print Summer 1980

Robert Barry

What happens when a de-materialist decides to go materialist? In the case of Robert Barry, fireworks! He executed a large (125 by 196^3/4 inches) untitled painting in flat red latex directly on the side wall of the gallery’s inner office, a semi-public space. While relating in type to traditional mural painting and in size to really big paintings done by the really big boys in the ’50s and ’60s in sensibility, this work is clearly at home with the conceptual/dematerialized fare for which Barry is justly celebrated. In fact, Barry succeeds both in conceptualizing and dematerializing the form of

print Summer 1980

Charles Biederman

This retrospective is the first one-person show which American artist Charles Biederman has had in New York in a number of years. Although Biederman spent some time here in the ’30s, he has preferred to live in a place called Red Wing, Minnesota, since 1942. Still, he has never been isolated, having acquired a considerable European following over the years. In England, he is regarded by artists like Victor Pasmore, Kenneth and Mary Martin, Gillian Wise, and Anthony Hill as a primary influence on them, and they share the important Constructivist tendency in post-World War II British art. In 1969,

books May 1980

Lisette Model: An Aperture Monograph

LISETTE MODEL IS SURELY photography’s Greta Garbo, a living legend surrounded by an aura of mystery. Interestingly, Model’s mystery is maintained even in this, the first major book of her photographs. The book is physically stunning—a deluxe 12- by 15-inch format contains 52 large prints—spanning the greater part of her career from the late 1930s to the early 1970s. It is the most complete view we have had of Model’s distinctive way of seeing. The photographs are accompanied by a chronology of Model’s life and career, a bibliography of articles about and shows by Model, and a brief introduction

print May 1980

Kim MacConnel

Kim MacConnel is one of the best and most interesting painters among the young decorative and color painters. He is also the one who is discussed often and favorably in relation to Matisse. He paints bold and big on fabric prints, taking his imagery from nature and nostalgia, the latter including vintage American mass-cultural icons from the ’40s through the ’60s. He paints in acrylics and metals; stitches vertical strips of painted fabrics together to generate individual works; leaves the bottoms uneven and unhemmed; and, finally, hangs these paintings unframed. Except for the common interest

print May 1980

Pat Steir

The title of Pat Steir’s new show is “Rembrandt’s Hairline” which clues us into the ironic side of these meditative and critical paintings about painting, and accounts, in no small way, for their fascination. In a series of four large diptychs (70 by 144 inches), Steir directs us to the 20th-century realm of the gestural, where abstract markings carry the authority of words and bear the same basic messages about art and life traditionally reserved for representational forms, like those of Rembrandt’s. The diptychs all have the same format, two equal-size canvases (70 inches square), each with

print April 1980

Rudolph Baranik

Rudolph Baranik’s new paintings, Words, deal with the relationship of writing to painting. In each large rectangular canvas—Words #1 is 70 by 55 inches—there are lines of words cramped in a register-like format which covers almost the entire upper surface not quite out to the edges; remaining areas including spaces between words are black. The words immediately draw us to the paintings. We respond to Baranik’s words on canvas in the same way as we do to words on pages, by wanting to read them, by wanting to understand them, by wanting—in other words—to get the message! Baranik is an artist who

print April 1980

Liliana Porter

Liliana Porter has been making art directly on walls since 1971. Her mastery of this genre is strikingly revealed in Wall Piece, where she is dealing with the interconnection of memory and reality, using both content and form of images as means. Mostly representational and highly associative, the images fall into two main categories—art and time. In the first category there are, for example, what Porter has called “recycled images” like a Botticelli head and Magritte men with top coats and bowler hats, and there are images of the pyramid (an ancient form) and the cylinder and the sphere, (two

print April 1980

Patricia Caire

Patricia Caire paints black silhouettes on large rectangular sheets of translucent acetate. The imagery revolves around a gun-toting hunter, an image which has concerned the young French artist since her arrival in New York a few years ago. The hunter is the star of an exciting visual drama in which silhouettes, suspended from the ceiling by metal holders, are arranged in maze-like passages to evoke an ambiguous narrative structure in which directions and light are all important. Caire is very interested in image as surface, as material, and as space. In addition to paintings, she works with

print April 1980

“Annual Juried Exhibition 80”

The one rule for submission to this “Annual Juried Exhibition 80” was that the artists reside within the geographical boundaries of Queens County. I will now explain the significance of this to readers unfamiliar with the geography of New York. Although New York City is composed of five boroughs, there is only one main center for art and culture—Manhattan. The other boroughs, Queens being one, have traditionally suffered from various art/cultural inferiority complexes vis-à-vis Manhattan. But the situation changed some in the last decade or so. The combination of radically rising rents and

Ronny H. Cohen