Posts from the “Painting” Category

Sandro Kopp: The French Dispatch

Posted on October 26, 2021

Lea Seydoux as Simone, courtesy of Searchlight

With the advent of the 24/7 media cycle, the art of journalism has all but disappeared. With slashed budgets, few can afford to engage in the glorious reportage of yesteryear, when reporters would disappear into a story for months only to remerge with masterfully crafted tales of historic import.

Wes Anderson offers a masterful love letter to journalists of yore with new film The French Dispatch, which made its UK premiere on Friday, October 22. Set in the outposts of an American magazine in the fictional 20th century French city of Ennuisur Blasé, The French Dispatch brings together a star-studded ensemble cast that includes Timothée Chalamet, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Lyna Khoudri, and Anjelica Houston.

Organized like an anthology, The French Dispatch presents three stories including “The Concrete Masterpiece,” which was inspired by “The Days of Duveen,” a six-part New Yorker feature on British art dealer Lord Duveen published in 1951. In the film, staff writer J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) chronicles the story of incarcerated artist Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), who draws inspiration for his glorious abstractions from prison guard Simone (Léa Seydoux) and soon comes to the attention of ruthless art dealer Julien Cadazio (Adrian Brody).

But perhaps the true star of this story is the paintings themselves — the magnificent masterpieces that we imagine Rosenthaler creating from inside the confines of his prison cell. In turns bold and brutish then thoughtful and tender, the paintings explode on the screen, offering a wildly expressionistic counterpoint to the precise formalism of Anderson’s aesthetic sensibilities.

Created by German-New Zealand artist Sandro Kopp, the abstractions present a point of departure for the figurative painter who has received acclaim for his Skype portraits, his hypnotic paintings of the human eye, and his mesmerizing portraits of partner Tilda Swinton. Realizing “The Concrete Masterpiece” has proven a blessing for Kopp, who continues to draw inspiration from Rosenthaler’s art.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Categories: AnOther, Art, Painting

Judy Chicago: The Flowering

Posted on July 23, 2021

*Boxing-ring advertisement, Artforum, 1971, Jack Glenn Gallery, Corona Del Mar, CA*

“I had a singular vision from very early on and for a long time I didn’t understand why I kept encountering so much resistance in the word,” legendary feminist artist, educator, and activist Judy Chicago tells Dazed. As a white, cis, middle-class, Jewish-American woman coming of age in the mid-twentieth century, Chicago was not content to allow society to dictate the trajectory of her life. She learned from an early age that the only way forward was to craft her own identity and path – a lesson that served her throughout her trailblazing career.

To call Chicago “prolific” would be an understatement; her output is monumental, her mediums as varied and all encompassing as womanhood itself, her style and subject matter a one-woman revolution in the history of art. Now, with her first-ever career retrospective opening on August 28 at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, Chicago brings together works from her groundbreaking projects including The Dinner Party (1974-1979), The Birth Project (1980–1985), PowerPlay (1982–1987), Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light (1985–1993), and The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction (2015–2019, which broke through the boundaries proscribed around gender in the contemporary art world.

Although Chicago is outspoken and fearless when it comes to challenging sexism and misogyny, she is no extrovert; public appearances are simply a necessary part of her work. It is in the studio alone with her work where she draws energy and builds strength, her dedication and determination necessary to play the long game. Her projects are like icebergs: massive in scope, though what the public sees is only the pinnacle of years of research and development.

Such could be said of The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago (Thames & Hudson), the extraordinary 416-page memoir that she penned while in social isolation. Releasing July 20, Chicago takes us on an intimate tour of her development as an artist, sharing the challenges, struggles, and triumphs to make space for women in the male dominated art world, which established false hierarchies that continue to this day. Refusing to play along, Chicago subverted the system from within, using her work to call out established notions of art, history, and gender, restoring the Divine Feminine to its rightful place in the pantheon.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

*Judy Chicago on a Doublehead bronze at the Shidoni Foundry, Santa Fe, NM, 1986 Photograph © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY*

*Judy Chicago. Rainbow Pickett, 1965 (re-created 2004). Latex paint on canvas-covered plywood, 118.79 × 119.79 × 132 in Collection of David and Diane Waldman.*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Painting, Women

The 2021 Dazed100

Posted on June 28, 2021

2021’s Dazed 100 is a global celebration of next-gen names leading change in their communities and across their fields, curated with a little help from Dazed 100-ers of years gone by. And this year, it runs as part of Open To Change, a far-reaching partnership between Dazed and Converse to increase opportunities, education and representation in the creative industries.

