Are We Having Art Yet? Bill Griffith at BCB Art

Irreverent, absurd, existentialist - Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead embodies these traits as only a character born out of the San Francisco underground comics scene of the 1970s could. Yet in 2011 he is going stronger than ever, in syndication to about 200 daily newspapers, out in a new book, and now appearing in an inspired exhibition at BCB Art in Hudson.

Titled Are We Having Art Yet? Selected Drawings 1978-2011, the show presents numerous original inked versions of daily strips, several inked originals of a 1990 Zippy calendar, a few pencil renderings of early Zippy covers, and signed inkjet prints of other Zippy material. All the work on the walls is in ink or pencil – i.e. no color – and was, of course, created for reproduction, so it has that special quality of blacks and whites, of hatching and cross-hatching, that gives all graphic art a certain eye-appeal.

But, rather than let the monotony of monochrome get overwhelming, Bruce Bergmann, the gallery’s owner, has placed most of the work along a bright yellow rail, backed by a garish band of the same yellow with a pattern of big, red polka dots. The design scheme is taken from Zip’s costume, but it also imparts a properly carnivalesque atmosphere to the exhibition. Yes, it says, you may be in an art gallery, but you don’t need to take anything too seriously here.

An art calendar drawing by Bill Griffith

As these are comic strips, naturally the show is a hoot; but what makes it really special is that all the strips are specifically art-related. It is certainly a comic fan’s delight – but it is also an art critic’s paradise. Griffith went to art school and attempted a career as a painter before stumbling into comics in 1969, and he loves to send up the posturing of serious artists and pundits. Jokes about Picasso, Giacometti, Pollock and Magritte here coexist with jokes about Ingres, DaVinci, ancient Greece and cave art.

With the irrepressibly idiotic Zippy as his guide, Griffith has no fear, and the results are hilarious.

For most, including myself, Zippy is an acquired taste. His bizarre appearance, politically incorrect moniker and – above all – chronically off-the-wall pronouncements are not going to be for everybody, even those of us who are used to edgy stuff. But he grows on you – his sweetness, his persistence, his inability to grasp basic reality – it all adds up to irresistible charm.

Whether you like the humor or not (and in the case of these strips, it helps to be conflicted about modern art), seen up close in the original, the drawings show that Griffith is no pretender – he’s got the chops to draw anything well, and he’s got the graphic sense to know what to draw and what to leave out. It’s clear, crisp communication.

While much of the work is simplified, and much of the content goes in the direction of one-liners, some of these drawings also have a great deal of complexity built in, and with lengthy perusal will yield new secrets. Mostly, though, it’s about the humor of absurdity and, in this particular selection, the absurdity of the art world. Which works real well for me.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Ten Years: Remembering 9/11 by Marie Triller

In the inevitable push-pull between form and content thatlies behind all photographic imagery, the work of Marie Triller falls squarelyin the middle of the argument. But it’s a pretty big middle and, as seen in thejust-published collection titled Ten Years: Remembering 9/11 ($29.95, JohnIsaacs Books), her work covers much of that range.

Triller, who earned an MFA at SUNY New Paltz and works as ahigh school art teacher, has had a quiet but persistent presence on the CapitalRegion art scene for decades, and for much of that time she has exhibited expertlymade, digitally captured color photographs that represent human culture, often fromtravels to distant places such as Belize, Ireland, and the American Southwest.One might argue that these pictures were clearly documentary in purpose – and thatwould be true – but it is equally true that they were intended as personalartistic expression. The pictures presented in Triller’s new book are noexception to this duality.

Beginning with a full-bleed cover shot of a motorcycle gastank embellished with an exquisite painting of a New York City skylinedominated by hovering ghosts of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, thebook teases the eye as much as it plucks at the heart strings. Immediately, theparameters are shown: This photographer use color, shape, composition, andpoint of view in ways that your everyday documentary photographers do not.

Perusing the sequences of images inside, which are organizedinto nine chapters of equal length, one gathers a cumulative sense of thedeeper meaning behind the work. The result of 10 years’ worth of anniversary visits to thesite of the WTC attacks, these 97 pictures were culled fromthousands, then thoughtfully sequenced to offer Triller’s interpretation of thechapters’ themes: Memory, Security, Expression, Reflection, Community, Courage,Place, Justice, and Spirit.

Triller explains in a short opening essay to the book thatshe avoided the press photographers’ territory in “the pit” at Ground Zero,choosing instead to focus on “the periphery, the crowds who gather eachSeptember 11 morning, and who tell a truer story of that bright, dark day.” Ithink Triller would say that, through these pictures and this book, she isattempting to share that story – their story – with the rest of us.

But a photographer – an observer – cannot set himselfcompletely aside from the story he photographs. And, so, Triller’s book is therecord of her experience of that story, filtered through her eyes and her lens.What I see when I look at these pictures is a wonderfully sensitive, open setof eyes, guided by an equally open heart, which is thrilling and impressive; Ialso see a highly trained and critically honed eye, which is delightful – and impressive.

Which moves me more? In this work, each depends on theother. The picture of a dark-skinned woman clutching a bouquet of multicoloredroses is pure visual candy – made bitter by the knowledge that she has broughtthem not to celebrate a love, but to remember the loss of one. On the pageopposite, low-angled sunlight hides a man’s face in shadow under ared-white-and-blue hardhat; the picture is as balanced as a still life, as theman bows his head reverently, the hat emblazoned with signatures of othersurviving rescue workers.

There are American flags visible throughout this collection,hanging gigantically on buildings, stitched onto clothing, and everywhere inbetween. This is inevitable given the book’s source material, but it is also,perhaps, a sly nod to two seminal photography books of the past century: WalkerEvans’ American Photographs and Robert Frank’s The Americans, both of whichused the presence of the stars and stripes as a visual cue woven into thefabric of the books’ layout schemes.

