When I visit someone’s home I am drawn inevitably towards their bookshelf. You can always learn something about a person by the books they read. The idea of creating a portrait through books, or to be precise, through the covers of books that someone has read is the central conceit behind the seminal project by R.B. Kitaj entitled, “In Our Time: Covers for a Small Library After the Life for the Most Part.” It is a portfolio of 50 screen-prints produced in 1969, 33 of which are currently on display in “R.B. Kitaj: Personal Library”at The Jewish Museum.

Kitaj was an artist full of big ideas. He was an early British pop artist, working at the same time as David Hockney and Richard Hamilton. While Kitaj was primarily a figurative artist this specific project would later be seen as a sort of bridge from the 60’s into the era of 70’s conceptual art. While often sensual and emotional, Kitaj’s work was always overflowing with intellectual questions and riddles. The notion that a person is the sum total of the books they’ve read, the information they’ve taken in, and by extension the choices they’ve made, turns this set of prints into an artistic mystery game.

What are we to make of the man who has chosen to read both The City of Burbank Annual report for 1968/9 and the collected Articles and Pamphlets of Maxim Gorky, Coming of Age in Samoa and a textbook entitled The Wording of Police Charges? Hints are dropped  by the inclusion of The Jewish  Question and The Tower by W.B. Yeats. As you walk through the show each book adds another set of clues about the nature of the man portrayed. It is a fascinating and totally successful game; except for the fact that the curators have chosen only 33 of the 50 available images. One wonders why and how the choices were made of what to show and what to omit Pieces of the portrait are missing.

The project consists of large screen-prints based on photographically enlarged images of the book covers, bindings and dust jackets. Viewing the worn and torn edges of these mostly pre-World War Two editions, we see the history of Kitaj’s relationship with these books and the beauty that age and handling has added to their already luscious old-world book design. The enlarged discolorations, delicate scuff marks, and deep elegant colors force you to focus on how beautiful books used to be. By enlarging the scale of the book covers Kitaj has re-contextualized them as objects that carry the full weight of their original intent along with the bemused hipster coolness of Pop art. The mundane becomes precious.

The one jarring note to what is a strangely moving and beautiful show is a lackluster installation. The prints are hung on a dingy pale blue wall that feels institutional, making the room seem dull. One thing we know is that the man portrayed by “In Our Time” was anything but dull.

“R.B. Kitaj: Personal Library” runs through August 11 at The Jewish Museum. 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St.

What do you think passes through someone’s mind as they dash though Grand Central Station? I would wager that the most common thought is something along the lines of  “What time does my train leave?” or “Will I be on time?” Time is the driving force behind any working train station. And “time” is a precious commodity in New York City, where we move fast and the past is quickly overtaken by the present. How apt it is that curator Amy Hausman has titled her lyrical and compelling exhibition “On Time/Grand Central at 100,” tying the underlying constructs of speed and travel with the centennial celebration of Grand Central Station. This group exhibition is presented in conjunction with the New York Transit Museum at the New York Transit Museum branch in the station.
Showing mixed-media work of 17 artists and one poet, this is an exquisitely curated show. Approximately half of the pieces were commissioned for the exhibition, including a poem by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Time is not a new concept for artists to explore, but in this show time is related to the great building that has both withstood the wrecking ball of New York City “progress” and every day serves as a conduit for living. Grand Central Station has become an iconic and romantic symbol of the past, an architectural ode to New York as it once was. It is also a very busy and entirely contemporary train station. This elegant and emotional exhibition captures the complexities and beauty of these two facts.
It is fitting that video plays a large role in this show and Improv Everywhere has two videos on view. One documents their infamous performance piece where 200 people “froze” motionless in the Grand Hall of the station for five minutes, which captures the reactions of commuters and tourists. The second video documents a commissioned “prank” staged on February 1, 2013 to commemorate the anniversary of the station. It involves blinking lights, camera flashes and the delighted responses of hundreds of people who just happened to be passing though the station at that magic moment. The unfettered joy of being in the right place at the right time. Both pieces portray Grand Central Station as a giant and benevolent performance space.
Jim Campbell and Ian Dicke use the tools available in digital filming to capture and play with the image of masses of people who pass through the station each day, slowing and quickening their movements to create visual poetry.
Mid-century photographer Paul Himmel contributes what I believe are the most poetic and thoughtful comments in the show with two vintage black and white photos that capture a moment of stillness amidst the mad dash of humanity.
Illustrators Sophie Blackall and Peter Sis’s work will be instantly recognizable to any subway rider. They focus their gentle view of the world on the architecture of the station itself. Sis portrays Jacqueline Onassis as literally the guardian angel of Grand Central Station, and Blackwell shows our ongoing fascination with the mythological world portrayed on the station ceiling.
The punch line is that this is an exhibition that asks us to stop and look around as we run frantically through Grand Central Station. Maybe even take a later train.
“OnTime/Grand Central at 100” runs through July 7, 2013 at the New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex in Grand Central Terminal. For more information: www.mta.info/art.

