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Pat Passlof: At the apex of a leap
Pat Passlof, Hawthorne, 1999, oil on linen, 87 x 75 inches
Partially republished In congratulations to the Estate of Pat Passlof being newly represented by Eric Firestone Gallery
Contributed by Jason Andrew to Two Coasts of Paint originally on November 4, 2019
Before the painter Pat Passlof, who died in 2011, would allow me to visit her in her Forsyth Street studio, she insisted that I join her and her Tai chi class held in the park across the street. “Sounds just like my sister!” exclaimed Aileen Passloff (Pat dropped the second “f” early in her career after discovering when signing a painting that she didn’t leave enough room for two), the noted dancer, choreographer and Bard College professor. “She was fiercely demanding about art and about everything else, really.”
It was exciting that the first painting I encountered at her current survey at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation was the very same one that Pat had set aside for a show I curated. Titled Hawthorne and made in 1999, it is a stunning example of her distinctive talent. It’s well-chronicled that she studied with Willem de Kooning and was married to Resnick, and parallels are certainly decipherable in this exhibition. But it was Pat who straddled the canvas and directed the brush. While she was deeply connected to those figures, she was also a frimly independent artist. At last it’s exciting to see a major survey all within an institution that Pat built.
Curated by the venerable Karen Wilkin, the show fills three floors of Foundation. On each floor there is a non-chronological hang mixing the decades and revealing the diverse directions of Passlof’s nearly eighty-year career. For instance, on the first floor, fifty years separate one of the earliest works on view, Gulf (1949) from Hawthorne (1999). For those unfamiliar with Passlof’s work, this discontinuous approach to a survey could prove disorienting, even jarring. I found it liberating. The strategy does require patience. But, as Passlof said, “Painting is inconvenient. It is slow and may require a whole life.”
On the second floor, an untitled painting from 1995 greets us at the top of the stairs. It’s colorful, depicting a period when Passlof recorded dreams and explored myths. The painting features two horses with riders and one lone horse within a gestural landscape built up from bottom to top with painterly yellows, greens, and blues. A bright orange cloud reflects a setting sun. Aileen recently told me that before their father married, he was an officer in the mounted police. “My father rode six horses at once. He could pickup a handkerchief with his teeth – the horses all along galloping.” Aileen didn’t take to riding as Pat did. Perhaps Pat was teasing out an autobiographical lament: she rides with their father and Aileen’s horse waits for her to climb on.
Elizabeth Murray Estate Moves to Gladstone Gallery
The switch from Pace Gallery comes almost 13 years after Murray’s death at 66. “I’ve been thinking about this and dreaming about this for a long time,” Barbara Gladstone said.
Elizabeth Murray’s painting “Bean,” from 1982, exemplifies the artist’s tendency to imbue abstractions with a cartoon-based, expressive style. It also demonstrates her facility with irregularly shaped and multipanel canvases.Credit...The Murray-Holman Family Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Gladstone Gallery
Elizabeth Murray was represented by Pace Gallery for more than two decades. But now, almost 13 years after her death, her estate has chosen Gladstone Gallery to show and sell the pioneering Neo-Expressionist painter’s work. For Barbara Gladstone, the gallery’s owner, including Murray’s work in group shows with more contemporary artists to expand her audience is one of her top priorities. Bolstering Murrays’ international profile is another.
“I’ve been thinking about this and dreaming about this for a long time,” Ms. Gladstone said in an interview on Monday. “I have always admired Elizabeth’s work and thought it was time for it to be seen in a new context.”
The decision was announced on Tuesday.
Murray was among the most important artists to arise in New York during the 1970s, but she is less well-known than some of her counterparts. This is because of, in part, her preference for painting, which was relatively unpopular at the time, and her particular style, which imbued abstractions with a cartoon-based, expressive spirit. Sexism, too, likely played a role: When Neo-Expressionist painting became popular in the 1980s, it was often slightly younger male artists like Julian Schnabel and David Salle who were credited with its emergence.
Despite these challenges, Murray forged a successful and influential career that culminated with a celebrated retrospectiveat the Museum of Modern Art in 2005. Ms. Gladstone cited the effect that Murray has had on painters like Carroll Dunham and Amy Sillman, both of whom are represented by her gallery, as a part of the reason she was keen to add her to the roster. But it’s Murray’s resonance with artists from the most recent generations that Ms. Gladstone is particularly keen on highlighting and exploring further. “I think there’s a lot of what Elizabeth did that’s extremely relevant to lots of things being done today.”
Tworkov Now Represented by Van Doren Waxter
Portrait of Jack Tworkov in front of his painting P73 #3 (in progress), Provincetown, 1973.
Photo: Arnold Newman / © 2020 Arnold Newman Properties / Getty Images
New York, NY — Van Doren Waxter is pleased to announce exclusive representation of the Estate of Jack Tworkov. An artist at the forefront of American painting for seven decades, Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) forged a disciplined aesthetic through techniques, transitions, and variations on compositions that score an artistic career which continues today to be avidly discussed and celebrated—the one constant being Tworkov’s gestural “mark.”
