Matta@ Pace 57htSt.

I went to Pace 57th St with Gillian to see Matta’s paintings. Being a fan of his work there were a couple I liked but for the most part I like what I’ve seen in museum collections better. I first encountered his painting when I was a teenager at the Clarke Art Institute in Williamstown, Ma. They had one in their collection that went to the Williams College Museum and is still there. It is from the early 40’s .It’s similar to the one at MOCA-LA.and MOMA ‘s “Here, Sire Fire, Eat!. I am most attached to this period of his work. I like the sense of a vast space populated with some mysterious unknown
debris and most of all the holes in the atmosphere; the implication of the way to another half revealed world.While a lot of his work has a science fiction / surrealist primitive quality ,there are also some paintings which have imagery that looks like sculpture from New Ireland in the South Pacific. It was fun to see Matta’s paintings overlooking 57th St. after having read about him in the DeKooning biography by Stevens and Swan.

“The Europeans remained focused upon 57th St., where they gathered at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery and 51st St., where she lived. Even being at the occasional party together did little to close the gap between the surrealists and the other artists. At one party, deKooning said wryly,” I tried to tell Miro of my admiration for his work in English.
So you see, the contact was not such a thing.” There was one essential exception, however- one surrealist who had a an early and pronounced effect on Americans: Roberto Matta Echaurren( universally known as Matta). He had arrived in New York in 1939, before the great wave of emigres. An ambitious Chilean who had joined the surrealists in Paris several years earlier, Matta had been a protege of Breton’s, and, like Breton, came from a background that respected elegance, intellectual airs, and a certain hauteur. But he had never been fully accepted by the french surrealists. In New York, he was more open to the Americans than the Europeans were. It helped that he was young- in his early thirties- and spoke excellent English. Julien Levy wrote of Matta’s arrival:

Matta burst on the New York scene as if he considered this country a sort of dark continent, his Africa, where he could trade dubious wares, charm the natives and entertain scintillating disillusions. He was chock full of premature optimism and impatient disappointment; believing ardently in almost everything and in absolutely nothing, as he believed ardently and painfully in himself, which was the same thing,
everything and nothing.”

Among deKooning’s friends, Gorky was most influenced by the arrival of the surrealists- and , in particular, by Matta. Both by background and temperament, Gorky was naturally attracted to surrealist whimsy and lyrical reverie.” Gorky had surrealism innate in him because of his Armenian background, independently of the Surrealists,” said Robert Jonas.” They didn’t implant it in him. Fantasies and dream images have been present through the ages. And his Armenia abounded in them.” It was only natural, then, that Gorky was eager to mix with the surrealists themselves. When Matta arrived in 1939, Gorky quickly gravitated to him. By 1941, the two had become very close friends, even though Gorky begrudged Matta his swift success in America. Gorky’s lyrical landscapesof the early forties reflect Matta’s influence. Matta urged him to be freer- to dilute his paint in order to achieve an airier, more extemporaneous effect and to use any accidental drips to spark improvisations.”


Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren (b. 1911-d. 2002), “Matta,” was born in Santiago, Chile in 1911. He earned a degree in architecture from the Universidad Católica of Santiago in 1932. Matta apprenticed under Le Corbusier, working on projects such as the iconic proposal for Ville Radieuse and travelled extensively in Europe (1935-37). André Breton invited Matta to join the Surrealist circle in 1937 and Matta would participate in the Paris Exposicion International du Surrealism the following year. In 1939 Matta left Paris for New York, where his increasingly biomorphic paintings quickly attracted­­­ the attention of the New York School. Following a break with the Surrealists, Matta moved to Rome (1948), where he resided until 1955. He lived the rest of his life in Paris, London, and Tarquinia (an Etruscan city, north of Rome, in the Lazio region of Italy), yet maintained strong ties to Latin America. Matta’s involvement in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s included his strong support of president Salvador Allende in Chile.

