Category Archives: artist

Seth Price at Reena Spaulings Fine Art

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Art’s commercial aptitude was apparent last night in the unlikeliest of places—my block. I’ve written about the spread of gallery hopping in Manhattan, but it’s officially reached the last stop of the F train in Manhattan. Seth Price had an opening at Reena Spaulings Fine Art last night. I googled the location, 165 East Broadway. I knew the google map was wrong because there was nothing on the block it showed but a Chinese restaurant.

How wrong was I, I discovered when I climbed the old stairs after a crowd of mid-20s folks who seemed to know where they were going. The floor above the Chinese restaurant is Reena Spaulings Fine Art. Instead of 4 people milling about, there were over 40 drinking, smoking and chatting around—oh yes—the art.

Sitting around the corner from said gallery now, having coffee, watching Chinese people practice New Years dances in the park across the way, the scene of the neighborhood just gets better now that I can include galleries. I understand why Renee Spauling and the LaViolaBanks Gallery, also on East Broadway, are here. The spaces are enormous. There are many tiny gallery spaces in the area immediately north of here, but these are massive. Based off last night, I’d say they draw a good crowd.

But where was art’s commercial potential last night? That takes us back to the art; Seth Price’s works are so polished and intelligent they might sell themselves even in this market.


Stressing the importance of dates, Price has created a series of calendar pieces where he has painted older paintings in a square in the top of a canvas and a calendar locating them in time along the bottom. For me, works like the one featured above, where molded objects or faces break through a flat, plasticine surface were less explicit and more appealing. I didn’t stay for the video, which I suspect was the best part.

American Populists: Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell

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Andrew Wyeth, Benny’s Scarecrow

The painter Andrew Wyeth died last Friday. In a way, he was a most unpopular populist. As the New York Times describes here, his main value to most art historians was that he provided an alternative to Modernism in the 1940s and 50s. Not quite high praise. The American public, the part that didn’t go in for Modernism, tended to be much fonder of Wyeth’s realistic images.

His form of realism seems to be what endears him to the common man, placing him in the class of Americana with Norman Rockwell. A spiritual opposite of Norman Rockwell, however, his negativity and earthiness depict another side of America’s identity. His subject matter is rural and humble; his style accessible, that is to say, it looks like real objects. His excellently composed scenes have an almost magical realism, but ultimately, I find them a little dull.

Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s Field

His most famous painting, above, is of a woman in his community who was crippled and pulled herself through fields rather than use a wheelchair. Wyeth admired her independence and determination. In this and much of his work, he overlays the American landscape with foreboding atmosphere and Puritanical ethos. Whereas Wyeth seems like the last of the Puritans, Rockwell’s work shows a New American optimism.

Norman Rockwell, The Roadblock

Is it fair to say Wyeth represents an older, Puritan ethos and Rockwell represents the exuberant America coming out of WWII?

Who is more American?

Reflections of Mylar

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Here we have me, Iphone photo taker extraordinaire, taking photo of Josephine Meckseper’s photograph on view at MoMA, with reflection of other huge print on facing wall.

Call me conceited, but I think it does more justice to the size and quality of her work than the MoMA’s exhibition images. She prints on mylar, which gives a viewer/viewee quality in its reflections of dull images of consumerism from a typical 1970s German catalog. Her work seems a little dated to me, both in the images she choose (quite purposefully dated on that account) and in the themes of consumerism, societal construct, and advertising effects on how we view ourselves.

MoMA is showcasing her work along with another photographers as noteworthy of 2008. Ah how quickly we pick favorites from the old year and move in. And I’m not over 2007 yet.