Vitality and market appeal were once again evident among the vibrant and expansive displays of this year’s exalted ART20 show, a cutting-edge venue created by Sanford Smith to properly promote art created during the Twentieth Century. Now in just its sixth year, the show has risen to become the foremost international Twentieth Century and contemporary art fair in New York City. And, as Smith will correctly allude, the quality, presentation and diversity of the art is “extraordinary.”
Opening to a huge crowd on Thursday evening, November 8, for a gala preview, a benefit for Planned Parenthood, the fair continued through the following Monday, November 12. Continually diversifying and adjusting toward market trends, several of the galleries that have traditionally mined the early modernist classics made departures from their strict mainline presentations with the inclusion of works by emerging artists. The added presence of several of these young artists over the course of the fair only heightened the excitement that accompanies ART20.
David Findlay Jr Fine Art, for example, made room among such Twentieth Century masters as George J. McNeil, Herman Cherry, Cajori and Paul Resika for the work of Bryan Osburn, a New York artist in his thirties. Gallery director Louis Newman described Osburn’s work as strong in composition and detail, fitting in perfectly with the works of modern masters the gallery exhibits. Apparently the buying public agreed. Osburn’s work sold within the first hour of opening. At the end of a successful fair, Newman stated, “The market, for us, remains healthy and we’re experiencing an expansion.” He then announced, “You’re the first to know. The gallery is planning to move to larger facilities very soon.”
James Graham & Sons, while displaying works by Guy Pene du Bois, Miklos Suba, Oscar Bluemner and other American masters, featured the rich, heavily lacquered paintings of contemporary artist Nancy Lorenz.
Lorenz, who was present at the opening night gala, said the featured work “Sea and Sky” was “based on a Hiroshigi wave” overlaid with paint, gold leaf, mother-of-pearl and “lots and lots of layers of lacquer.”
Also known for its expansive assortment of Twentieth Century sculpture, Graham Gallery associate Priscilla Caldwell was quick to note a Sidney Gordon sculpture from 1955 titled “Number 14” on display, along with a Paul Manship bronze.
Michael Borghi Fine Art, Tenafly, N.J., also introduced a young artist. Bradley Narduzzi Rex, who holds a degree in architecture and paints “billboards.” While not the kind you would expect to see on the highway, his colorful, vertical panels of interposed paint and mixed media are inspired by the constantly changing billboards of Mexico City, where Rex maintains a studio. Though not the fare that Borghi’s clientele is accustomed to experiencing from the gallery, Rex’s “Highjack In Five” carried a red dot moments after the gala got under way.
Borghi also introduced the works of Michael (Corinne) West, a female Abstract Expressionist who had worked with Pollack, Kline and Gorky. Among the more traditional items in the Borghi booth were works by Joan Miró, Milton Avery and Hans Hofmann and John Graham, who Borghi referred to as “the teachers.”
The Stephen Haller Gallery, back for the second year, presented a slate of contemporary artists. New to its gallery were the works of Paul Sarkisian, who at 80 years of age produces art made of automotive lacquer and polyurethane. The gallery also represents Ron Ehrlich, whose painting “Penumbra,” 2007, an oil and mixed media on canvas, was chosen for the cover of the ART20 catalog and banners.
The artist, who worked with monks in Japan and has a background in ceramics, has been able to “combine his love of the surface of ceramics with paint,” said Daniel Ferris, the gallery’s director.
Some galleries adjusted their inventories, hanging works from several different decades so masterfully that they created a visual timeline of movements, each informing the next.
At the stand of D. Wigmore Fine Art, Daniel Aichele stated the comparisons. The booth’s baseline of non-objective work, Ilya Bolotowsky’s “Geometry in Green,” 1937, hung near John McLaughlin’s 1961 painting “#11.” Aichele explained, “You can see [in Bolotowsky’s work] that Abstract Expressionism is linked to Surrealism. Then you come up with John McLaughlin, a California painter who liked geometric art. His work seems to look back two decades as well as looking forward. He brought optical illusion techniques into it †and that’s what came out in 1960s ‘Op Art'” Aichele underscored the point with Richard Anasziewicz’s massive Op Art piece “Convex Concave” at the center of the booth. “There is a renewed interest,” he said, “in both the Abstract Classicists and the Op Art artists.”
Another gallery drawing connections between the prewar and postwar periods was Gerald Peters Gallery. Lily Downing Burke, director, allowed a group of paintings hung en suite to make the point. Included were Arthur Dove’s oil on canvas “Colored Drawing, Canvas,”1929, and next to it a small untitled Helen Frankenthaler color field, 1959‶0. The latter not only resonated visually with the earlier work, it also connected with Hans Hofmann’s “Provincetown,” 1941, which itself yielded to an image by Georgia O’Keeffe, “Like an Early Blue Abstraction,” 1977, that alluded to a work completed earlier in her career.
