Sunday, July 28, 2013

Rain Room at Inside and Out



It's 8 pm on the last day/night of Random International's Rain Room (2012) at the Museum of Modern Art - and it's raining outside.  I imagine people are now standing in the rain, waiting to enter the Rain Room, which is the experience of standing in the rain without getting wet.  Someone has to point out the irony in all that - it's too delicious to let slip by without a comment.

Announcements were sent out to inform the public that the show would close at 12 midnight to accommodate those die-hearts unperturbed by standing in line for as little as 1 1/2 hour (members) and as much as 8 hours or more.  Once inside the Rain Room, you can stay as long as you like - but only 10 people may stand inside the room at one time.  (One wonders which MoMA wunderkind thought that this was a good idea for a city of millions and its thousands of summertime guests - not.)  As of last weekend, over 70,000 visitors braved the challenging New York heat for fear of missing out on this much-talked about attraction.

If you are like me, however, and can't spare 1 hour - let alone 8 hours - for just about anything these days, take heart.  We still have videos.  Here is one with the artists as your guides:


And at the Barbican Gallery last year:


Or you may share my "rain room" on the porch, gently perfumed with Nature's own refreshing blend.  


Cheers,

Beth New York
aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director
New York Arts Exchange


Our next tour will be Edward Hopper at the Whitney Museum, July 31 at 1 pm.
Please confirm your reservation at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net
Thank you.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS, 1988, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, through August 2

Rosalind Solomon, New York, 1987
Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

 "Because life leads inevitably to death, these pictures are about all of us." 
 --- Rosalind Solomon,"Artist's Statement," Portraits in the Time of AIDS, 1988


From May 17 through July 2, 1988, the exhibition Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS filled the rooms of New York University's Grey Art Gallery with its large 32 1/2 by 32 1/2 inch square, black and white photographs, attached to a beige fabric wall with ordinary push pins.  The installation seemed uncharacteristically stark and vulnerable for this tony Greenwich Village venue. Each photograph focused on a few anonymous people (the afflicted, their families, their friends and their lovers).  The entire experience of the images (unprotected by the glass of conventional framing) performed a visceral confrontation as well as an intimate encounter for the viewer.  

Solomon's portraits also became a visual collaborative essay produced by the sitters and artist as they decided on the settings, poses and circumstances. Sometimes at home, sometimes in a hospital, sometimes in the arms of loved ones, Solomon strove to capture the individual as simply that: a person, whose body turned into battlefield inside and out. The emotions run the gamut, from the appearance of isolation to affectionate embracing, from wistful mediation to active defiance. In each, we are forced to consider a vibrant personality tested by pain, trauma and confronting the inevitability of death. 

In 1988, the Grey Art Gallery exhibition intended to break through the vicious stigma, instigated by the media and ignorant hearsay, that had turned people with HIV into social pariah because the public feared contamination. In 2013, hopefully, we are wiser and more compassionate. Today, these portraits memorialize the victims and historicize the moment.




The Grey's director at that time, Thomas Sokolowski, had discovered Solomon's work in the fall of 1987 and asked her to complete the series for a spring opening. The experience for both artist and curator was unusual, but necessary. AIDS (Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome) was on the rise, destroying scores of populations everywhere. The medical community, the arts community and the gay community - among others - felt an enormous urgency to stop this predator and cure those already afflicted with the condition. Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS (a title inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 1985 novel Love in the Time of Cholera, translated into English in 1988) attempted to enjoin this zeal through fostering a personal connection through portraiture.  


Solomon wrote in her statement for the current reprisal of the 1988 AIDS show, now at Bruce Silverstein Gallery: 

In my practice, I am interested in breaking down stereotypes.  Though I am always aware of the social and political context in which I am working, my pictures raise issues.  They do not give answers.  Wherever I am, I connect on a gut level.  I never gloss over the raw realities of life.  I do not tell people what to believe, but cause them to confront their assumptions.  I take them to the places where I have found connection with strangers and their lives.  My convictions and confusions intermingle as I meet individuals living with emotional and physical stress.  I think that viewers reminded of their own problems, find this disturbing.  They face their own mortality.