Van Doren Waxter will debut the gallery’s new online viewing space with a signature painting in Tworkov’s oeuvre, Ending (1967-72). This painting has not been exhibited or offered publicly since 1991. The gallery aims to cultivate broader national and international audiences for Tworkov’s art and ideas, while advancing scholarship focused on the artist’s life and work. The announcement follows the artist’s inclusion in Epic Abstraction (2019-2020) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Artistic License (2019) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Pollock e la Scuola di New York (2018) at the Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome, Italy.
An émigré to America from Russian occupied Poland in 1913, Jack Tworkov found refuge in Greenwich Village. His intellect and commitment to abstraction established him as a member of the post-war avant-garde and charter member of the intellectual Eighth Street Club. His was a long search for an abstract, painterly “mark’’ motived by his own conflict with self-portrayal in painting. This reflection fueled a full vigorous embrace and thrust that began in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and grew into a more reductive, meditative, analytic mark by the 1970s and 1980s.
As a painter, Tworkov not only respected traditions of the art historical past, but he knew and was influenced by contemporary music, dance, and poetry. He made lasting friendships with composers John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Stefan Wolpe. Tworkov was close to choreographer Merce Cunningham, poets Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Stanley Kunitz. Painters Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline were well known to him among others from the Eighth Street Club. As a respected teacher, he accepted invitations at institutions across America including American University (1948-51), the legendary Black Mountain College (1952), and most notably the position of Chair at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1963-69) where his students included painters Jennifer Bartlett, Chuck Close, Rackstraw Downes, Brice Marden, William T. Williams, and the sculptor Richard Serra.
Jason Andrew Curates: Woodstock Artists Association & Museum
Fern Apfel, Herb Silander, and Jenny Nelson
Originally published by Art Valley NY
Woodstock Artists Association & Museum | March 7 – TBA, 2020
The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum opened a new exhibition on March 7 titled FOCUS: Fish and Dish—A Fresh Take on Still Life, juried by Jason Andrew. I was fortunate to see this show at WAAM the week after it opened. Unfortunately the opening reception scheduled for Saturday, March 14 was cancelled due to the closure of the museum to prevent the spread of COVID-19. I was particularly interested in this exhibition because the juror Jason Andrew, an independent scholar, curator, and producer, is a legend of the Brooklyn art scene. He’s the co-founder and director of Norte Maar, a non-profit dedicated to encouraging, promoting, and presenting collaborative projects in the arts. Andrew is also a Founding Partner at Artist Estate Studio, LLC, an entity that advocates for the legacy of artists like Jack Tworkov and Elizabeth Murray.
Andrew has a great eye and I was curious to see what he selected for the show. I was happy to see work by Beacon artists Sascha Mallon and Rob Penner, as well as other familiar names. The show includes Fern Apfel, Joan Barker, Sascha Mallon, Jenny Nelson, Rob Penner, Herb Silander, Jeff Starr, Linda Stillman, Wendy Williams, and Mimi Young.
AES Collaborates with Ron Gorchov Studio to Design and Launch a New Website and Social Media
Artist Estate Studio was please to collaborate with the studio of Ron Gorchov in the design and presentation of his website.
Born in Chicago in 1930, Ron Gorchov is an American artist known for his curved surface artworks. The artist helped spearhead the shaped canvas movement with his bowed wooden frames stretched with linen or canvas, bridging sculpture and abstract painting through his unique artistic creations.
Gorchov created his first shaped canvas work in Mark Rothko’s studio. His oil-on-linen paintings pair one or two biomorphic colored shapes against differently colored backgrounds. The patterns of the paintings resemble living organisms, telling the story of the beginning of a certain formative state. These questions of form and existence materialize into works of art through the use of bold brushstrokes, providing chromatic contrasts.
The artist then hangs the work on a shaped canvas stretcher that is at once concave and convex, similar to shields or saddles. The saddle-like canvas replaces the traditional rectangular base, utilizing the curved shape’s ability to catch the viewers’ attention faster than a rectangle. While the paintings themselves play with symmetry and asymmetry, the warped edges of Gorchov’s canvases create new dimensions and depth, disorienting the perception of the audience.
Gorchov’s distinctive and assertive saddle-like stretchers were created in the late 1960s as an alternative to the pervasive Greenbergian formalism of the time, evidenced in the dominance of minimalist sculpture. He belongs to a generation of artists in New York in the 1960s and 70s that includes Frank Stella, Richard Tuttle, Blinky Palermo, and Ellsworth Kelly, who pushed painting to its extreme. Gorchov is unique in his ability to unite form and content while preserving their tensions.
Following a first solo exhibition at New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1960, Gorchov has since exhibited at prominent museums and galleries around the world, including New York: The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, PS1, Queens Museum of Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art; Spain: Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno among other institutions. Gorchov’s recent solo exhibitions include Cheim & Read, New York (’19, ’17, ’12); Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (’14); Maruani Mercier, Brussels (’19, ’18, ’17); Modern Art, London (’19); Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (’18); Thomas Brambilla, Bergamo (’18, ‘15); and Vito Schnabel Projects, New York (’16, ’13, ’08, ‘05).
"Ron Gorchov’s paintings are among the most fully and graciously embodied being made today. They engage our whole bodies from our first encounter with them and sustain this enegement over time. You have to move to see them, and when you move, they come alive. With one’s whole body involved, the mind is also free to move, and does.”