Triller uses the same technique, placing a photo with aprominent flag at the start of the book and often beginning each section of thebook with one, too. But her tale is not a patriotic or political tract – it isall about the people who come each year to remember the tragedy of 9/11 at itsepicenter and who are presented here with their raw emotions on full display.Included among them are many in uniform, in family groups, in work clothes, businessdress or biker attire. Many also have their own creative or political messageto share, duly recorded by Triller’s camera.

The photos are presented without titles or captions – we aremeant to take them in visually and draw our own conclusions about what they maymean. This is one of the book’s great strengths. It’s difficult to approach asubject so charged without succumbing to the temptation to preach, but it maybe even more difficult to craft a narrative with images alone, as Triller hasdone very successfully here.

Text is provided in the form of a foreword by Sen. KirstenGillibrand, Triller’s introduction, and a thoughtful afterword by EleanorHeartney – all are brief, leaving the pictures to do the real communicating. Theydo it eloquently, and beautifully.

Note: There will be an exhibit of 11 of Marie Triller’s 9/11photographs at The College of Saint Rose’s Massry Center for the Arts atriumgallery, 1002 Madison Ave., Albany. The show opens on Sunday, Oct. 16, and willrun through Sunday, Dec. 11. Triller is an alumna of the college.

New York, New York! at the Hyde Collection

Andreas Feininger - Brooklyn Bridge 1940s  gelatin silver print

The show New York, New York! The 20th Century, on loan to the Hyde Collection from the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., is designed to be a crowd pleaser - and, judging from the reactions I witnessed on a recent weekday visit there, it is - but it is also a worthwhile show for any serious art viewer who may or may not care about the theme but will be thrilled to have a chance to see these 60 or so excellent pieces from the Norton's collection.

When you enter the show, you are struck by a clever (actually, too clever) subway-style design scheme to the exhibition, which starts with an appropriately understated audio track of screeching train sounds and a large wall emblazoned with the tiles and signage typical of mid-century New York City subway stations. The one work of art at the entry is a large and graphic black-and-white photograph taken in 1941 by Andreas Feininger under the elevated train at Division Street; potent in its structure of steel, sun, and shadow, the photograph sets the course for this show: not so much that it will be about New York, but that it will feature a lot of art that describes the atmosphere of the place as much as its physical details.

Though the rest of the exhibition space is painted a conservative dark maroon, the subway theme carries through in the form of text panels with the black background, primary color dots, and Helvetica type you still see all over New York's rail system. While these provide useful information, they look odd and distracting here. The show is organized around several sub-themes: On the Waterfront, Avenues and Streets, Tall Buildings, Parks and Recreation, and On the Town, which help to give it form as it spans a good deal of history - both of the city and of art.

Childe Hassam - Melting Snow 1905  oil on canvas

In addition to a great proportion of photographs (27) and prints (add another 8), the exhibition features a range of paintings from the late 19th century to the late 20th, and five somewhat lonely sculptures, four of them in bronze (or plaster with a bronze patina). Fans of photography will recognize many of the names included here - Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, Weegee, Diane Arbus, and other giants are represented by fine, sometimes famous, examples of their work. Equally, there are first-rate photos by some lesser known practitioners, such as Bill Witt, Jerome Liebling, George Tice, and Feininger, whose five prints in the show are really terrific.

Thinking about Feininger, I wonder just how many of the other artists in this show came as immigrants - after all, New York is the world's destination, a place that perfectly exemplifies the ideal of the melting pot and the fresh start. One fine piece among the excellent graphics on view seems to purposely capture that experience - a sketchy lithograph by the Austrian master Oskar Kokoschka that depicts the Statue of Liberty from the water. Surrounded by an ocean of white space, the black-crayon drawing perfectly embodies possibility. It is worth noting that the artist was already past 80 when he made the piece and, though he was never an American, he changed citizenship more than once in his life, and lived out his last decades in Switzerland, perhaps enjoying his own restful neutrality.

More central to the theme of the show are a number of paintings in it by artists associated with the Ashcan School, including George Luks, Edward Hopper, Everett Shinn, and others in the same vein, such as Reginald Marsh and John Marin. These and others offer elements of social commentary - my companion's pick of the group is an acidic study of upperclass gallerygoers by William Gropper - but most focus on the weather, smoke, snow, fog and the sea of humanity that fills and refills New York every day, rather than depicting specific individuals.

Edward Hopper - August in the City 1945 oil on canvas

The works that best exemplify these different moods of the city are about equally distributed among the photos, paintings, and graphics - almost too numerous to mention, standouts include a marvelous color lithograph in the form of an accordion book by Eugene Feldman; exacting etchings by Armin Landeck from 1934 and John Taylor Arms from 1925 that render light and texture to perfection; Childe Hassam's classic of American Impressionism from 1905 titled Melting Snow; and a sweeping photographic overview of a chunk of the Bronx by Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao.

Other particularly special paintings in the show include a terrific vertical mural piece by Stuart Davis; the Hopper, titled August in the City, where, in the deep summer's absence of any humanity, a statue stands in for his typical figure at the window; several John Marins; and a frenetic bit of expressionism by Mark Tobey. Altogether, for me this experience was not so much about New York as it was a great excuse to see a wonderful show of a century of art.

The main problem with the exhibition is its title - because now I can't get that damn song out of my head! It's a great song (personally, I prefer Liza's rendition to Frank's) but, well, you know what I mean about ear worms.

New York, New York! The 20th Century continues through Sept. 18. It originated at the Norton Museum of Art in 2009, and continues on tour, stopping next at the Katonah Museum of Art. The Hyde has organized a full slate of activities around the exhibition, including a week of 9/11 tenth-anniversary events - please see the museum's website for details.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Eugene Feldman - New York West Side Skyline 1965  fold-out book

Graphic Design - Get the Message! at AIHA

Most of us have tried to figure out where you draw the line between fine art and commercial art. My own favorite answer to that slippery question is that it is entirely a matter of intent (not, as some would have it, a matter of quality).