A beloved and valuable Upper East Side public artwork by renowned sculptor Louise Nevelson has had a near-death experience. The sculpture, entitled Night Presence lV, located at 92nd Street and Park Avenue, suffered years of neglect and physical decay before a consortium of concerned neighbors and city officials stepped in to fund its repair and preservation. The public-private partnership has not only salvaged an important mid-century artwork, it has cast light on the fate of an array of older New York public artworks in urgent need of attention.
“This project has given us greater insight into the complex preservation needs of our contemporary artworks” throughout the city, said Jonathan Kuhn, Director of Arts and Antiquities for the NYC Parks Department.
In a city of sometimes costly public art, Louise Nevelson’s Night Presence lV was both a gift and something of a love letter. Nevelson adored New York City. Raised in Brooklyn and then Maine, she moved back to the city in the 1930s. Much of her important art education was here, at the Art Students League and the studios of various mentors. She became an iconic figure in the 1950s and 60s social and art scene – exotic, famous and a fierce New Yorker. In 1972, in a gesture of love for her adopted city and to commemorate fifty years of working here, Nevelson gifted a 22-foot high by 13-foot deep sculpture to New York City. Night Presence lV was fabricated out of Cor-ten steel, and stood for over thirty years on the divider at Park Avenue and 92nd Street. Rusting gracefully, as Cor-ten is supposed to do, the work became a landmark of the Upper East Side.
The Parks Department’s Kuhn recounts that the sculpture was inspected almost every year, as are dozens of public art works. From 2003 to 2008 the department noticed substantial changes in the steel. The sculpture was found to be suffering from a dangerous degree of deterioration. Years of weather and water had caused parts of the sculpture to dissolve into rust, and entire sections of the monumental piece were in danger of falling off. Kuhn reports that much of the public sculpture from the 1970s, made fro Cor-ten steel has suffered from weather damage, but the Nevelson’s was in particularly bad condition. The Citywide Monuments Conservation Program (CMCP), an award-winning public/private initiative of NYC Parks & Recreation, prepared a restoration plan and presented it to the Public Design Commission. They also began to fundraise to support the projected cost of the project. After careful consideration an additional $140,000 to the original budget was deemed necessary for the restoration. Through the generosity of New Yorkers, many of whom live in the immediate neighborhood, the partnership has to date raised about $120,000 of private donations.
Though shy of the targeted funding goal, the sculpture was dismantled in 2011 and taken to a warehouse for substantial restoration and retrofitting. In consultation with Lippincott Steel (the original manufacturer) and a score of conservation and museum experts the sculpture is being re-welded and reinforced. Stainless steel infrastructure is being added, as well as a drainage system to allow the sculpture to shed the water, rather than fill up like a bathtub as in the past. It is a huge and complicated undertaking. In addition to the internal structural changes and remaking of many steel panels, months of both artificial and natural “weathering” will be required in order for the new steel to take on the patina of the old.
Kuhn hopes fervently that they can finish raising the approximately $25,000 required to finish the project and to bring Night Presence lV back home on the Upper East Side by late spring of this year. It will be a joyful return of a stunning New York neighbor.