This is about the future; every name on 2021’s line up has been instrumental in enacting change in their field and looks at what’s next for the creative industry. Each entrant was asked, “How will you shape the future?” with Converse funding the winning project with a $30,000 fund and mentoring to bring their idea to life. The public vote will deliver 10 finalists from which Dazed and Converse will select the winner, announced in early July.

Read the Full List Here

Categories: Art, Dazed, Painting, Photography

Anh Duong: La Tentation d’Exister. There is always Champagne in the Fridge

Posted on June 23, 2021

*Anh Duong, “Don’t Come too Close, Don’t Go too Far”, 2012*

“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better,” Frida Kahlo said, her words revealing a profound truth about the creation of art. In the hands of a painter, the canvas is transformed into a page in the book of life, delving into the intricate facets of existence that lay both within and beneath the shimmering surfaces of the visible world. The painting is an exploration of the artist’s inner and outer worlds, creating a space where the two might meet and in that encounter proffer something we have never before seen.

“As an artist, you always have to challenge yourself. It’s about growth, engaging with the unknown, and recognising something new, like, ‘Yes, that’s what I was searching for’,” says French-American artist, actor, and model Anh Duong, who is currently exhibiting a selection of her works in La Tentation d’Exister. There is always Champagne in the Fridge at Galerie Gmurzynska in Zurich. Bringing together a selection of still lifes, self-portraits, and portraits of Vincent Gallo, Susan Sarandon, and Anjelica Huston, the exhibition offers an intimate look at Duong’s practice over the past 30 years.

Duong first made her name as a model when noted photographer David Seidner launched her career in March 1986 with an Yves Saint Laurent campaign for Vogue Paris. Trained as a ballerina, Duong was a natural in front of the camera, effortlessly holding difficult poses for extended periods of time, and quickly went on work with luminaries including Herb Ritts, Steven Meisel, Patrick Demarchelier, and Peter Lindbergh. Muse to Christian Lacroix, Duong has walked the runway for John Galliano, Yohji Yamamoto, and Karl Lagerfeld, becoming a singular beauty during the era of the supermodel.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: Art, Dazed, Painting

Gulnara Samoilova: From Russia With Love

Posted on April 21, 2021

*Untitled from the series “Lost Family”, 1987-2015 © Gulnara Samoilova*

With the recent publication of Women Street Photographers (Prestel), photographerGulnara Samoilova has once again returned to the public eye — but in a very different way from when she won the World Press Photo for her photograph of September 11. After the trauma she endured that day, Samoilova left photojournalism, never to return. She established a successful wedding photography studio but eventually found herself depressed. Money and status simply were not enough — she needed to return to her love of making art.

Encouraged by the words of American photographer Mary Ellen Mark, Samoilova decided to change careers in 2015. She dreamed of traveling the world and taking street photographs, a passion she enjoyed since she first picked up the camera as a teenager in her hometown of Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan in Russia.

The answers became clear after the 2016 Presidential election in the United States. Triggered with memories of sexism experienced throughout her career, Samoilova decided to create Women Street Photographers, a now-highly popular Instagram feed, in 2017. With the success of the community, she could organically expand the platform to include a website, exhibition series, artist residency, inspirational films, and now the book, which brings together the work of 100 artists from around the world pushing the boundaries of street photography into new realms.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Untitled from the series “Uda, Baskiria” © Gulnara Samoilova*

Categories: Art, Blind, Books, Painting, Photography, Women

Styling: Black Expression, Rebellion, and Joy Through Fashion

Posted on September 22, 2020

*Margaret Rose Vendryes, Kwele Betty – Betty Davis, 2010*

Style is an expression of self that weaves together our aesthetic sensibilities with the time, place, and culture in which we live. But for Black Americans, style has long been more than a means of self-expression: It’s also been an essential way to survive systemic racism.

