September 9, 2024
The weekend brought several art fairs to town and the Gazette checked out two of them. All the way downtown, at the very foot of this island, Independent 20th Century once again settled into the majestic Cipriani South Street site next to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Walking into this amazing building and up the grand staircase inside, one leaves behind the noisy hubbub of Lower Manhattan and enters a serene space full of fine art from the last century. In addition to famous artists including Picasso and Raoul Dufy, the Independent offered visitors an opportunity to see others, perhaps for the first time.
The landmark Battery Maritime Building/Casa Cipriani.
One of them was Stuart Davis, an American artist whose work featured the people and places that, according to a flyer from Alexandre Gallery, “polite society wished to ignore: one which freely acknowledged the presence of poverty and vice within a setting of decayed grandeur.”
Stuart Davis, Babette (Burlesque), 1912
John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres began making life casts of people in their South Bronx community in the late 1970s. Their subjects were neither famous nor wealthy, simply working class Black and Latinx people who’d been historically overlooked in American visual culture, according to a card from Salon 94. The plaster casts highlight the dignity, reverence, and sometimes humor of their subjects, the card states. As the subjects were immobile during the casting process, a high level of trust is implicit in the work. Initially, Ahearn said, he thought of it “as like a Polaroid. Very present, very direct and quick.”
Ahearn and Torres: three plaster casts.
Ippodo Gallery presented rare works created using traditional Japanese methods and materials. The image atop this post features a thousand year old back painting method, Urazaishiki, that uses gemstone pigments and layers of silk and paper. The cast net in the painting, Firework Aqua – Eternal Moment by Masaaki Miyasako, signifies auspicious beginnings and is intended to bring good luck, according to the gallery.
A pair of Glass Objects by Kota Arinaga.
What can you even say about Pablo Picasso? He was so prolific that even half a Century since his passing you can still come across works of his that you’ve never seen before. At the Independent there were a dozen and a half of them presented by John Szoke Gallery.
Some of Pablo Picasso’s Muses.
A little bit North of the Battery, on Pier 36, Art on Paper once again presented an enormous sampling of works that were related by the shared medium of paper if nothing else. The show ran the gamut from little things you could pick up with your fingers to big ones you could literally walk through. In between were paintings, drawing, scultures, collages and photographs that came in all sizes as well.
Artist Rick Midler creates amazing art using a scissors, glue sticks and paper. The finished pieces evoke collage, jigsaw puzzles, and oddly, Tibetian art at least to one viewer. The Gazette enjoyed chatting with Rick and we hope to follow up soon with a deeper dive where Rick can tell us about his process and his art. The short video above shows him assembling one of his artworks.
Rick Midler at Art on Paper, Pier 36, NYC.
