A Round Of Applause

 

         Matthew  Retzlaff,  "HUFFY" at   Burchfield Penney Art Center

Surviving the pandemic, & having some time in the studio to think about my life, I have to stand and give a shout out to the many artists whose dedication to their art and to their audience I have shared.  In our part of the country I see many outstanding paintings, prints and installations and it is hard to keep up with all this creativity!  A couple of weeks back we were in Buffalo and we stopped into the Burchfield Penney Center before driving back to Rochester, and there were many folks from our area with their art on view in this museum!  Across the street from this museum is another huge construction project at The Albright Knox Art Gallery which looks like the galleries will double in size!

Bill Stewart's " A Shaman's World"  on view at The Burchfield Penney Art Center

Let me say that the Burchfield Penney  Center  is devoted to the art of Charles Burchfield who I have written about previously on this blog.  The current exhibitions on view at this venue include groups of crafts people and individuals like the late Bill Stewart who created ceramic figures that have an impact - mixing cartoons with idol worship, so quirky that you have to laugh. 

Bill Keyser

You might want to spend more time with the survey of American crafts that brings you artists like my friend Bill Keyser who spent many years in woodworking and in this instance brings the audience a stripped down edgy piece that has a minimalist aesthetic.   Having just seen a show of paintings and drawings by Elizabeth Murray, I was surprised to see the wall mounted sculptures by Paul Brandwein.  His constructions seemed to cross what Elizabeth had pioneered with an almost scientific composition that seemed to symbolize something familiar that might appear in a dream.  And around the corner was a very large work that has the look and impact of a  window in a cathedral  topped off with a grand butterfly. 

Paul Brandwein

Big Butterfly

Christine and Paul Knoblauch have created a beautiful and delicate kind of gate (“Heaven’s Sake”) that has a decorative quality and as an installation is quite unique. There are birds and flowers in the  composition and intricate metal work in this substantial piece.  I can’t imagine how many hours were spent trying to get the forms of all these things just right!

Christine and Paul Knoblauch

Upstairs there were a number of small paintings made “At the Water’s Edge”  by Mildred C. Green ( 1874-1951).  Mildred found her specialty with the steam boats on the Great Lakes and she was a stickler for detail!  Some of her paintings remind me of Edward Hopper and his keen eye and I really enjoy the compositions that are found in this show.

Mildred C. Green ( 1874-1951 )

Joseph Piccillo

Joseph Piccillo is an artist who works with charcoal, and looking at the large scale drawings in his room, I am attracted to his big horse and the portraits hanging alongside.  I was wondering how he got the smooth effects using charcoal – it was like the values were rubbed on, or built up very slowly, the drawings had quite an effect.

Back In Town

 

Elizabeth Murray at University of Buffalo Anderson Gallery

Buffalo, New York

thru October 3, 2021

I met her coming off the airplane at the airport in Rochester, New York, and promptly drove Elizabeth Murray over to meet with my students at Rochester Institute of Technology.  The year was 2002.  Just a few weeks earlier she had been close at hand in her studio in lower Manhattan to witness the crashes and catastrophe of 9/11.  I wondered how those days might have affected her and influenced her thinking and her artwork.  We talked about this in the car as we approached R.I.T.

Elizabeth Murray visiting my painting class at R.I.T. in 2002

Now, almost twenty years later, one could get a better picture of how Elizabeth's art had changed when viewing the show " Back in Town" that is on for the rest of this month in Buffalo, N.Y.  The artist has passed on but her artwork survives, and this show mounted at the University of Buffalo Anderson Gallery is powerful and allows one to evaluate her influence on artists since her heyday in the later part of the 20th century.

Elizabeth Murray's early work at U of B Anderson Gallery

I thought of our conversation about 9/11 when I was visiting  the Anderson Gallery and caught sight of the toppling of the Empire State Building in her early work on exhibit.  She must have had a premonition of some sort!  In this present show there are several of her earliest works that mix a kind of cartoon style with textures and nervous colors like you see here ( above ).

"Back in Town" harkens back to a period in Elizabeth Murray's career when she was a teacher in Buffalo and was just setting out her subjects and her materials.  She only stayed in Buffalo two short years and then it was on to the Big Apple!

"Flying Bye" oil on canvas by Elizabeth Murray,  1982

I had been following her work since I first found it in the early 1970s at the Paula Cooper Gallery in SoHo in lower Manhattan.  Elizabeth took her interest in abstraction and married that to imagery taken from comic books and symbolism. Ingenuity  in form and color, Elizabeth Murray's art took painting and moved it closer to a sculptural presence.

"Sandpaper Fate", oil on canvas, 1992-93

This show is on until October 3rd, 2021 and it covers the two floors of the Anderson Gallery with artwork that runs through a robust period of nearly thirty years, with drawings and prints right up to her last paintings.  If you haven't seen this show - DON"T Miss It!  I thank the curators and the family trust that holds many of these works.  I am inspired by the energy Elizabeth brought to her task, and one can follow along with her development through the inclusion of drawings for this painting above called: "Sandpaper Fate".

This artwork indeed must have gone through many stages.  Just developing the stretchers for her paintings is a challenge for a carpenter because the edges curl around giving this painting a real dimensional form that juts off the wall.

"Riverbank", oil on canvas , 1997 in the collection of The Albright Knox 

In Murray's art there is an active sense of humor and movement as maybe a coffee cup spills over, or  a face that looks like crinkled lettuce has a word or two to say.  This is an interesting engagement  that Elizabeth Murray has with her audience, she is always giving you a zetz.

Bill Alley, lithograph in several parts by Elizabeth Murray

Upstairs, at the U of B  Anderson Gallery, there is a survey of Elizabeth's artwork in printmaking.  Here the visitor is greeted with a lithograph that really circles back to the comics - trying to tell a story using form and color linked to shapes that may have a symbolic resonance.  Many of the prints on view here relate rounded shapes that can serve as suggestions for paintings that would arrive later in her life.

When I brought Elizabeth to  speak to students back in 2002, I did not know then that she had health struggles, and I also did not know that she would be given a full scale retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 2005, just a couple of years before her death.  At least she got to participate then and I expect that her art will have greater impact on viewers as the years go by...she was a true master, and this show gives us a chance to watch her development - and see how she broke the rules and made paintings her way!