“This may sound facetious, but a number of years ago in Provincetown a lady from the Midwest, who was studying with Hofmann, said to me, ‘Mr. Gottlieb, what do you think art will be like five years from now?’ My answer was that if I knew I wouldn’t tell her. I would do it myself.“
— Adolph Gottlieb, from an interview with Sister Corita, I.H.M. Published in Jubilee Magazine, December 1964.
Pictured here: Adolph Gottlieb in Provincetown, Massachusetts, ca. 1950s.
From the archive: A reproduction of the original invitation for the solo exhibition “Adolph Gottlieb” at Howard Putzel’s Gallery 67 In 1945 (top), featuring an introduction by Jon Stroup, which reads:
“The hieroglyphic arrangement of Adolph Gottlieb’s images so ostensibly invites intellectual interpretation that it seems pertinent to issue the following warning: although the intellect plays an important part in the aesthetic appreciation of the pictograph, it will seriously mislead the spectator if relied on exclusively; the symbolism is too personal. The assimilation of the images is more than a process of addition, and their whole content is experienced only when it has penetrated the subconscious. Insofar as one can speak of a final analysis the pictograph is mysterious, enigmatic, profoundly so when most fully experienced."
Image below: Nocturne 1945, oil on canvas, 26 x 34” (checklist #25).
Speakers will include Sanford Hirsch, Executive Director of the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, who will be speaking about the relationship between Adolph Gottlieb and Sam Kootz.
For more information and a complete list of speakers, click here.
Shown here: A reproduction of the invitation to the exhibition, “Adolph Gottlieb: An Exhibition of Recent Paintings” at Kootz Gallery in 1954.
“As for the future, by the time our work is accepted by the general public, there will arise new artists, seeking new art forms, who will deny our work in order to be free to express themselves.”
— Adolph Gottlieb Excerpted from notes for a talk, c. 1950.
Adolph Gottlieb Composition 1955 Oil on canvas 72 x 60”
“Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint, our obsessive, subterranean and pictographic images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time.”
From the archive: invitation for a 1935 group exhibition at Secession Gallery in New York, which included a work of Gottlieb’s titled “Landscape” (c. 1934).
Individual Support Grant Recipient Spotlight: Greg Bray
Black with 2 sugars 2017 Paper collage on paper 24 x 36”
“Greg Bray works within a framework of linked consciousness pushing up against boundaries. Whether it’s the collective discomfort of race or the circuitous route of institutional power structures, connecting concerns of observed condition within interpretations of relative truths stemming from cultural collisions in it’s increasing interconnectivity. Challenging how we change as we confront change. His early art form grew out of the inherently and overtly political Black Arts Movement.”
Judith Braun, a.k.a. Weinman, or Weinperson, began as a realistic figurative painter in the 1980’s, and has periodically reinvented her art practice and persona. In the 1990’s, as Weinperson, she produced enlarged Xerox works, and was included in the “Bad Girls” show at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (@newmuseum).
Now, as Braun, she makes intricate abstract drawings, both small graphite on paper and large charcoal fingerprinted walls. The latter are site-specific ephemeral installations that have been subject of solo and group exhibitions in New York City, and throughout the US and Europe. They are sometimes executed live, for the public. She is featured in the recent documentary, “More Art Upstairs.” Braun was born in Albany, New York in 1947, and has lived and worked on the Lower East Side in New York City for many years.
It’s me again, your neighborhood slut for the baroque, back with your favorite artists you’ve never heard of.
Trophime Bigot, in his native French, or Teophili Trufemondi in his adopted Italian, our maître à la chandelle, was just that: a master of portraying candlelight. He is a relatively obscure figure in the period of the Baroque, but in his works, the fundamental compositional facets that are so unique to this movement are seen executed with unparalleled mastery. We don’t know much about his life, apart from the accepted timeline that he was in France during his early years, but he created most of his art during his time in Italy.
1.) Cupid and Psyche, 1642, Museo Soumaya, Cuidad de Mexico, Mexico. 2.) Allegory of Vanity, c. 1640s, Barberini Collection, Rome. 3.) Judith Cutting the Head of Holofernes, c. 1640, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, US.
In the first part of this series, we talked about tenebrism. Bigot utilizes this type of contrast to create such drama in his scenes. The light in each piece emits from single candle flames, preserved in such clarity you can almost see it flickering. There are no long shadows cast by the sun, or refracted beams from a chandelier, only a humble flame nourished by wax.