Photographing people with AIDS and those in their lives was a wrenching experience.  For a year of my life I met individuals facing the affliction.  My life was all about AIDS.  It was total immersion.  When the show opened, for the most part, it was ignored or got negative reviews.  I was accused of exploitation. Most of the people in the photographs exhibited came to the opening of the exhibit and liked it.  They knew that they were being memorialized.   After that year, I worked on other projects and tried to put the pain that I felt behind me.



Rosalind Solomon remains one of America's most important artists whose primary media is photography. This particular series in her oeuvre features individual portraits (as opposed to genre pieces) and, therefore, is unique among her other endeavors.  

In general, Solomon's photographs bear witness to the extraordinary in our times: the strong, the mysterious, the tragic and the beautiful.  Elsewhere  I have written about her photographs of rituals.  

I look forward to hosting an evening with Rosalind Solomon on September 10, 2013 at  287 Spring Gallery and Performance Space, beginning at 7 pm.  An exhibition of selected works will open as well, continuing through September 17th.   Please save the date and join us.

(Other exhibitions on AIDS in the 1980s are on view at the Whitney Museum, through September 1, and the New York Historical Society, through September 15.)


Best regards,
Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director
New York Arts Exchange


Saturday, July 13, 2013

Le Quatorze Juillet: Bastille Day 2013 - and an Anniversary Poem for Andre and Jeanne Salmon

Moise Kisling, Portrait of André Salmon, 1912 and Portrait of Jeanne Blazy-Escarpette Salmon, 1919

Poem Read at André Salmon’s Wedding

July 13 1909

Seeing the flags this morning I didn’t tell myself
Behold the rich garments of the poor
Or democratic modesty wants to veil its sorrow
Or honoring liberty now makes us imitate
Leaves o vegetable liberty o sole earthly liberty
Or the houses are ablaze because we’ll leave never to return
Or these restless hands will labor tomorrow for us all
Or even they’ve hanged those who couldn’t make the most of life
Or even they’ve renewed the world by recapturing the Bastille
I know it’s only renewed by those grounded in poetry
Paris is decked out because my friend André Salmon’s getting
        married there

We used to meet up in a damned dive
When we were young
Both of us smoking and shabbily dressed waiting for sunrise
Smitten smitten with the same words whose meanings will have
        to be changed
Deceived deceived poor kids and we still didn’t know how to laugh
The table and two glasses became a dying man who cast us
        Orpheus’ last glance
The glasses fell shattered
And we learned how to laugh
We parted then pilgrims of perdition
Across streets across countries across reason
I saw him again on the bank of the river where Ophelia was floating
Who still floats white amongst the water lilies
He went off amongst wan Hamlets
Playing the airs of madness on his flute
I saw him near a dying muzhik counting his blessings
While admiring the snow that looked like naked women
I saw him doing this or that in honor of the same words
That change children’s expressions and I’m saying these things
Recollection and Expectation because my friend André Salmon is
        getting married

Let’s rejoice not because our friendship has been the river that
        made us fertile
River lands whose abundance is the nourishment all hope for
Or because our glasses cast once more Orpheus’ dying glance
Or because we’ve grown so large that many people confuse our
        eyes with stars
Or because flags flap at the windows of citizens who’ve been
        content these hundred years to have life and trifles to defend

Or because grounded in poetry we have the right to words that
        form and unmake the
Universe
Or because we can weep without being absurd and because we
        know how to laugh
Or because we’re smoking and drinking as in the old days
Let’s rejoice because the director of fire and poets
Love filling like light
All the solid space between stars and planets
Love wishes that my friend André Salmon get married today

