SUMMER 2012 • $4.95
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MIHAIL ALEKSANDROV “In My Own Dream”
8 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
SPECIAL HAMPTONS ART FAIRS EDITION
Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 1
Mai V
Paris II
NATHAN NEVEN Delight & Happiness
What is better in creativity and life than to have delight and happiness? How great it is that artists still seek such a result from their labors! Sprightly and alluring, these images reflect but a morsel of the body of work by Nathan Neven. Comfort food for the eyes of the soul will surely put a smile on your heart of hearts. Born in 1979, is based in Ireland, Nathan studied Art and Interior Design in Paris. His childhood passion was drawing and painting everything around him. Nathan believes in the power of art. For him, each piece of art has a soul and possesses the ability to affect people’s lives. He is inspired by everything around that touches his soul -- the joy and beauty of life itself and the beauty of nature.
December VIII 2 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
www.nathanneven.com
Paris VIII
Mai I
NOAH’S ARK ART GALLERY Art Dealer & Broker
A. Isachev, Source of Life, 40 x 30cm, oil and iconographic pigments on panel, 1979
Between 4-8 April 2012 the “Noah’s Ark Art Gallery” once again participated in the Arte Monaco’12 contemporary art fair and was awarded the Excellence Prize for representing a New Dimension in art known as Absurd Surrealism.
We specialize in:
Paintings-Sculptures (Lebanese, Russian, Armenian) Icons(Greek, Russian, Melkit) Rugs & Carpets(Caucasian, Armenian)
Services:
Estimation / Art Publication / Restoration & Framing
Represented Artists:
Vahram, Yuri Tsvetaev, Vahan Roumelian, Alexander Isachev, Suren Voskanian, David D., Ruben Apovian, Hermes, Gevorg Yeghiazarian, Berdj Tchakedjian, Yeghya Bakmazian, Edik Pertian, Arthur K.
Personnel: Movses Zirani Herkelian(Ph.D) Elo Saradjian(MA)
Admin Director/Media Representative
owner/director
Herag Herkelian
Assistant Director
Address: Noah’s Ark Art Gallery, Center Grand Park 2, Zoghbi St. B.B., Zalka-Metn, Lebanon Tel: +961 4-711-852(tel), +961 3-72-72-11(mob), +961 4-711-552 (overnight) E-mail: noahsark95@gmail.com, website: noahsarkgallery.com Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 3
Villa Marilyn
A Visionary’s Dream Comes True In A Hamptons Artistic Paradise
Villa Marilyn sculpted rock beach and Monet Waterlily Pond, custom outdoor B-B-Q kitchen, Indonesian custom parasols
By VICTOR B. FORBES o truly understand the impact and influence of one woman on not only the artworld but on the lifestyles of multiple generations, you would need to have been at the New York Coliseum, circa mid 1980s, when Artexpo was the king of art fairs and Marilyn Goldberg’s Marigold Enterprises was the star attraction. For many consecutive years, there would be a crowd lined up at the Coliseum’s massive glass front doors on opening day for the trade, waiting for the bell to ring so they could make a beeline to the Marigold booth. There, they would find hundreds of products from Picasso ashtrays to stunning paintings from unknown Chinese masters to works by the giants of the 20th Marilyn Goldberg century to unknown but soon to All Photos © Courtesy MJR Michael J Rothbart be famous artists. Kudo, Impiglia, Markus Pierson, John Lennon, Erté, Warhol, Dali all shared display space. As many of the items were limited editions, the rush to the booth was not unwarranted. Art galleries from around the globe could fill their walls and gift counters with one visit to Marigold’s sprawling exhibition space
T
Gunite pool, sculpted rock waterfall, custom self-watering planters
where they would find Art Merchandise headlined by Pablo Picasso dinner wear, bedding and gift bags that revolutionized Museum shops from staid money losing space wasters to profit centers for such stalwarts as the Guggenheim and Hermitage. She went on to formulate the incredibly lucrative Erté sculpture and tapestry proFine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Villa Marilyn Gourmet kitchen, East End Country Kitchen Cabinetry; Lumens Lighting; Granite counters GT Marble
Window treatments Beckenstein
Crystal European chandeliers designed by Marilyn Goldberg
Custom bar and wine cabinet Lit Onyx base, Marilyn Goldberg Interiors
Entry mahogany doors, bevelled glass doors, Marilyn Goldberg Interiors
Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Master bedroom suite
Marilyn Monroe Cinema Theater, graced by Sid Maurer Celebrity Icon paintings
covered with European bed linens custom made for 25 years for Ms. grams, and big-time licensing agreements with Salvador Dali and the Goldberg by Bette Nagle in Germany. estates of Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and John Lennon. Years with The landscaping includes sculpted stones from Arizona, carved Erté have influenced the decor, carpet designs, and even gift bags and bronze banana leaf bronze bases for coffee tables from Hawaii, note cards for the guests who will be staying in this grand and palatial outdoor furniture hand-carved in Indonesia, with the most amazing environment. Marigold evolved into Museum Masters International parachute umbrellas of Mandarin orange that can dance in the wind, (MMI), headquarters newly ensconced at Villa Marilyn with one of and flow with the breezes of the Atlantic. major victories so far has been the international promotion of the “I had a dream,” said Marilyn, “when I was 20 living in artist Tamara de Lempicka to prominent museums which brought Amagansett on the ocean. It was to build a sanctuary and honor her paintings to the eight figure mark at recent auctions. For most, life. Villa Marilyn has replicated the this would be more than enough work for a dozen lifetimes, but to Marilyn gardens of Monet in Giverny, and The Goldberg, it was all a practice run for vegetable garden and fruit orchards her dream: the Villa Marilyn Art of are graced with Liechtenstein and Living home in Southampton, New Miro Art cats. Fresh mint abounds so York, which was completed in June we can drink home brewed teas in the of 2012. Moroccan Arch rooms. The abundance This incredible place welcomes of nature thrives in this Villa! It is a you with handmade iron gates, a paradise for children who are awestruck large private circular drive surrounded and entertained incessantly with the with stone and Belgian Block and boat dock pond, and waterfalls.” exquisite double glass handcrafted New headquarters for her company, mahogany doors opening into the Museum Masters International, Villa entrance foyer where you are greeted Marilyn is also available as the place to by a Keith Haring Americana tapestry enjoy family reunions, special friends, and Entry foyer, Picasso umbrellas and European hand-made crystal business meetings with clients. Vacations chandeliers. Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe here may be reserved in advance by tapestry and Sidney Maurer’s Brigitte Bardot portrait add to the star contacting MMIMarilyn@aol.com or calling 917-273-8710. Special power to delight for the tasteful and artistic eye. Says Marilyn, “Living thanks go to Gaetan Berube Builders South Hampton, Victor Rojas with art, color and design have been my life! Landscaping South Hampton, East End Country Kitchens Custom Every window explodes with views of flowers and gardens Cabinetry, GE Granite and Marble and Anastasios Tzakas MA, AIA for the architecture, Carolina Santiago and Elif Varna of MMI for their planted from bulbs from around the globe. With impeccable taste work in assisting with the creation this masterpiece. There will soon be honed over decades of international business, this stylish woman a documentary made in Rome on Ms. Goldberg’s Art of Living as well has built her dream. Inside the gorgeous and newly furnished home as a book on her life in the arts by Victor Forbes. are six fabulous bedrooms with custom electric positioning beds Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Breakfast for two poolside patio and waterfall Tamara de Lempicka porcelain vase
“The biggest creativity of it all is the transmission of this energy to my children and grandchildren. This whole project is about family; about a sanctuary, a place to bond, a place to create; to do our ‘bestfriending.’
MRG-77 Marilyn’s first car (1987) impeccably pristine, driving through custom designed gates; Ramon Halcon Gates, Southampton Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
The Sweetest Way Home: A Greyhound’s Tale, published by SunStorm Arts Publishing Co., Inc, had it’s coming out party at CFM Gallery June 9 in New York City. Written by Fine Art Editor-in-Chief Victor Forbes and beautifully illustrated by Michele Bramlett, it is packaged with an 11 song CD featuring original songs composed expressly for the book by Susan Pillsbury (Coming Home), Mark Naftalin (Puppy Lullaby) and Brad Hurlburt (Faith) as well as previously recorded tunes by Dion, Kim Simmons, Richie Cannata, Liberty Devitto, Martha Gallagher, Rico Rodriguez, and Chris Parker with a musical narrative by the author backed by Keene Valley’s own Back Porch Society. The story came about when Aztec the Greyhound (aka Big Grey) took himself on an excursion in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, the Tall Peaks region, and was gone for about two weeks. He did return, and this book contains the story of his adventure deep in a “Certified Wildlife Habitat.” To learn more and hear the songs, visit www.thesweetestwayhome.com Special thanks to Neil Zukerman for a great afternoon.
Steve Zaluski and Michele Bramlett with Zaluski’s Greyhound Sculpture at CFM Gallery
Carla Baker, CFM Gallery owner Neil Zukerman, Dr. Bob Baker PHOTOS BY JAMIE ELLIN FORBES
Michele Bramlett, illustrator with author Victor Forbes at CFM Gallery opening reception for their book, The Sweetest Way Home: A Greyhound’s Tale www.fineartmagazine.com
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Homage a Honoré Daumier 1808 – 1879 • Printmaking Master The artwork The Uprising (About 1860) inspired contemporary painter John Pacovsky as he created this, one of more than 120 pieces in our Absente Homage to Great Artists Collection.
