Thursday, May 31, 2012

NYC - Day 3

On Tuesday I visited a show at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison. Last year at this time I saw the show "Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L'Amour fou" at Gagosian's Chelsea showroom, and this year it's "Picasso and Françoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953." And what a great show it is, very nicely hung in a bright and spacious venue.
Maternité, by Pablo Picasso
Gilot was only 21 when she met Picasso, forty years her senior. Together they had two children. Gilot was an artist in her own right when they met. Now, at 90, she is still actively painting and living in New York. Her work is shown side-by-side with Picasso's. Often their subjects were the same: the children, domestic life. One wall of his lithographs was particularly fascinating to me, because we had been talking about the idea of a series in my on-line class. These dozen prints, all portraits of Françoise, were each made several days or weeks apart, from the same printing plate. Only the distribution of the ink is changed, and yet the effect is markedly different.

From there I went to the Jewish Museum, to take in a show on Vuillard. I felt that the paintings on display did not represent the best of Vuillard's work, though the show was interesting enough from the point of view of his relationships with dealers and patrons.

Finally, I visited The City Quilter, a quilting store and art quilt gallery on West 25th Street. Featured until June 23 is the work of Lenore Crawford. Two images of her work are shown below. About sixteen of her pieces are on display, ranging in price from about $1500 to $2500. They measured two to three feet in either dimension. Technically, they are fused, raw-edge appliqué, using commercial fabrics, heavy machine quilting, and a minimal amount of paint to enhance shading. Her sense of composition and colour makes her work very special.







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