—David Levi Strauss“In Ron Gorchov’s paintings we find the argument that he created for himself is his poetic flight, and within the argument of lightness (his imagery) and weightiness (his structure) there arises his fine balance that truly obscures the differences between form and content. He is painting-in-between.”
—Phong Bui
Jason Andrew Interviewed: Many Ask Artists To Supply Creative Work For Exposure. So Did The Asheville Art Museum
The Asheville Art Museum reopened this past November with "Appalachia Now!" as its marquee exhibition.
Originally published by Blue Ridge Public Radio
Ask any of the 50 artists invited into Asheville Art Museum’s “Appalachia Now!” exhibition and, to a person, they’ll tell you they were honored and elated. Many were motivated to stretch themselves artistically to create what they regard as their most ambitious works.
For good reason. “Appalachia Now!” is the flagship exhibition that reopened the Asheville Art Museum last November and few of the artists had ever experienced exposure on this level. The exhibition closes Feb. 3.
The Asheville Art Museum reopened this past November with "Appalachia Now!" as its marquee exhibition.
But here’s another truth: Even the museum director acknowledges the artists were largely paid with exposure. The museum raised $24 million for its renovation and only distributed stipends of $100 each to the “Appalachia Now!” artists, regardless of whether they simply loaned pieces out of their studios or created major new works at the request of the exhibition’s curator.
The stipend was a thank-you for participating with us on this project. It wasn’t a compensation,” said Pam Myers, who is in her 24th year as the museum’s director. “The intention from the beginning was to open with an exhibition of contemporary artists from the region to support the artists and bring national attention to their work, and I think that’s what we’ve done.”
Artists looking to establish themselves often get requests to perform or otherwise lend their creative skills to conferences, private parties, businesses and assorted projects for the promised payment of exposure. But what does it say about the value of an artist’s work when a city’s leading arts institution does the same?
AES in the Wall Street Journal: You Inherited a Bunch of Papers. Now What?
Archives may hold historical and other value even if the deceased wasn’t famous
Archives may hold historical and other value even if the deceased wasn’t famous
At the end of our lives, we leave behind memories—and lots of paper.
Not just diaries, letters and photographs, but rough drafts, notes, sketchbooks, date books, check books and receipts.
Clearly, the doodles, random jottings and other ephemera that most people leave behind are of no interest to anybody. But that isn’t always the case.
The archives of singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, for one, were purchased in 2011 for $6 million by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. The archive features rare recordings, journals and handwritten lyrics, but also includes contracts, royalty statements, employment and military records, and rent receipts.
That was an exceptional case, of course. But more common are archives of people who, though relatively unknown, made important contributions in a particular field, were important to an institution, or had connections with famous people.
Jason Andrew, founding partner of Artist Estate Studio in New York City, a service offering archive management to artists and estates of artists, poses the example of a painter who never sold any works but who was friends with well-known artists. In such a case, Mr. Andrew says, an archivist or collector focused on those other artists may wish to acquire that person’s papers.
So for people who inherit those kinds of archives, it is worth doing a little investigation to see if they have any commercial value.
DIY art spaces pop up in unexpected spots across the country
Cutting edge art isn’t limited to big cities and large cultural institutions. Creative work can be found across the country in small towns and artist-run spaces, says Jason Andrew, who curated an exhibit on contemporary Appalachian art that just opened at the new Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina, ashevilleart.org. “These are really DIY, do-it-yourself type spaces. You’re right there where all the creative juices are working and flowing.” He shares some favorite spots with Larry Bleiberg for USA Today
Cutting edge art isn’t limited to big cities and large cultural institutions. Creative work can be found across the country in small towns and artist-run spaces, says Jason Andrew, who curated an exhibit on contemporary Appalachian art that just opened at the new Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina, ashevilleart.org. “These are really DIY, do-it-yourself type spaces. You’re right there where all the creative juices are working and flowing.” He shares some favorite spots with Larry Bleiberg for USA TODAY.
Granary Arts, Ephraim, Utah
Art flourishes in remote central Utah thanks to artists based in a historic granary building on the high plains. “It’s in a very exciting space. It’s really in the desert. There’s nothing there,” says Andrew, a Utah native. Founded by two friends, it enriches the community with workshops, musical performances and art installations.
Popps Packing, Hamtramck, Michigan
This group founded by a husband and wife, has brought international artists and quirky shows and events to a neighborhood just north of Detroit. Housed in a former meat-packing plant, it serves a community with immigrants from places like Yemen, Armenia, Turkey and Ukraine, offering a tool-lending library and meeting spaces, along with gallery openings and shows.
Fiendish Plots, Lincoln, Nebraska
From Buddhist paintings made from rose petals to art inspired by workplace immigration raids, this gallery and exhibition space embraces the ephemeral and the contemporary. Run by an artist couple, it also offers workshops, performances, screenings, readings and artist talks.
Collar Works, Troy, New York
Artists have brought new life to a former industrial building in upstate New York. The collective, named for the city’s once-prominent shirt collar factories, got its start mounting pop-ups and shows in empty industrial spaces. It has helped lead the revival of the area, Andrew says, hosting often edgy art installations and theater productions.