GRANDE ABSENTE ~Absinthe Originale
Its maker’s private recipe has stood uncompromised since 1860. Hand crafted in Provence. Only fine botanicals of the region are selected – including artemisia absinthium, the wormwood of legend. Grande Absente is 138 proof so please enjoy responsibly. www.grandeabsente.com Grande Absente Liqueur, 69% ALC/VOL., Grande Absente and Grande Absente Logo are trademarks owned by M. P. Roux, Imported from France by Crillon Importers Ltd., Paramus, NJ 07652 © 2008
Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 1
KENNETH IAN HUSBAND “Simply Complex”
Circa Something Gallery
opening reception Friday August 10 - 5:30 - 9 pm Show runs thru Sat. Aug. 25 GALLERY OWNER / DIRECTOR Dr. Bob Baker 117A South Country Road, Bellport, NY11713 (631) 803-6706
Kenneth Ian Husband’s art has taken him to many places over the years, from the University of Wisconsin to New York City to several other states. His work has also been featured in print and online publications as well as presented him with the chance to work with exciting and knowledgeable people. In his latest show, Simply Complex, he has the chance to work with seasoned curator Bob Baker at his newly renovated gallery Circa Something. Dr. Baker is known for his keen eye for art as one can see from his collection of artists from Picasso to Troyan to Whistler. He also enjoys newer emerging artists, which is evident from Simply Complex, his first solo show. For his mid-summer solo show in the heart of a summer town Kenneth Ian Husband will be introducing a new evolution in his painting style. Merging his free-form paintings with subtle figurative swatches of color, Husband explores his latest emotions, life experiences and theory that simple and complex moments are almost always found together, at the same time. By combining these different styles, one can see how a simple object can find harmony in a complex surrounding. These paintings, all from 2012, leave you with a sense of ordered chaos in a stimulating aesthetic sense. Currently on view at CIRCA SOMETHING GALLERY, Bellport, NY. 6 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Fast Eddie Rehm Takes on the Art World Circa Something Fine Art 117A South Country Road, Bellport, NY 11713 631) 803-6706 http://circasomething.com/
Exhibition Dates Friday August 31, 2012 – Saturday September 15, 2012
Opening Reception Friday August 31, 2012 - 5:30 to 9 pm Gallery is open & free to the public Wednesday to Saturday: 12pm to 5pm
Eddie Rehm photograph courtesy of Kenneth Ian Husband
A Fusion Of Raw Emotion New York artist Eddie Rehm will close the 2012 summer season at Circa Something Fine Art, Labor Day Weekend in his Hometown with an exhibition of cutting-edge contemporary artwork belligerently entitled Instant Gratification Abstract. “I’ll declare 2012 is the summer that artist Eddie Rehm took out and took on the East End art scene,” said gallery owner Dr. Bob Baker. Adds the artist, “Opening & closing the summer out on the East End where I call home is nothing short of an honor and I’m excited about collaborating with Dr. Bob Baker in my upcoming solo exhibit. In an art scene drowned out by the same old same old, one bad brain decided to make a change, not only in his art but also in his life reflected through the plasticity of duality in he, himself.” Eddie Rehm’s work has been described as “a fusion of raw emotion, deliberately instinctual design, and artmedium experimentation.” He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Pennsylvania, as well as a museum show in Nevada. His works have been featured and displayed in multiple print & online publications. Circa Something Fine Arts is located in Bellport Village on the western most walkway from Station Road next to the parking lot. Its newly renovated space offers an eclectic selection
Duality in Himself Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 7
Larry Larkin, Pollock and Krasner in the studio, 1949.
POLLOCK AT 100: A CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION ArtHamptons 2012 will honor Jackson Pollock on the 100th anniversary of his birth, with a benefit for the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center. Friday, July 13, 6 - 8 P.M. featuring a portrait created by the legendary Peter Max to be auctioned for the cause. Chances to own a painting on paper by appropriation artist Mike Bidlo, from his 1982-83 Not Pollock series, will be sold throughout the fair’s three-day run. Events include a reception, sponsored by Hamptons Magazine, with a performance of “BodySite” by artist Andrea Cote. Replica paintings from the Academy Award-winning motion picture Pollock, photographs of Pollock by Hans Namuth, and a selection of Pollock graphics will be on display with Andrea Cote performing BodySite.
Peter Max, Portrait of Jackson Pollock, 2012
Film Art Department, copy of Pollock’s Portrait and a Dream, painted for the motion picture “Pollock,” 1999
http://www.andreaspace.net/performance_bodysite_scope.html
Ed Harris, painting made during the filming of “Pollock,” 1999
Friday, July 13, 6 - 8 pm @ ArtHamptons, Admission $75, benefits the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center 8 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
The Universal Message of MIHAIL ALEKSANDROV
M
BY JAMIE ELLIN FORBES IHAIL ALEKSANDROV’S retrospective covering his 30
Aleksandrov is one artist capable of uniting cultural perspectives and historical timelines to state his unique personal vision. year career at Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Art in Soho, New York City was an indisputable tour de force of Aleksandrov’s imaginative palette is distinct, reflective of his one man’s prolific brilliance. Light, airy and spacious, this gallery appreciation for the Early Renaissance, inclusive of influences setting was the perfect backdrop to immerse oneself in the creative from Mannerism, Brueghel the Elder, and Chagall, among maturity of this Lithuanian-born others. Mythic compositions are artists’ broadly developed linguistic combined by this painter with a language. Throughout this powerful unique geometric application of collection of paintings, Aleksandrov forms and patterns, stylistically captures moments of beauty in attentive to bright colors and color compositions encompassing unique blocks shaded in hues tonally often interpretive visions. They emanate associated with the late Medieval and from the imaginative and analytic Early Renaissance periods. These minds’ eye of the artist, purposefully elements are methodically used to placed and applied upon each of his frame out the compositional space, canvases. while creating the historic or spiritual Mihail Aleksandrov is most statements this artist accesses with often referred to as a Russian great expertise. Aleksandrov is at artist even though he was born in ease within his select media and Lithuania and lived in Estonia. compositions, while adapting a “The Baltic nations,” commented philosophical process rich in texture Mr. Gertsman, who lovingly curated to heighten chiseled forms as iconic this immense undertaking, “have statement, each masterful in its their own approaches to visual art, refinement. to literature, and to life in general. It In the image Adam and Eve, wasn’t until the 1940s that the Baltic Adam appears to be receiving the countries became part of the Soviet invitation to bite the apple Eve is Union and, for that reason, they had offering as a beautiful maiden with a much stronger relationship with seductive grace and beauty. While Western culture and Western art than they are under the tree appearing with Russian culture.” Adds the artist, more fable-like than Biblical, this “It’s true. There was a completely story is personified by the artist’s different atmosphere in the Baltic appreciation of the event. He often states than in the Soviet Union at uses his wife’s face as muse or large. This definitely influenced me. subject and speaks of her as follows: At the same time, I have always loved “Through the harmony of her face, Russian art. Russian poetry had a I see a window to a better world.” much greater influence on me than Captured within his Russian painting. It has been a great understanding of the moment in time honor for me to be considered part of just prior the couple’s expulsion from the Russian tradition, something that Eden, this image, as an interpretative is always being ascribed to me, but in not liturgical depiction, comes to the end, I don’t know that I belong life. It appears Adam is almost to any national artistic lineage. I protecting her from the fall about believe that art is greater than a to come. He is waiting, ready to nationality, or a state, or any kind catch her descent as he sits below, of border, because art is something embedded amongst nature. Eve that unites different cultures and is illustrated with her hand above different historical periods. I would her head, in which she seems to say that I have always been, first be holding a small red bird. An and foremost, contained in some intrinsic look molded on her face (as – Mihail Aleksandrov personal worldview, that I have lived seen in her eye), may be a foreboding inside my own artistic vision.” of what will be. An internal sense of Aleksandrov’s works are informed co-equally by his Estonian loss appears to be evident. Knowledge has begun to filter through her Baltic heritage flavored with a Russian/Soviet cultural influence being, reflected in her gaze toward the seated Adam, around whom the rabbit, small cat, mouse and bird are observing. that infuses a diverse multi-national and encompassing art dialogue “…I believe that animals are like messages, each animal is a adapted within his ingenious Iconic historical story telling.
“It was a big surprise for me that Alex selected ‘Adam & Eve’ for the cover of the book… for me it was like something from the past… he gave me this feeling that all my works actually have no age.”
Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 9
message from God, so we have to be not just kind, but responsible… ” While elements are still balanced in utopian harmony, the hint of an angular stress, as if cables may be about to snap, is realized in the lines on the faces of all. With rich greens set off to form an almost bright background. Reds and browns (all fall seasonal earth tones) entwine behind the couple within a darker subdued core of the tree trunk to suggest the protected Garden has ended. The figurative forms of Adam and Eve are well illuminated in ochre and texturally worked to create a sculpturally cool effect, which could have been painted in an early Renaissance style as flat board wooden Icons, or utilized allegorically, in late Romanesque wall
plasters painted to convey this emblematic story. Adam and Eve may be compared to, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Peasant and the Birdnester, 1584 with attention to detail and color for the purpose of the palette defining the artistic mood and configuration as an introduction to the portrayal of the artist’s perception. Eras and concepts are connected, time lines blurred, as Aleksandrov’s personal vision is united, emerging compositionally, posing to the viewer his unique imagery as a painter of figurative metaphor incorporating metaphysical overtones. As he so aptly puts it, “…for me it’s also like a life experience, so I do not distinguish metaphysical from physical, because most of life is metaphysical for me.”
“…for some artists, a wife is a window to a business world, for Aleksandrov, she is a window into the world… ”
America and the Dragon
A
leksandrov shapes the figures in America and the Dragon employing the same look of alabaster illuminated from a light cast behind, as does the image of Adam and Eve. The subjects are emblematically co-joined in this representational image, which may be experienced in the way an operatic opus could sound; to illustrate what may be America’s defining moment as viewed by Aleksandrov. In this story, a new picture of pure fantasy describing a unique, previously unstated theme is used to exemplify America pictorially, created by the artist as historical observer. Again his wife as muse, this time in a different role, and a Dragon slain, thrust through the 10 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
heart with a sphere in mid flight while breathing fire, are placed against a luminous ball defined by a pitch-black background to illustrate this idea. The contrasts in the composition are startling, heightened through the use of bright color to create a beauty that seems untouchable and visceral at the same time. When compared to the “Angel” as simply beauty, the textural application of muted color defines the heroine in this image differently than to the Dragon slayer, or Eve. Although each image is a metaphor for a story, the face is recognizably the same. Aleksandrov deploys differing techniques to define the idea being embraced by each woman pictured.
