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Art Forum Review on Dan Christensen

Jenn McMenemy

In Dan Christensen news, Art Forum's November 2009 issue has a great review on the Christensen show organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Dan Christensen: Forty Years of Painting was on view at Kemper from May 15-Aug. 30, 2009 and is now on view at Sheldon Museum of Art from October 23, 2009 thru January 31, 2010.

Sheldon has a great podcast (about 5 minutes) with Sharon L. Kennedy, Sheldon's Curator of Cultural and Civic Engagement, talking about Christensen’s early years in Nebraska and Kansas City. You can download it here or visit their site to listen.

And if you're a Christensen plaid fan, there's a show on view thru Nov. 14th at Spanierman Modern featuring 14 of his plaid paintings. My personal favorite is Dark Tulip, 1970. Dan Christensen: The Plaid Paintings

Video: Peter Poskas on "Prelude to Spring, New Milford, Connecticut"

Jenn McMenemy

A few weeks ago we invited artist Peter Poskas in for a brief video interview with Ira. As part of the "video team" it was a pleasure meeting Peter and his wife, Jan, and a treat to hear him talk about one of his recent works, Prelude to Spring, New Milford, Connecticut.  It was nice hearing of his experiences painting the farms of Connecticut, especially the story of the only refusal he's gotten on a farm he wanted to paint.

Opening Photos! Peter Poskas: Capturing Light

Thanks to all those who helped make last night's opening reception for Peter Poskas: Capturing Light a success!

Photos from the event:

Ira Spanierman and Peter Poskas 
shown in front of

Orchardman’s House, (Washington Connecticut), 2008
Oil on panel, 24-1/2 x 33-3/4 inches

Opening-night crowd

the painting on the far wall is  
Prelude to Spring, New Milford, Connecticut, 2009
Oil on panel, 24-1/2 x 30-1/2 inches

Re-seeing John Twachtman’s Little Giant

Lisa N. Peters

On walking into Ira’s office the other day, I noticed John Twachtman’s Little Giant (ca. 1900) facing his desk. This made me wonder why Ira would choose this painting for this spot. We know that the work depicts Gloucester’s Rocky Neck dock, where the ferry “Little Giant” made an intermediary stop on its route between Gloucester and East Gloucester. However, aside from the fascinating history of the subject, and Ira’s longstanding admiration for Twachtman’s art, I think Ira may have chosen to have this painting meet his gaze because it captures a particular moment and mood.

Painted with dark strokes applied with the scraping force of an action painter, the dock in the foreground stands out from the soft Whistlerian atmosphere of the rest of the work. Out of a pleasant recreational landscape, we’ve zoned in on this dilapidated structure that seems out of the way, isolated from the highly developed far shore. Sloping too steeply for a comfortable descent to the water, the Rocky Neck dock seems a place left behind by progress. It evokes an image of something old and beginning to deteriorate while newness grows up around it. The ferry still stops here, with passengers aboard, but we don’t see any waiting or disembarking. A few empty rowboats rest in the dark green shadows beneath the dock’s ramp, huddling as if to fend off corrosion due to lack of use. The diagonal of the shadows draws our eye to the ferry, making us aware that it’s in the process of moving on.

The painting seems to ask: what is our relationship with things that time has passed by? There’s both vitality and some sadness to the sprightly yet seemingly wobbly dock. It’s still here, but we imagine that soon it won’t be. The painting puts us in touch with ourselves and the world around us, and that may be why it stands opposite Ira’s desk.

Read more for information on the John Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné.

Research in Progress: Helen Wessells

Carol Lowrey

With Veteran's Day approaching, I’d like to showcase a patriotic painting we have in the gallery. It’s entitled The Negro Troop, pictured here, and it depicts a group of African-American soldiers making their way along a street, the Stars and Stripes held aloft by one of the men. Some female admirers tag along, distracting several of the marchers. Where is the scene meant to take place? I’m at a loss to tell you because the ambiguous background makes it unclear as to whether the parade is in a rural town or a large city. The subject matter, however, is a reminder that during the first half of the twentieth century many African-American men proudly served their country, despite the discrimination that continued in American society and the armed forces; their involvement in both World War I and II led to future reforms within the U.S. military.

This striking genre piece (the medium is tempera on panel) was painted in 1936 by Helen Wessells, an artist whose career remains unstudied thus far. According to the archivist at the Art Students League of New York, she studied there from 1922 to 1927, working under influential painters such as George Bridgman, Allen Tucker, Kenneth Hayes Miller and Thomas Hart Benton. In The Negro Troop, she works in a painterly representational style that links her to the Fourteenth Street School in New York (of which Miller was the leader), who portrayed modern, everyday themes with techniques inspired by the Old Masters. What’s particularly impressive about The Negro Troop is the way in which Wessells employs a firm, almost caricaturist method in rendering the faces of several of the protagonists, her deft touch capturing the individual facial expressions and excited demeanor of several of the women.