For more information on CMCP and their programs, including the status of the Nevelson restoration, please visit their website- http://www.nycgovparks.org/art-and-antiquities/permanent-art-and-monuments/conservation

Irony is one the most overused conceits in contemporary art. So much so that the term “ironic hipster” has become part of our current lexicon. I’m tired of ironic hipster art, minimal drawings coupled with what are meant to be pearls of wisdom encapsulated in a tagline.  The current show of vintage William Wegman drawings and videos at Salon 94 Freemans, Drawings for a Better Tomorrow and a Worse Yesterday, reminds us that there was a time when irony in visual art was a fresh and delightful concept. Wegman’s quirky view of the world holds up to the test of time and shows just how meaningful a few well-drawn lines and well-chosen words can be when crafted by the right hands.

Most of these drawings and videos are from the 1970s, when William Wegman was a shaggy-haired guy who always schlepped a dog around with him. I met him when I was a freshman in college. He showed up to my class (dog in tow) and spoke on a relatively new art form for the time: video. He was lovely, self-deprecating and, above all, generous to students. That spirit of generosity has always come through in Wegman’s art. An attitude of inclusiveness is ever-present throughout his body of work. Wegman respects and invites the viewer, rather than carrying on with a sense that “there’s a joke here, and you’re not cool enough to get it,” an attitude that is pervasive among some of his hipster successors.

Several of the standout drawings in the show are so slight that it takes a good second look to see how deceptively complicated they really are. To describe them and give away the punchline would be to do the work a  disservice. It’s that momentary collaboration with the viewer by which a simple drawing and a few words combine in a flash of delight and recognition. A smattering of drawings from the 1980s are included, and it is evident that Wegman continues to view the world with a bemused intelligence that shows no sign of wearing thin.

In the videos we get to re-meet the soulful Weimaraner Man Ray, a dog with a face so expressive he could have been a silent movie star. Wegman sets up the most absurd situations: The artist chiding Man Ray about the dog’s spelling errors, Man Ray in bed with an alarm clock. Somehow, through the gentle art of irony, he makes those encounters both hilarious and poignant.

This exhibition is a refuge from the jaded contemporary art scene. See it and remember another era in the art world, one that could genuinely make you smile.
William Wegman, Drawings for a Better Tomorrow and a Worse Yesterday
Through Oct. 20 at Salon 94 Freemans, 1 Freeman Alley. Call 212.529.7400 or visit
www.salon94.com for more information.

Martin Puryear, "Night Watch," 2012.

Martin Puryear’s universe

By Melissa Stern

Martin Puryear is a man on the move. In his current exhibition at McKee Gallery, almost all of the pieces refer in one way or another to an act of movement, whether literal, as in the pieces “The Rest” and “The Load,” which are on wheels, or metaphoric, like the stunning piece “Heaven Three Ways/ Exquisite Corpse ‘Heaven.’” Cast in white bronze, it’s an elegant triad of gestures that moves from earth to sky in one majestic sweep.

This is Puryear’s first exhibition since his huge, traveling retrospective, which hit MoMA in 2007. It reflects both a great evolution in Puryear’s work and the continuing dedication to material, form and fabrication that makes it some of the most powerful contemporary art in America.

For Puryear, everything is in flux; everything moves. From pieces on wheels to pieces on giant rolling timbers, the entire show exudes a sense of physical potential. There are sculptural carts on wagon wheels, sculptures that are paper-thin sheets of Alaskan cedar curving along the walls and a huge field of willow branches that seem to blow in an invisible wind. Without the faintest hint of cliché, these all evoke a feeling of exploration, new lands and new lives. It is a show that to me expresses a great optimism.

As always with Puyear’s work, there is a tie to our cultural past, our history of making objects by hand. This is a critical element, I think, in keeping Puryear’s work so consistently potent, ethereal yet accessible. Beyond its beauty, there is always a connection to the hand that made it, and by extension to the viewer who imagines in him or herself the potential to be the makers of such things.

It’s a show that offers no easy interpretations, no comtempo art-world irony or bratty high concept. The show quietly and powerfully draws you into Puryear’s exquisite universe and leaves you feeling somehow better for the experience.