Apollinaire
translation © Jack Hayes 2010

From Robert Frost's Banjo

POÈME LU AU MARIAGE D'ANDRÉ SALMON

Le 13 juillet 1909
En voyant des drapeaux ce matin je ne me suis pas dit
Voilà les riches vêtements des pauvres
Ni la pudeur démocratique veut me voiler sa douleur
Ni la liberté en honneur fait qu'on imite maintenant
Les feuilles ô liberté végétale ô seule liberté terrestre
Ni les maisons flambent parce qu'on partira pour ne plus revenir
Ni ces mains agitées travailleront demain pour nous tous
Ni même on a pendu ceux qui ne savaient pas profiter de la vie
Ni même on renouvelle le monde en reprenant la Bastille
Je sais que seuls le renouvellent ceux qui sont fondés en poésie
On a pavoisé Paris parce que mon ami André Salmon s'y marie
Nous nous sommes rencontrés dans un caveau maudit
Au temps de notre jeunesse
Fumant tous deux et mal vêtus attendant l'aube
Epris épris des mêmes paroles dont il faudra changer le sens
Trompés trompés pauvres petits et ne sachant pas encore rire
La table et les deux verres devinrent un mourant qui nous jeta le dernier regard d'Orphée
Les verres tombèrent se brisèrent Et nous apprîmes à rire
Nous partîmes alors pèlerins de la perdition
A travers les rues à travers les contrées à travers la raison
Je le revis au bord du fleuve sur lequel flottait Ophélie
Qui blanche flotte encore entre les nénuphars
Il s'en allait au milieu des Hamlets blafards
Sur la flûte jouant les airs de la folie
Je le revis près d'un moujik mourant compter les béatitudes
En admirant la neige semblable aux femmes nues
Je le revis faisant ceci ou cela en l'honneur des mêmes paroles
Qui changent la face des enfants et je dis toutes ces choses
Souvenir et Avenir parce que mon ami André Salmon se marie
Réjouissons-nous non pas parce que notre amitié a été le fleuve qui nous a fertilisés
Terrains riverains dont l'abondance est la nourriture que tous espèrent
Ni parce que nos verres nous jettent encore une fois le regard d'Orphée mourant
Ni parce que nous avons tant grandi que beaucoup pourraient confondre nos yeux et les étoiles
Ni parce que les drapeaux claquent aux fenêtres des citoyens qui sont contents depuis cent ans d'avoir la vie et de menues choses à défendre Ni parce que fondés en poésie nous avons des droits sur les paroles qui forment et défont l'Univers
Ni parce que nous pouvons pleurer sans ridicule et que nous savons rire
Ni parce que nous fumons et buvons comme autrefois
Réjouissons-nous parce que directeur du feu et des poètes
L'amour qui emplit ainsi que la lumière
Tout le solide espace entre les étoiles et les planètes
L'amour veut qu'aujourd'hui mon ami André Salmon se marie


Vive la Liberté,
Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic
Director
New York Arts Exchange
www.nyarts-exchange.com
www.andresalmon.org 

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Gay Pride Weekend 2013 and Patricia Cronin's Memorial to a Marriage Reconsidered

Gay Pride March 2013, begins 11 am at Fifth Avenue and 36th St.


New York Arts Exchange salutes Gay Pride Weekend with a big shout out to the Supreme Court for striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, of 1996.  How wonderful to celebrate together this landmark decision.

With that in mind, I am thinking of Patricia Cronin's masterpiece Memorial to a Marriage (2002) and the significance of the work within the context of this new development.  Will it lose its transgressive edginess which galvanizes so much of Cronin's work?  Maybe . . .maybe not.  Only time will tell.

Once again, here is my review of the artist's exhibition "Bodies and Soul" which took place in Washington, DC in 2011

                  


             
Patricia Cronin, Memorial to a Marriage, 2002 in bronze and marble.

Patricia Cronin: Bodies and SoulConner Gallery, Washington, DC , Febuary 4 - March 10, 2011

In July 2010, this blog celebrated the marriage of New York artists Patricia Cronin and Deborah Kass, whose long-time commitment inspired Cronin's sculpture Memorial to a Marriage, 2002, permanently installed in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.  The marble mortuary sculpture was meant to accomplish in death that which seemed - in 2002 -  impossible in life.

Now the exhibition of the bronze version of this sculpture, on view at Conner Gallery in Washington, DC, celebrates the transition of this artwork from depicting a dream to immortalizing reality. 


Memorial to a Marriage is based on Gustave Courbet's Sleepers or Sleep (1866)

Gustave Courbet, The Sleepers, 1866

and the American neoclassical tradition of the 19th century (Patricia Cronin studied and appropriated Harriet Hosmer's work for her exhibition Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found  (June 2009-January 2010).

Harriet Hosmer, Beatrice Cenci, 1856.

We have in Cronin's sculpture what the artist calls "institutional critique."

For more information on Patricia Cronin's work, please visit her website:http://www.patriciacronin.net/
And read her interview in Sculpture Magazine.