Bjerklie Perfomances@ Parkers Box

After work on Friday, Jan.24 I went to John Bjerklie’s third opening of “When a river Changes Course” at Parkers Box in Williamsburg. The opening was from 6-9, I had some time to kill beforehand so I went to Spoonbill and Sugartown bookstore. I love it there ( it’s my idea of heaven ), I bought a book by Jed Perl called “Antoine’s Alphabet” about Watteau. So I went to the cafe and read and drank espresso awhile before going to Parker’s Box. When I got there I noticed some changes from my previous visit.
The floor had overlapping sheets of ply wood strewn about the space creating an undulating springy uncomfortable surface to walk on.
The debris/crate wood had been pushed back, tidied up a bit
Two TV monitors were placed on a low bench 
 John Bjerklie was greeting people with a straw sun hat and a red bandage wrapped around his head(ala Van Gogh). He disappeared up into a lofted area and appeared on the television screen( in his “studio”, under surveilance). On the second screen another artist came on and advised John on his motivation to paint. The joke was that John smeared paint all over his paper and then smeared the paper all over himself (his attempt to put himself into his work). He left and another artist, Cindy Towers came on with a cape and boxing gloves and started having a painting contest with John. John got a cell phone call in the middle of the contest , so I realized I could call him . I got out my cell phone and called and offered him money for his painting . Every time he got close to accepting an offer, I countered with a lower offer (mimicking his price slashed writing on his other TV screens) until things degenerated into bickering with Cindy and I hung up. Cindy left and Steve Brauer came in they have a conversation and the whole bit turns into high jinks; eventually Cindy comes back, they both leave downstairs and end up in the lofted space with John other artists come on.ETC... 
 A lot of people came to the opening, it was crowded for a long while. John had some other video’s he had recorded earlier that incorporated the same theme’s:
How the artist sees themself.
How the artist thinks they’re perceived by society.
The anxiety of wanting to be financially successful and artistically successful.
Eventually I got tired and went home.


John had another opening Fri. 2/13. For this he made video tape of himself in the lower studio, shown on one screen, while on the other he ran a live feed of himself up in his lofted area. This time he was competing, taunting, cajoling, and muttering with himself. The themes of his conversation were similar to his earlier performance but because he’s talking to himself I felt greater clarity about listening to the artist’s inner voice. One funny bit was John writing his phone number on a paper to sell his work a la QVC Cable television. The huckster side of his personality was selling the work out from under the poetic side. The whole piece became one giant organism to me. Quite profound;to so literally hear the voice of the artist coming through his work. I mentioned this to John’s dealer Alun Williams and also that I see this as related to J.Beuys, in particular his Honey Pump sculpture. Alun said that John was also influenced by the work of Paul Thek.
SUNDAY 2/22/09

John did another performance on Sunday 2/22/09. It was more heavily attended than the previous weeks. He had made another recorded video of himself to play against. When he did the phone bit Marina Abramowicz called him up ( she was attending with Alana Heiss). They ended up buying work from John over the phone. Alana Heiss negotiated to buy the paintings John was making for $50. He told her to put the $50 under a 5 gallon bucket on the gallery floor, she did and he threw the paintings out a window in the lofted area of his piece. The paintings were still wet when she picked them up and left.
During this performance I noticed the dialectical nature of the 2 screen presentation more prominently than I had before. Two screens talking to each other seems original to John’s work( there is picture in picture but not two seperate television screens in discourse with one another and an artist talking to his alter ego ,no less). The diptych was reflected in a painting on paper vignette of Okey-Dokey Man and a Do Not Be Afraid painting that were casually strewn at the foot of the painting loft. Clearly ,Okey-Dokey Man is getting the message.

Guston@ L&M Arts

My daughter Gillian was going to fly to Chicago after working for me at Showman Thurs.2/12. Her plane didn’t leave LaGuardia until 7pm, so we had time to go to L&M Arts to see the Philip Guston show. She is a fan of his work, me ...not as much. The show was of about 8 paintings from the early 50’s; when he’s still doing abstract expressionist work. Flat shapes that seem to become cartoon like imagery are working there way into these paintings. I like the way the shapes are conjured up out of the atmospheric gray pink haze. It’s a fun show and L&M is such a good place to see abstract work.
I had been to L&M once before while working on a movie; an art consultant brought me there to look at paintings to copy for the movie. The production company had bought the rights to quite a few paintings and I copied a lot but they still didn’t have enough. We went to L&M on a day that it was closed and had a look around to pick something out, I don’t remember if we did pick anything but I do remember the De Kooning's next to the Pollack's and getting to go to all the floors in the building and look at a lot of contemporary and modern painting; sometimes in semi-darkness(very magical). I had fun recognizing who painted the various pieces. We ended up in a small room on the top floor with a bunch of small paintings sitting on the floor leaning against the wall. I remember there was a Monet and some painting facing the wall, the stretchers looked like they were made of barn wood, the back of the canvas looked as old as time, we turned it around and it was a cubist painting by Picasso from 1910; I thought I was in heaven. I had always wanted go back to L&M with Gillian, as I knew she would love it, and I finally got to.