As Lewis Long, founder and owner of Long Gallery Harlem, told Artsy in a conversation, “Style, for Black people in America, began as a point of survival and liberty.”

Many Black Americans who escaped slavery created garments that typified the appearance of free men and women, giving them the ability to hide in plain sight as they built new lives from scratch. After the Civil War, style became a means to chart a new path in society at a time when segregation limited access and mobility. The Black church offered a safe space for the devout to show out every Sunday. “In spite of oppression in the broader society, Black people were leaders and were completely free to express themselves in a grand way,” Long said.

By 1920, Black American art, culture, and style reached new heights as the Harlem Renaissance brought a generation of artists and intellectuals to the world stage. In celebration of the Harlem Renaissance’s 100th anniversary, Long Gallery Harlem and Harlem-based curator Souleo have partnered with Nordstrom to create “Styling: Black Expression, Rebellion, and Joy Through Fashion,” a multi-venue exhibition that includes an installation at Nordstrom’s flagship New York store and an online viewing room with Artsy.

Read the Full Story at Artsy

*Yelaine Rodriguez, Afro-Sagrada Familia (Mawan Zahir Ajam), 2020.*

Categories: Art, Artsy, Painting, Photography

Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi: Gymnasium

Posted on November 8, 2019

Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, from the Gymnasium series, 2019.

When Simone Biles made history at the 2019 World Championships by becoming the most decorated gymnast of any gender, she single-handedly redefined one of the world’s most elite sports. As a Black woman in a traditionally white space, she surpassed all expectations, becoming an icon in the process.

For Johannesburg-based multimedia artist Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Biles’ success is a testament to Black power in the face of an establishment determined to undermine it. Earlier this summer Biles invented new skills and the Federation Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), the sport’s governing body, penalized her for the groundbreaking performance. The FIG reduced the degree of Biles’ signature‘double double’ dismount (two twists, two flips) from the beam—out of concern, they claimed, about the safety of lesser gymnasts who might harm themselves while attempting it.

“That felt so personal,” Nkosi says. “Simone Biles is flying and they have to find ways to hem her in. It’s like so many moments in my own life. Throughout my artistic career, people would say things like, ‘Oh, you will never be William Kentridge.’” The ill-fitting comparison to a third-generation South African man of Lithuanian-Jewish heritage smacks of misogynoir and is just one of the various ways people have tried to undermine Nkosi’s extraordinary life. But now, with the success of her new seriesGymnasium, the artist is having her moment—just like Biles.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, from the Gymnasium series, 2019.

Categories: Africa, Art, Document Journal, Painting, Women

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jaques and Natasha Gelman Collection

Posted on October 24, 2019

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943.

Diego Rivera, Landscape with Cacti, 1931.

In the early 1920s, a teenage Frida Kahlo met Diego Rivera while he was painting the mural ‘La Créación’ at the Escuela National Preparatoria, the oldest high school in Mexico. In his late 30s, Rivera was at the outset of a spectacular career, and was set to become one of the most prominent modern artists in the world.

“One day they asked me who I wanted to marry, and I said I would not marry,” Kahlo told Olga Campos in 1950. “But I did want to have a child by Diego Rivera.”

Though they never had any children, the couple married twice. Theirs was not an easy life, as Kahlo famously confirmed: “I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down… The other accident is Diego.”

Yet for all their trials and tribulations, their legacy lives on, and is being celebrated in the new exhibition Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jaques and Natasha Gelman Collection. Featuring about 140 works, the exhibition explores their lives and love affair, while placing their contributions within the larger context of revolutionary Mexican art.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Diego Rivera, Portrait of Natasha Gelman, 1943.

Frida Kahlo, The Bride Who Becomes Frightened When She Sees Life Opened, 1943

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Latin America, Painting

Marc H. Miller & Barry Blinderman on the Explosive Rise and Inevitable Fall of the East Village Art Scene

Posted on September 26, 2019

Raymond Pettibon, A&P Gallery Closing Party, Announcement Card, 1986 – Courtesy online Gallery 98.

