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OF THE EDITOR
Notes and quotes from the artworld and the inbox
installation shot
at Lawrence Markey Gallery showing Jerry Zenuik's show last fall
HEADING TOWARDS
THE ALAMO: The current show of Fred
Sandback, which I reviewed on April 22, turns out to be the penultimate
show we'll get to see at the Lawrence Markey Gallery, unless we're ready,
like the dealer himself, to head west. For personal reasons, Lawrence
and his family are moving to San Antonio, Texas. This is a sad loss
for those of us who have grown quite addicted to the very particular
aesthetic of this gallery, with its emphasis on quietly quirky abstraction.
Sandback, as it happens, was the subject of Markey's first exhibition,
in his old west of Soho space back in 1980. He'll close his Upper Eastside
aerie with a show of new watercolors by Suzan Frecon, which opens May
12.
photograph by John
Link
THE ART CRITIC FORMERLY
KNOWN AS CLEM: I was out of town for this year's annual AICA lecture
at the New York Studio School, which was given by the journalist Lawrence
Wechsler on March 24. Each year the International Association of Art
Critics (of which I'm a proud enough member) invites some distinguished
individual to give their annual Clement Greenberg Memorial Lecture.
Only this year, the committee. in their widsom, decided to drop the
name of the most distinctive and persuasive art critic America has yet
produced from the lecture title and blandly rename the fixture "The
Distinguished Critic Lecture". In case we didn't notice this belated
act of oedipal pettiness, the press release let us know that it was
"formerly the Greenberg Lecture." As Mr. Wechsler's talk was
on Bosnia, "former" took on a rather sinister tone, as if
to suggest that art critics have finally worked up the courage to topple
the statue of the formalist dictator. To put up what instead: a monument
to the Unkown Art Critic?
Jake Berthot Untitled
2002-2003
graphite on paper, 22-1/4 x 27-1/2 inches
Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York
MUCH MALIGNED MONSTER: In
response to my review of Jake Berthot
and his exhibition at McKee this month, MOLLY HOLLAND took issue with
a harsh verdict:
Berthot's show was like
water in the desert. Yes, the oily sheen of the paintings felt a little
saccharine. But they did seem genuinely "felt." There was
a sense of mystery or, perhaps, romanticism registered with uncompromising
flourish. And the charcoal drawings were especially refreshing -- intimate,
confident, and luminous -- a sincere touch of hand and no bravado. I
long to see drawing such as the ones in this show! Passion,
yet reservation and decision, honest gesture and poetry! These values
have become as extinct as a dinosaur.
Old Desktop stories...
Yeohlee fashion show with Elizabeth Dee and Kate
Shindle; Dave Barry takes on James Scarborough and Rodney McMIllian