Morgan Library

I went to the Morgan Library with Lynn Brown to see the Thaw Collection of drawings an oil sketches. In the last few years they put a modern addition on and it ‘s like being in a humungous hotel lobby. I’m a fan of modern architecture but this is so out of character with how old school traditional the Morgan Library is that I can’t imagine what they were thinking; maybe they get a lot of people at certain times and they need a place for them to wait. Luckily it was quiet the afternoon we went. The Thaw collection was divided into two sections; drawings and oil sketches.
There was a great variety within the drawing collection. “A pen and ink study of a Renaissance temple by Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–ca. 1501) drawn ca. 1470 and a mixed media representation by Jim Dine (b. 1935) with imagery inspired by a dream, dated 2000, signal the wide chronological, technical, and conceptual range of the exhibition.

French drawing is represented by a dynamic study of Italian gamblers by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) and a floral design by Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759–1840). Two exquisite portrait drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) that have been long hidden from public view are among the highlights of the Thaws' recent acquisitions. They represent the first full-length studies by Ingres to enter the Morgan's collection, joining three portraits and four additional sheets from the Thaw collection and nine other drawings by the artist.
The modern drawings represent the diversity of the medium during the twentieth century and include fine examples of major artistic movements. Collages by Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) and Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) expand the traditional definition of drawings. A small sketch by Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) records one of his signature sculptures in a play of frenzied lines. A major work by Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) headlines a group of postwar drawings by Americans Franz Kline (1910–1962), Agnes Martin (1912–2004), and Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923). The exhibition concludes with a spare line drawing from 1993 by David Hockney (b. 1937) of charming dachshunds resting.” So much great stuff by a lot of my heroes.

The oil sketches were in a seperate room. “Among the works on view is Jean-Michel Cels's Clouds and Blue Sky, one of a group of eight studies of clouds and sky that Cels executed between 1838 and 1842, and John Constable's Hampstead Heath with Bathers (ca. 1821–22), a study of the sky emphasizing cloud morphology and weather effects.” Nice stuff!

Bonnard @ the Met

After work I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my daughter Gillian( an art student @SUNY Purchase) to see the Pierre Bonnard show. It was in the Lehman Atrium, a nice place to see special exhibits. I loved Bonnard paintings since first seeing them back in art school, so it was a particular treat to see a large amount at once.
I was always a fan of his pattern painting, but this time I realized how wonderful his figures are. The closer they are to you, the more they blend into their surroundings, they seem to be increasingly made of energy and light, it's profound. It reminded me of something Giacometti said about when seeing a figure from across the street,you can see the whole figure but that when they come in the cafe, the closer they get to you the less you can see.

When A River Changes Course 1/9

I went back to see John Bjerklie’s show Jan. 9 : another First Friday reception. at Parker's Box in Williamsburg. Things changed quite a bit since the first viewing. A lot of the crate wood that had been in the gallery was out in the front window. The remaining wood in the main room was reorganized into tree like structures with wires spewing out the top like twigs. Additional video elements and mirrors became more prominent. A couple of the mirrors are hung on the wall on the diagonal , they’re smudged, with a circle cleaned off in the center. A new video of the sunrise to sunset on the Savanah river was placed in front of a mirror with the same smudging, an allusion to the shows title. In the center of the action there are 2 TV monitors on folding chairs facing each other. The monitors have cameras hooked to them so each is taking the others picture, on there screens are list’s of dollar amounts , sometimes John would cross out and change the prices. It seemed to be pointing out the artists relationship with the marketplace.
I was there early and got to speak with John about his work and he brought out some bronze pieces he had recently cast in N.C. One was of an easel with a hole chopped through the canvas another was of his Hothead bust made of gum balls. People started showing up ,it got busy, I left feeling amazed by getting so many ideas out of such debris , an Arte Povera experience.