Marmot Art Space, Spokane, Washington
Located in the hip Kendall Yards neighborhood, this “white cube” gallery focuses on emerging local artists, but has a polished vibe, Andrew says. It attracts crowds on the first Friday of every month when it opens new exhibits. “The walls are well painted, the lighting will be perfect. It’s a little more sophisticated.”
AES Collaborates with Judy Dolnick Studio to Design and Launch a New Website and Social Media
Artist Estate Studio was please to collaborate with the studio of Judy Dolnick in the first ever design and presentation of her website.
Judy Dolnick (b. 1934) has been working and exhibiting her lush abstract paintings since the late 1950s where, upon her return to Chicago with her art degree from Stanford, she alongside artists Robert Natkin (whom she would marry in 1957), Gerald van de Wiele, and Ann Mattingly opened the Wells Street Gallery, as a reaction to the lack of opportunities for emerging artists to exhibit the expressionistic paintings they were making at the time. With the struggling folk singer Odetta rehearsing upstairs, Dolnick and her crew created what critic Max Kozloff called "an avant-garde exhibition place filled with the most advanced abstractions in town.” The Wells Street Gallery is credited for giving many of the group, including the sculptor John Chamberlain, their first solo exhibition.
Dolnick moved to New York City in 1959 and began exhibiting alongside such seminal abstract artists as Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and Franz Kline at the prestigious Poindexter Gallery. In the 1980s, she was represented by Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery. Her last solo exhibition there in 1987 and was reviewed by Michael Brenson in The New York Times who called her work the answer to “Matisse, Kandinsky and Dufy.”
Dolnick is most influenced by expressionism, and her works pay homage to Van Gogh (with whom she shares a birthday), Gauguin, and Redon. Except for the slight pull of nostalgia, Dolnick's nonfigurative paintings are without a hint of gravity. Her seemingly endless expression of color is spontaneous and intuitive. In a mode of receptive reverie, Dolnick offers a surreal world dense with bucolic, ambiguous and semi-familiar shapes that suggest landscapes through scattered pulses of paint. Rhythm and gesture play a critical role in the process of Dolnick's work, a process she has continued to develop despite of her absence from the New York art world. This selection of paintings are like bright daydream fantasies.
There clearly are developments of Dolnick’s more recent work and nobody could now speak of it as ‘feminine’ […] It is as though at some point Dolnick decided to pull her images apart from each other in order to investigate their meaning in isolation. …[now] She has begun to bring them closer together, so that there is a stronger relationship between image and ground. There are subtle movements also, at first undetectable, but eventually the viewer becomes concious of hidden pendulums, oscillations along circular or elliptical paths. There is something exceedingly strange…in Dolnick’s work that I find captivating.
– Lawrence Campbell, Art in America, February 1988
Judith Dolnick (b.1934, Chicago, IL) graduated from Stanford University and studied art in Chicago. Recent group exhibitions include To be a Lady: forty-five women in the arts, 1285 Avenue of the Americas Gallery, New York, NY ('12); Arshile Gorky and a selection of contemporary drawings, Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY ('14); The Wells Street Gallery Revisited, Lesley Helley Workspace (’12). Solo exhibitions include Well Street Gallery, Chicago, IL (’57, ’58, ’59), Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY (’76), Hoshour Gallery, Albuquerque, NM (’79); Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, New York, NY (’83, ’87); Outlet Fine Art (‘15). Dolnick’s work can be found in the permanent collections of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, The Mint Museum of Art, Mint, Charlotte, NC and The Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS to name a few. Dolnick lives and works in New York City.
Shop Talk with Artists’ Legacy Foundation
Artist Estate Studio and Artists’ Legacy Foundation partnered for an evening of discussion focused on presenting strategies for artist studio managers and their archivists. The conversation was among some of the most experienced peers in legacy planning and art management and involved key talking points about institutional representation, archive organization methods, and a walkthrough from Jason Andrew and Julia Schwartz on the most important steps to take to ensure the long term stability of an artist’s legacy. Artist Estate Studio’s design director, Peter Freeby also spoke on the top ten most important parts of digital strategy for an artist, which has been preserved below:
Photo credit: Julia Schwartz, courtesy Artists’ Legacy Foundation
1. How to design
If you design anything, you are making a physical thing, not an idea. Think through the reality of what problem you’re trying to solve, who it’s for, and why it should exist. Map out how all these relationships connect. Build the absolute simplest solution to the problem. Finally, fine tune it and ask for feedback until it does everything you want it to do and people understand the core concept in the first 5 seconds of seeing it.
2. Use existing systems
Developing a website from scratch is costly, and expensive long term, not just for the time it takes to hire a freelancer. Building digital products in the ecosystem of other digital products allows you to quickly adapt and be compatible with new trends.
3. Pay attention to pixels
Images should be Jpegs that are 1500 pixels across at their smallest dimension (1500 px wide for portrait photos and 1500 px tall for landscape photos) and should ideally be between 200 and 700 kb. Tip: don’t size up images. It just makes them blurry.