“I do not distinguish metaphysical from physical, because most of life is metaphysical for me.” – Mikhail Aleksandrov
Godiva
After Aleksandrov moved to America, where he met his wife Lena, much changed for the artist. “The West affected my work indirectly; with its energy and the atmosphere it created. The Western art world itself couldn’t have had any particular effect on me, and hasn’t. On the whole, the 20th century hasn’t had much of an effect on me, since every artist is born with his own concerns. And not only in terms of subject matter, but also in terms of the path that he must find for himself. He is like a man wandering through the forest, following secret signals that only he receives. This is how the artist searches for his path. This is why my intuition is like a compass that I use to find what I need while remaining immune to other outside influences. Lena really did change a lot for me. I would say that Lena’s face is like an icon in that it is a window into a more perfect world. This is why I’ve been using this window for the past 25 years.” She appears triumphantly in Godiva, in which Aleksandrov’s strong sense of space, along with dark and light contrasts to
demarcate the sky above and the earth below suggests the duality of the Aristotelian Greek traditions, in keeping with Russian principles of Orthodoxy. Charging on her raised horse into the city, not timid but rather unfettered regarding her nudity, Godiva, an arm raised up, challenges the darkened sky, astride her horse which is reared upon hindquarters. United they appear to catapault over the shuttered windows. Her hair, composed of waves or ribbons of color, flies behind as does the horses’ mane and tail. Almost matching, they are used as contrast against a static color field-like background in shades of red highlights and blond as accents to suggest hints of movement. The image is flat with the three-dimensional quality of Godiva and the horse arising from the hard line imposed in the figures against the textural background of an almost pointillist application of color. Here, the artist applies the techniques of Mannerism to the dappled color of the horse as illuminating texture is applied to the skyline of the city below. Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 11
“This is actually like a medicine for myself, because I need to see this work everyday.” (Aleksandrov on “The Island”)
“Mannerism was important to me. I don’t think about it much now, but when I was young, I was searching for some sort of peak where everything converged. By everything, I mean form, beautiful line and color. It is common knowledge that after the Renaissance, color lost much of its significance until Impressionism, although there were great colorists in-between. I always sought the point where all of this intersected, where color spoke and was able to embody an idea, where line didn’t disappear into volumes, where you could find the lyricism. For me, this point is the early Renaissance. For a long time, this was the period I was most fascinated with, when I felt like art was in full bloom, whereas during the High Renaissance, Leonardo and Raphael had already lost interest in color. Anyway, this is why the early Renaissance had the greatest influence on me. On the other hand, I later learned to love art from almost every era, including even the most boring academism that I nearly hated when I was young—those 19th century artists before the Impressionists.” In The Island, Aleksandrov builds his image with arched windows of the buildings stacked in the shape of a triangle to comprise a restricted religious community rising above an atoll, out of the water. With an Angelic statuary atop as the pinnacle dome, reaching to the 12 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
sky, a red light is seen in the central window. Two flags flank the angled sides and the shoreline completes the trine, dividing the top from the bottom horizon. A man sits in a boat with a dog, gazing at the distance, floating on the water. The image is fantastic yet subdued by the Gothic building, the late medieval, early Renaissance palette of color and the mannerism applied to the man’s face. The dog is a humorous addition. Almost as if a tarot card had been painted from symbolic meaning, a cosmology unique to the artist is now linking one painting to the next. Never are the scenes duplicated, this and other pictures are at once familiar to the viewer, although unique, never having been painted by another, they are infused with the influences patterned by the artists to create image to image the threads of his visions becoming language. Elements become recognized, useful to employ in stating his message. Duality is united within a trinity, as the geometry (when employed in each image) places the viewer inside the context of a sacred space to view that which is only imagined not as real, but as a possibility to unite the concept that this language is not merely a representation but encompasses the process of the ideal. Like a buoy, as the man in the boat in The Island, the trine is built to support the angel atop.
Aleksandrov is a literary man and has often mentioned that poetry is fundamental for his art, which is readily apparent to the viewer. “Poetry, as even Dostoevsky remarked, is at the heart of all the arts, including prose, painting, and music. The lyrical strain leads me from era to era, where I seek, in the various times and styles, whatever it is I need to make a poetic image materialize. It would be a mistake to become too enamored of various styles, since every style is tied to its epoch. In the end, the thing to express isn’t one’s love for old art, but one’s artistic sensation of their time. That is why what I look for when exploring previous eras is some kind of cultural charge, an energy. The historical aspect interests me a lot less. The energy I am looking for is what will help me manifest what I feel and think today.” The images seen in both Orpheus and Eurydice and the Trumpeter are double sides of a coin, like two faces of Janus carved out of the space between each other, looking forward and back. Orpheus is said to have attempted to retrieve his wife through song from the underworld. In The Trumpeter, two
The Trumpeter
figures may be falling in space, in an aerial dance whirl created by the leaping figure playing the horn. They may be colliding with or causing movement as the atmosphere appears to be joyous and chaotic at the same time, as with Orpheus and Eurydice, seen as Orpheus plays his song. Quantum theory may be what holds the dimensions together. Clearly time is being set aside by the artist as the unifying force and a centrifugal field may be felt in The Trumpeter. The Harlequin pattern, used also in Godiva, is developed in the pant legs of the figures placed on textural background. As the Trumpeter’s sound may be heard within the image created, so can the solitude and quiet be felt in the Aleksandrov’s image of Hope.
“I am always learning and I now believe that this is the best position for an artist to take— not to consider himself a master, or to even believe that he has accomplished anything, but to always be a student. I try to be like a sponge and take in everything.” Orpheus and Eurydice Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 13
Angel With Flowers
Hope
“I’m not trying to go deep in the psychological history of each person. I just try to bring out what is the spiritual message which any person has. In my opinion, psychology is not a subject for painting. The psychology we see in Rembrandt is not like psychology in Dostoevsky or Tolstoy; it is the revelation of the human soul, a different species of psychology. This is why I never attempt to show the psychological state or singularity of any particular figure. I would say that literary psychology not only has no place in the visual arts, but can also destroy images. Another reason I eschew psychology is that I have the sense that an individual opens themselves up much more when they are appealing to a Higher Power, to the Creator, God. It can be called many different things, but this Higher Power is something that we all feel, and it is precisely in that moment when an individual turns to Him that they may be ‘taken’. My work attempts to capture this. “This is why I avoid concreteness—when I am painting a face, I try to make the features as general and abstract as possible. A portrait can be very sketchy and distant from the model and at the same time resemble and convey the essence of the sitter. Finding this balance is crucial. Chaadaev believed that what the artist depicted was not a person or an object but that mysterious ‘double’ that can only be seen with inner vision, that this was what art was meant to do.” Out of the mystery the poet as painter—Aleksandrov— 14 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
penetrates the veil of language that separates us all…or, all from the other side, allowing us to see both sides at once. Like Botticelli whose influence was said to be Ovid, when accessing a muse for his mythic work, Birth of Venus, a transliteral dialectal metamorphism occurs in the alchemy of Aleksandrov’s work to state a message. This approach for crossing over of metaphors is cyclically restated and personally unique to the artist within the body of his work. Like PousetteDart, Aleksandrov’s paintings access the rhythmic heartbeat of the universe unfolding and are never finished in the artist’s eyes. Intended consciously or not, his thematic icons are used repeatedly to penetrate the veil and engender a common understanding. Simplicity emerges for his visions to be told in stories utilizing his developed symbolic language easily understood by all viewers. This is the genius of Aleksandrov’s work. These masterfully executed artistic statements, which contain an anamorphic metaphysical synthesis through image stating the artists’ universal views, required inspiration and compositional discipline to execute therefore enabling them to last the test of time when seen side-by-side over thirty years as a retrospective. The accompanying volume to the display was Mihail Aleksandrov: A Retrospective. It is a thought-provoking journey the viewer may take, clarifying and understanding the conceptual importance of the images as a complete overview of the artists’ work seen at the Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Art in the spring of 2012. To view Mihail Aleksandrov’s work and other information please contact ALEXANDRE GERTSMAN CONTEMPORARY ART 652 Broadway, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10012, Phone: 1.646.344.1325 Web: www.agcontemporaryart.com
Eileen Skretch, Through the Trees 2 Tramaridge
Light by the Water Coastal Landscapes of the Sag Harbor Area
Anita Kusick, Sag Harbor Jetty
Casey Anderson, Long Beach
Plein Air Peconic is a group of a dozen painters and photographers based on the East End of Long Island who are devoted to capturing the beautiful vistas of farmland, beaches and bays in their art. They work closely with the Peconic Land Trust and other conservation organizations to bring a heightened awareness of conservation by displaying and selling their work. This year will be the 7th of working together and showcasing their local landscape exhibitions in museums and non-profits throughout the East End.
