Arthur Secunda

• 

  print August 1963

  John Bernhardt (1921–1963)

  THROUGHOUT HIS RICHLY CREATIVE LIFE, John Bernhardt sought out the “bones” and the “skeletons” of all things, whether they had to do with people, paint, machines, ideas, or his own complex relationship to his environment. In the still hour of the night, when most people are too tired to think, he pondered heav­ily on the nature of things, their reality and their meaning. He never stopped marvelling at life, probing beneath the skim of superficial acceptability and appearances. His intellectual curiosity was as insa­tiable as it was perceptive; and he had no false illu­sions about his profound

• 

  print May 1963

  Rico Lebrun, An Interview

  Q: I want to talk to you about how you feel living here—why did you come back from Italy this last trip? How did you feel in Yale? Why are you here and do you feel part of the California scene?

  Lebrun: Things were difficult at Yale—too much snow, and too much Josef Albers. To have him a visiting critic in my classes turned out to be an unfair situation of which I had not been warned when I accepted the assignment, mostly because of the havoc it raised with the pupils. Surprisingly enough for a man of such aloof ideas in painting, on this particular occasion he behaved like a general in the Prussian

• 

  print May 1963

  Aage Pedersen

  This Danish-American artist seems to have woven rather than drawn or printed his mysteriously organic black and white monoprints. He is a surrealist in sheep’s clothing, crucifying a doilied Jesus on a candy-box valentine cross of old lace. His work records evidence of the patterns in a clock, an apron, a flower, a tablecloth; the voluptuous allegory, in fact, of almost anything that has an actual or implied decorative order. Pedersen’s subject matter is created from the imagery inherent in humble decorative folk patterns (common objects).

  “A pattern is a thing,” says the dictionary, “so ideal

• 

  print March 1963

  Group Show

  Though this mixed-media group exhibition of Polish and Russian works ranging from the late 19th century through contemporary times is of uneven quality, several examples stand out notably. Among them are genre paintings from the School of Repin and by N. Grandkowski executed around the turn of the century, the cubist and impressionist paintings of E. Reinhold and J. Eckert, and the loose watercolors of W. Zych and F. Polec. By far the most interesting to the contemporary eye is the “art brut” nonfigurative work of Wanda Paklikowska-Winnicka. Painted in rich impasto relief, Miss P-Winnicka’s

• 

  print March 1963

  Group Show

  The dark, wistful black and white landscape of Jack Simcock, the strange, carefully glazed still-lifes of Yves Ganne, and the vibrant expressionist oils of Christian Title, easily stand out as the most interesting works in an exhibition of better than average quality for this gallery.

  —Arthur Secunda

• 

  print March 1963

  Group Show

  Not much logic or meaning or consistency of performance in this exhibit of works by Max Band, Jorgen Hansen, Ruth Erlich, Ted Gilian, Al Wien, James McMennamin, Marc du Plantier and Alice Asmar, but a surprising number of serious essays are nevertheless present. More careful and sensitive planning and editing in the selection of the show would have made it one of more memorable substance.

• 

  print March 1963

  Group Show

  Featuring a half-dozen or so artists of ordinary talent, the work of Paul Jasmin is emphasized in this exhibition of popular tastes. Jasmin is fun, decorative, tightly detailed, figure-illustrationful, ingratiating, and harmless.

  —Arthur Secunda

• 

  print February 1963

  James Hueter

  The drawings and bronze and clay sculpture of this sensitive artist are concerned with the elusive aspects of figure imagery, such as the drama inherent in the subtle turn of a torso, a poignant gesture, and the elemental movements of limbs rising or tilting. There is an electrical sensuousness in the surface textures of his figures which displays a tremendous formal discipline. Hueter’s attitude is, in turn, classical and romantic. Without being eclectic, his sculpture strangely combines the grace of, say, Nadelman, with that of Giacometti, producing evocative and mystical images of serenity

• 

  print December 1962/January 1963

  Group Exhibition

  Featuring paintings by Ray Campbell, Jonathan Scott, Alexander Nepote, Burr Singer, Aimee Bourdieu and Mabel Al­varez, this small group show offers sev­eral choice examples within the modest but perfectly valid confines of the gal­lery’s conservative penchant. Two paint­ings are of particular note: Nepote’s vigorous early seascape, executed with broad, sure strokes and cool, singing colors, and Miss Alvarez’s rich bouquet­like genre entitled Flower-sellers, iri­descent in its refined sumptuousness and subtle glow.

• 

  print November 1962

  “Latin America—New Departures”

  This is a traveling exhibition of eleven painters sponsored by the Institute of Contemporary Art of Boston, and Time, Inc., and was organized by Thomas M. Messer, then Director of the Institute, and present director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. As Messer points out in the accompanying catalog, any attempt to objectively sum up in a single exhibit the paintings of such an extensive region as Latin America is an impossibility; therefore one must regard the selection as a highly personal one. Taken in its totality Messer’s choice reveals his perceptive catholicity of taste, his sophisticated

• 

  print November 1962

  “Some Aspects of Surrealism”

  Surrealism is based upon the dream, the irrational and the fantastic. Nevertheless, the most striking common feature of the artists represented in this modest but significant exhibition, is neo-romanticism. Further, from the vantage point of 1962, the purported literal illogicality of objects represented together in one context no longer appears either as illogical or as important as it must have decades ago. DeChirico’s Il Trovatore is as solid as a Mantegna and as Classic as a David; Picabia’s extraordinarily emotional Personnages could be mistaken for an important pre-World War I Kandinsky;

• 

  print November 1962

  John Coleman

  Coleman’s allegorical figure studies, executed in watercolors, are somewhat reminiscent of Max Weber’s Chassidic paintings (albeit, locked in the cubist architecture of John Marin). The scale is large for the medium, and Coleman’s color is pale, greyish, and tonally chromatic rather than dynamic. His pen and ink drawings fare somewhat better, being less pretentious. If there is an individual stamp in these works, it is in the prismatic form that reflected light takes, while imposing itself onto the more or less naturalistic figures in genre settings. Studio after Dark is among the most successful.