Here are 2 ways to make sure your pixels are perfect:
In Photoshop: use the "Export As" tool in the file menu and tweak the Image Size and Quality Settings to export a Jpeg that fits the dimensions you need.
In Preview: "Export..." tool and tweak the Quality slider until it fits the file size you need.
4. Make sure you’re ADA compliant
There is a current trend of lawsuits against arts organizations across the country for not being ADA compliant on their websites. Here is a quick checklist to make sure you’re safe:
all images should have captions that literally describe the image (these captions are also called Alt Text, or more broadly referred to as metadata)
make sure that any video/audio content has text alternatives with equivalent information
clearly label all text alternatives for video and audio as an alternative for said video and audio
5. Use Alt Text for Social Engine Optimization
Use alt text to describe images on your website involving artwork, events and news items. This is good for above ADA reasons, but also will assist your Google search ranking. In Squarespace you can write the Alt text for an image by writing it as the title of the image file before you drop it in your site. Describe the image, the location, and any other related keywords.
6. Data matters (but not all data)
Pay attention to the analytics on your site, but specifically watch out for Geography, Visitor Count, Time on Site, Device Usage, and Traffic Sources. These numbers can tell you where your fans are, how they’re looking at your site, and where they found you.
Photo Credit, Peter Freeby
7. Understand your fans
After combing through the data, use it to come up with a profile of what kind of person they are. At big tech companies like Airbnb these "profiles" even have a name and personality. The more you can personify the data, the more personal you’ll seem to the people who find you.
8. Design for them
If you know who likes you and how they find you and what they use, you can figure out what changes you might want to put into the site. If everyone finds you on instagram and uses an iPhone, make sure that you put the most effort into making your website mobile friendly and has interesting images that people will want to share.
Some recent data about our sites that informs us about the kind of work we put in:
Jack Tworkov visitors use desktop computers 43% of the time
Elizabeth Murray visitors use desktop computers 66% of the time
9. How to Instagram
Because of the number of profiles that have spam followers now, success on instagram isn’t as much about the followers anymore. It’s much more about the engagement with comments and likes. (followers are still important, but not the #1 priority)
According to the data, here’s how to post the best photos on instagram:
Close up shots
Portrait photos/photos with faces
Multi-photo posts
Video posts
10. Marketing
Spending a small amount on social media marketing can get you a long way, and using apps like Adobe Spark Post, it’s way easier to make a successful ad than ever.
But, email marketing is still statistically far and away the most successful way to advertise. Make sure that you are consistent, sending out an email once a month, every other week, every day, it doesn’t matter. If you can get your newsletter into someone’s routine, they will keep up with you. Also, be intentional. Emails should have very short paragraphs and images, not be long essays. They should also be sent to multiple narrow audiences, (not 10,000 people who are in a sending mailbox called "art").
#AppalachiaNow curated by Jason Andrew opens the newly renovated Asheville Art Museum
Jason Andrew organizes Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia the inaugural exhibition of the newly renovated Asheville Art Museum.
Installation View: Andrew Scott Ross, Gallery of the Thieves, 2019, Acrylic paint, charcoal, mud, paper, and wood. Photo: Andrew Scott Ross
Curated by guest curator Jason Andrew, Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia is the inaugural exhibition of the newly renovated Asheville Art Museum. The exhibition provides a regional snapshot of the art of our time—a collective survey of contemporary Southern Appalachian culture.
This exhibition explores the amalgamation of tradition and present-day perspectives extant in contemporary artistic representations of life in this region. Appalachia Now! situates artists within a regional and national dialogue that spans time and socio-economic status. Whether works are bio-bibliographical, or address larger, universal themes, this cross-disciplinary exhibition invites visitors to participate in the individual experiences that make this part of the world so unique. It will celebrate contemporary artists living and working in Southern Appalachia, focusing on Asheville as a nucleus of creativity within the broader area of its adjacent states of Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Formerly isolated by geography, and sometimes intentionally so, Appalachia remains culturally rich and yet is more globally connected than ever before. Whereas past community and cultural exchanges took place through face-to-face, physical interaction, it is now possible to connect and access the world digitally. What was once a day’s journey from one town to the next has been replaced by the swipe and tap of a mobile phone. The diversity and magnitude of art-making in the region expands our understanding of the world today from the perspective of Southern Appalachia. Appalachia, while its roots are deep, has outlived its regionalism and is deserving of a new nuance of narrative. — Jason Andrew, curator
Appalachia Now! builds upon the Museum’s mission of collecting and interpreting 20th- and 21st-century American art in all media relevant to/produced in the Southeast and WNC. Inclusive and ambitious in scope, the exhibition will present a survey of works by emerging and established artists selected by Jason Andrew, a curator and juror of national renown. Andrew and Curatorial Assistant Lola Clairmont drove over 40 hours around the Southeast and made 54 studio visits with artists. In order to promote underrecognized and emerging artists, Appalachia Now! will feature artists whose work is not yet represented in the Museum’s Collection.