The artists of Plein Air Peconic are painters Casey Chalem Anderson, Susan D’Alessio, Aubrey Grainger, Gail Kern, Anita Kusick, Michele Margit, Gordon Matheson, Joanne Rosko, Eileen Dawn Skretch, and photographers Tom Steele, Kathryn Szoka, and Ellen Watson. Furthering the cause of land conservation and protecting the waterways that surround Eastern Long Island is the uniting force that bands these diverse artists together. Plein Air Peconic is proud of its longtime partnership with the Peconic Land Trust where they help and support the Trust in spreading the word about the urgency for land conservation on Long Island’s East End. Over 40 Peconic Land Trust sites have been painted and photographed specifically for Plein Air Peconic events. The sites are located on the South and North Forks, Riverhead Town and Shelter Island and were conserved by the cooperation between the Peconic Land Trust and individual landowners and in many cases local governments. Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 15
Hooke Sculpture Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY
The Duplicity of Language While the spoken word is considered humankind’s most sophisticated form of communication, in many respects it pales in significance when compared to body language and posture as elemental mirrors reflecting reality’s true narrative. Carrying nuances that transcend the subtleties of dialects or idioms as well as ripping away the masks we wear to disguise our perceptions or prejudices, stance and pose, as the performance artist Terry Galloway noted, illuminates “the duplicity that language is capable of and the many expressions the body cannot hide.” For the sculptor Robert Hooke, this emphasis on body language completely defines his focus of aesthetic priorities, whether it is in his studies of animals drawn from the natural world or the interactive melodramas that echo through his use of the human form. Underscoring the concept that communication depends less on syntax than on sentiment or that stated expression is secondary to emotional sensation, Hooke elicits secrets from his silent figures by understating the obvious and emphasizing the inferred. This relies on a number of factors ranging from an elemental understanding of Henry Moore’s reference to “the form and shape of things” (what Emerson called “the anatomy of form”), to the recognition that an integral part of any sculpture, as Gertrude Stein observed, consisted of “some supports and pretty air.” Underlying and emphasizing these singularly uncomplicated principles, however, is Hooke’s ability to understand that simplicity of the image itself is the most vital component in allowing the viewers to develop their own silent communicative avenues between themselves and the sculptural object (an effect accentuated by the lack of facial characteristics in any of the works). This measure of simplicity is not, however, achieved simply through the indiscriminate and random expulsion of detail as if, in sculpting an angel, the process entailed merely chipping away everything that doesn’t look angelic. Instead, through a practiced and intuitive sense of detached observation, the artist is able to understand the emotional structure of the object and thereby recreate not the actual reality of an image of something, but instead strive to emotively conjure the persona of the entity itself. As a result, inevitable comparisons become apparent to these works and primitive art from Africa and elsewhere as viewers find 16 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Robert Hooke
By ERIC ERNST
themselves responding not simply on a visual level but also through the facility of imagination, emotion, and even some measure of mysticism, all aspects synonymous with primitive art. Further, Hooke’s works are exemplified by a latent sense of formalism, a markedly subtle degree of pictorial sophistication, and an insistent exploration of emotional and psychological elements such as had existed as a centuries-old tradition of abstraction in African art long before its emergence in the west. A significant difference, however, is that Hooke directs his focus more at figures and atmospheric moments representing universally common emotional sensations, rather than using his figures to necessarily identify with some transcendent being or concept. Whether reflected in the gentle camaraderie of “An Evening Walk with Buddy in Noyac” (marble), the wistfully meditative “Daydreamer” (bronze), or the rhythmically seductive “Flamenco Dancers” (bronze), Hooke draws inspiration from disparate elements of daily life while still imbuing the pose and posture of his subjects with an elegantly ethereal impassiveness. This is also apparent in his works featuring animals from the natural world whose recreation is dependent not on aspects of scientific illustration nor the majestic idealizations of the 19th century ‘Animalier’ artists. Instead, in works such as “Leopard Head” (sandstone), “Monkeys” (bronze), or “Sleeping Swan” (alabaster), Hook simplifies the forms so that planar dimensions are subtly softened and the materials themselves seem to yield the sense of existentiality, allowing the work to straddle the often intractable line in sculpture separating realism from abstraction. Striving to balance modern impulses with traditional sensibilities and accentuating lines that are elegant in their unadorned minimalism, Robert Hooke is able to evoke profoundly memorable moments and emotions that are, by turns, both unique and universal. He arrives at this with a recognition that image, form, and narrative are intrinsically intertwined and that their complexities are best understood when stripped of all needless embellishments and adornments. In effect, searching for their emotive and spiritual essence by subtracting the superfluous and spurious, thereby reflecting Han’s Hofmann’s observation that one must “eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
ELAINE BENSON’S HAMPTONS VOYAGE by KIMBERLY GOFF 17 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Elaine Goff, 1950
Kimberly and Elaine, Photo by Tulla Booth 1998
Kimberly Goff, Elaine Benson, Ginny Goff Green, 1980
Kimberly Goff, Elaine K. G. Benson, by Jill Krementz photographed in front of the Elaine Benson Gallery, 1994
Elaine Benson, from Memorial
“I did not give up the gallery property and our wonderful Gingerbread Victorian without first trying hard to find a way to continue.”
S Elaine Benson, Roger Rosenblatt, Photo by Kimberly Goff 1996
Elaine Benson by Nancy Crampton 1995, sculpture by Marc Mellon 18 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
By KIMBERLY GOFF
o many people have called, written, emailed, and stopped me on the street, that I feel I owe it to the community to provide information and to respond to the questions, tears, love, and public outcry, over the loss of my family home, located next to the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York. Elaine (my mother) and Emanuel Benson, her second husband moved here, in 1965, from Philadelphia where they both had worked for the Museum College of Art (later called PCA and now known as The University of the Arts). The following year they bought the property at 2317 Montauk Hwy across from the Post Office in Bridgehampton. The gracious wooden house was large enough to house the couple as well as visiting artists, and was the home of the original Benson Barn Gallery. The house was unlike any house I had known from my early childhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It was built in the 1800’s and there were architectural details that fascinated me. The ceilings upstairs met in strange angles that always intrigued me. The angles came in from different directions and I couldn’t figure out exactly why. I stared up at that ceiling from my bed for endless hours and never tired of it. There were old curved glass windows upstairs and in the panes of the front door. There was “gingerbread” trim around the eaves and a curved staircase with an amazing banister. The floorboards had been painted which seemed sad but you could see they were wide and old. In my first room there was a huge walk-in closet. It was my favorite house of all time. That first year my mother and stepfather owned the house they put a swimming pool in the yard. My stepfather planted a vegetable garden in the rich Bridgehampton loam. That started my love for gardening. In 1966, the barn and out buildings were renovated and added onto, to make a rambling indoor/outdoor space which was the gallery and sculpture garden. In the time that this house was built, Bridgehampton had relatively few houses. The old timers picked the best places to build. They avoided the beach and low-lying areas because of floods and storms. The site they chose for the old “Sayre house” was breezy and
Jill Krementz, Elaine, Cecile Gray Bazelon
Elaine Benson, Elaine Steinbeck, Edward Albee, Photo by Kimberly Goff 1997
Bill, Kim, Elaine, Neal and Ginny Goff 1958
Elaine with Helga
Kimberly, Mary Lynch, Elaine, Southampton Hospital Party 1998
Elaine K G Benson, Kimberly Goff, 1997 Liz and Bella Abzug, Elaine Benson, Photo by Tulla Booth
Betty Friedan, Elaine Benson, Photo by Kimberly Goff 1997 Robert F. X. Sillerman, 1996, Photo by Kimberly Goff
10th Annual Benefit for the Group for the South Fork and Nature Conservancy. Robert S. DeLuca, Eric Lustbader, Elaine Benson, Sara Davison, 1997
Elaine Benson 1996 by Michael Alpert 19 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Elaine Benson by Seth Alfoumado
“It was a magical time when creativity oozed out of people.” cool in summer. There was an amazing maple tree, one of the largest I have even seen with an amazing enormous beehive in it. Every year the bees came back to it at time causing dismay to the clients who were trying to cross by into the gallery. The maple and the chestnut that had survived the die off of most of the local chestnut trees were torn out of the ground shortly after the house was destroyed. This was a much smaller community in 1965 and although the Hamptons were clearly established as an artist colony, there were no galleries where those artists could show their work or congregate. The Benson Gallery became a meeting place where artists and writers gathered and where you never knew who you might run into. It was a magical time when creativity oozed out of people. Wine flowed and wonderful conversation that was an art in itself. In 1971 Emanuel Benson died of lung Cancer. The gallery was renamed the “Elaine Benson Gallery”. I moved here to be with my mother shortly after Emanuel’s death. My brother Bill came a few years before, in order to help when my stepfather became ill and my mother needed help with the gallery. He worked with her for three summers supporting her in every way. He helped hang the shows, repair the buildings and keep Elaine going. There was no question of closing the gallery. Contracts had gone out and the artists were counting on showing and the continuation of this special place that had become central to the artist’s community. Also, Emanuel’s estate was contested and the family needed the money. My mother also worked as the Community Relations Director of Southampton Hospital for thirty years. She left every morning to get there at 8am and got back in time to open the gallery at noon. That provided health insurance and an income in the lean times. I finished high school at the Hampton Day School in Bridgehampton. At the time the school went up to twelfth grade. It was know as the “Artsy School.” Willem de Kooning’s daughter Lisa was there and so were the children of other creative people in
Meet the Writers Book Fair 1996,Wilfrid Sheed (Honoree), Elaine, Congressman Tim Bishop, Photo by Kimberly Goff
Elaine Benson by Nancy Crampton, 1995, Sculpture by Molly Mason.tif