Vive l'amour et la passion,
Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director


Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Paul Werner gives us the Woid on Venice Biennale 2013





Fresh off The Orange Press blog, New York Arts Exchange faculty-at-large member Dr. Paul Werner's gives us the latest on Venice Biennale 2013
http://theorangepress.com/woid/woid20/woidxx45.html


Plus a review from The New York Timeshttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/v/venice_biennale/index.html


For more VB photographs, the report from The Huffington Posthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/venice-biennale-2013-photo-diary-wrap-up_n_3383163.html

For more on the artworks, the blog Contemporary Art Dailyhttp://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2013/06/venice-biennale-2013/

And, of course, Blake Gopnik's take on The Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/06/05/modern-art-s-last-gasp-at-the-2013-venice-biennale.html

Ciao, bella/bello -
Beth New York


aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director
New York Arts Exchange
www.nyarts-exchange.com 

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Max Ferguson and a Year of Magical Thinking


My Father on Fifth Avenue, 2011
oil on panel, 9 1/2 x 12 inches
Private Collection

On Father's Day 2012, I posted a review of Max Ferguson: Portraits of My Father on view at the Hebrew Union College from April 16 through June 29, 2012.  It was a strange show: portraits of a father before and after he passed away.  A bit melancholy with a touch of Magic Realism.

Then a few days later my own father passed away at the same age as Ferguson's, 92.  A lot has happened in this year, including thinking often about Ferguson's portraits of his late father.  It occurred to me that we all create an image in our minds of everyone, especially of the dearly departed.  These personalized portraits, which are expressed in eulogies or shared reminiscences, actually expose our relationship with the other person and, as such, might teach us about ourselves if we take the time to examine our motives.  With this in mind, Max Ferguson's paintings no longer seem so melancholy and weird.  Rather they become invitations to contemplate our own fictitious portraits of our parents - and the degree to which we too mythologize the real person.

Here, once more, is the review of Max Ferguson's work:


Max Ferguson, My Father at a Water Fountain, 2011
oil on panel, 10 x10 inches, Courtesy of Henoch Gallery


Some critics see Edward Hopper's urban loneliness, some critics see Johann Vermeer's geometry.  I see none of that, really. Max Ferguson's Post-Modernist Realism is warmer than Hopper's and more complex than Vermeer's. That complexity doesn't stop with his formal considerations.  Ferguson takes on the complexity of a  relationship.  In this case, the Father and Son Relationship, which has so many dimensions. From hero worship to disillusionment, from constant camaraderie to unspoken boundaries, fathers and sons slog through different stages of their development together and, hopefully, remain friends.

In Max Ferguson's meticulous paintings of his father Richard Jacob Ferguson sometimes there is truth and sometimes there is fiction.  I asked the artist a few questions so that I might understand his choices.


Me and My Father, 1986
oil on panel, 26 x 26 inches
Private Collection, Palm Beach Gardens, FL

BNY: Which paintings are inventions of your father in circumstances that
he would not have participated in during his lifetime?

MF: Buying The Forward, selling tickets at a movie theater. Playing pool with me.

BNY:  How much of his true personality can we glean from your paintings?

MF: Some, but not all aspects. He was very physically active, and extremely funny, which I don't believe come across in the paintings. (Related. I have often thought that if someone had never met me, and just knew my paintings, they would have a radically inaccurate idea of me. Humorless? Constantly making jokes. A loner?   Married with three children. Tranquil? A ball of anxiety and nervous ticks.  Patient? Could not be less so...)

BNY: Do you feel that there is a bit of yourself infused in the person
you create on the canvas in the guise of your father?

MF: Absolutely. He and I are to some degree inseparable.
  
My Father in Katz's, 2005
oil on panel, 16 x 20 inches
Collection of the artist


BNY: Do you bring a deliberate concept to the characterization of your father?

MF: In one sense he is Everyman. In another sense he is very specifically my father.
People keep telling me they see their father in him, so is also a universal "father figure."
The more personal you get, the more universal you become.

BNY:  You spoke about a kind of Proustian desire to preserve a moment in
time as you recognize how quickly modern life changes our immediate
environment.  When did this desire first occur to you?
  