I am excited to share the many stylistic approaches and concerns of artists in this exhibition—their ages varied, their origins diverse. — Jason Andrew, curator
The following 50 artists have been selected through recommendations from regional museums, curators, and art organizations and through an open submission process. The overwhelming regional interest in this exhibition was demonstrated in the participation of artists in the free, public open call; over 400 artists applied through the call. Overall, the Museum and Andrew researched over 700 artists for consideration in the exhibition. The selected artists represent all media, including painting, sculpture, new media, dance, and film.
RELATED PRESS:
ARTSY.
Amy Beth Wright. “Artists of Appalachia Push Back on Regional Stereotypes.” Nov 22, 2019
Metropolis.
Joanne O’Sullivan. “Appalachia Makers Tell Their Own Story in New Exhibition.” Nov 22, 2019
HiFructose.
Andy Smith. “Asheville Art Museum Opens New Building in North Carolina.” Nov 18, 2019
Citizen Times.
Paul Moon. “Asheville Art Museum reopening highlights Madison County’s past, present and future.” Nov 12, 2019
Mountain Xpress.
Arnold Wengrow. “Asheville Art Museum readies for its grand reopening.” Oct 11, 2019
American Craft (Dec-Jan 2020)
”Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia.”
And these spotlights:
WMYA TV40.
John Le. “Man who one guarded Asheville Art Museum now has a piece on display there.” Nov 18, 2019
The Museum would like to thank the donors that make this exhibition possible: the John & Robyn Horn Foundation, The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, Parsec Financial, The Chaddick Foundation, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Hollis Taggart, the Maurer Family Foundation, and the Judy Appleton Memorial Fund. This project is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Museum would like to extend a special thanks to local partners Blue Ridge Printing, Asheville Color & Imaging, Mountain Paint & Decorating, and The Old Wood Co.
The Museum also thanks the following individuals for their support of this project: Jason Andrew, Chris Brooks, Lola Clairmont, Jenine Culligan, Emma-Leigh Evors, Beccy Hamm, Chesnee Klein, Nandini Makrandi, Jolene Mechanic, Amy G. Moorefield, Susan Rhew, and Stephen C. Wicks.
Your support helps the Asheville Art Museum develop community-driven programming and exhibitions. To contribute to Appalachia Now!, please visit our Donations page, select Upcoming Exhibitions, and type “Appalachia Now” in the Notes.
AES in WSJ: You Inherited Some Artwork. Now What Do You Do?
Artist Estate Studio Founder, Jason Andrew was quoted by Daniel Grant in the Wall Street Journal. Read about where to go to find out what the artwork you’ve inherited is worth, how to sell it, and how to get help managing an artist’s legacy.
AES pairs up with Artists’ Legacy Foundation to host discussion on studio management and legacy planning for artists
Artist Estate Studio, LLC + Artists' Legacy Foundation present
SHOP TALK:
an evening of discussion + exchange focused on presenting strategies for artist studio managers and their archivists
Hosted by:
Jason Andrew, Founding Partner, Artist Estate Studio, LLC
&
Julia Schwartz, Co-Director, Artists’ Legacy Foundation
Date: Tues, Nov 5, 6-8:30PM
6:00PM Cocktails + Light Fare
6:30PM Introductions
6:45PM Discussion and exchange
8:00-8:30PM Post shop talk mingle
Seating limited please RSVP
Location: 88 Pine Street, Brooklyn, NY 11208
Directions: J Train to Brooklyn / Crescent Street Stop
AES Collaborates with The Estate of George McNeil to Design and Launch a New Website and Social Media
Artist Estate Studio was please to collaborate with the Estate of George McNeil in the design and presentation of his website.
George J. McNeil (1908-1995) was a vital and influential artist whose career spanned the whole of the Post-war American art era. He attended Pratt Institute and the Art Students' League, where he studied with Jan Matulka and Vaclav Vytlacil. From 1933-37 he studied with Hans Hofmann, becoming Hofmann's monitor (assistant). He worked for the W.P.A. Federal Art Project and in 1936 he became one of the founding members of the American Abstract Artists group; at the New York World's Fair in 1939, he was one of the few abstract artists whose work was selected. During World War II he served in the U.S. Navy.
In the late 1940s McNeil taught at the University of Wyoming and then taught art and art history at Pratt Institute until 1981, and at the New York Studio School until 1981, influencing generations of young artists. In 1989 McNeil was elected to the American Institute of Arts and Letters.
A pioneer Abstract Expressionist of the New York School, McNeil had over forty solo exhibitions during his lifetime, beginning with the Egan Gallery in 1950. His art grows from the abstract: in his pure abstractions through the early 1960s, the subject matter is passionate metaphor. Later, dynamic situations involving dancers, bathers, discos, New York City, football or graffiti gyrate around the canvas. This high-energy content is expressed through virtuoso oil paint technique in which rich texture and color define complex abstract volumes. McNeil used his comprehensive authority over oil paint to push for an ever-deeper exploration of sensation.
George J. McNeil's work is included in numerous museum collections around the country, including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, the Whitney Museum, NY, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Walker Art Center, MN, amongst many others.
AES in Forbes: Why Designers Should Collect Art
In the design work I do, I get stuck in a cycle of inspiration. It’s not unlike going to the fridge, opening it, staring for a minute, closing the fridge and going back to my room. I do this with Dribbble and Behance and Twitter TWTR +0% and sometimes Reddit. This cycle of getting inspiration from all the same places is a big problem for the design community. It’s easy to get lost, or make the same things over and over again. It's easy to be cynical about the things you make when the ideas you believe in are written in a note on your phone.