the community. Now it is the site of the Ross Lower School. I went on to open a boutique on Main Street in 1974, just down the block from the gallery. People often went form the gallery to my shop and back to the gallery. Elaine de Kooning was a great customer along with Dorothy Lichtenstein and Syd and Annie Solomon, Truman Capote, Betty Friedan, Joe Pintauro and many other famous and not so famous clients. Because of my mother’s gallery I felt centered in Bridgehampton and secure enough to open my shop at the tender age of nineteen. My shop closed in 1986 and I went off to Mexico where I had spent the winters since 1976. I joined my husband who lived there year round. Once away from this community I felt free to become a painter. Here, there were so many wonderful painters that I did not feel I could enter the group but once I was away I had no real choice. I was driven and passionate. Eventually my mother encouraged me. In 1993, after seven years of living in Mexico, painting and gardening, I came back to Bridgehampton, moved back into my mother’s house, and went to work as her apprentice. It only took her a few days to decide she wanted me to come after I offered. We had no idea how important it would be for both of us. Elaine was incredibly generous with her information, her friends, her time, and her house. I had a separate entrance, bathroom, and my own kitchen upstairs. The house was set up as two completely independent apartments. My mother and her third husband, Joseph F. X. Kaufman, lived on the ground floor and I had the upstairs to myself unless they had house guests. When my husband joined me the following summer, it was a little too close for comfort and we ended up buying a house just off the turnpike in Bridgehampton. I was incredibly lucky to find a foreclosure near where I grew up and near the gallery. Plus, I was on the board of the Bridgehampton Child Care and Rec. Center so I knew many of my neighbors. As it happened my mother was widowed again in 1996 and I was widowed in 1997. My mother had already been diagnosed with cancer by that time but chose to keep it a secret. She wanted to tell no one. She said it would hurt the gallery and she didn’t want anyone to look at her with pity. By then we really needed each other. We were fortunate that I was already living only a few miles away and working with my mother when she and her husband were both diagnosed with cancer in 1996. By that time she had made me a partner in the gallery and she depended on me to cover for her whenever she couldn’t be there. My husband was helping to take care of my stepfather and I was learning everything my mother could teach me. She wanted me to remember every story of the Hamptons. She was a great storyteller and I was fascinated with her and everyone around us. She wanted me to know all the artists and famous people, their histories, their stories, and everything she could teach me about art history. She said she cloned me. Still, I am not Elaine Benson and I cannot fill her shoes. Finally in the last days of her life Mother felt it was important to let people know what was happening to her so at the very end of her life she told the story of her illness in her last column for Dan’s Papers, a column she had written for more than thirty years. She said she would miss everyone and hoped they would miss her. She died three days after the article appeared. There were mixed reactions. Some people were angry. A few girlfriends were hurt that she had not shared the information with them. Others realized why she had been wearing a wig for a while. Many asked if I knew how wonderful my mother was. The answer: YES! The Gallery centered our lives in the Hamptons. It was never very profitable but my mother lived in the house and loved her life there. She even died in that house surrounded by three of her four children and her ashes were buried under a cherry tree in the front yard. The tree lives on in a new location with a view of the ocean that she would have loved, but some of her ashes stayed on in the soil. She will never leave that property completely. My mother entrusted everything to me but also said, “Give it a try. Give it three years and see what you think.” I gave the gallery eight years after she died. In that time, I renovated the house and gallery completely. The grounds were gorgeous. The gallery wasn’t nearly as interesting or as much fun without Elaine Benson. She was the life of the place. She lit up the room. I could not become the personality that my mother was in the community. Even after her death hundreds of people came by and admired thousands of works of art. People told me Elaine Benson stories. Many people came and told me how she had helped them. They thanked me for continuing. Continuing after her death, tens of thousands of dollars were raised for charity in the tradition she established. Many emerging artists got their start and we had two “Hampton Art History Shows” including works from Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, both Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers, and over forty other artists from the previous generation of Hampton’s artists. I followed the same formula as my mother did. We changed shows every three weeks from the beginning of May till the end of September. I cleaned the place up, repaired the old buildings, got rid of all the bramble and overgrowth, extended the sculpture garden and painted the house and galleries. I replaced the roof of the gallery and completely replaced the ceramic shed that was falling apart. As always we had openings every three weeks in the summer with preview benefits for local charities. We helped many charities with these benefits. The Bridgehampton Child Care and Rec. Center, CMEE (Children’s Museum of the East End), the Retreat (home for domestic violence victims), and The Nature Conservancy, the Group for the South Fork, Hampton Shorts (a writing anthology), the Meet the Writers Book Fair for Southampton College and the college library and John Steinbeck Writing Room, ARF (Animal Rescue Fund), EEGO (East End Gay Organization), and LTV (local access television) are among the many organizations that held their fund-raisers in a tent, in the sculpture garden, and in the buildings of the gallery. I did not give up the gallery property and our wonderful Gingerbread Victorian without first trying hard to find a way to continue. Before my mother died she told me there was a problem with the Certificate of Occupancy. She 20 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
thought it would be an easy thing to deal with but said she was too old and sick and she didn’t have time. She knew I had a lot of experience building and renovating houses. She assumed I could “solve it”.It was only after I purchased the property from my siblings that it became clear that although the house had its “C of O”, the barn was on the books as a “bar”. I was told it would cost me over $50,000- and three years to make it all legal (without any physical work whatsoever). It would not pay for itself from sales. The business paid for itself most years but there wasn’t much left over even for a salary for me and the property was expensive to maintain. I was living in my own house at that time. I kept my mother’s house heated, kept it clean, and used it for entertaining. It was bitter sweet without Elaine’s presence. After 1965, throughout all forty-two years of the gallery, the gallery was made up of three unheated, un-insulated, single story buildings that could not be used on a year-round basis. It seemed better to hire a great architect and try to build a new building. After many meetings with Preston Phillips, the most talented architect I know, we found the best solution to the problem of how to “save” the gallery: build a structure attached to the existent house that would mimic the original architectural elements and roof line and look as if it had always been there. It took three years and a lot of compromise. The town wanted 26 parking spaces and a promise that the second story of the existent house could only be used for storage. All I could think of was the song lyric, “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” It seemed a crime to take away most of the sculpture garden to accommodate more parking. There is a huge parking lot across the street for a condo building that is half empty. Finally the plans were approved 100% by the town board. We had the blessing of the planning board and one of the planning board members said that Preston Phillips was the most polite person who ever presented a project to them. After we had town approval for the building, I tried to raise the money to build the new gallery. By that time I realized the project was too big for me alone so I tried to form a new organization called, “Friends of Elaine Benson”. I even tried to sell the concept and plans to a potential new owner. It had seemed to me we could make a Museum dedicated to the “Art History of the Hamptons”. In my dreams I could be on the board in the beginning and ultimately the gallery/ museum could live on without me. It could have year round, income producing, rental spaces on the second floor of the addition, as a part of the new plan. It would have been beautiful. It ended up as only a dream, but a beautifully designed one at that. In hindsight with the state of the economy we are probably lucky that this ambitious plan never became a reality. It is harder than ever to raise money for publicly supported projects. When Joe Farrell offered to buy the property, he said he would try to save the house. He suggested that because he is a builder, he would be in the best position to save the old structure. It was in good shape so I was surprised when I read in a newspaper interview with Mr. Farrell that he was going to tear the house down. That was before the closing on the property. We had an agreement of sale only. There was a ‘follow up” article at the time where I admitted to being very upset and Mr. Farrell called me and offered to renege on the purchase. I felt I had to go through with the sale and also had to realize that the new owner would have the right to do whatever he wanted, in accordance with the laws of the town. I knew that the process of getting town approvals is a long and difficult one. I understood I couldn’t stop progress. I agreed to the sale and said I would be mature and understand that once I sold the property, I would have no control over it. At least the Farrells gave me permission to take the front door, with its curved glass panes, the banister, the decorative windows from the upstairs bedrooms, and the gingerbread trim that my mother and I loved so dearly. I couldn’t bear to see them destroyed. It was a part of the agreement that I could ‘save’ the things I cared about the most even though I couldn’t save the house. In late December of 2008 I was surprised to see the house demolished during a terrible ice storm. I was told that the timing was because the new owner had been advised that there would be an architectural review board meeting the next day and he was in a hurry to get rid of the building. This is hearsay on my part. I was told that he was called on the phone but there was nothing in writing. I admit that our house was not the most beautiful house of all time. It was simply the most beautiful old house I have ever known well. I wept. Even knowing the house would come down, it was a shock to see it in pieces, a huge pile of giant match sticks, the result of a giant bulldozer in a few short hours. The plan to destroy the house had been announced in the papers many times. There were public hearings in front of the planning board. Plans for a new building were in the Southampton Press. The Farrells were very clear about their intentions. Mother always said, “We are liberals who hate change”. What is done is done. I can’t turn back the clock. What I can do is stay positive. I have forty-two years of gallery archives to finish organizing, scanning, recording, and then the task of finding ways to make the archives public. I have worked with more interns this summer (2006) and we have begun to study grant writing. My desire is to open the records to students and professors, to writers, and aspiring painters. There is a wealth of visual information and the excitement I feel about this part of our story/history cannot be taken away. There is enough information to encourage many books. My mother lives on in the legacy she left, the friends and artists who remember her, her four children, three grandsons, as of March 2012 a great granddaughter and in the book she wrote. She lives on in the cherry tree and in the archives. She lives on in our hearts. I have started working on a memoir about my mother, the gallery, and “the way we were.” I am asking artists and old friends to try to recapture their memories and send me their antidotes. My plan is to preserve all that I still can. The building is gone. My mother is gone. Still, nothing can erase this rich history. That lives on. Memories and anecdotes can be sent to elainebensongallery@gmail.com Written, 2009, edited July 2012.
Cheech Marin Arts Patron of the Year!