MF: I have always been hyper aware of the brevity and transience of life.
Never being one to quite accept the idea of death, I have long sought to hold back the hands of time. I tend to resist change of any kind.  It is hard to pinpoint any moment, but this idea of freezing time and resisting change has always been reflected in my work; but not initially as a conscious element, or catalyst.


My Father in the Subway III, 1984
oil on panel, 22 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches
Collection of the artist





BNY: You explained that 17th century Dutch genre paintings have been a
major influence on your work.  Would you call these paintings
portraits or genre paintings - or both?

MF: I think of them as genre paintings, but in a broader sense they are portraits.

BNY:  Do you believe that the culture of the 1950s and 1960s plays a role

in your formation as an artist?  Specifically, did the idealization of
 the father in late 1950s and early 1960s television and movies: Father
Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, Fury, Disney movies, etc. influence
your desire to idealize your father in your own art?  Have you ever considered this
question before?

MF: I have never thought about that, but I suppose one's environment (especially as a child) cannot help but influence one's perception and concepts of the world.
[I recently found something I had written when I was 8 that said in effect:
"When I grow up I want to get a job so I can support my family."] I was literally a child of the 60's, and certainly watched a good deal of television of that ilk so I am sure the influence was there. I am certainly prone towards idealizing and romanticizing. Certainly it is difficult for me to escape certain imposed gender stereotypes. For example: I might have found it difficult to paint women playing pool, or a man lighting Sabbath candles (even though when single I did just that).



My Father at Mount Sinai, 2011
oil on canvas, 36 x 52 inches
Collection of the artist

BNY:  You painted your father when he was alive and you continue to paint your father since he passed away in 2005 at the age of 92, perhaps to keep him alive in your daily life. How does it feel to bring your father to life on the canvas?

MF: As assiduously as I seek out realism in my paintings, I avoid it in my daily life.
No more concrete manifestation of reality than death. Mortality has never been my favorite thing. To continue to paint my father is both my way of dealing with his death and denying it simultaneously. To bestow on him a degree of immortality is my vain attempt to do the same for me. It is both resurrecting him (playing G-d in a sense), but also refusing to accept his death. It is comforting for me to still have him with me; if only two-dimensionally.


Quotes from the catalog:


On My Father in Katz's: "I began working on this painting of him in Katz's Delicatessen a short time after his death in 2005. The whole time I was working on it, I kept asking myself if this was my way of dealing with his death, or not dealing with it, by trying to keep him alive via this painting.  To stop painting him is to acknowledge his death. To accept his mortality, is to accept mine . . . " (p. 10)

On My Father in the Subway II: "I made the photographic studies for this in July, but my father was generous enough to wear a winter coat." (p. 18)

On My Father in Mount Sinai: "I often asked myself if my father would have approved of me painting this.  The answer is no.  Was I being disrespectful of him? I am not sure, probably yes.  Still, I felt not so much that I wanted to paint this, but had to." (p. 35)

Sources: 
Gail Levin, "Introduction," Paintings of My Father: Max Ferguson, New York: Hebrew Union College, 2012.
Max Ferguson, "Paintings My Father - Richard Ferguson, 1912-2005," Paintings of My Father: Max Ferguson., New York: Hebrew Union College, 2012.
Marie Elena Martinez, "30 Years of Paintings of a New York Everyman," New York Times, Sunday, April 15, 2012.
Jeanine Barone, "An Intimate Exhibition for Father's Day," The Huffington Post, June 15, 2012

The artist's interview with Chuck Scarborough, Tuesday, June 12: 







 Happy Father's Day, Dad.


David Gersh (November 1, 1919-June 20, 2012)


Beth New York
aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director
New York Arts Exchange
www.nyarts-exchange.com

Monday, June 17, 2013

"Kathleen Gilje: Revised and Restored," Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT through Sept. 8


Kathleen Gilje, Lady with an Ermine, Restored, 1997, 
oil on panel, 15 ¾ x 21 7/8 inches,  
Courtesy of the Artist, © Kathleen Gilje 2013 

Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine (Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani) 1490
oil on wood panel, 15.0 x 21.6 inches, Czartoryski Museum, Wawel Castle, Krakow

Kathleen Gilje is an art historian's artist: a brilliant scholar and detective who can deftly copy masterpieces from different eras and then, with just an addition or subtraction of elements, transform the imagery into a highly charged, contemporary topic.