This sentiment is mirrored by the opening quote of the wonderful exhibition Graphic Design - Get the Message! at the Albany Institute of History & Art (through June 12), which ponders that and more while making great use of the Institute's permanent collection and other local resources to present a broad swath of commercial design by talented artists over several centuries.

Organized into thematic sections (Foundations, Graphic Design and Commerce, Political and Social Messages, and The Creative Process), Get the Message! sprawls through four galleries and features seemingly countless original examples of printed matter in two and three dimensions, augmented by electronic, digital, and multi-media material - an appropriately dense barrage that captures so much of our overloaded everyday visual experience.

After an introductory room that touches on the range of themes with examples as intriguing and diverse as war propaganda posters and a powder-blue Tiffany box, the show delves into history with a large display of old-fashioned letterpress equipment and 19th-century broadsides that represent the birth of modern graphic style.

This room also holds a distracting installation of photographs and pulp bales illustrating the papermaking process as practiced today by key exhibition sponsor Mohawk Fine Papers. While it is a blessing to a struggling museum (is there any other kind these days?) to have such prominent corporate underwriting, I must say it's a shame to see it come at this sort of price.

The next, largest gallery puts out the really colorful stuff we readily think of as showcasing the classic elements of graphic design - illustration and typography - in the form of bright and clever posters from the past hundred or so years (examples shown at the top of this post, and above at left).

It could be argued that the 20th century, with its political causes, social unrest, and explosion of commercial advertising, was the golden age of graphic design, and this room shows why. Whether selling war bonds, popular entertainment, educational toys, or soap, the artists behind these designs knew how to get our attention and make a lasting impression.

I had the company of an old friend and longtime graphic designer on this visit, and it was a pleasure to watch how he viewed the work in this section - moving in close and often marveling at the fine-art techniques, such as charcoal drawing and oil painting, that were employed in the service of these pitches. He frequently commented with amazement at the elaborate lettering that these pre-computer artists routinely hand-painted - a nearly lost art today.

For me, it was the simplest designs that held up the best. One artist featured prominently throughout the exhibition is Woody Pirtle, an internationally-known designer active in the Hudson Valley, whose politically-charged posters use color, shape, type, and iconic images in effortless concert to illuminate, anger, or amuse (example shown above at right).

Pirtle is among several top creators - all with local connections - featured in the last section of the show (Creative Process). The others are illustrators Dahl Taylor and William Westwood; design firms Vicarious Visions and Spiral Design; and early 20th-century designers Will H. Low and Hajo Christoph. All are of the highest quality in the business and have found significant commercial success - who knew the Capital Region was such a hotbed of creative design?

The Creative Process section has the expected preparatory sketches and such, but it also shows elements of the commercial design world not typically seen outside its own confines - promotional pieces in expensively elaborate detail that design firms use to give clients an idea of what they can do. Here, Spiral Design is the mind-blower, and it's here that I think the line gets crossed back over into fine art - because, in this case, the client is the artist, and the intention is to show the artist's skill. It's some pretty amazing stuff, from all the participants, and an impressive capstone to the show's historical lead-in.

Hajo, as he was known, is also featured in a separate exhibition one floor up from Get the Message! that details his personal journey from Berlin to Castleton, where he forged a career designing witty and sophisticated packaging for many local manufacturers (example shown at the bottom of this post). There are abundant examples of Hajo's extraordinary work in both exhibitions, including delightful personal art in watercolor, oils, gouache, and other media.

By the way - here's the quote that starts the exhibition, from Paul Rand (world-famous designer of iconic logos for firms such as IBM, ABC and UPS):

Design is the method of putting form and content together.
Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition.
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

Food for thought, no?

Rating: Highly Recommended

Note: Throughout the run of Graphic Design - Get the Message!, there has been a series of related lectures and events. The next two are coming soon - at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 6 (in conjunction with First Friday), illustrators Dahl Taylor and William Westwood will present; and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 8, Ellen Lupton, the author of Thinking with Type and other design guides, will address the topic How to Do Things with Typography: Introduction to an Art.

Further on, at 2 p.m. on May 22, graphic designer, typographer and calligrapher Paul Shaw will speak and sign his latest book, Helvetica and the New York Subway System; and at 6 p.m. on June 3, Laura Shore will speak on the topic The Truth About Paper.

All the events are free.

Swan Song

Desiree Alvarez, The Contents of the Falconer’s Bag, 2011

The last exhibition at Union College's Mandeville Gallery to be mounted under longtime curator Rachel Seligman's watchful eye has just ended, as has Seligman's 13-year tenure there. She moves on to become an associate curator at the Tang Teaching Museum, and this last show, co-curated by Middlebury College photography instructor Sally Apfelbaum, has been dispersed.

But the show, Of Weeds and Wildness: Nature in Black & White, leaves traces worth contemplating (as well as a lovely printed catalog). Initially inspired by a small Louise Bourgeois etching titled Hairy Spider, the show brought together a completely unpredictable group of artists working over a range of many decades in diverse media and subject matter.

Quite unlike most curated exhibitions these days, and quite unlike the ideas the title put into my head, Of Weeds and Wildness was extremely subtle and anything but a facile look at nature. Viewing the show on its second-to-last day, I was perplexed by the inclusion of work that seemed not to fit the theme of the title, much of which didn't particularly seem to belong together. Perhaps the show was just a good excuse to present some favorite work in under-appreciated media (particularly printmaking) and sensitive shades of grey?

While this wouldn't have been a bad end in itself, the catalog essay explains that the show's intention was not to represent nature, but to "explore the mystery and beauty, romance and brutality of the human experience of the natural world." That makes the inclusion, for example, of Harold Edgerton's chilling high-speed photographs of a 1952 atomic bomb test, or of the mysterious abstract etchings of Kate Temple seem much more sensible.

These and other works in the show reach areas of artistic expression far broader than the title would imply. Other virtually abstract prints by James Siena and Lee Bontecou join Temple, while photographs in the social documentary mode by Robert Adams, Danny Lyon, and Margaret Moulton flesh out the human aspect of the discourse.