Terry Winters "Knotted Graphs " at Matthew Marks

I went to Chelsea Friday , Jan. 9 to see a couple of galleries before going out to Williamsburg to revisit John Bjerklie's"When a River Changes Course" show. The shows I saw in Chelsea were Terry Winters at Matthew Marks and Nick Cave at Jack Shainman. First was Terry Winters show of paintings “Knotted Graphs”. I saw a review in the Times that morning and I was so attracted I couldn’t resist going to see them.I painted canvases with knotwork patterns in the 80’s. Mine were inspired by the knotwork in the Book of Kells and George Bain’s book
“Celtic Art the methods of construction”. When I look at Terry Winter’s paintings I see them as abstracted images from that same world and I feel euphoria to be amongst kin. The way they are painted with layers of translucent lake pigments is luscious. I ‘m disappointed though when I read the press release mentioning the study of topology (mathematics of continuous closed system curves i.e. mobius strip) as the inspiration for the paintings without mentioning the meaning behind
the use of the imagery as a metaphor for the interconnected nature of life. While at the gallery I spoke with the gallery attendant about the information in the press release and
after my mentioning the celtic knotwork he brought up parallel evolution; meaning Terry Winters could come up with the similar imagery through the use of mathematics without
having seen historical references. I left finding this hard to believe, since then I’ve read the interview in The Brooklyn Rail by Phong Bui


“Peter Lamborn Wilson: Quite recently, we were talking about Ireland
where we both have been and became obsessed with the stones. Does that
kind of monumental abstraction of the stones as they survive, not as we
might hypothesize them originally being, like the reconstruction of
Newgrange, which neither you nor I seem to care for, but the way they look,
denuded of the earth and in ruins, inspire your work in any specific way?
Winters: Not in any way that I would want to claim for myself, but I feel a
tremendous attraction to the development of that kind of abstract
language. A geometry that is rooted to its location as well as its relationship
to the given geology.
Wilson: It struck me that you could look on those stone structures in the
way they tie themselves into the landscape, which at times appear like a
topological puzzle.
Winters: Well, that reading of pattern making, which is tied to notions of
surveying both of the landscape as well as the cosmological movements of
planets and constellations, develops a structure that goes beyond
formalism. I think that’s been a challenge that I’ve applied to my own work,
that the work would become what Wallace Stevens called a ‘necessary
fiction’. That the paintings would be a product of exploration, an excavation
of factual material to reveal other levels of, I don’t want to say reality
—other possibilities.
David Levi Strauss: As Peter said, we are seeing these ancient Celtic
forms in ruins and it is this kind of deformation that I think is applicable to
some things that are happening in these new paintings.
Wilson: How so?
Levi Strauss: How forms once made and put in play break down over
time. Certainly, in the paintings in the front room that we were just looking
at, we’re seeing forms break, not necessarily into their constituent parts,

but to make new forms possible.”

I think I’m on the right track.

The Wassaic Project

My parents and sisters live in the Northern Berkshires.For the past 25 years I drove up there with my wife, Francie, and my children, Gillian and Liam. We always drive up Rte22 and along the way pass through Wassaic. Wassaic was only ever noteworthy because there is a large Metro North Train station right along 22 and down in the village away from the road is a distinctive mill structure 8 stories tall. Six months ago Eve Biddle e-mailed me that she in conjunction with Bowie Zunino were organizing an installation oriented art space at the mill building in Wassaic called the Wassaic Project. They planned a weekend in late August full of performance pieces , music, video and visual art. As it happened it was a weekend we were planning to drive to the Berkshires so we stopped in. We went inside the mill and climbed to the top checking out the sculpture, photography and painting along the way. Particularly memorable was the boat piece by Jessie Henson, Jin Kim and Lisa Iglesias. A nylon rope sculpture of a boat with oars suspended 4’ above the floor.
We checked the schedule and saw we had time for one of the performance pieces over at the old cattle auction building. We went in just in time to see Tonia Schoumatoff perform a folk song called Dona Dona, about a calf on his way to be slaughtered with a group of young girls from farm families in the area. It was a tribute to all the cattle that had passed through that space but no longer do (for economic reasons). The way of life of the farmers is changing due to global politics. It was so moving my wife Francie sang along with them as this was a camp song she knew from her childhood. After the performance we went on our way to the Berkshires much richer for the experience as the arts festival continued on through the next day. We stopped in on our way back and got to say hello to Eve and her husband Josh and Bowie before we returned home. You can follow them at wassaicproject.com.