The late 1970s through mid-1980s in New York marked a major turning point in both the city’s political history and the art world. Fueled by the policies of the Reagan White House, money began to flood the nearly bankrupt city, heightening the stratification between the haves and have-nots, while the specter of gentrification began to sink its teeth into the downtown firmament.

In this brief window, the last vestiges of bohemian life staked their claim in the outposts of the East Village and the Lower East Side, where a new anti-authoritarian art scene emerged. With the launch of galleries like FUN, Gracie Mansion, ABC No Rio, and Civilian Warfare, the downtown scene was primed for new talents like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and David Wojnarowicz that would take the world by storm.

In an exclusive conversation with Document Journal, journalist and archivist Marc H. Miller and art historian and Semaphore gallerist Barry Blinderman discuss this pivotal era of New York City history, spotlighting how artists and galleries used work as a call to action, rather than a commodity for status and profit. Yet the scene’s explosion would ultimately cause its downfall, as efforts to label and package that which defied the system would crash and burn. Today, while countless East Village storefronts sit empty because small businesses cannot afford the rent, we look back at a time when the neighborhood was a playground for anyone who dared to follow their dreams.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Tom Warren, Portrait Studio: No Rio Locals, Photo Composite, 1981 – Courtesy online Gallery 98.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Document Journal, Manhattan, Painting, Photography

Zak Ové: Get Up, Stand Up Now

Posted on June 27, 2019

Armet Francis, ‘Fashion Shoot Brixton Market’, 1973.

Jenn Nkiru, ‘Still from Neneh Cherry, Kong’, 2018.

“I was raised by a village,” says artist Zak Ové of his upbringing in West London. “It was a very outspoken black and West Indian community, [and I was] understanding how assertive one had to be to be seen.”

As the son of an Irish Socialist mum and acclaimed black filmmaker Horace Ové, the artist was raised with strong ideals that have guided him throughout his career: “Politics within the arts has always been very integral from my father’s generation onwards. [It helps us] attain equality, honesty, and perspective towards our own history.”

Now, Ové is honouring those who laid these foundations in Get Up, Stand Up Now, a new landmark exhibition which celebrates 50 years of Black creativity in the UK. The exhibition features historic artworks, new commissions, and never-before-seen work by 100 artists working in art, film, photography, music, literature, design and fashion. This includes the Black Audio Film Collective, Chris Ofili, David Hammons, Ebony G. Patterson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Lubaina Himid, Althea McNish, Steve McQueen, and Yinka Shonibare.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Ajamu, from ‘Circus Master Series’, 1997

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Music, Painting, Photography

Barry Blinderman: The Downtown Art Scene

Posted on June 11, 2019

Kenny Scharf, Keith Haring, Futura 2000. Courtesy of Barry Blinderman

The Director of Semaphore Gallery in Soho, Barry Blinderman was also a freelance writer for Arts Magazine, where he wrote very early articles on Keith Haring and Robert Longo, among others. In the fall of 1981, he curated a very popular exhibition called The Anxious Figure, reflecting the new figuration by artists like John Ahearn, Jedd Garet, Ed Paschke, Longo, Haring, and others. He speaks with NYC, 1981 about the art scene as it was happening on the streets and in the galleries, in the studios and the clubs.

Miss Rosen: Please talk about the art scene, as it was downtown in 1981. I am very interested in the relationship between the street and the gallery, and the way in which outsider artists migrated into the mix of curators, collectors, and critics. Could you speak about how the door was opened to this new generation of artists?

Barry Blinderman: In 1980-81, some of the most vanguard art being created in New York wasn’t on view within the white-walled sanctuaries of SoHo. At lower Manhattan nightspots such as Mudd Club or Club 57, young artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets and other performers congregated to collaborate on one- or two-evening events. I first met Keith Haring at Club 57, which occupied a church basement on St. Mark’s Place, and a few years later I met Martin Wong at Danceteria on the West Side. It was a time when you could keep up with what was going on by scanning the layers of posters that decorated walls and construction sites downtown. New Wave rock bands, many featuring art school dropouts, were exhibiting some of the most innovative artwork in the form of concert announcements. Cryptic messages by SAMO and other graffiti poets began to appear at regular intervals between the East Village and Tribeca.