Drawings make their appearance as well, by two representatives of the Union art faculty (Charles Steckler, current, and Arnold Bittleman, long-deceased) who share a mesmerizing mark-making fascination expressed in very divergent scales. Bittleman conjures large, brooding cloudscapes, while Steckler's elaborate doodlings fill tiny pages with imagined naturalistic forms and textures (one is shown at left).

An animated film loop by Hedya Klein, also hand-drawn, has an affinity with Steckler's style and with a beautifully made etching/aquatint by Michelle Segre. Other fine examples of the old printmaking media on view included Kiki Smith's Fawn and Bird Skeleton (shown above at right), two sugarlifts by William Kentridge and a Robert Gober lithograph.

In a departure from traditional forms, Desiree Alvarez created a site-specific installation by hanging swaths of diaphanous fabric embellished with images drawn in ink and printed with wood blocks. Intriguingly titled The Contents of the Falconer's Bag, this piece brought an almost jarring freedom to the otherwise staid presentation of the show.

Overall, it was a show for quiet contemplation, and a fine note for Seligman to go out on. Fortunately, she won't be traveling far, and we can look forward to seeing her future efforts in Saratoga Springs.

Harold Edgerton, Atomic Bomb, 1952, gelatin silver print

Objects of Wonder & Delight at The Hyde Collection

Walt Kuhn Dancing Pears, 1924, oil on canvas, 12 x 15 in.

The Hyde Collection has broken with tradition by bringing a crowd-pleasing show to Glens Falls in the middle of a harsh winter. Objects of Wonder & Delight: Four Centuries of Still Life from the Norton Museum of Art may not be summer blockbuster material, but it comes darn close, with a galaxy’s worth of major-name artists’ work wrapped around an underwhelming premise in an intriguing way.

Organized by the Norton (which is in West Palm Beach, Fla., and where Hyde director David Setford once worked), this touring show both fulfills expectations and challenges them. Part of the strategy involves subthemes that allow for a free flow of groupings and interactions among the works. For example, in the section titled From the Garden: Fruits and Vegetables, tabletop still lifes mingle with figurative interiors and landscape-ish exteriors.

Here, the staff of the Hyde has excelled in clever arrangements and juxtapositions that make the whole enterprise much more lively than the topic natura morta ought to promise. But, then again, just look at what they had to work with. The selection of 51 pieces (including three-dimensional works and several functional or decorative objects) bristles with creative brilliance.

Making a list of standouts, I ran out of room on my notepad: Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Courbet, O’Keeffe, Demuth, Lichtenstein, Avery, and Severini number among the 20th-century painters with significant pieces here. Photography is also well represented, most importantly by two Edwards (Steichen and Weston), along with important predecessors, contemporaries, and followers – including Baron Adolph De Meyer, Ralph Steiner, Dorothy Norman, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lilo Raymond.

The sculptural surprises include an oversized felt suit by Joseph Beuys, a miniature townhouse by the British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, and a marvelously wrought wooden skeleton of a grouper fish by Fumio Yoshimura. This is not your Dutch uncle’s still life – but, don’t worry, there are enough Flemish paintings here to satisfy him, too. In fact, these provide some of the show’s nicest moments, such as the Jesuit painter Daniel Seghers’ undated oil on canvas depicting a luminescent garland of flowers (explained on the label as representing painting as a form of religious contemplation), and the nicely conjured trio of William Harnett’s Bachelor’s Table (1880), Christiaen Striep’s classic still life (about 1665), and a Chinese Imperial carved wood panel from the Qing dynasty (1736-1795).

But, ultimately, Objects of Wonder & Delight really earns its stripes through individual masterpieces. Starting with a large Robert Delaunay from 1916, its objects radiating colorfully striped auras, the show grabs you by the eyes and never lets go. The O’Keeffe, a white cow’s pelvis floating in a brilliant blue sky above a low Southwestern landscape, is gorgeous; one of the Matisses is also arguably a landscape - a fabulous seaside one featuring two beached rays; and a 17th-century trompe l’oeil by Jacobus Biltius is a masterful and darkly humorous example of the genre.

Almost mirroring the Matisse is a Surrealist-tinged painting from 1945 that also features rotting fish, by the Japanese-American Yasuo Kuniyoshi – fortunately, though they’re not hung together, it’s possible to view them simultaneously from a certain vantage point. Another treasure, the Courbet, shows that great art can be made while languishing in prison – and by contrasting the temptations of accessible fruits with those of an inaccessible forest.

Among all this glory, my favorite picture in the show is a relatively small and unassuming one by the German Expressionist Max Beckmann – probably not an artist you think of as painting still life at all. But here is his signature black-outline style gracing a two-foot-square canvas with a spray of irises and a few unlit candlesticks. The painting was made just a couple of years before his death, and you feel that he senses it coming, but you also feel in the colors how fiercely he defies it. Still alive!

Rating: Must See

Best Shows of 2010

Larry Poons Monkey Liner 2008 acrylic on canvas

A year ago at this time, I summed up the first complete year of Get Visual with philosophical musings, memorable highlights, and encouragement to all of you to support the arts any way you could in these tough times. Well, it seems not very much has changed – Get Visual has completed another calendar year of reviews from our incredibly rich region’s offerings, and the arts are still taking heavy blows from the ongoing (though supposedly easing) recession.

Among the lowlights: NYSTI crashed and burned, swept away by multiple fiscal malfeasances; the city of Albany cut its entire $350,000 annual arts budget (to which the Common Council had the good sense to restore a fractional $65,000, targeting “small arts groups,” according to the Times Union); Proctors bought and sold a couple of buildings, forcing the move of the “working” artists’ studio to off-street quarters; and the number of art shows overall dropped significantly, as cash-strapped presenting organizations sought ways to cut costs (extending a show for a few months is a quick way to do that).