Martha Clarke's Garden of Earthly Delights

My daughter Gillian and her girlfriend Kim gave my wife and I a pair of tickets to see Martha Clarke’s Garden of Earthly Delights. We went early and went to eat at Caffe Reggio around the corner on Mac Dougal St. We had soup, salad and espresso and soaked in the exquisite atmosphere: heavily carved dark wood,dimly lit old portrait paintings... We left to wander around the West Village: Carmine, Bedford, Cornelia Streets then went to the Minetta Lane Theater.
The lobby was peppered with prints of Bosch’s triptych Garden of Earthly Delights, so the ground was prepared for the journey into the world you were entering.
We had seats in the balcony , a great view to see the reflections of the dancers but the seats are so cramped. The access is so limited that people in the middle of rows have to stand up and let others pass so much so that one man started losing his patience and tried to refuse letting some young men pass, his response was “ Come on, it’s the theater!”. We cracked up!
The show begins with musicians dressed as monks casually coming on stage to make very atmospheric wind and drum noises. Around the stage there are stumps and branches (barren of leaves) sporadically placed among other props; like debris. The dancers come out walking on all fours in nude body stockings, like reptilian creatures, very primal.The progression of their movement is to the discovery of sex. The music is at turns nature driven, melodic, classical, increasingly discordant. The relationships between the dancers progress through the sexual ,becoming increasingly violent. The dancers at one point put on medieval peasant clothing. They create an image of log rolling by the women standing on the hips of prone men. As the men roll, their reflections in the floor imply a watery surface; indelible. Pairs of dancers sequentially begin slow motion leaping across the space, this evolves into the dancers putting on harnesses and flying. Daringly they flip , spin and swing; multiple dancers in the air; out over the audience, they’re assisted by the other dancers onstage , At one point a dancer on stage extends a 5’ long stick to the eye of a suspended dancer. Smoke fills the space from the top down, the climax of the action (in my opinion as this is just a fleeting impression of actual experience) comes when a male figure ascends, spinning, is dropped and raised several times and while at the apex of the rise , lights out, disappears in the dark and smoke.
On leaving, my wife Francie said “The moral of the story is it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. I said I saw it as creation myth as opposed to Bosch’s painting, which I always saw as man’s descent into Hell.
When coming down from the balcony I was moved when I saw some old show posters, the first was from Angry Housewives, Francie had painted the scenery for it back in the 80’s when the theater was first built, the second was a poster for Jeffrey that my sister Donna assisted on the sound design for in the early 90’s; ah! nostalgia.
For me it was interesting that a show inspired by a painting had no painted elements, as it was done as a black box with props and it was fun to see the mechanics of the flying system.

Picasso's Guernica

Picasso’s Guernica was sent to Madrid in 1981. Picasso had stipulated that it be returned to Spain after Franco’s death.I first saw it when I was about 12. My mom took me to MOMA a few times before I went to high school. The experience of seeing it was
disorienting. It was so big and visually out of control, the symbolism so incomprehensible, that it was a mysterious puzzle to me. I spent a lot of time looking at the studies for it . Matching the study to the larger painting , I liked examining the differences. When I would read the labels I couldn’t have cared less about the story line. I knew it was anti-war but Picasso’s motivation was by far less interesting than the raw visceral power of the painting itself. So impressive that the affection and memory of it still captures my imagination after not seeing it for 30 years. I realize now that the power of it comes from its formal qualities but also the immediacy of of Picasso painting in black and white made it feel like the painting was my own. As a young native New Yorker I felt the presence of the painting was such a part of MOMA and New York,I couldn’t understand why it should be sent back to Spain. In that myopic view of my youth I thought the day would never come when it would leave. Still in my mind’s eye it’s just been out on loan until its done traveling.
The power of the image is so strong that Rockefeller had a tapestry of it made and donated it to the UN. In 2003 when Colin Powell went to the UN to declare war against Iraq the Bush Administration had the tapestry covered with a blue drape so that the image wouldn’t appear behind him in photo’s of the event. That was some serious art power coming through Pablo.