Designers are limited by the constraints of their projects with brand standards, style guides, practicality, and every other factor in a project. With these constraints, designers aren’t able to explore full freedom of creativity. In a number of ways, this is good. The best design is design that is working within practical constraints. But this restriction also limits designers so they might not come across solutions to design problems because they aren’t able to explore far outside the limits of their current projects.
This is why companies like Google have 20 percent rules, allowing people to explore outside the constraints of their own assignments and find solutions in side projects that can influence the company in serendipitous ways. While this approach is immeasurably helpful in creating opportunities for spontaneous innovation and developing a community that genuinely cares about the work they do, it doesn’t directly solve the problem to which it is directed.
If designers are making things within design constraints and don’t have significant contact with unconstrained aesthetic ideas, they don’t come in contact with new ideas that might better solve their design problems.
AES Talks Legacy with Hrag Vartanian of HYPERALLERGIC
What Should Artists Do With Their Work After They Die?
Guests Jason Andrew and Saul Ostro sit down with Hrag Vartanian in this episode of Hyperallergic’s podcast, Art Movements
Highlight:
Vartanian: What is the biggest challenge when dealing with an artist’s legacy?
Andrew: You load as many archival boxes as you can in the back of your Honda Civic and you process that and you build the relationship. The biggest challenge is that people don’t want to talk about their legacy. They don’t want to talk about dating this painting from 1982. The more that you develop a rapport and confidence with an artist working in their studio you’re able to get around those situations.
Ursula Davila-Villa joins AES as "Legacy Specialist"
Photo: Elfie Semotan
New York, NY – Artist Estate Studio, LLC, the organization that manages the Estates of Jack Tworkov and Elizabeth Murray as well as the studios of living artists Joan Witek and Robert Zakanitch among others, is excited to announce that Ursula Davila-Villa has joined its team as Legacy Specialist.
In the growing field of artist estate management, Ursula has quickly become a leader in legacy planning. Her varied background, elite curatorial and research skills, as well has her worldwide wealth of contacts in the gallery and museum sector, positions her as an effective force and advocate for artists and their estates. Ursula will be a valuable member of our team. - Jason Andrew, Founding Partner, Artist Estate Studio, LLC
Expanding into legacy planning and stewardship comes as a natural evolution to the organization which strongly believes in empowering living artists and those involved with caring for artists’ estates by advocating for their interests and their legacies with integrity, empathy, and imagination.
About Ursula Davila-Villa.
Ursula Davila-Villa co-manages the Kurt Kocherscheidt Estate and has worked on an advisory role with artists such as Luis Camnitzer, Lorraine O’Grady, Carolee Schneemann, Elfie Semotan, and the Estate of Serge Spitzer. From 2012 to 2017 she was a Partner at Alexander Gray Associates where she managed the artistic and operational areas of the gallery including: artists liaison and career development, exhibitions, publications, institutional acquisitions, curatorial and research projects, and supervision of gallery staff.
From 2005-2012, she was Associate Curator of Latin American Art at The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin where she directed and supervised exhibitions, permanent collection, acquisitions, publications, ongoing research, and established the first international artist-in-residence program. She curated several exhibitions at the Blanton, among them The New York Graphic Workshop 1964–1970: Luis Camnitzer, Liliana Porter y José Guillermo Castillo (2008), Eclipses for Austin a project by Pablo Vargas Lugo (2009), Recovering Beauty: The 1990s in Buenos Aires (2011), The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas (2013), among others. In 2012, she was co-curator of El Panal/The Hive: Third Poli/Gráfica Triennal of San Juan de Puerto Rico. In 2008 she curated a mid-career survey of Mexican artist Yoshua Okon at the Städtische Kunsthalle Munich, Germany. Previously, she worked as project and archival researcher for artist Cai Guo-Qiang at Cai Studio, as public programs assistant at the Guggenheim Museum, as curatorial assistant at Art in General (all in New York), and Manager of International Art Fairs at Galería OMR (in Mexico City).
She completed her M.A. in Museum Studies at New York University in 2005, and holds a BA in architecture and urbanism from the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, and the Technische Universiteit Delft, Netherlands. She has lectured and published internationally on contemporary art and museum studies. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About Artist Estate Studio, LLC.
Founded in 2017 by Jason Andrew and Julia K. Gleich, Artist Estate Studio, LLC, services artists and the estates of artists in the management and cataloguing of their art and the promotion of their legacy. With the artist and their studio as our core focus, we specialize in promotion and preservation. Whether our client is emerging, established, or an estate of an artist, we aim to provide full management associated with all aspects of the life and work of the artist. This includes strategic planning, promotion and marketing, overseeing agreements and contracts, licensing, inventory management, assistance with appraisals, legacy and estate planning, overseeing and development of catalogue raisonné projects, and the collection, preservation, and placement of the artist’s archives.
Our team brings together first-hand knowledge and more than eight decades of accumulated experience in the curatorial, archival, academic, performance arts, publishing, and market fields. We believe in empowering artists by representing their interests and stewarding their legacies with integrity, empathy and imagination.