Despite the downs, there were at least 50 shows out there that Get Visual reviewed, and the traffic here has increased by just about 50%, jumping from 15,000 visits tallied in the first year to 22,000 in the second (for a current total of 37,000). And, while there may have been fewer exhibitions to track – though that did not save us from missing a whole lot of them, naturally – the quality of those exhibitions remained astonishing.

Though I was planning to break tradition and do a Top Ten list this time, the 17 shows on my “short” list will not whittle down that easily. Even so, as I said, important shows were missed, and while that’s almost unforgivable, please allow me to apologize foremost for failing to make it to MASS MoCA during 2010 (soon to be rectified!), and in general for any other worthwhile efforts that I didn’t catch. I welcome, and would greatly appreciate, any comments from readers that mention such worthy, overlooked endeavors.

So, with a little bit of category manipulation (but no further ado), here are the Capital Region’s best shows of 2010, each linked to its original review as it appeared on Get Visual):

Category One - Major Museums: As usual, there were summer blockbusters, and the one that stood out above all others was Picasso Looks at Degas at the Clark Art Institute (image at left). We were extremely lucky to have this international event make its only North American stop in our backyard, and it absolutely lived up to the hype – unless, for some reason, you hate great paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints. Also worthy of supreme status was Andrew Wyeth: An American Legend at The Hyde Collection, which should have been sufficient to convert any remaining doubters that Wyeth truly matters as a 20th-century artist; and Not Just Another Pretty Place: The Landscape of New York at the New York State Museum, which earned my first Must See rating (the system was only recently instituted) for the way it showcases the surprising depth, breadth, and quality of the NYSM’s permanent collection (and it’s still on view through March 3, hint, hint). Also mentionable in this category is the Norman Rockwell Museum’s excellent exposure of Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera.

Category Two - Solo Exhibitions (large): A very crowded category, probably because I generally prefer the in-depth coverage of a solo to the smatterings of group shows – but maybe also because there just happened to be a bunch of great solos this year, and a bunch of those were pretty substantial. Top of the list, because it was as challenging as it was rare, is Larry Poons: Recent Paintings at the Esther Massry Gallery. Also very impressive: Jules Olitski: An Inside View at Opalka Gallery (image above at right); Edward Avedisian: Retrospective at Carrie Haddad Gallery; Carroll Dunham Prints: A Survey at the University Art Museum; and Fred Tomaselli at the Tang Teaching Museum. All were comprehensive surveys of important, innovative bodies of work that the curators and presenting organizations pulled off flawlessly. It’s worth noting that two of these shows were of prints (Dunham and Olitski) and one was of mixed media (Tomaselli) – it’s not always about painting.

Category Three - Solo Exhibitions (small): Again, many good choices here. The top spot has to go to Michael Millspaugh (once again, not a painter), whose exuberant, exhaustive installation at Lake George Arts Project set him apart from the everyday artists of this - or any - region (image above at left). Also worthy of year-end praise: Claude Carone: Paintings at John Davis Gallery; and Monica Miller: Diary of a Trespasser at Joyce Goldstein Gallery. Boxed Sets, a retrospective of dioramas and stage designs by Charles Steckler at the Perrella Gallery at Fulton-Montgomery Community College gets honorary mention here because, even though I didn’t actually see it, other similar recent shows by Steckler were unalloyed knockouts - I'm certain this must have been, too.

Category Four - Group Exhibitions: Reflections on Water in American Painting at the Arkell Museum (image at right) was a revelation, because traveling shows from private collections usually come off as self-serving and are rarely as great as the presenters would like to think. But not this one! Another group show that transcended the category by the sheer quality of juror Ian Berry’s selections was this year’s Fence Select at the Arts Center of the Capital Region. Also at the ACCR, Battlesight: Dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan by International Photographers stood out as a hard-hitting, carefully planned combination of three photojournalists’ personal visions of war (oddly enough, it’s the only show of photographs that made this list). Then and Now at Albany Center Gallery effectively combined the seemingly unrelated talents of fiber sculptor Mimi Czajka Graminski, painter Iona Park, and photographer Jeri Eisenberg. And, finally, Here and There: Two Degrees of Separation, a show of 20 printmakers at the Union College Arts Atrium, again broke the mold by pulling together a very diverse collection and, somehow, pulling it off.

Notably absent here is The Jewel Thief, currently on view at the Tang; I predict it would have been on this list had I seen it yet. Please watch this space for a review of The Jewel Thief that will run soon. And have a fantastic year of art viewing in 2011.

The Perfect Fit and Old Soles at AIHA

Based on publicity photos for The Perfect Fit: Shoes Tell Stories at the Albany Institute of History & Art, I went there expecting to see shoes as art, and art as shoes - but I was not prepared for the additional quantities of complex art about shoes that the traveling show also includes.

Organized by the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Mass., which was once a shoe-factory town, The Perfect Fit is the type of show that reminds us of the large role traditional craft media now play in contemporary art. The Institute's three small upstairs rooms are stuffed with work by a geographically diverse selection of artists, all of it produced between 2004 and 2008 in almost every conceivable material.

Just so you get the idea, here's a partial list: silk, glass, ceramic, wood, wire, quilted fabric, painted fabric, beads, papier mache, embroidery, doll parts, bicycle parts, tools, precious metals, origami, handmade paper, recycled milk jugs, soil, honeycomb (yes, actual honeycomb) and canary eggs. And, of course, video - pretty darn bad video, at that.

Among the actually shoe-like creations, one lovely pair (by Jan Hopkins, shown at the top of this post) is crafted from grapefruit and cantaloupe peels; another exuberantly unwearable pair of boots (by Rebecca Siemering, shown at right) is entirely made of discarded scratch-off tickets.

Further expanding the media included are a pair of fake-fur-and-blown-glass telephones (the handsets are ladies pump-shaped) by David Fox; a sound sculpture featuring a wide fan of 416 bronzed baby shoes by Judy Haberl; and an elegantly cut, black-paper silhouette accordion book by Beatrice Coron.