In addition to the clubs, guerrilla art spaces and organizations flourished: ABC No Rio on Rivington Street, Group Material, Colab (Collaborative Projects), and Fashion Moda in the South Bronx, organized theme exhibitions and performances that were open to virtually any artist. It was at Fashion Moda that I first saw the work of the charismatic trickster Rammellzee, the progenitor of “Iconoclast Panzerism,” and his young disciple A-1.

The Times Square Show, organized by Colab in a former Midtown massage parlor, brought together over 100 artists. Some were art-school trained, like Jenny Holzer, Keith Haring, John Ahearn, Tom Otterness, and Jane Dickson, and others got their training on the streets and subways, such as Fab 5 Freddy, Lee Quinones, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Museums like the New Museum (Events: Fashion Moda, December 1980-January 1981) and P.S.1 (New York/ New Wave, February-April, 1981) soon followed suit with large, well-publicized exhibitions mixing the talents of “studio” artists and street artists. Graffiti artists first shown at Fashion Moda and the Times Square Show were within a year or so offered exhibitions at Fun Gallery, named by Kenny Scharf and run by Bill Stelling and underground film star Patti Astor. Fun showed Dondi, Futura 2000, Fab 5 Freddy, and many other graffiti artists, along with Haring, Basquiat, and Jane Dickson. European collectors showed up to Fun’s openings in limousines and snapped up plenty of work, and seasoned American collector Hubert Neumann, who later held a symposium on graffiti art, visited and bought there as well.

The more established galleries soon followed suit, most notably Tony Shafrazi Gallery and Barbara Gladstone in SoHo, and Sidney Janis on 57^th Street. A little later, in 1985, we showed Lady Pink at Semaphore EAST on Tompkins Square, and then Futura 2000 at Semaphore Gallery, Soho, in 1986.

Keith Haring’s championing of graffiti artists, both through exhibitions he curated at clubs and his public acknowledgment of their influence upon his own art, was also a factor in their greater acceptance by the art world. For example, in his first exhibition at Shafrazi in 1982, he showed work he had co-created with LAll, a teenager at the time. When I watched Keith paint a frieze a few hundred feet long at P.S. 22 on the Lower East Side in the summer of 1981, I felt it was one of the most important exhibitions of the year. I still have a video of him drawing some of this monumental project with a refillable marker. On the walls below this frieze were spray-paintings by Lady Pink, Futura, Lee, Dondi, and several others.

nstallation shot of Keith Haring and Tseng Kwong Chi at Semaphore EAST, October, 1984. Photograph courtesy of Barry Blinderman.

Miss Rosen: Keith Haring is an excellent example of this confluence between public to private space. Can you speak about why you think Haring best exemplified the spirit of the times, and why his work resonated so deeply with people from all walks of life?

Barry Blinderman: Keith Haring was, quite simply, a phenomenon, the kind of artist that comes around just once in a great while. From the very start, he was driven to share his art with as many people as possible. While a student at School of the Visual Arts in 1978-79, he opened his first-floor studio on 23^rd Street to passersby as he painted huge drawings on photo backdrop paper on the floor. Performance was of the essence to him, and not long after, in December 1980, he carried this impulse into the greatest uncommissioned public art project New York had ever seen—the chalk drawings on covered-over ad spaces in subway stations.

When I saw the very first of these: space ships looking like sombreros zapping babies, dogs, and pyramids, I was living on the Upper East Side, taking the #6 train downtown every day to my gallery in SoHo. There would be new ones every day, as others got covered up by new ads. I had no idea who was doing them, and at first thought it was some secret campaign—and in essence it was. I got hooked, traveling the subway sometimes for no other reason than to see his latest drawings.

Here, for perhaps the first time, was sophisticated contemporary art that could be understood by anyone—much more accessible even than Warhol, whose appeal did not extend to children, minorities, and everyman straphangers. And, unlike standard graffiti, it was meant to be impermanent, ever-changing, and done right out in the open, not covertly in deserted train yards after dark. And unlike just about any other artist, he never had to show his slides to a dealer. They all came to him. It was nothing short of brilliant, and there has never been anything like it since.