Martin Puryear: New Sculpture
Through June 29, McKee Gallery, 745 5th Ave., 212-688-5951, mckeegallery.com.

Kidd Yellin Gallery is perched on a dead-end Red Hook street, almost in the river. It’s as “out there” as you can get and still be in New York City. The gallery has put together “The Kings County Biennial,” a huge, 48-artists show, culled from those working throughout Brooklyn.
While there are several noteworthy individual works, the show lacks an over-arching curatorial theme and is a bit of a conceptual mess; there’s a little bit of everything and it feels a wee bit frantic. Each of the artists has one piece in the show, though I felt it would have been a stronger show had there been half as many artists, each represented by more pieces. Still, there were a couple of standouts. Eric Fertman’s elegant sculpture entitled “Tower” is reminiscent of post-war modernism. Constructed of stained oak, it exhibits gorgeous craftsmanship and a feeling for form traveling through space. Similarly simple in appearance is a painting by Alejandro Cardenas. Entitled “Special Forces,” it is a haunting and affecting portrait of a mass of burka-shrouded women rendered as a landscape of staring eyes. It’s a powerful image, at once political and beautiful.

The other piece that impressed me was a video by Meredith James, which demonstrates real narrative and filmmaking skill. A surveillance monitor placed in a ridiculously small office, dating from a past era, and plays a continuous loop of a video about the same office and the security guard tormented by a constantly ringing telephone. Better yet, the monitor is placed in the office set in which the film takes place, providing a physical context that makes the sculpture work on several levels. It’s mysterious, funny and a little twisted—a recipe for great art.

Miles away, on one of the chic streets of Chelsea, one enters another “out there” place, but this by dint of concept rather than location. The Cue Foundation is presenting the New York debut show of David Dunlop. Dunlop, a resident of Iowa City, has been working on his idiosyncratic and very personal vision for over 20 years. Using sculpture, text, found objects, installation and photography, Dunlop lays bare both his life and artistic process. Though university educated, Dunlop is arguably a true outsider artist. The complexity and fully realized nature of the universe he inhabits is completely outside of mainstream art. It is funny, meaningful, provocative and utterly original.

The gallery is hung ceiling to floor with drawings, photographs, altered clothing and homemade calendars. In the center of the space is a big wooden cabin that houses, inside and out every single handmade book the artist has created since the 1970s. Recurrent themes echo throughout the enormous show—Martin Luther King, calendar dates, flags and politics. Dunlop does not have an agenda to pursue with all of these subjects. It’s more like a view inside of one man’s complex mind- obsessive phrases and imagery; the things that a mind latches onto and plays with verbally and figuratively. Operating on several levels, it is a show that deserves a very close look.

All in all, two very interesting ways to end the year.

> The Kings County Biennial
Through Feb. 26, Kidd Yellin Gallery, 133 Imlay St. (at Verona St.), Brooklyn, 917-860-1147.

>David Dunlap
Though Jan. 7, The Cue Foundation, 511 W. 25th St. (bet. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-206-3583.

Something In The Water A fantastical gallery opens on a ho-hum NYU block

The Esopus Creek is a renowned troutfishing stream that flows through the Catskill Mountains into the Ashokan Reservoir, a principle water source for New York City. It is also the name of a non-profit foundation, a magazine and now a gallery that all celebrate the quirky, literate and inspired vision of its founder, Tod Lippy. I have long been a fan of the biannual magazine, each issue of which is an artwork itself, full of the most unexpected objects ever to be found in a magazine.Various issues have contained pages that are dye cut or burned, inserts of strings, plastic or rubber, books within a book, and CDs of music or “found” sounds. Each issue is both printed and hand constructed; how the hell Lippy actually gets the damn things produced is anyone’s guess.

It was with great delight then that I greeted the news that The Esopus Foundation had opened a gallery space in NYC.

Consistent with the Esopus tradition of reveling in the unexpected, the gallery space is in a weird 1980s-era building near the NYU campus, not near any other gallery, not in a neighborhood that’s cool or even un-cool. It sits in the midst of student falafel joints and wannabe dive bars like that glorious found object you discover on trash night.