A number of pieces make painful reference to the Chinese foot-binding legacy; others are equally humorous and lighthearted. Among the more fully-realized works of art are Nina Fletcher's Shoe Wheel, a mandala of discarded black pumps joined in an endless cycle, and Ito Horotoshi's Morning of the Snow Fall, a remarkably illusionistic sculpture in granite and marble of a pair of boots toeing some of the freshly fallen white stuff.

The most touching work of art in the show for me is Abby's Shoes, a tableau by Lissa Hunter of several framed black-and-white photos (rendered in paint and wood), sitting on a plaster shelf along with two tiny woven slippers. The accompanying text details a Korean two-year-old's adoption, and her subsequent sad attachment to the memory of her first pair of shoes, which she regrets having thrown away. This piece is on another level compared to the work in the show featuring complaints about shopping and fit.

After viewing The Perfect Fit, you are sure to see the art in many of the more than 60 pairs of shoes from the past three centuries featured in Old Soles, an accompanying vitrine exhibit taken from the Institute's collection.

Old Soles covers a satisfying range of examples in wood, leather, silk and so on, including a terrific pair of Frye-ish child's boots from the 19th century, that amazing silver pump shown above at right, and the silk slippers shown below, dated 1916.

Both shows end on Jan. 2, so you'll have to hurry.

Rating: Recommended

Reflections on Water in American Painting at the Arkell Museum

Anton Otto Fischer Summer Seas oil on canvas 1945

The drive along the Thruway to Canajoharie is a great set-up for seeing Reflections on Water in American Painting at the Arkell Museum. Along the way, the toll road follows the Mohawk River for miles, affording frequent and pleasant views of just the sort of landscape that inspired many of the artists in this excellent show.

Drawn from the collection of Arthur J. Phelan (best known for works depicting the American West), Reflections on Water is perfectly suited to the Arkell – its first stop on a national tour – because it includes a number of artists who are either in the Arkell’s permanent collection or might as well be. Comprised of 50 paintings dating from 1828 to 1945, the show provides lessons in both history and geography, as it mirrors the American expansion from east to west. In addition to the expected Atlantic Ocean and Hudson River scenes, there are also images from the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and Columbia rivers, even an Alaskan glacier.

Phelan, a former banker who later got involved in ocean shipping, began collecting marine paintings in the 1960s and displays a keen eye for outstanding work by lesser-known artists. Unsurprisingly, there are numerous pictures here that would appeal to any typical man or boy who enjoys action and activity – but there are many more that indicate a more specifically artistic sensibility that transcends the hunting, sailing, and fighting genres.

The crown jewel of the collection (shown above at right), a miniature tour de force made by William Merritt Chase while looking up the Arno River from his villa in Florence, Italy, is atypical in its foreign subject, but announces the seriousness and breadth of the collection. And it has plenty of company in a gallery filled with many fine American Impressionist canvases, such as a stunning winter scene by Elmer Livingston MacRae and Willard Metcalf’s petite Twachtman-like marsh view.

These, like many other works in the show, were made in Connecticut, where Phelan spent his summers growing up, and they form the core of the collection, both from the personal standpoint and artistically. Phelan, who holds two degrees in American history from Yale University, said “I have built a number of collections that started with a chance acquisition of an artwork that reminded me of something from my past.” He also said, in a 1978 Washington Post interview, that he “got interested in art through an interest in the historical process, because paintings offer a clear record of the changes that people have made in the environment.”

The second quote may explain two other key groups of pictures in the show: those that go deeper into the historical aspect of life in the United States (such as James Bard’s meticulous, fanciful 1873 rendering of a Hudson River steamboat, shown at the bottom of this post) and those that represent industrialization (such as Reginald Marsh's 1936 Lift Bridge, Jersey Marshes, shown below at right). Others present popular pastimes, including duck hunting and beach vacationing (such as Aiden Lassell Ripley's 1935 Beach Scene, shown above at left), but most of the work in the show is landscape – and the majority of that falls into the timeframe of the heyday of American Impressionists, revealing a softer side to the historian-collector whose first purchase depicts a burning ship and its fleeing crew.

I don’t know if it’s a trend, but it appears that exhibitions drawn from personal collections are becoming more common (see my review of an exhibition at the Hyde Collection earlier this year). This may not be a bad thing, as institutional perspectives can get stuck in conventional thinking, which an independent voice can possibly shake up. But it also means there’s a risk that the (moneyed) source of the collection is more vain than rigorous, and that we will be subjected to a lot of second-rate work in the process of polishing their ego with our attention.

Fortunately, Phelan does not seem to be that sort of collector; despite its slightly punny title, Reflections on Water is a first-rate show that explores a strong personal sensibility while exposing a number of unfairly overlooked figures from our rich artistic history. If you haven’t yet seen the wonderfully renewed and expanded Arkell Museum, use this opportunity as an excuse to go – I promise it will be an unqualified pleasure.

Reflections on Water in American Painting, organized by Exhibits Development Group and accompanied by a nicely produced color brochure with several reproductions and a fine, historically oriented essay by John Seelye, runs through Oct. 3. A related event set for Oct. 2 will feature NPR’s Selected Shorts readers performing seaside stories live as a fundraiser for the museum. For details, call (518) 673-2314 or go to http://www.arkellmuseum.org/.

John Ransom Phillips at Opalka Gallery and Albany Institute of History & Art

Based on his current exhibitions in Albany, there are at least two John Ransom Phillipses - and that doesn't take into account his purported past lives in Europe and Egypt. The pair of shows by this mysteriously motivated painter at The Sage Colleges' Opalka Gallery and the Albany Institute of History & Art combine to present some 50 works of art from an even larger body that focuses on the Civil War and its most famous photographer, Mathew Brady.

While Phillips claims to have formerly been a 16th-century Dutch painter, he does not expressly state that he thinks he was also Brady - but he clearly identifies with the celebrated icon of 19th-century photography, as well as with his contemporary, the poet and battlefield nurse Walt Whitman.