Ricardo Ruiz, La Reyna De Las Masotas, 2011 from Cheech Marin collection, courtesy Thomas Paul Fine Art, Los Angeles
Cheech Marin
Comedic Icon to Educate East End About Chicano Art & What It Means to America at ArtHamptons Fair
Cheech Marin, best known as half of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong, who is also the world’s largest collector of Chicano art works, will receive the Arts Patron of the Year Award during the 5th annual edition of ArtHamptons. While the renowned funnyman can’t resist joking for long, he is very serious about his passion for Chicano art and supporting the genre. Hamptons Expo Group CEO Rick Friedman will present the Grammy winning actor, director, and author with the prestigious award on Saturday, July 13 th, during the summer’s premiere international fine art fair which will be held in its new location at Sculpture Fields of Nova’s Ark at 60 Millstone Rd. in Bridgehampton, NY, from July 13th to 15th, 2012. “Sure, I’m able to use the fact that I am known for my career as an actor to attract an audience to a type of art that might otherwise go unnoticed. The artist wouldn’t be successful if the painting wasn’t any good.” Mr. Marin has amassed over 400 pieces of MexicanAmerican artwork. He will be on hand all weekend at the Thomas Paul Fine Art booth to discuss the genre that captures the social, political and religious life of Mexican-Americans, his own critically acclaimed traveling exhibitions, and his unerring passion and support for what he calls “Art of the New Americas.” “The inception of Chicano art was political,” Cheech explained, “which is how it got noticed and what kept it out of museums. Any museum that showed early Chicano art didn’t want ’em back because, you know, they were fist-waving, headband-wearing, dope-smoking Chicanos who ‘wanna burn down your museum,’” said Cheech in his
“stoner” voice. “‘Chicano’ to me is a ... term in constant evolution. Every generation that comes in has as much right to say what the definition of ‘Chicano’ is as any that went before it. It’s not just a term that applies between such-and-such years. All the elements of great Chicano art should come together unconsciously. I think that’s what great art does. I always have an emotional reaction to paintings, that’s why I buy them, that’s why I’m coming to Bridgehampton.” Until Marin’s own works began traveling the country, no one had really defined a Chicano School of American painting. Only a few, such as Carlos Almaraz (1949-1989), Rupert Garcia and John Valadez, had achieved national prominence. “This is not Latin American art,” Cheech said. “This is American art. Just like de Kooning is not a Dutch artist, de Kooning was an American artist. We’re Americans, too. When you come to the point where salsa is already the No. 1 condiment over ketchup, the change has already occurred. My own collection, and galleries like Thomas Paul, act as an introduction to the genre and hopefully will create a new appreciation in a new location…” “The impetus for me coming to ArtHamptons and being involved with this is I don’t want these artists to pass through their whole creative lives and not be known. I also want to help audiences everywhere understand what this art means to America.” Mr. Marin will introduce works by some of his favorite new artists, including Carlos Donjuan, known for mixing his classical training with graffiti and mural techniques, and Ricardo Ruiz with prices at the booth ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. Since its inception, ArtHamptons has garnered a reputation for excellence and continues to grow in scale and prestige. Housed within the impressive modular building, fair-goers will enjoy an enormous selection of artworks as well as special attractions. Visitors at the agriculture reserve are also invited to explore the 95 areas of sculpture gardens, which include a polo field where the Southampton Polo Club will play a match on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon. For further information, go to www.arthamptons.com Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 21
Second Annual artMRKT Hamptons Hits The Beach 30+ Galleries Participating in the July Fair; Proceeds To Benefit the Parrish
Shane Mcadams, Synthetic Landscape 53 (North Rim Lodge), 2011 Ballpoint pen, oil and resin on canvas 24 x 24 inches Courtesy of Allegra La Viola Gallery
Created to appeal to the culturally engaged art buyers and enthusiasts, the second annual ArtMRKT Hamptons will feature leading galleries from across the country. Forty galleries will exhibit Thomas Woodruff, Still Life Variation Sanguinic, 2009-10 original contemporary painting, sculpture, photography and prints Acrylic on linen, 60 x 48 inches at the Bridgehampton Historical Society grounds July 19 – 22. Courtesy of P.P.O.W Gallery Underscoring the Fair’s commitment to the visitor experience, this year’s Opening Night Preview will benefit the Parrish Art Museum. Noted Brooklyn chef Leon Gunn, formerly of Wolfgang Puck, Aria, the more seasoned collector.” Managing Partner Wainhause adds, Noho Star and Williamsburg’s Traif restaurants, will serve opening “Our aim is to create an enjoyable experience for our clients and night guests his “refined take on the quintessential Hamptons dining to make the Fair easily accessible. The Fair is centrally located in experience — the summer barbecue.” Bridgehampton near wonderful restaurants Returning this year are many leading and shops, and the venue and layout of the New York galleries including Lennon fair enables the galleries and artists to be the Weinberg, Nancy Hoffman, Kathryn Markel true stars of the show.” and Morgan Lehman. Halsey Mackey Location: (Hamptons), Boltax Gallery (Shelter Island), Bridgehampton Historical Society located 101/Exhibit (Miami), Mindy Solomon in the heart of Bridgehampton directly on Gallery (St. Petersburg) and AUREUS the main road, Route 27, 2368 Montauk Contemporary (Providence). Joining this Highway (Rt. 27) - Bridgehampton, NY line up are P.P.O.W, DC Moore, Envoy Hours and Admission: Enterprises, Allegra LaViola and David Evening Preview benefitting the Parrish Lusk (Tennessee). Launched by seasoned Art Museum: Thursday, July 19 6PM – fair veterans, Max Fishko and Jeffrey 7:30PM Wainhause, the artMRKT fairs—which Opening Night Party: Thursday, July 19, include artMRKT San Francisco, Hamptons, 7:30PM-10PM Texas Contemporary and the soon-to-be Friday, July 20th - 11AM to 7PM launched Miami Project—are well received Saturday, July 21st - 11AM to 7PM by exhibitors and visitors alike. “What sets Sunday, July 22nd - noon to 6PM artMRKT Hamptons apart from other Evening Preview Ticket - $100 online / fairs is our intimate scale and dedication to $110 at door Robert De Niro Sr. showcasing emerging and established artists 3 Day Ticket - $35 online / $40 at door Still Life with Guitar, Torso and Two Vases, in a relaxed, welcoming environment,” says 1 Day Ticket - $20 online / $25 at door 1971 . Oil on canvas Fair Director Fishko, “We serve the everFor additional information, 38.5 x 27.75 inches Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery growing market for art and still appeal to please visit: www.art-mrkt.com/hamptons 22 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Completing the Triumvirate, Art Southampton Debuts Launch Events to Benefit Southampton Hospital & The Watermill Center
Art Southampton will be held at Elks Lodge Fairgrounds July 26-30
F
lorida’s bustling art scene will soon make a major impression in the Hamptons, with one of the world’s première art fairs bringing an unparalleled array of the world’s finest contemporary art to one of the world’s greatest artists communities, The Hamptons. For over three centuries, renowned artists — from 19th Century Plein Air painter William Merritt Chase to the 20th Century moderns Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein to their 21st Century counterparts Cindy Art Southampton’s Partner-Director Sherman, April Gornik, Eric Nick Korniloff & Pamela Cohen, VP Fischl — have all called the Sponsorships - VIP Relations East End home. The inaugural Art Southampton presented by Art Miami, the premiere International Contemporary & Modern Art Fair and marketplace for acquiring the finest works of art available in the Hamptons, will make its Hamptons’ debut July 26-30, 2012 in a state-of-the-art 75,000 square foot Pavilion located on the sprawling 18-acre fairgrounds behind the Southampton Elks Lodge between the Southampton Country Club and Mercedes Benz of Southampton located directly off Route 27 A. The fair will commence on Thursday evening, July 26, 2012 with an Opening Night VIP Preview benefiting Southampton Hospital. “We are excited to be a benefactor of the inaugural Art Southampton Fair,” said Robert Chaloner, President and CEO, Southampton Hospital. “This Art Fair is a wonderful opportunity to bring our supporters and the international contemporary art community together in an entirely new way. Most importantly contributions from this event will assist Southampton Hospital in continuing to meet the evolving healthcare needs of our Eastern Long Island communities.” Special features include the premiere of “HEAARTBEAT” a documentary which takes an incisive look at the late renowned sculptor John Chamberlain by his step-daughter filmmaker
Hans Hoffman, Nikola Rukaj Gallery, Toronto
Andrew Levitas
Alexandra Fairweather, Thursday July 26. By documenting Chamberlain’s artistic process and intentions, the film reveals his desire to go out into the world and create art that makes your ‘heart beat. “HEAARTBEAT” captures the man that the public has not seen before: Chamberlain as a father, a husband, and a friend. As he battles health issues, Chamberlain races against time to complete sculptures that will leave his mark on the world. The screening will benefit the Ross School’s Chamberlain–Fairweather Scholarship Fund for the Arts. The Fund was created by John Chamberlain, Prudence Fairweather and Alexandra Fairweather in 2007 to recognize and support students with a passion for the arts who are in need of financial aid to receive the excellent global interdisciplinary education offered by Ross School. Each year this scholarship encourages young artists to realize their dreams and impact the future of fine arts. On Friday July 27, internationally acclaimed director Robert Wilson will host a VIP reception followed by a screening of “HEAARTBEAT” to launch the Watermill Center/Chamberlain Residency Grant Fund. The Watermill Center is an interdisciplinary laboratory for the arts and humanities completed in 2006 on the Long Island, NY site of a former Western Union communication research facility founded by theatre and visual artist Robert Wilson as a place for young and emerging artists to work, learn, create, and grow with each other. Visit www.art-southampton.com for more info. Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 23
Jenna Lash: Finding Answers To Difficult Questions No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest, 48 x 60 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, Australian Dollar
Jenna Lash has traveled the world as an artist, with solo exhibitions in recent years in Switzerland, Beverly Hills, Stamford and NYC. Her newest collection of works, on display at the Bego Ezair Gallery in Southampton through July 31st, is her most personal to date as it focuses on the subject of family and family dynamics, beginning with her own. Lash left her life behind for two years in order to care for her ailing father. Her mother and father’s retirement community became Jenna’s home away from home. Last year within four months of each other, Jenna’s father passed away as did her mother, and she believes it was because of a broken heart. Cherishing the memories of her mother and father, Lash utilized her artistic gift as an outlet to work through the whirlwind of emotions she was experiencing. She explored her own sense of loss and pain from the past years through her work. Lash took an inherited collection of family photographs as her base and the finished product of work was the oil-based series Imagined Memories - A Family Album, which was recently showcased in New York City at Synchronicity Fine Arts. When describing her latest works, Lash confides, “I feel that I am taking big risks, and just leaping and hoping that the net will appear…I always promised myself that I wouldn’t allow my work to get too comfortable, because I believe that, as an artist, you stop growing and making exciting work if you do that. Also, I am focusing on painful losses, and going deeply inward to try to find answers to questions that are difficult. It is a much more scary exploration for me. I have challenged myself to leave the ease of proficiency to seek new answers in my work.” These personal paintings will be featured alongside select pieces from her previous exhibition, The Art of Money, that explores global culture relying on each country’s currency as Lash’s visual compass. For more about Jenna, visit www.jennalash.com.
Pals, 36 x 48 inches, Oil on Canvas 24 • Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2012
Judith with Bow, 36 x 48 inches, Oil on Canvas
Floater, 48 x 60 inches, Oil on Canvas
“Life is hard, but life is the art.”
“Yo! Halleleujah!” from Dion’s “Bronx Poem”
Bronx Zoo, 1957 photo by Susan Dimucci Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 1
DIONOLOGY BOOK ONE: BELMONT AVENUE
The Prince Bakery, Belmont AVenue landmark For Frederick Bruce Martuscelli August 4, 1950 - Dec. 14, 1972
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his street, like any other live being, would be entitled to an aura of its own. It didn’t breathe but it offered air to its inhabitants; it didn’t see, but it gave sight to its strollers. One minute it would exude the sweetness of soft rolls rising in the cavernous ovens of the Prince Bakery. At other times, it would reek with the stench of too many hot July days without garbage pick-up. They would turn the hydrant on – before water shortages and modern sprinklers – so that the garbage, caught in the current, would flow down the street, never higher than the curb, racing to unforeseen purification on Fordham Road. During spells like this, you could smell the ape house in the Bronx Zoo, a few long blocks to the east. There were days when the street would crackle as opposing gangs fought territorial wars on her stony terrain. Blood would spill. And there were days when the street would sing for joy, in moonshine and sunshine, under the street lights. There was life on this street of decay and love emanated from the apartments 2 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
From hallways like this one on Belmont Avenue, a harmony sound was created and perfected that defined an era and is still wildly popular today. It’s all about the echo.