Whitford Fine Art of London, a regular exhibitor at the ART20 for several years, showed mostly Twentieth Century European paintings and sculpture although there was a hefty peppering of works by English Pop Artists. “Pop really began in England,” Adrian Mibus stated. On display were several Clive Barker works, including the 1965 “Coke with Two Straws,” in chrome plated bronze, the more recent 2006 work “Two Lobsters,” polished bronze, and “Homer,” a polished bronze bust of the Simpson’s patriarch. Viewers not inclined to favor Pop needed only to take a look at Jean Metzinger’s “Nature Morte a la Carafe,” 1914, and works by Leger and Dubuffet, all of whom were once considered equally radical.
One gallery featured the work of a single artist. Lost City Arts of New York City made its premier appearance at the show after many years of doing Sanford Smith’s Modernism Show. Its exhibition relied on the strength of 100 Harry Bertoia monotypes. The pen on paper studies were reflected in his innovative Sonambients, or kinetic sound sculpture, and multipoint bronze bushes. Perhaps better known for the classic chrome chair he designed for Knoll in the 1950s, Bertoia abandoned furniture design after only two years to concentrate on sculpture.
Gary Snyder/Project Space highlighted the works of Thomas Downing, a Washington School painter. Downing’s paintings of the early 1960s are composed of colorful circles that punctuate the intersections of invisible square grids.
Among the 60 galleries exhibiting, many represented the works of artists for whom ART20 has traditionally been known. Hackett Freedman Gallery of San Francisco featured Alexander Calder’s “Red and Blue with Yellow Lips,” as well as Manuel Neri’s untitled standing figure “#10,” a large bronze with oil-based enamel. The group of artists known as the Sausalito Six was represented by the work of James Budd Dixon.
A few galleries, including Peter Findlay Gallery of New York, said they were showing “more affordable offerings.” These included works by Ed Moses, who, at 80 years old, remains a prolific L.A. artist.
Findlay also featured a large sculpture titled “Begg Rock” by Stephen Douglas. At 88 inches tall, the anchorlike bronze drew comments from one couple in the market for garden art. Roger Brown’s “Fall Color,” circa 1987, an acrylic on canvas featuring five horizontal rows of forms resembling bushes interspersed with figures of hunters shooting geese, was termed both appealing and “funky” by the exhibitors.
Finally, some galleries simply recreated their gallery ambiance, without fanfare or dialog, presenting a slate of well-known artists.
Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago, showed modern and postwar art, including Jack Tworkov’s “Study for Still Life with Yellow and Blue Pitcher,” circa 1945. By end of show, Robert Pearson McChensey’s “Four Moods,” 1945, sported a sold button, as did Jack Youngerman’s “Study,” 1965.
Jack Rutberg Fine Art of Los Angeles led with “Crouching Nude,” 1961, a large bronze by the Costa Rican-born Francisco Zúñiga. On the walls hung at least nine Hans Burkhardt works. Rutberg, credited with having introduced Burkhardt to the public, included “Wandering Souls,” 1955, “Studio of Gorky,” 1951, and “The Desert,” 1946.
Gary Bruder mixed Picassos with Warhols for an effective presentation. In the booth was his signature hand painted leather chair with the Toulouse-Lautrec-like figures.
The Nohra Haime Gallery commingled past and present in a strong presentation that included a 1975 Calder mobile titled “Two Tulips” and Botero’s “Hombre a Caballero” with Sophia Vari’s “Double Epee,” bronze with black paint and yellow oils. Among the paintings were Julio Larraz’s “Detail,” 1984, a large still life with melon and French bread †all in the pot, with a red dot.
Nancy Hoffman, whose longtime SoHo gallery is moving to Chelsea, had a large booth. Standouts among the visual feast were several portraits by Hung Liu, the largest of which was “Narcissus 4.” The Chinese-born artist fuses images from Tang tomb paintings of princes and princesses with Western imagery, and dapples them with signature circles.
Gallery Henoch featured works by the realist Sharon Sprung, whose “A,” a painting of a blond woman in a kimono, offset a pair of small Don Gale patinated bronzes titled “Position R,” 1990, and “Position XXIII,” 2000. Nearby hung John Evans’s “Early Morning Walk,” a beach scene, Katherine Doyle’s evocative “Three Women With A Gift” and paintings by Dan Greene, who is represented by the gallery.
Ultimately, it was the Richard Norton Gallery that broke the mold, showing a new-to-the-market painting by Richard Edward Miller. Untitled but labeled “Woman in An Interior,” the painting asked the question, “Can a figurative painting compete in this age of passion for non-objective works?” The sensuous full-length portrait of a woman in a period skirt looking in the mirror above a serpentine chest was in startling contrast to the booth’s centerpiece †”Arcana,” 1956, by Claude Bently. The latter was a powerhouse of prismatic effects and colors. And yet both works spoke eloquently.
“This is my favorite show,” stated one gleeful customer. With so much to choose from, it is no wonder that ART20 is one of the darlings of the art fairs.