I'm used to artists, so the nuttiness factor isn't all that offputting here; neither is the prospect of trying to apprehend a multifaceted vision in bi-polar fashion across a few miles of my home city. But the complexity of the work itself does challenge - Phillips paints in oil on canvas and in watercolor on paper, using stylistic sources almost as diverse as all of modern art. To quote from the Institute's wall text, which in turn quotes from a book-length essay by Alan Trachtenberg, "Phillips re-imagines the story of Brady's life within ... work [that] combines elements of colorist expressionism, surrealism, abstraction, pop art and cubism."

As seen in these two shows, Phillips also takes two clearly divergent approaches to this process. Titled Ransoming Mathew Brady: Searching for Celebrity, the Opalka show features larger works that concentrate on Brady's studio activities, often depicting camera equipment, props, and sitters in a quasi-theatrical setting. The Institute's selection, titled Ransoming Mathew Brady: Re-Imagining the Civil War is all about the battlefields and the men who lost life and limb upon them.

This dichotomy is successful in forming two relatively coherent exhibitions that are nonetheless closely tied, but it does require the interested viewer to make two stops. I would recommend seeing the Opalka show first (as I did) because I think the Institute show is better and you'll want your experience to improve as it goes along.

Then again, the Institute show, though it has more paintings in a trickier space, is much easier to follow and take in as a whole, while the Opalka show, with several extremely complex, multi-panel pieces, is far more difficult to understand. So it might be easier to take the reverse approach and warm up with Civil War before attacking Celebrity. I can't say for sure because, being only one person, I couldn't try it both ways (though I wish I could have, just to see what would have happened).

What did happen when I innocently wandered into the Opalka show, having never laid eyes on a Phillips painting before, was that I became persistently perplexed. The gallery's exhibition coordinator informed me later that Phillips has a doctorate in symbols, which didn't surprise me one bit - I believe you might need one, too, to fully understand this work.

The Institute show, on the other hand, is quite relaxing (visually speaking). Dominated by several very nearly abstract images with beautiful passages of pure paint, its messages are clear but mainly quietly stated; this aspect of Phillips' painting is more dream than nightmare. That said, there are some rather disturbing images here, even if they are sometimes presented in a rather cartoonish style (more on that further down).

In both exhibitions, the watercolors function as a sort of primer, providing a window into Phillips' thinking process with inked words, most of them quotations from Brady. The watercolors also act as a bridge between the two shows, linking them stylistically and conceptually. They are done in a loose way that is better suited to the direct medium painted small on paper than it is to the layered medium painted larger on canvas or linen.

And that constitutes my main objection to this painter overall. While many of the watercolors feel cartoonish in their essence, it is difficult to take work seriously that depicts its main subject (Brady) as a silly-looking figure not much more expressive than a doll. It's also annoying (for me, anyway) when the comic-strip convention of rendering hands and feet with four digits rather than five is applied to museum-bound art in the form of otherwise well crafted and ambitious paintings. When Phillips trivializes the subject in this way, I am left with more perplexity.

NOTE: The Opalka Gallery exhibition is officially open through July 30, but has been extended a week through Aug. 6. The Albany Institute exhibition runs through Oct. 3. For hours and contact information, check the web sites (linked above).

Image credits for paintings by John Ransom Phillips, from top down: Fallen at Shiloh 2007 Oil on Linen Promised Gift to Yale University Art Museum; Scattered Parts at Murfreesboro 2007 Oil on Linen Collection of Artist; Birds Eye View of Lost and Fallen: Chancellorsville 2007 Oil on Linen Private Collection; Death and Forgotten Selves at Second Manassas 2007 Oil on Linen Collection of the Artist; To be Photographed by Me Made You Unique 2005 Watercolor; Shooting 2007 three panels of oil on canvas

"Seeing Ourselves" at New York State Museum

The New York State Museum has mounted many strong exhibitions of photography over the decades, but none with the scope or ambition of Seeing Ourselves: Masterpieces of American Photography from George Eastman House Collection, which draws from the vast archive of the Rochester-based museum of film and photography, and has been touring for several years.

Part of the Bank of America Great Art Series that regularly brings in blockbuster shows (usually from New York City museums), Seeing Ourselves comprises more than 150 pictures - ranging from an anonymous 1845 Daguerreotype to a 2003 color digital print by Terry Evans - and is conceived as a comprehensive portrait of America since the invention of photography. The show is organized into five sections: American Masterpieces, American Faces, America at War, America the Beautiful, and American Families. Each section covers the full range of the time period, except America at War, which has nothing later than the Vietnam era.

Beginning with American Masterpieces, the show immediately plunges the viewer into a post-argument phase of photography as art, whether as fine art, commercial art or transcendent documentary. So iconic are the images in this first gallery that an avid student of the medium could stand in the middle of it, look at the pictures, and rattle off nearly every name: Ansel Adams, Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Nikolas Muray, Robert Frank, W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange (her Migrant Mother is shown above at left), Lewis Hine, Barbara Kruger, Edward Weston and so on. While we may have seen these pictures before, it is a new and powerful experience to see them together, and it makes a clear statement that we are in the presence of a collection unlike any other. Though quality always beats quantity, the Eastman House has more than enough of both, with over 400,000 photographs in all.

After this potent set-up comes the section titled American Faces, and it also packs a punch, not just by offering a gripping series of portraits, but by including among them such unexpected examples as an FBI wanted poster for Angela Davis, a mug shot of a man accused of "selling liquor to an Indian," and a tiny half-length portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Mathew Brady (shown at right).

Everyone loves to see faces, and this part of the show won't let them down. Also bristling with humanity in all its forms is the section titled American Families, which comes last, and brings to mind the legendary 1955 Museum of Modern Art exhibition and book The Family of Man, not just for its theme but also for its comprehensiveness.