The current exhibition, Dwight Ripley:

Travel Posters is a perfect component of the Esopus universe.The most glorious, gorgeous drawings that I have seen in a long while have, of course, a fascinating backstory that adds to their mystic.

Dwight Ripley was a major part of the post-war New York cultural scene. He was the financial backer of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery and part of the social circle that included Clement Greenberg and Peggy Guggenheim. His passion, however, was the search and discovery of new and exotic plants. He and his companion Rupert Barney traveled the world for years discovering 74 plant species that now live in the New York Botanical Garden.

After his death in 1973 a trunk was discovered that contained the 13 drawings that comprise this exhibition.They are “travel posters” that chronicle a specific plant-gathering trip through Spain and Portugal in 1962. Drawn in ballpoint pen and luscious colored pencil, they are ostensibly landscapes, but so much more.

Swirling psychedelic puzzle pieces and bold ‘60s graphic design seem both retro and wildly contemporary. Each drawing contains the name of the location written in an idiosyncratic script that weaves in and out of the overall design. But the true madness of the drawings is that hidden as a sort of under painting in each one is the obsessively written Latin names of the plants discovered in each locale.They are giddy with Mediterranean sunshine and color.

Lippy foresees six to eight exhibitions a year. Some will run in tandem with projects in the magazine, others will stand independently. But all will all reflect the deliciously odd, rich world of Esopus. After all, Lippy spends part of each year living on the banks of this namesake creek; maybe it’s something in the water.

> Dwight Ripley:

Travel Posters

Through Oct. 24, Esopus Space, 64 W. 3rd St. #210 (betw. Thompson St. & Laguardia Pl.), 212-473-0919

Heist
Gallery on the Lower East Side is hoping to change that.The Essex
Street gallery has decided to devote its entire summer to shows about
New York City. Entitled “The City’s Summer Heist,” the programming
involves a series of quick hit two-week exhibitions that will alternate
between solo and two-person shows, mounted both inside and outside of
the gallery itself and will include video, photography, performance,
sculpture and painting that all relates to summer in the City. The
summer programming began on June 30 with site-specific video
installations by Liz Magic Laser. The display consists of three
performance-based video and photographic works set in bank vestibules.
She has produced a version of the Bertolt Brecht play Man Equals Man in the vestibule of a Chase bank branch. Man’s relationship to ATM? It will be interesting to see what it all means.

The
second show is a twofer. Tim Hailey and Milton Carter do not explicitly
work together, but the curator has paired them, in a series of events
woven together by their fascination with motorcycle culture and
promises the project will “thrill and shock” gallery viewers (not to
mention the neighbors). Ladies
and Gentlemen, start your engines! Personally, I think Evil Knivel
jumping the fountains at Cesar’s Palace represented the ultimate
motorcycle art, but perhaps Tim and Milton can top it.

Installation
number three is a multimedia and video performance TV show by Jennifer
Sullivan. She will set up what looks like a nutty TV studio in the
gallery and produce a daily program that will star both her and her
artwork. The gallery press release promises “possible disaster.” Heist’s
owner Talia Eisenberg says, “We don’t know exactly what the show
entails because we are giving her full creative reign starting from day
one through the end of the second week.” So far, the gallery
programming seems to promise both thrills and danger. I guess that’s
all part of life here in Sin City. Stay tuned.

The fourth and
most intriguing exhibition is in more traditional-looking media and
depicts radically different visions of the city.Tim Feigenbaum’s
“Trainset Ghetto” will attempt to create a cinematic, hyper-real
miniature environment based on 1980s-era decaying New York City—using
model railroad supplies he has created an empty film set of our town.
Eerie, beautiful lighting gives these pieces a surreal glow. Marissa
Blustones’ large paintings depict a dream-like vacation from the city
that becomes a nightmare. Semi-clothed figures dot a rural landscape
that seems ready to explode upon impact. Lush and colorful, these
scenes are truly terrifying. The moral of the story is never leave the city! It’s a jungle out there.

–
The City’s Summer Heist
Through Aug. 30, Heist Gallery, 27 Essex St. (betw. Hester & Grand Sts.), 212-253-0451; Thurs.-Sun., noon-6, FREE.