Known for her “restorations” (the artist’s term), Gilje’s appropriations grow out of a long and careful study of the each work of art.  She physically masters the artist’s style, material, and execution. Then she scrupulously researches the iconography, artist’s life and the socio-political context of the work in order to deepen her understanding of the artist’s decisions. Often her academic investigations uncover background stories or encoded narratives embedded in the art or swirling around the artist’s milieu that may inform her analysis. 

Gilje’s sly additions or adjustments in the works derive from her considerable research. Then, in an effort to break new ground, she paints revised art historical readings. Gilje calls this practice “restoration,” because she fantasizes a restoration of the meaning of the work which may not be visible in the original work itself.


Kathleen Gilje, Woman with a Parrot (Restored), 2001, 
Courtesy of the artist., © Kathleen Gilje 2013 

For example, in her 2001 “restored” version of Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot (1866) she replaced the bird’s perch with a nude male figure to emphasize the phallic symbolism of the original painting. The parrot in the Courbet may represent the petit ami who is privileged to gaze upon the female model [i] or the Kamasutra.   

Gilje painted her “restoration” of the artist standing over the frisky model and then painted an exact copy of the Courbet painting on top of her “restored” version. She had her exact copy x-rayed in order to show her faux “original” underneath the copy. Viewed as an installation, the 2001 copy of the Courbet painting placed next to the x-ray film of the “restored” version sparks a variety of associations. The perch clearly becomes the proxy for Courbet himself, who has eroticized his model for his own delectation.

Gilje’s installation also comments on scopophilia: pleasure derived from the act of looking, an aspect of the male gaze.[ii] In Gilje’s “restoration” of Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot, the artist enters into his own picture and experiences the pleasure of viewing the model directly. (The grainy texture of the x-ray also suggests that we are witnessing the artist’s dream or fantasy as he paints the nude with ardent desire.)

Gilje’s ability to alter the original iconography to serve her interpretation of the work elucidates what she believes lies beyond the physical evidence. In this way, she embarks on dialogues with art history’s masters that seamlessly integrate her feminist readings and sometimes incorporate the very history of the work itself.


Kathleen Gilje, Danaë, 2001, 
oil on canvas, 72 1/2 x 80 1/2
Courtesy of the artist, © Kathleen Gilje 2013 

Rembrandt van rijn, Danaë, 1643, 
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg


In her Danaë, Restored (2001), Gilje alludes to the vicious slashing and sulfuric acid attack on Rembrandt’s painting Danaë (1636), which occurred at The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, on June 15, 1985.[iii]  Here, a puddle of acid flies through the air toward the nude heroine, instead of the supernatural golden shower of rain (Zeus’ transmogrification in the myth) which Rembrandt painted in the original. Gilje explained in a conversation that the golden shower in the myth is the Greek deity’s semen which impregnates Danaë with Perseus. Gilje views this sneaky sexual encounter as a romanticized act of non-consensual sex: a form of rape.

Rape, the violation of another’s body, is a perfect metaphor for the attack on the Rembrandt painting in 1985. Gilje noted that Danaë’s gesture in the original painting was meant to welcome Zeus as the golden shower into her bower. In Gilje’s “restoration,” Danaë’s raises an arm in a feeble attempt at self-defense, warding off the approaching acid. In the Gilje appropriation, Danaë’s gesture emphasizes the vulnerability of the woman in the painting and the artwork itself during the violent attack at The Hermitage. The title of Gilje’s work reminds us that Rembrandt’s Danaë is now literally a restored work of art.