Haring’s interest in promotion began with the “crawling baby” buttons he carried with him at all times, handing them to anyone expressing interest while he was drawing in the stations. This eventually grew into the idea for the Pop Shop, which granted him access to audiences barely reached by a fine artist. You could wear a Haring tee shirt or hat, put colored magnets on your refrigerator, grab a poster. Some said he’d sold out, but these days so many artists have followed in his footsteps in the area of marketing.

Martin Wong in front of the billboard for his first show at Semaphore, 1984. Photograph courtesy of Barry Blinderman.

Miss Rosen: As a writer for Arts Magazine, you had the opportunity to speak directly with some of the most dynamic figures of the era. At the same time, as Director of Semaphore Gallery, you had the opportunity to show their work, and engage directly with the public. How did being a director and a critic inform and shape your understanding of the artists you engaged with

Barry Blinderman: I really have to thank Richard Martin, the late editor of Arts magazine for taking a chance and opening the door for me and other young critics at the time like Dan Cameron and Peter Halley. He imposed little or no control over what I wanted to submit, and offered nothing but encouragement. One of the first reviews I published, on Warhol’s Ten Jews series at the Jewish Museum (February 1981), led to my interview with Warhol published in October 1981. Between those two articles, I got to write an essay on Robert Longo, which became his first cover story, Keith Haring’s first art magazine interview, and an interview with Roger Brown. Meeting Warhol, and being able to get responses from him about his influences and working process, was one of the most exciting encounters I’ve ever known. And that interview has made its way into an anthology of selected Warhol interviews edited by Kenneth Goldsmith.

In the same year, 1981, I’d published the pieces on Longo and Haring, I curated my first theme exhibition at Semaphore Gallery in SoHo, called The Anxious Figure. It was one of the first exhibitions to address the new figuration appearing in the work of Jedd Garet, John Ahearn, Longo, Haring, Mike Glier, and others, mixed in with paintings by artists of the preceding generation like Alice Neel, Robert Colescott, and Peter Dean. So basically I was showing for a brief time some of the work I was writing about, getting to work with artists from different angles, and getting to know them pretty intimately. The Anxious Figure got a lot of publicity, including a feature article in the Village Voice by Peter Schjeldahl entitled “Anxiety as a Rallying Cry,” a nod to my exhibition title. As my gallery became more prominent, and we began advertising our own exhibitions in Arts, I was faced with a potential conflict of interest as someone who was both a critic and a dealer. So by the end of 1982, it was time to stop publishing in the magazine.

At Semaphore, and later at Semaphore EAST, I began exhibiting several emerging artists on a regular basis, including Martin Wong, Tseng Kwong Chi, Duncan Hannah, Walter Robinson, Robert Colescott, Nancy Dwyer, and Mark Kostabi. I also included Donald Baechler, Joseph Nechvatal, Mimi Gross, Cara Perlman, and Jane Dickson in two- or three-person exhibitions. Annie Herron, later a pioneer in Williamsburg, became director of Semaphore EAST and organized early one-person shows for Lady Pink, Ellen Berkenblit, Felix, Lori Taschler, and Bobby G. The opening show at Semaphore EAST, by the way, in October 1984, was a two-person show with Keith Haring and Tseng Kwong Chi. Kwong Chi exhibited light boxes with color transparencies of Keith’s subway drawings in situ, and Keith had us paint the entire gallery black so he could fill every inch of the gallery with chalk drawings interacting directly with the installation of light boxes. For some reason, the show received very little critical attention, but for me it was an amazing moment. I wish we could have preserved it somehow.

In 1987, I closed Semaphore and took the position of Director of University Galleries of Illinois State University, in Normal, Illinois, where I’ve been ever since. I’ve had the privilege of organizing large traveling exhibitions for many of the artists I worked with in New York, including Jane Dickson, Duncan Hannah, Martin Wong, Keith Haring, and just last fall, Walter Robinson, the first show in our brand new space off campus. My writing these days consists mostly of catalogue essays for either our publications or those by other museums and galleries.

First published at NYC, 1981 in 2015

Barry Blinderman in front of billboard for our summer 1984 exhibition. Photograph courtesy of Barry Blinderman.

Categories: 1980s, Art, Manhattan, Painting