Founding Partner Jason Andrew Interviewed by Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association (via CRSA)
Jack Tworkov in his Provincetown studio, 1960. Photo: Arnold Newman, © Arnold Newman / Getty Images. Courtesy Tworkov Family Archives, New York.
New York - Founding Partner at Artist Estate Studio, Jason Andrew, talks to the Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association about his work on the launch of the first online catalogue raisonné project for painter Jack Tworkov. Launched over ten years ago, Andrew discusses the ever-changing-landscape of catalogue raisonné research and it’s growing presence online.
(Via Press Release) Hauser & Wirth Announces Independent Non-Profit Institute
Franz Kline, Wanamaker Block, 1955.Y ale University Art Gallery, Gift of Richard Brown Baker, B.A. 1935. © 2018 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
New York - Iwan Wirth, President and Manuela Wirth, Co-Founders of Hauser & Wirth, and Marc Payot, Partner and Vice President, today announced the establishment of Hauser & Wirth Institute, an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) private operating foundation dedicated to supporting art historical scholarship and to preserving and advancing the legacies of modern and contemporary artists through enabling greater public access to their archives for research.
To pursue its mission, the Institute will create a study center for the preservation, expedient cataloguing, and digitization of primary research materials for direct study and free online public access to these resources. It will seek to nurture innovation and substance in art historical research through the funding of fellowships in partnership with artists’ estates, foundations, and educational institutions. Another core activity of the Institute will be the production of online catalogues raisonnés and print publications that advance the highest academic standards in order to strengthen the field of modern and contemporary art history. The organization will also present public programs, including exhibitions of archival material and symposia that engage scholars, archivists, artists, collectors, curators, estate managers, gallerists, and the general public in dialogues about the obligations and opportunities inherent in archive stewardship.
The activities of Hauser & Wirth Institute will include both projects connected with artists represented by Hauser & Wirth and artists who are unaffiliated with the gallery.
The Institute is under the leadership of Executive Director Jennifer Gross, formerly Chief Curator and Deputy Director of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Previous to her work at deCordova, Gross served as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut; Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts; and Founding Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine.
Hauser & Wirth Institute is governed by a Board of Directors with guidance provided by an independent Advisory Board of artists, advisors to artists’ estates, scholars, and archivists.
“The work of Hauser & Wirth Institute is a natural extension of our gallery’s support of living artists and the noteworthy estates and foundations we have represented for over 25 years,” Iwan Wirth said. “The art world has accelerated and globalized its exhibition and publishing activities so dramatically. In creating the Institute, we hope to make resources available to support similar growth in the areas of art historical research and the sharing of essential knowledge that fuel a richer understanding of art, artists, and the creative processes central to the history of culture for future generations. We are honored to have the opportunity to create an organization to do this work, and so grateful to our Advisors for joining in the effort.”
Jennifer Gross commented, “We are thrilled to launch this unique and ambitious initiative at a time when there are fewer and fewer resources available to afford scholars the time and access needed for primary document research. It is a great privilege to care for and process archival materials. Even as the art world has become interested in these resources, it is critical to support public conversation about best stewardship and most effective and appropriate practices and partnerships. Technology should be enabling the sharing of intellectual and visual resources, but the speed at which the art world is operating now can preclude adequate attention to this work. We aim to broaden the art historical conversation to reflect the diversity of aesthetic and cultural values at hand today.”
Exhibition News: Biala opens at PAAM (Provincetown)
August 10-September 30, 2018
Opening reception: Friday, August 10, 8pm
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
460 Commercial Street
Provincetown, MA 02657
Provincetown Art Association and Museum presents Biala: Provincetown Summers: selected paintings and drawings. This historic exhibition is the first to focus entirely on the paintings and drawings by Janice Biala (1903-2000), which were created or inspired by her summers in Provincetown and on Cape Cod. The exhibition opens with a reception on Friday, August 10 at 8pm and will run through September 30 at Provincetown Art Association and Museum (460 Commercial Street, Provincetown, 508.487.1750 ext.17 / www.paam.org)
Organized and curated by Jason Andrew (Artist Estate Studio, LLC), the exhibition features twenty-seven paintings and twenty-three works on paper ranging in date from 1924 to 1985. Highlights include the earliest painting by the artist titled The Violin (c.1923-23) painted as an homage to her mentor and friend, Edwin Dickinson; Portrait of a Writer (Ford Madox Ford) (1938), who she met in 1930 and remained at his side until his death in 1939; The Beach (1958), a masterwork from the artist's most gestural period; a group of whimsical drawings of her grandnephew's first steps in Provincetown Bay; and Pilgrim Lake (1985), a pensive and contemplative painting that sublimely captures a layering of water, dunes, and the sky above. Works are on loan from the Estate of Janice Biala (courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York), as well as several major loans from private collections, The Art Collection of the Town of Provincetown, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.
Mr. Andrew will give a gallery talk on Tuesday, August 21 at 6pm
as part of the Fredi Schiff Levin Lectures.
An online catalogue with essay by curator Jason Andrew is available here by visiting www.janicebiala.org