Gilje came by her ability to reenact the masters’ touch as an apprentice in Antonio DeMata’s studio for restoration from 1966 to 1968. Then, she went to Naples with DeMata and his other assistants to restore masterpieces in the Museum of Capodimonte from 1968 to 1972. In 1973, she returned to New York City, her hometown,[iv] to work for Marco Grassi, where she restored paintings for various collections, including the Thyssen Bornemizsa Collection in Lugano and Madrid and the Norton Simon Collection in Pasadena. In 1976, she opened her own studio, restoring works for numerous public and private clients, such as Stanley Moss, Eugene V. Thaw, and Robert Dance.[v]



Kathleen Gilje, Bacchus (Restored), 1992
oil on linen, 37 1/2 x 33 1/2 inches
Courtesy of the artist, © Kathleen Gilje 2013 

Caravaggio (Michaelangelo de Merisi da Caravaggio), Bacchus, c. 1595
Uffizi Gallery, Florence


Gilje’s concept of the “restored” painting (her Postmodern Appropriations) dates back to the early 1990s. Her Bacchus, Restored of 1992 (after Caravaggio’s Bacchus, c. 1595) features plastic wrapped over the bowl of fruit with condoms strewn alongside the succulent choices Caravaggio depicted in his original. Gilje’s “restoration” suggests that the beautiful young man in the seductively draped toga was indeed “forbidden fruit” for the patron Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, who commissioned Caravaggio’s work and delighted in beautiful young men.[vi]

 Gilje’s Bacchus, Restored belongs to the horrific first wave of the AIDs epidemic and historically marks the overwhelming concern that gripped the arts community. Simultaneously, Gilje explored the iconography of homoeroticism in art, which had recently gained recognition as “queer” theory among academic art historians and critics.

Today, a wonderful selection of Gilje's oeuvre has been beautifully installed in the Bruce Museum, on view through September 8, 2013.   This venue, which has welcomed numerous exhibitions of Old Master art, perfectly complements Gilje's paintings and drawings with its warm colors and informative text panels. 

The exhibition catalog deserves high praise too.  It features essays by the executive director Peter Sutton, critic John Yau, art historian (and subject in two Gilje portraits) Linda Nochlin, art historian (and subject in one portrait)  the late Robert Rosenblum, and an interview between the artist and art historian Francis Naumann (who exhibits Gilje's work in his gallery Francis Naumann Fine Art).  It is an elegant book, packed with valuable information about Gilje's work and the original pieces she copied - a delicious art history textbook in its own right.

Nevertheless, the catalog is not the real thing.  Seeing is believing.  This rare opportunity to see a large portion of Gilje's formidable body of work in public ends one week after Labor Day and then heads out to other parts of the US.  Catch it while you can!

(The New York Arts Exchange features two tours of Kathleen Gilje's exhibition this summer: Tuesday, June 25 and Tuesday, July 9.  Please visit our website for details and to make a reservation www.nyarts-exchange.com)




[i] Mona Hadler introduced the notion that the parrot represents the privileged position of the male gazing upon the courtesan in her reading of her article “Manet’s Woman with a Parrot of 1866,” Metropolitan Museum Journal, v. 7 (1973): 115-122. Kam or Kamadeva, the god of love in Indian mythology, is best known for the Kamasutra. He flies through the air on his parrot. Therefore, the parrot can be associated with sensual love.
[ii] Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 13 (1975): 6-18, was very much on the minds of feminist artists and art historians during the late twentieth century, as well as the feud between Linda Nochlin and Michael Fried on gender bias and artistic intentionality in Courbet Reconsidered (Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum, 1988). Kathleen Gilje directed my attention to the two articles in this exhibition catalogue.
[iii] The assailant slit the female figure across the stomach and thigh with a knife and then threw acid against the canvas. It took twelve years to repair. Danaë was put back on view in the Hermitage in 1997. (John Russell, New York Times, August 31, 1997.)
[iv] Kathleen Gilje was born in Brooklyn.
[v] Information culled from the artist’s website www.kathleengilje.com and interviews with the artist. Her own work belongs to collections all over the world, including the Musée Ingres, Montaubon; the Weatherspoon Museum, North Carolina; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.
[vi] Donald Posner, “Caravaggio’s Homo-erotic Early Works,” Art Quarterly 34 (1971), 301-24.

(The essay is an excerpt from "Portrait as Performance: The Theater of the Self in Kathleen Gilje’s Series of Curators, Critics and Connoisseur," written to honor Dr. Alicia Faxon, professor emeritus, Simmons College, whose scholarship has always been a source of inspiration.  The complete version will be published in a forthcoming festschrift dedicated to Professor Faxon, organized by Simmons College, where I taught from 1989-1991.)




Best regards,
Beth New York

aka Beth Gersh-Nesic
Director
New York Arts Exchange