The author points out DION DIMUCCI WAY (Belmont Avenue and East 188th Street). to grandson Matthew Bennett Forbes,
in the stone dwellings, where people lived one on top of the other, separated by twelve inches of concrete. This story begins in the street, this Belmont Avenue, named af ter some longforgotten settler, where I found kindness, affection and a beauty of spirit that I never dreamed existed on earth. I set foot on that beautiful, stinking street – rife with filth, strife and life, abundant with love – and soaring, in a second floor tenement, with music and art. I could not tell you exactly why such a soul came and went like a flash in such a place at such a time. But I knew early on my role in the drama: to chronicle it. And I want to share it with you, because it is a story of hope. A strong story, one you can take hold of in your hands and hold up to the heavens and shout: Yes! We are left on earth! Yes, we love our lives. Yes! We will be waiting for you and YES! You never left. –VICTOR FORBES
H
By the age of 12, Dion was an With The Belmonts, Street Corner Talkin’: Freddie Milano, Carlo Mastrangelo, established neighborhood star working Angelo D’Aleo and Dion, 1957. “I’m a lover not a fighter but I’ll kick your ass.” (a line from Son of Skip James, the title cut of Dion’s 2007 CD) clubs & restaurants, like the Villa, reviewed here by the noted author/ restaurateur Helen Dunn in 1972
What’s Cookin’ at the Villa Italian Restaurant
T h e heavenly and hearty a r o m a of home cooking, just as you open the door of the Villa Italian Restaurant, New York’s Helen Dunn, Marilyn Monroe n e w e s t privately owned and operated restaurant, and the warm welcome by Ralph Martuscelli, one of the most genial hosts here in “Lttle Italy” in the Bronx are twin ingredients hard to beat. The Villa menu, a la carte and moderately priced, lists over a dozen pasta pleasers including the traditional spaghetti al dente, linguini and lasagna, with your choice of Ralph’s delightful sauces. Entrees? You name it and Ralph will cook it for you. But … please be patient. Seafood? such succulent shell foods as Shrimps Fra Diavlo, Mussels Possilipo and Scungilli, cooked to a tenderness and served with a hot-hot sauce are highlights. Steak lovers, this is your dish: Steak Pizzaiola, tender, juicy, and tasty served with a slightly seasoned sauce. Chicken Cacciatore, plump and generous chicken parts and mushrooms which Ralph simmers and simmers to a delight in a mouthwatering sauce.
Dion and Susan Butterfield “Top Ten Girls were all I dated.” They are married some 50 years.
From “Haulin’ Ash” to “Kickin’ Ass,” “The Wanderer” to “The Thunderer” THE BEST LOVE SONG EVER WRITTEN:
“They call me Sweet Papa D ’cos I’m slammin’ and tall but when it comes time to get my ashes hauled I let me baby do that, I let my baby do that, I let my baby do that and she ease my worried mind.” Wondering how to start this story about Dion with so much written and said about him by the great, iconic figures of our era. The Beatles put his face on the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Dylan, Springsteen, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Billy Joel, Steven Van Zandt all write liner notes for his records, cite him as a major influence and back him by singing The Belmonts parts at big-time concerts. Robert Plant never fails to catch his show when the King of the New York Streets hits England. Would it suffice to open with this: Is there another performer who is the go to guy for 1) The Blues Cruise 2) Malt Shop Cruise 3) The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 4) WCBS-FM 5) NPR and last but not least 5) EWTN Global Catholic Television Network? The answer is simple: there is only one and his name is Dion. So I was thinking of all these things, driving on the Cross Bronx Expressway and what passes me but a very large truck, loaded up. With ash. Hauling. “You can crank my car, shift my gear But when the easy riding goes on here, I let my baby do that…”* The appetizers, soups, salads, Pizza (Oh Yes) thin crisp Pizza in a variety of combinations to delight all Pizza lovers. Sandwiches, too, beverages and desserts to the smoothest home made cheese cake, you will be
happy you discovered the Villa Italian restaurant. The Villa is intimate in atmosphere and decor, with warm wood wall paneling and matching table tops. Open for lunch and dinner every day except Monday
with a seatintcapacity of forty. The Villa Italian Restaurant at 651East 187th Street at Belmont Avenue is long gone, as is my grandmother, Helen
Dunn. We present this review as a tribute to them both.
*”I Let My Baby Do That” Dion Dimucci from the CD “Bronx in Blue” © Dion Dimucci Bronx Soul Music, used by permission Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 3
DIONOLOGY BOOK TWO: THE BLUES MAN AS ARTIST & AUTHOR
Steven Van Zandt hosted an evening with Dion at the 92nd St. Y here they jam on a Robert Johnson tune. Photo by Arnie Goodman
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Dion’s Robert Johnson painting graces the cover of Bronx in Vlue
“The Blues is the naked cry of the human heart apart from God, wanting to feel at home.” – Dion
Above, Still Life, left, Madonna and Child
4 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Dion’s new book available everywhere and from Part 2 of Dion’s story will be in www.servantbooks.org our next issue and at www.fineartmagazine.com
Thirst, 51 x 59”, oil on canvas, 2007
Prodigious Russian Artist Eduard Anikonov
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duard Anikonov, as part of the new work stands alone stylistically—a painter who face of Russian figurative painters, has By JAMIE ELLIN FORBES has attained his own art statement to express forged his accomplished style, inspired his views. One of the artist’s strengths is his by his roots from his birth in his hometown, the steel center of capacity to draw on multiple topics, as quantified in his composiRussia, Magnitogorsk in 1966 to become a contemporary master. tions though expressive movement of color, allowing Anikonov to Acclaimed for the depth of his body of work nationally and incross over multiple artistic borders to achieve a singular definitive ternationally, Anikonov can be seen as a leader in Post (industrial) definition of painting within his evolving and ever-growing mode Modernism, machine metaphor, structuralism; extrapolating influof expression. ences from the Soviet school or social realism. Embracing these As a young painter, Anikonov was introduced to America ideas refined from techniques learned at the esteemed Fine Arts through his participation in the exchange program “Hands Across College of Sverdlovsk and School of Graphics at St. Petersburg the Water” in 1997, and thereafter continued to participate in Repin Academy of Arts, Anikonov state independently from others gallery exhibitions, primarily in Philadelphia, where he developed the imagery in his diverse portfolio revealing his artistic soul. The an understanding of the current US art scene, independent of Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 25
Nameless Time I, 79 x 51”, oil on canvas, 2007
Nameless Time II, 79 x 51”, oil on canvas, 2007 influences from others. It was through his connection to the burgeoning 1990’s Philadelphia cultural renaissance that Eduard met Leslie Barany, agent and art director for Hans Rudi Giger, forming friendships leading to his involvement with the artist’s participation in the Carnivora project 2007-2008. This landmark Art exhibition took place consecutively in Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, and San Diego, concluding with the Carnivora: The Dark Art of Automobiles exhibit. Anikonov was placed in the company of cutting edge young artists such as John “Crash” Matos and Anthony Ausgang, among others. They were labeled within the specific dialogue on machines and their place within the social context of art dissertation—noir artists of the last half of the 20th century, noted in Les Barany’s 2007 book, Carnivora: The Dark Art of Automobiles. Anikonov’s participation in the project and inclusion in the book established him as a forerunner in the continued milieu of Post Modern, Machine Metaphor and Structuralism, as work reflective of his original art statements drawing upon his influence from the steel mills of Magnitogorsk. In 2009-2010 Art Gallery ALLRUS organized eighty artists to be displayed in Vienna as part of the prestigious Art of Russia exhibition with Anikonov’s invited participation validating him as one of the young Russian art masters. In the industrial works Gear I and Gear II, the raw energy of the steel forging, machines moving, the monolithic importance of the subject matter in general is observed and delivered as the artist’s impression. When seen within the context of the Carnivora Project 26 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
they fit the homage to Detroit and the Automobile as the strongest influence in the 20th century culturally. The works feel primal and are easily understood to be dark and consumptive, lacking natural elements. Machines are displayed and the atmosphere created by machines devouring natural non-replenishable resources is seen in each work. The likeness to or affinity between the gray background of Alien, as the artist’s friend and mentor Giger instilled in the imagery and sculptures for the films monsters years ago, is apparent. The colors and forms are heightened to feel sensual in Gear I as red is introduced to the canvas becoming a strong focal accent and subdued, muted, void of life in Gear II as grayed-out. As George Bellows the early 20th century painter dialogues industry and machine in works such as Steaming Streets, 1908, these two canvases are indicative of the move away from figurative as Soviet Realism of the Stalinists era or European Post Impression to a more textural spontaneous experience. Paint is richly applied to these canvases in broad plains of area, comparable to noted WPA artist, influenced by Bellows as a young artist, Willem de Kooning’s use of paint as special plane to develop compositional interest providing definition for the subjects’ line. Anikonov has mastered the unified cohesive understanding of expression and subject in tandem in figurative modern painting within industrial landscapes. In these settings, he communicated a deep appreciation for the machines as subjects necessary and worthy of artistic interpretation: their place of importance and impact on our current cultural overview of urbanization and industrialization. Reminiscent of the inspirational qualities offered by works of the Soviet Socialist-era art, in Thirst, Anikonov frames the worker, a focused cropped hard shot profiled, possibly close to the iron furnaces satisfying his need for water. The red makes the canvas hot, portraying the possible refection of liquid iron near by. This young face is defying the surroundings driving his thirst. Strong areas for color denote his inner determination possessed by all individuals in these conditions. In viewing this large canvas, the energy experienced sparks a response the viewer can feel—the dry unquenchable thirst. A heroic quality is lent to the subject by igniting the red with a dimensional dark background highlighted by pale ocher, to denote no real light source other than fire
What is intended may not always be seen brightens this setting. The artist’s deep heart-felt connection and appreciation for the subject is conveyed. In the images Nameless Time I and Nameless Time II from his Decadence series, Anikonov experiments with nudes placed on, or arising from differing tonal backgrounds. Contrast is drawn in this diptych expressing a shift in mood and statement. There is a continued emphasis on gears as a machine. In each painting the clock is held in front of the modeling figure. The time on face of the clock is the same yet the statements are expressing different processes of the potential contemplations abstract within the images. In Nameless Time I, the nude female figure is walking upon abstract blocks of white and clear, clean blue. In Nameless Time II she is cropped emerging from a different orientation, yet the time of the face of the time piece is the same in each image offering the viewer a space within time. Nameless Time I is a pronounced negative print, like film hanging in a dark room. Nameless Time II is an exposure of the real time within the darker setting revealed. The artist seems to provoke the question of inner and outer landscapes within a person. What is intended may not always be seen and the variances in the color palette can introduce new perceptions. Anikonov has adapted a unifying artistic grid in all of his works to fulfill the message of understanding that we are placed with in our personal landscapes, captured in an image or viewing an image, as he unites the plains, or time conceptualized in his art. His line of art description is strongly stated throughout his body of work as the universal Now, irrelevant to time or place as the artist strikes with his colors and palette the structural importance of the mechanism of the universe, placing the gears or the bones of his vision on the context of permanency, while fleeting as an impression of a moment.