Here the contemporary photographs in the section carry much of the burden - whereas the earlier examples tend toward the posed group portrait or amateur snapshot, many of the later works are produced by savvy practitioners highly aware of the symbolic and interpretive value of their images. Here, too, are the majority of the rather few color pictures in the exhibition, among them a ravishing interior by the California photographer Larry Sultan and a coolly neutral cataloguing of seemingly innocuous items confiscated at airports in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Landscape (or cityscape) is the dominant feature of the other two sections in the show. America at War is the weakest link in the chain. Though there are important and moving images in this section (Pentagon Demonstration, Washington, D.C., November 1967 by Benedict J. Fernandez, shown at left, is a good example) it somehow falls flat - possibly because it does not reach anywhere near the present, or perhaps because, after the Civil War, it leaves our shores behind. It is followed by the sections titled America the Beautiful and American Families (you know, the stuff we were fighting to defend - we certainly didn't go to war to protect our masterpieces!), which belies a slight whiff of propaganda going on.

Nevermind that, though - the pictures in America the Beautiful are too diverse, and too darn good, to be dragged down by such thoughts. Here we find some of the more creative approaches to picture-making that the show offers: an embroidered photo on fabric by Betty Hahn; a delicate platinum print of Albany's Capitol by Chatham-based Sandy Noyes; an aerial view by Marilyn Bridges of dunes that look more like a nude; and glittering cityscapes from the Photo-Secessionist period.

Altogether, Seeing Ourselves is an effective montage of American identity and history, but it is more effective as a tantalizing slice of the Eastman House's astonishing collection. Unlike many museum-generated exhibitions of photography, the individual pictures in this gathering are framed and presented in a great variety of ways, revealing the long and careful labor of assembling them into the collection in the first place. This non-homogenized presentation allows each object to retain its integrity so that the personality of each image is preserved rather than being subsumed by the overall theme of the exhibition.

By virtue of this approach, the show feels like not so much a unified presence as a gathering of individual wonders. That's what a collection is meant to be, and the greatness of the sum of these parts comes across mightily in this marvelous selection. Seeing Ourselves ends on May 9 (and then ends its tour) - be sure you don't miss it.

American Impressionist Landscapes at The Hyde Collection

Ernest Bruce Nelson April in Central Park, ca. 1935-43, oil on canvas

The title of the current show at The Hyde Collection may be a bit of a mouthful, but that doesn't mean An Enduring Legacy: American Impressionist Landscape Paintings from the Thomas Clark Collection isn't also an eyeful. Drawn from a private collection numbering over 100 works that will eventually be donated to the Hyde, this selection of 64 paintings by 47 artists nicely fills the museum's ample central gallery and is sure to please lovers of traditional painting genres.

Thomas Clark is a Saratoga County-based private management consultant (who, incidentally, is not related to the family that founded the Clark Art Institute and other major museum collections), who began to form his collection about 25 years ago. Even at that time it would have taken almost untold wealth to pick up quality works by significant artists from the first third of the 20th century, so the group represented here consists mainly of second-tier painters who were well-known and successful in their day but are now largely forgotten. This review will consider the question of whether it should have remained that way, or whether these footnotes to American art history are worthy of recognition today.

This is a tough bill to fill - as it is, even American Impressionists of the highest order (such as Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, and William Merritt Chase) remain far less esteemed than their European elders (Monet, et al). The painters in this show were primarily students and lesser colleagues of these and other top-drawer Americans; for the most part, they could paint quite well, and the examples shown include some of their best work. However, I believe few people would make a strong argument that this work broke important new ground or carried lasting influence.

Looking at the show, I tried to ask myself a certain question regarding each painting: If someone brought this to me as a contemporary work of art by a budding painter, would I be impressed? Or would I be inclined to think the artist would never amount to much? While it isn't necessarily fair to judge historic art through a contemporary lens, it is still very instructive. I don't doubt that any first-rate work, from any era at all, in any style, would pass such a smell test.

So, how did the Clark Collection paintings fare? As a whole, I'm sorry to say, not that well. Most of the works, while competent, felt either amateurish, commercial, or touristy. Still, I'm glad to report that the best works in the show transcend these categories to deliver the kind of vital experience that one desires from the best art, whether visually, emotionally or symbolically.

Among these outstanding examples are some that fall neatly under the Impressionist label, including the show's signature piece by George Loftus Noyes (reproduced above left), Maurice Braun's almost-too-sugary but gorgeous Meadow in Spring and John Joseph Enneking's energetic small sketch titled Distant Sail.

Others have a distinctly Modernist edge, including a fine piece made under the auspices of the Federal Art Project by Ernest Bruce Nelson that may have been a study for a mural (reproduced at the top of this post); and Louise Upton Brumback's Grey Day, Gloucester, which presents a view of a harbor in winter that could almost have been painted by Edvard Munch. This piece is smartly juxtaposed with a lovely but more pedestrian view of the same harbor under summer sun by Alice Judson (reproduced at right). These two women, incidentally, are among seven included in the show - not an equal representation compared to the 4o men, but a pretty fair one considering the time frame.

Two of my favorite pieces in this exhibition fit between the Impressionist and Modernist parameters. One, titled Winter Landscape with Purple Hills, by Walter Koeniger, is among a large number of paintings here that depict snowy scenes, and is easily the most muscular of them in terms of both color and composition. It also has a lot of atmosphere - but not nearly so much as Arthur Clifton Goodwin's masterful depiction of a blizzardy squall in Boston, circa 1915 (reproduced below). That painting alone is well worth paying the Hyde's modest $5 suggested donation to see.

A catalog has been published to accompany An Enduring Legacy, with text by Hyde curator Erin Budis Coe, who will give a lecture about the exhibition at 3 p.m. on Sunday (Jan. 17). Coe, along with Thomas Clark, will be on hand after the talk to sign copies of the book.

Arthur Clifton Goodwin The Wharf and Custom House Tower, ca. 1915, oil on canvas