Art Beat – Art Today in All Its Inclusiveness

– By Mary Brennan Gerster –

There was a time when the art world was ruled by the academy. It defined what was acceptable and which art was worthy of purchase and acclaim. Over time, artists rebelled against the restraints imposed upon them by others. First Turner and Goya, and later the Impressionists and the iconoclasts who showed their work in the 1913 Armory Show, expanded artists’ horizons.
Today just about every medium and style is represented in galleries and contemporary museums. Sculptures created from every material imaginable (or unimaginable), prints combining multiple images with an array of techniques and video and computer art have expanded the landscape. The 183rd Annual Exhibition of the National Academy in its stately Fifth Avenue townhouse is all about inclusion, not exclusion.
And what a wealth it includes! While the Whitney Biennial garners the best press (if not necessarily the best work), this show, instead of settling for the sensational or shocking, generates real excitement and optimism.
Brenda Garand’s Kamouraska (2007), a wall sculpture created with felt roofing paper and steel, cascades from the wall like the icicles you see frozen on rocks along the highway in winter. I had my 8-year-old granddaughter Grace Lane with me and she saw, in this one, the ice witch from Narnia.
Sungmi Lee has literally made art from smoke and mirrors, capturing incense smoke between four-foot layers of Plexiglas in Evanescence (2007).
Fourth of July (2007), an oil by Laura Newman, creates a sense of sound and motion in paint. Brush strokes of primary colors rush across a ground of cobalt blue and your eyes move beyond the edges of the canvas and back again. Newman says of her work, “I would like to paint air, but in order to paint air, I need to paint things in it.”
An abstract canvas by Eve Olitski, Warm Enfold (2008), has a river of bright yellow bleeding into an earthy Kelly green with a large expanse of ultramarine blue. A landscape at its core, Grace said it evoked Vermont for her. And then there’s Ken Beck’s Vermont (2005), with what may be an old milking jug encrusted with moss and woodland debris. Myriad shades of green and mushroom have such a strong sense of being in the deep woods that one smells it here on Fifth Avenue.
In the print arena, Nancy Lasar combines etching and aquatint in After Midnight with Van Dyke (2007). Unknown flowers and fauna and insects seem to grow and flutter before you. It is absolutely enchanting.
Hunter McKee has painted Underwood 11 (2008) in the rich, painterly style of the old masters. For anyone under the age of 30, the image may need explanation. Also in the representational style is Marilyn Perry’s Seafoam (2007), an acrylic capturing a small piece of the roiling ocean. You feel you can dip your hand directly into the foam and turquoise water before you.
A watercolor by Lee Marshall, Mountain Joy (2006), is a mound of intertwining cells emerging from horizontal layers of rich color. She says, “I paint from an internal motif, like a mountain in bloom.”
In Untitled, a 2004 oil by Loretta Dunkleman, the lush, sensual layering of warm colors is reminiscent of Rothko or Frankenthaler, with a sense of the figure as in deKooning or Matisse’s Jazz works. My granddaughter liked this one and interpreted four female forms within the mass of color.
I close with Floating World (2008) by Yuriko Yamaguchi, located in an alcove on the main floor. To have this piece would be to harness the magic of light dancing on water. Created with resin, bits of computer components and wire of brass, copper and stainless steel, she has created an ethereal environment suspended within the real world. She states, “I hope to maintain the openness to nature and a keen awareness of the way in which organic forms impact our lives both obviously and subliminally.” Grace and I had to tear ourselves away from the magic.
This exhibition, the perfect size for children, teenagers and skeptics of modern art, continues through September 7. The museum also has a delightful gift shop. The National Academy Museum is located at Fifth Avenue and 90th Street. For further information, call 212-369 -4880 or visit www.nationalacademy.org.