Gear I, 51 x 55”, oil on canvas, 2007
Gear II, 51 x 79”, oil on canvas, 2007
Anikonov’s work is available at www.anikonov.com English speaking customers, please contact Anya Garankova, curator and project manager, 617-974-0808
Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 27
ITA LEW BULLARD
“GOING NORTH,” Acrylic on Canvas, 60” x 60”, 2012 also available in giclee
STUDIO VALCOUR
ORIGINAL PAINTINGS SCULPTURE GICLEE REPRODUCTIONS EXPERT ART RESTORATION E-MAIL: ITALEW@MSN.COM PHONE 518 563-4019 WWW.STUDIOITALEW.COM ITA LEW BULLARD, IN HER STUDIO, ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN, VALCOUR NY Fine Art Magazine • Spring 2012 • 1
ABSURD SURREALISM: FROM PREHISTORIC TIMES TO PRESENT
Vahram, Montgolfiere, 200 x 300cm, oil on canvas, 2012
Between 4-8 April 2012 the “Noah’s Ark Art Gallery” once again participated in the Arte Monaco contemporary art fair and was awarded the Excellence Prize for representing a New Dimension in art known as Absurd Surrealism. The desire to live free and have freedom of expression is first and foremost natural before being rational. All throughout history and all over the world, man fought and still does to achieve absolute freedom. Primitive Man was the one who enjoyed and expressed most this freedom, unfortunately the means available to him for expressing it were quite limited. However, the more he evolved and advanced, the more his freedom was restricted due to social, religious, economical and political constraints. History has proven that all ages and regions have had, and continue to do so, their written and unwritten laws and regulations which have imposed restrictions on the artist who tried to rebel against them and liberate himself from them. It is appropriate to mention that the Post-Soviet movement as we understand it today was already in existence after Stalin’s death (since the sixties in ateliers). But in the seventies and beyond the borders of Soviet realism many activists in the Modern Plastic Movement exhibited their work in residences, and underground clubs such as on Malaya Grunzinskaya 28 Street. During this period I have had the good fortune to personally attend some of these exhibitions where the works of Isachev, Mikhail Alexandrov and Plavinski especially impressed me.
Yuri Tsvetaev, Loss of Aim, 21 x 21cm, mm on panel, 1998
Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 29
To d a y, w h e n i n t h e countries previously of the Soviet Union, the artist is no longer suppressed and imitates European art and searches for an easy path; a parallel movement based on healthy foundations and on a high level has started to bring freshness and inner strength which is reminiscent of the constructive ferment of the turn of the century. At the forefront of avantgardes such as Konstantin Khudiakov, Ruben Abovian, Alexander Maltsev, Vahram D a v t i a n , Yu r i Ts v e t ae v, Yuroz, Gevorg Yeghyazarian Suren Vosganian and David Davtian each of these renewed artists has his own particular individuality and creativity style, but are united to each other under a common dominator, which is to create freely in the absurd surrealist atmosphere. The desire to express oneself freely leads the disappointed artist from the existing realities to seek truths and values in a world in which restrictions and restraints are totally absent. It is here that the artist exploits all the available media and gives free rein to his imagination. In this respect Surrealism is as old as Primitive Man. As such, similar to the animals, primitive man first lived naked. First due to the David, The Forbidden Fruit, 120 x 100cm, acrylic on canvas, 2009 cold weather and later to feelings of shame, early man started to cover up certain parts of his body. back to him, without any compromises. As much as artificial and Much later, these early ugly and formless covers evolved into the unrealistic was Sovietism, its downfall was even more illogical art of clothing and fashion. and unbelievable. This is why the Soviet Artists truly felt the Whereas, today Modern man not only has started to rid himself absurdity of their situation. A context in which not only could of his clothing, and is concerned more with undressing than dressing, they really create and express themselves, but also entwined at in fact, the desire to be the least covered or the most uncovered the same time in the unsolved issues of mankind which can only has become second nature especially among women. Primitive be resolved through one’s dreams and imaginations. man started wearing clothes instinctively and in response to the After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of environmental conditions, whereas modern man started undressing internationally featured Surrealist artists emerged who in a conscious and attractive manner. Thus, the conditions of early spontaneousl y represented absurd situations, suc h as man led him to rationality and knowledge, whereas modern man’s Micheal Cheval(USA), Thor Lindeneg(Denmark), Detlef aspirations and pursuit of aesthetics led him to resort and make use Gotzens(Germany), etc. of Surrealism. All the creative artistic attempts to save the man and to provide It is here that Primitive and Modern man come face to face in for him a “heavenly” life, although they had to a certain extent the circuits of Surrealism. The former is forced to give up his freedom a positive impact, yet at the same time they could not eradicate and is exposed to restrictions and constraints, while the latter starts or diminish human suffering and pain. The Humanitarian ideas to liberate himself from these restrictions and the limitations which and their noble and beautiful expressions continued to be abused were accumulated all throughout the years. and exploited by the Forces against the Good. During the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the artist Injustices and wrongs continue to be committed and the all of a sudden found himself in a void. His much longed for, human worries increase and go whereas the crisis get even more dreamt about and yet “taboo” freedom, was all of a sudden handed complicated and wide spread. 30 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
Gevorg Yeghyazarian, Verdict, 90 x 100cm, oil on canvas, 1994
A. Isatcev, Salome, iconographic pigments on panel, 1979
Not only the nations of war-torn countries, but all people everywhere are undergoing critical conditions nowadays. The feeling of insecurity persecutes them and they are skeptic about the future. Every day, everywhere innocent people die, and it is obvious that neither civilizations nor the riches of the world, or the Humanitarian organizations and not even the religious teachings have succeeded in keeping man away from Greed, savage and inhuman actions and unjust behaviors. Why??? The reason is that in spite of the existing numerous and varied humanitarian ideologies and beliefs, the inalienable value of the human being still remains ignored. Religions have for thousands of years, promised good and happiness to their believers… in the afterlife. The communists, after rejecting the afterlife, promised mankind to provide them with an
earthy paradise; but they failed. In fact, it is obvious that all throughout history human civilizations have failed to produce civilized and peaceful human beings. And the millennia struggle to achieve it still goes on… Man fights against himself. The only means still available to him to embellish life, and to refine and tame himself is still ART, the most noble and beautiful means which enables man to escape the realities of this world and reach the cores of his inner self. Aesthetics is the most complete and highest art that still succeed to save mankind, because it deals with man’s essences and uncontested values without any mediation. Art can only appreciate and evaluate man in his natural and naked reality without the external and artificial reasons for that. Whereas in reality and practice, man is esteemed due to his social milieu, his ethnic or religious belonging, his education or wealth – or based on the car he owns and the clothes he wears, while he is ignored and disregarded in his very essence and unfortunately this continues to go on. We are rational human beings and we often forget (or ignore) that man’s intellectual wealth is in itself unique and an inalienable value. Just as in birth and death, human beings become equal, so the true human values cannot also have different criteria and standards. It is here that the strongest and the weakest, the triumphant and the defeated acquire inhuman interpretations. The struggle against Greed and its ensuing cruelty can only become effective in Art and through Art. Nowadays the world and man suffer from chaos. The political, social and moral equations seem to have all mixed up. The human and humanitarian ideologies and beliefs of the 20th century have failed and human values seem to be totally ignored and even scorned at. While the most sensitive and committed artist seems to have become tormented and in crisis. A New Century, New Values, A New World Order (Outlook). The future is pregnant with novelties. The Artist most probably is again going to seek inner peace and harmony in the circles of Surrealism and the Absurd. And the world awaits a new form of Art…?
Movses Zirani
(Doctorate in Fine Art) Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 31
Bob Baker, gallery owner with Mr. and Mrs. Donald Stewart, Chairman Emeritus Public TV
Circa Something Gallery is located at 117A South Country Road, Bellport, NY - Drbob4fun@aol.com
Bob Baker, David Goldsteiin, Christopher and Karen Gallagher enjoying the Troyans
CIRCA SOMETHING GALLERY SHOWS OFF NEW LOOK IN BELLPORT
Portrait of the pop star Laura Branigan painted by Pierina Leonardo, at the gallery. Ms. Branagin died at age 47 of an aneurism, an ageless beauty indeed.
Chris and Luann of Bellport Art and Framing, The Baker Family (Mrs. Carla Baker, her mother the artist Pierina Leonardo and daughter/granddaughter Aimee Marie Baker, partner and jewelry designer)
Author/Fine Art Editor-in-Chief Victor Forbes 32 • Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012
The family jewels
Anatoli Kharlanov of AKJ Construction and Aimee Marie Baker admiring her designs for her Pacific Reef Collection which consists of salt water south sea pearls, jade and coral
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Fine Art Magazine • Summer 2012 • 1