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Designer Laura Santos transformed a light-filled, full-floor apartment in a former parking garage into a cozy backdrop for her impressive collection.

Artist Snapshot: Jill Nathanson
Exploring the mind and habits of an artist in twenty-five questions

At what age did you decide to become an artist?
When I was a tiny girl I loved horses, pretending I was a horse and also drawing horses. When I first started kindergarten, my horse drawing skill was rewarded: I was honored with the position of glue monitor. I had heard of horses being killed and sent to the glue factory, so I was nervous about a possible connection. I thought of myself as an artist in some way from that early time.

How did your parents react when you told them you anted to become an artist?
My mother was enthusiastic. She was a classical pianist with the highest level of training but a truncated career. She liked the idea of me being an artist even if she didn’t have a clear sense of what that might really mean, and I guess my father didn’t think much about his little girl’s future in terms of career in any case. From my earliest days I heard my mother practicing the classical repertoire without explanations, so I assumed she was making up the music as she went along — creating the great piano works of Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann. Why did she make the song go in that way. Why did the nice calm part become the loud stormy part? When I was a teen, my mother wanted me to go to Bennington College because that was where Helen Frankenthaler, a famous woman artist, had gone. So I went to Bennington early, after my junior year at the High School of Music and Art (now known as LaGuardia High School), thinking of myself as a professional from the start, knowing next to nothing. Bennington College, a key site of American modernism in the 1970s, was very good for me.

Judith Godwin, Seated Figure, 1955
oil on canvas
210.82 x 119.38 cm (83 x 47 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Artist

A generous gift to the Gallery from American artist Judith Godwin (b. 1930), Seated Figure (1955) is the first work by her to enter the collection. Seated Figure is a striking arrangement of pale blue, royal blue, and black planes outlined in white and gray that evoke a figure's head, back, knee, and leg folded into a chair. Angular lines, extravagant drips, and vigorous brushwork energize the composition and transform the static motif of a seated figure into a dynamic image. The work shows both Godwin's mastery of the gestural style of abstract expressionists like Franz Kline and the influence of Martha Graham's expressive bodily gesture. Completed when Godwin was 25 years old, Seated Figure is a powerful example of second-generation abstract expressionism by one of the movement's female practitioners.

November 2 − December 1
Art Students League: The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery

Postwar Women is The Art Students League’s first exhibition to explore the vital contributions of these alumnae on the international stage. On view at The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery from November 2 to December 1, 2019, Postwar Women challenges the misperception that great art produced by women artists is somehow an exception rather than the rule. Curator Will Corwin investigates the history of innovative art academies like The League that promoted democratic ideologies, which in turn created artistic opportunities for women of all social classes. This ground-breaking exhibition features over forty artists active between 1945-65, tracing the complex networks these professional women formed to support one another and their newfound access to art education. Postwar Women presents work by some of the prominent artists of the 20th Century like Louise Bourgeois and Helen Frankenthaler, but more importantly it calls out the women who were not credited enough: Mavis Pusey, Kazuko Miyamoto, Olga Albizu and Helena Vieira da Silva – challenging a new generation of visitors and art students to KNOW YOUR FOREMOTHERS.

Featured Artists:
Berenice Abbott, Mary Abbott, Olga Albizu, Janice Biala, Isabel Bishop, Nell Blaine, Regina Bogat, Louise Bourgeois, Vivian Browne, Elizabeth Catlett, Dorothy Dehner, Elaine de Kooning, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Judith Godwin, Terry Haass, Grace Hartigan, Carmen Herrera, Eva Hesse, Faith Hubley, Lenore Jaffee, Gwendolyn Knight, Lee Krasner, Blanche Lazzell, Marguerite Louppe, Lenita Manry, Marisol, Mercedes Matter, Kazuko Miyamoto, Louise Nevelson, Charlotte Park, Joyce Pensato, Irene Rice Pereira, Mavis Pusey, Faith Ringgold, Edith Schloss, May Stevens,  Yvonne Thomas, Lynn Umlauf, Maria Vieira da Silva, Merrill Wagner, Joyce Weinstein, Michael West

Exhibition invitation for Inspired, curated by Kimberley Goff of the Elaine Benson Gallery. Exhibition is at Center for Jewish Life in Sag Harbor, NY.

New York City Gallery Openings Video. Christine Berry introduced exhibition: Dan Christensen: Early Spray Paintings (1960s)

The Museum of Modern Art is set to reopen after its big expansive and restoration—and when it does, it’s crown jewels, the permanent collection will be reimagined. Old hits are still there, but new discoveries are also worked in. Film and architecture are integrated into the galleries. And the curation, as the New York Times reported, seeks to make room for “detours, anachronisms and surprise encounters.”

As the public gets ready for the new MoMA, here are photos that give a sense of how its new art history fits together.

Image: Ben Davis

SYD SOLOMON AT THE RINGLING  Camouflage and Calligraphy

For Sarasota’s art aficionados and culture vultures, the works of acclaimed abstract expressionist Syd Solomon are well known. And for locals, his time here remains a source of cultural pride and a milestone in the area’s artistic history. But a new exhibition opening this December at The Ringling Museum—Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed—proposes to dive deeper into the artist’s early life and inspiration than ever before, presenting a definitive origin story for a man who became a local legend.

Dominating the Searing Wing, Concealed and Revealed brings not only several of Solomon’s paintings to the museum, but also several artifacts from the artist’s early life, most importantly his service in World War II and professional start as a graphic designer and calligrapher in Sarasota, on loan from the Solomon Archive. His son, the artist Mike Solomon, has been working on the archive for five years now, and even he has been surprised by what they’ve found. “The general knowledge was always there,” he says, “but the surprise was in the details, and how it connected to his painting.” When the elder Solomon served in World War II, his camouflage designs hid men, tanks and supplies from German air raids following the Normandy invasion. Fake trees on wheels disguised Allied planes resting on makeshift airstrips. And when Solomon and his fellow soldiers liberated the French town of Roye, they held a big celebration with a parade and a printed poster. That original poster will be on display. And when Solomon moved to Sarasota in 1946, he turned his talents to signage for local businesses and layout work for local newspapers. “And a lot of the look of Sarasota in the ‘40s, in terms of advertising and signage, he made,” Mike says. But more than that, both of these experiences—Solomon the camouflagist and Solomon the calligrapher—would greatly influence the celebrated abstract expressionist he became. “For the people who think they know Syd Solomon’s work, they’ll realize it’s a lot more complex than they thought,” Mike says. “It wasn’t just about nature. It’s expressionism. It’s a personal, autobiographical thing.” Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed opens at The Ringling this December.

Approaching the Quogue Gallery, I was immediately drawn in by Susan Vecsey’s painting, visible through the side entrance along Jessup Avenue in Quogue, NY. It was awash with warm, radiant color; a vast field of peachy orange. I had seen Vecsey’s work before, in Chelsea at Berry Campbell gallery, and was intrigued with how it would look in this setting in The Hamptons.

I passed through a forecourt with greenery, slate steps and a silvery sculpture by Hans Van De Bovenkamp and stepped into the gallery’s north exhibition space to see Vecsey’s solo show simply titled “Paintings” as it eases into its final week before closing on October 2, 2019. Inside, this impressive painting, Untitled (Orange/Purple/Gold), 2017, greeted me with its vast sky of orange. A circle of the same hue pushed towards the top edge, glowing with a whitish halo. The horizon was marked by a swath of deep purple infused with ultramarine, and a band of ochre yellow suggested sand. I was reminded of our Long Island beaches, in the light of late afternoon on a summer day.