John Bjerklie at Parkers Box

At Parkers Box I went to John Bjerklie’s Opening. His piece is a month long installation that he will change each day called “When a River Changes Course”. It will only be viewed on tv monitors on folding chairs placed in the front windows. There will be another time in January for the public to walk around inside. Once you go around the wall separating the monitors from the rest of the gallery,you’re confronted with 2 piles of debris 1 painted red , 1 painted blue with security video cameras embedded in them. On the walls behind each pile are drop cloths painted red and blue, dividing the space into the hot zone and the cool zone. The piles of debris are the remains of John’s most recent presentation of hi Hothead/Coolhead sculpture at UNC Greensboro in North Carolina.
I got to speak with John and a group of other people including an artist Michael (who was assisting him with the installation) and a Dutch woman who said she saw the piece as a political reference to the electoral politics. The message I took away with me
was that it reflected a culture divided, heads blown apart , over analyzed by technology.
I loved peering into the monitors to try to discover where I was in relationship to all the debris. I hope everyone has as much fun with it.

Chelsea Art Galleries27th-26th St 12/12/08

On Friday December 12 I planned to go to the opening of John Bjerklie at Parkers Box in Williamsburg. Being a friend and a fan of his work I wouldn’t miss it. The opening began at 6. I left work at 3 with time to go to Chelsea(as I like to do on occasion).
I’d seen an ad for an exhibit of Al Held’s paintings at Paul Kasmin Gallery. The paintings were done in the early 80’s. I was most impressed by the 2 largest: “Roberta’s Trip” and
“The First Circle”. They are geometric abstractions painted in very bright flat color, that become dimensional by the use of perspective and overlapping. The use of color generates a tremendous amount of light. The craftsmanship is so impeccable ! The vision they speak to is a crowded, complicated, layered world that lacks the mystery I
often see. I do feel a kinship and like them so much, I buy the catalog. I leave and go around to the annex to the Kasmin Gallery to see the Andy Warhol Polaroid’s. Deadpan images of objects on a white, flat background. Set up in grids, they are by turn saccharine and dangerous. It felt great to clearly see them as the building blocks for his larger pieces. When asked the young woman sitting at the desk said they were$11,000. a piece,unsigned but stamped by the Warhol Foundation. I quickly did the math and realized there was alot of money on those walls.
The next place I stopped in was the Nancy Hoffman Gallery to see the sculpture of Ilan Averbuch “Intimate Monuments”. They employ a combination of curved space, symbolism and mystery that I wish to employ in my own work. In the back room was a Don Eddy triptych, an airbrushed photo realist piece so flawless that I thought it was digitally printed. I do like the subject of nature as spiritual.
I walked further down 27th to Sundaram Tagore Gallery which is showing the paintings of Natvar Bhasar. They are big meditation inspired images. Painted with bright colored dry pigment in circular shapes they are too similar to Rothko for me to think they’re art historically important.They seem to have another function, in an interview he said ”I believe color is based on physical elements. It has a real physical entity and an impact on our psyches. I brought color with me from India. Our religion is imbued with color; it is a part of our daily lives. In America, color does not have the same significance... When I paint I am in a deeply meditative state. The viewer can also achieve a state of meditation.”
I walked around to 26th went into Mitchell-Innes & Nash, wasn’t with it so I went next door to Gallery LeLong(which I consistently like). They were showing Petah Coynes sculpture “Vermillion Fog”. Divided into black sections and white sections named “Dante’s Inferno” and “Unforgiven”. They are constructions of flowers,feathers,velvet and taxidermied birds (mallards on the black and doves on the white).They are so emotional, sickeningly beautiful. It brought to my mind a stanza
from a poem by Tennyson called “The Voyage of Maeldune”:

And we came to the Isle of Flowers; their breath met us out on the seas,
For the Spring and the middle Summer sat each on the lap of the breeze;
And the red passion-flower to the cliffs, and the dark blue clematis, clung,
And starr’d with a myriad blossom the long convulvulus hung;
And the topmost spire of the mountain was lilies in lieu of snow,
And the lilies like glaciers winded down, running out below
Thro’ the fire of the tulip and poppy, the blaze of gorse, and the blush;
And the whole isle-side flashing down from the peak without ever a tree
Swept like a torrent of gems from the sky to the blue of the sea;
And we rolled upon capes crocus vaunted our kith and kin,
And we wallowed in beds of lilies and chanted the triumph of Finn,
Till each like a golden image was pollened from head to feet
And each was as dry as a cricket, with thirst in the middle-day heat.
Blossom and blossom, and promise of blossom, but never a fruit!
And we hated the Flowering Isle like we hated the isle that was mute,
And we tore up the flowers by the million and flung them in bight and bay,
And we left but a naked rock, and in anger we sailed away.
I went a few buildings further to the Robert Miller Gallery to a show of small scale Ab Ex paintings called “Beyond the Canon”.It wasn’t much beyond the canon; Pollock,De Kooning, Kline,Krasner, Elaine Dekooning, Hoffman, Gorky; they were all there. I liked a Jimmy Ernst the best. The show is the stuff dreams are made of.
By now it’s getting dark out,I walked further east and could see the lights in Pace Editions 4 stories up. Like iron to a magnet, I crossed the street and up I went to see the Francesco Clemente show. I’m not a fan of his larger figurative pieces ,so I wandered to the back of the gallery where they had a print by Ryan McGinnis I had fun staring at. The print was of a grid of varying size mandalas. Each ring was made of losenge shapes. So when you focused on one mandala the ones in your peripheral vision started spinning. i was entertained for a while sorting out the relationship of which ones spun when you looked at which mandala. Eventually the spell broke and I went to leave but I noticed a small glass room with pages of a book displayed .It’s called “ Alcuni Telefonini” Each page is set up side by side a watercolor by Clemente and a poem by Vincent Katz. I was resistant at first but then they washed over me like a wave at the beach. From Katz’ website:
“Katz and Francesco Clemente have a book of poems and watercolors, entitled Alcuni Telefonini, just out from Granary Books. Katz has contributed translations and poems to two of Clemente's exhibition catalogues, and they have done a series of prints together.”
“Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, art critic, editor, and curator. He is the author of nine books of poetry, including Cabal of Zealots (1988, Hanuman Books), Understanding Objects (2000, Hard Press), and Rapid Departures (2005, Ateliê Editorial). He won the 2005 National Translation Award, given by the American Literary Translators Association, for his book of translations from Latin, The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (2004, Princeton University Press). He was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship in Literature at the American Academy in Rome for 2001-2002. He had a one-month residency at the American Academy in Berlin in Spring, 2006. He is the editor of the poetry and arts journal VANITAS and of Libellum books.”
Realiizing it was time I walked back to the A train, went down to Union Square; past the Tom Otterness funny bronzes and on to the L train to Williamsburg.

Poogy Bjerklie's opening at The Phatory

I went down to the East Village. Poogy’s opening started at 7. I was a little early so I stopped and had an espresso on Thompkins Square Park (perfect). I was the only customer and the barista was playing Janis Joplin. I rocked out until 7 o’clock came. I walked over to The Phatory and a small bunch of people were there. I got to say Hi to Poogy and checkout the paintings. They were all about the same size approximately 9”x12” oil on board landscapes with a cream color shadow box frame. They all were soft focus images of trees and fields in a rural area with no evidence of human presence (a combination of Albert Pinkham Ryder, George Inniss and Gerhard Richter). The paint is applied thinly to enhance the surface texture of the under-painting( some what thickly applied). My favorite had an area of crackle.
The gallery is a small intimate store front. Poogy had painted the gallery walls with a green/ gray iridescent glaze which she had stenciled a pattern of 4” tall topiary trees( very soft and elegant). She arranged the paintings in small groupings, some horizontal, some over/ under.
For me the concept of putting the framed paintings of pastoral, rural visions on
walls with topiary trees seemed to suggest we are looking at the rural landscape from the point of view of the urban civilized garden.
I had some fun conversations with Poogy’s decorative artist friends (Poogy’s a
member of DC9 decorative painters) especially with Katie Kelmsley who helped Poogy stencil the walls ( along with Poogy’s husband John).
I went home feeling richer for my experience there, visually satisfied.

MOMA Epiphany

So, on the 4th floor at MOMA is their late 20th C. collection. After leaving the Beuys area
I wandered and came upon De Kooning's Woman. Hanging next to it was a painting by Lee Krasner. I was stopped dead in my tracks, overcome with the pink and the gray. I recalled the time I went to see the Pollock/Krasner show at Robert Miller Gallery. On the very back wall of the gallery was a huge pink painting (at least 15'H x30'W) and a little girl of 3 was there with her Mom.
The girl was dressed in a beautiful mint green flowery dress and she broke free of her Mom's grasp and ran full tilt at the huge pink painting, giggling all the way until she stopped, enthralled just 6" from the painting. For me Lee Krasner became a giant in that moment and next to De Kooning's 'Woman' at MOMA her painting delivered just as big.