Biographical accounts, exhibition records and newspaper reviews I’ve located thus far indicate that Wessells exhibited in New York City––at venues such as the G. R. D. Studio, the Midtown Galleries, Contemporary Arts and the Whitney Museum of American Art–– at various times during the late 1920s and 1930s. This elusive painter seems to have disappeared from the Manhattan art scene after about 1940, but it’s obvious, from The Negro Troop, that she was a figure specialist––skilled in translating the emotions, actions and energy of ordinary people into paint––and her work can be situated within the tradition of American Scene painting and Depression-era Realism. If anyone out there can enlighten me further on Wessells (her surname sometimes appears with one ‘l” or she’s referred to as “Helen E. Wessells”), please contact me at the gallery.

Can Technology Topple Art Forgeries?

Jenn McMenemy
Yes, but it needs help!

Appraisers Workshops highlights an interesting article in the NY Times on the use of technology in identifying forged artworks. Being the tech geek that I am, I can't help but share it with you.

Barbara Wall interviews Eric Postma, a professor of artificial intelligence at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Moreover, Postma is an expert in the digital analysis of Vincent Van Gogh works. Using complex algorithms and applying it to a database of Van Gogh paintings, his software is able to identify a complex pattern of brushstrokes that is unique to the artist. (Sounds like a brushstroke "fingerprint" of sorts.) Here Postma describes how the process has been used to identify fake Van Goghs:

Working in cooperation with the Van Gogh Museum and the Kröller-Müller Museum, both located in the Netherlands, we have been able to demonstrate the accuracy of digital analysis. A painting depicting the sea at Saintes-Maries, a Van Gogh fake sold by the German art dealer Otto Wacker, fooled experts for years, but our software easily identified the work as suspect. It had too many prominent brush strokes.... Our methodology was also tested on a U.S. television show, “Nova Science,” where we were easily able to distinguish one fake Van Gogh painting from five genuine works by the artist.

I find it unfortunate that this method is not being more encouraged in the art world. Postma continues:

Notable Pictures, Inspiring Chairs

Katherine Bogden  

I’m an avid reader, and because sometimes I find the couch a little too comfortable I’ve been daydreaming about purchasing a modest chair, which I think is just what I need to keep my eyes on the page.

Until this week, I had been ogling chairs in decorator’s magazines, store displays, and those quick glimpses through the windows of the handsomely decorated brownstones of my Brooklyn neighborhood.

And then, I found myself  jealously eyeing the chairs in some of the paintings in the gallery’s collection. Here are a few I've noticed:

Nicolai Cikovsky, Flowers on a Chair

(oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches)

The blue-green chair in this picture expresses the painting’s simple and homey ambiance. Its  square legs and flat seat, which hold a vase of wildflowers, suggest stability. The touches of green throughout the picture, coupled with the portrait on the far wall, create a sense of life even without a human presence. The color of the chair draws in the those of the lush growth outside the window. Like the overall simplicity of the composition, the plainness of the wooden chair appeals to me, and its hard, straight back would certainly help me stay awake when reading.

 

William Glackens, Unfinished Nude

(1920s, oil on canvas, 32 x 26 inches)

Glackens’s handling of the chair-fabric in this picture is soft and delicate. The bold orange and plush quilting suggest both luxury and comfort. Although the sitter is the focus of the painting, the chair is not lost, it works to both frame the model and set her apart from the simple background. (Although the chair’s armlessness might present a problem for reading, as sometimes I like to rest a book just-so, or prop an elbow on the armrest after a long day.)

Gershon Benjamin, Lady on the Green Chair

(ca. 1935, pastel on brown paper, 27 x 20 inches)

The straight-back Victorian-style piece in this painting is upholstered with a green, patterned material which could seem overly formal, yet the slouched, relaxed posture of the sitter suggests to me the chair is both snug and a space to relax. Like the chair above it isn't the focus here, but is essential to the composition—it seems inevitable that the sitter has found this particular chair to sit in at this particular moment.

—For more information, or too see additional work by each artist, click on the artists' names—

Peter Poskas

Lisa N. Peters

A second exhibition at Spanierman Gallery of the work of Peter Poskas will be opening November 5. The thirty paintings on view—images of the rural farms of Connecticut and the sun-washed coasts of Maine--are quiet worlds that we feel we can enter, due to perspectives that involve us and a subtle, measured, and carefully observed sense of light that expresses the specific moment. Poskas preserves on canvas places that are threatened by development. At the same time, he conveys optimism about the perpetuation of the past by depicting places where structures from a past era have been lovingly maintained—old parts have been repaired rather than ripped out and new ones have been integrated seamlessly with old ones.