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47th Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse
May 2nd - May 30th
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Berry Campbell collaborated with Robert Passal Interior Design and Daniel Kahan of Smith and Moore Architects as well as Sarah Bartholomew Design in the Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse, supplying works by Eric Dever, Perle Fine, and Stephen Pace.

Each year, celebrated interior designers transform a magnificent estate into an elegant exhibition of fine furnishings, art and technology. This all began in 1973 when several dedicated supporters of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club launched the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Manhattan to raise critical funds for much needed after school and enrichment programs for New York City children. For more than four decades, the show house has been a must-see event for thousands of design enthusiasts, renowned for sparking interior design trends throughout the world. In 2017, the show house expanded with a second location in Palm Beach, in partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County.

Three canvases hang as looming, watchful presences in New York-Centric, an exhibition at the Art Students League of New York curated by James Little: Al Loving’s stolid New Hexagon (1996), Dan Christensen’s Jarrito, (1997) and Ed Clark’s sensual and lugubrious X-form Untitled (Bastille Series) (1991). While these artists, and the others in the show, fulfill Karen Wilkin’s simple precept from her introduction to the catalogue—that their paintings make “color and the way it [is] applied the main carriers of emotion and meaning”—these works, many of them contemporary but emerging from specific artists’ practices forged in the ’60s, are evidence of a decisive break with modernist tradition. They were a rejection of existing standards of aesthetics, mirroring Pop Art’s rejection of appropriate subject matter but with a more visceral turn. Loving’s marbled blue triangle illusionistically juts out into the viewer’s space, a threatening machine of sharp edges and points, while Clark’s twisting torso-like abstraction mimics the enticement of corporeal flesh. This is color not behaving itself, expanding to overtake the more modernist and Ab-Ex sanctioned notions of “gesture,” “form,” and “mark” to become the main component of painterly composition. Color was accepted historically as a tool to illuminate emotion or psychological depth, but outliers such as William Blake, Hilma af Klint, and Johannes Itten, who foregrounded color as the main dynamo of expression, were relegated to the periphery and seen as overtaxing on taste or engaged in optical trickery. Emerging mid-century, most of the artists in New York-Centric refused to handle color gingerly, and while this novel approach is not overtly political, many of the artists are African-American and several are women, and this alternative approach to abstraction may have functioned to move the form away from exclusionary art historical traditions. 

The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) inducted three arts luminaries into its Hall of Fame during its annual benefit on April 11 at Capitale. The evening’s honorees were Sanford Biggers, a visual artist whose work speaks to current social, political, and economic happenings while examining the contexts that bore them; Karl Kellner, patron of the arts, Senior Partner, New York Office Managing Partner, McKinsey & Company, Inc., and a former NYFA Board Member; and Min Jin Lee, novelist of the best-selling books Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko(Grand Central Publishing, 2007 and 2017). The gala was Co-Chaired by Marc Jason and J. Wesley McDade, both members of NYFA’s Board of Trustees. The silent auction was Co-Chaired by Marjorie W. Martay, a NYFA Board Member, and Marjorie Croes Silverman, a NYFA Leadership Council Member.

Designer QnA: Elizabeth Swartz On Bunny Williams Bingo, Her Belgian Urn, And That Moment The Art Goes On The Walls

Stephen Pace, Untitled (52-53), 1952, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

Elizabeth Swartz was named partner of Bunny Williams Associates in 2017 after a 14-year tenure, which began with a coveted internship. Elizabeth notes, “These days, it’s rare to rise from intern to partner while under one roof. In my case, I found my calling through the apprenticeship tradition much the way Bunny did when she began her long association with the revered Parish-Hadley Associates.” Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, Elizabeth attended the University of Richmond and then the New York School of Interior Design. After graduation, her internship at Bunny Williams Associates led to a job as Junior Designer and she rose later to Senior Designer. “Bunny is an ideal mentor and collaborator and we take our partnership seriously. She sets the stage with her vast experience, practicality, intelligence, and sense of humor. Generous in spirit, she invests in her staff when they show initiative, drive, and talent so I worked hard to meet these expectations. I’m thrilled to have the privilege of leading by Bunny’s example,” continues Swartz. Known for her skill in building stories for beautiful rooms from one point of inspiration, Elizabeth carves out time for personal growth, which informs her designs. When not at the office, reading, visiting museums, or spending time with numerous nieces and nephews, she’s exploring the world and capturing her adventures through her other great passion: photography. A recent trip to Berlin and Vienna are highlights, while future sojourns in Greece, Africa, and Iceland await.

We are preparing for our William Perehudoff exhibition, Architect of Color, opening on March 21, 2019. Please read our online catalogue with essay by Fraser Radford to learn more about the artist and his career.

William Perehudoff | Architect of Color
April 25, 2019

Opening Reception
April 25, 2019
6-8 PM

Our country, particularly New York City, became the center of the Western art world after World War II with the advent of abstract expressionism. No American artist looms larger in that movement than Jackson Pollock, and there is no more important Pollock work than his 1943 “Mural.”

Complementing the landmark display of this modern masterpiece at the Columbia Museum of Art is a temporary exhibition of works collected over six decades by South Carolina residents Dwight and Sue Emanuelson. Entitled “A Life in Art,” the exhibition features nearly seventy pieces, from major abstract expressionist paintings to iconic objects of midcentury design.

What is the genesis of this collection? Dwight Emanuelson began collecting art when he was just in his twenties, living in New York City and working as an investment advisor. He had a personal relationship with many of the artists whose work he purchased: “I’d help them manage their money, and they’d show me their art.”

Gallery Talk by Karen Wilkin  
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
6:45 pm  
RSVP

Karen Wilkin is an independent curator and critic.  She was previously the curator of “American Vanguards,” on view at the Neuberger Museum, SUNY Purchase and a faculty member at the New York Studio School. She is an art historian, curator, and critic, educated at the High School of Music and Art, Barnard College, and Columbia University. After living and working in Italy and Canada for some years, Ms. Wilkin returned to her native Manhattan in 1985. She lives near the Empire State Building with her architect husband and two Maine Coon cats. A specialist in 20th century modernism, Ms. Wilkin has organized numerous exhibitions internationally and written monographs on David Smith, Helen Frankenthaler, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Stuart Davis, Giorgio Morandi, and George Braque, and is the co-author, with Clifford Ross, of The World of Edward Gorey. She contributes regularly to The New Criterion, Partisan Review, and Hudson Review. Her recent projects include a study of Clement Greenberg’s personal collection for the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, and “David Smith: Two into Three Dimensions”, the first exhibition to examine Smith’s reliefs as a coherent body of work, in relation to his drawings, paintings, and free-standing sculptures, which will be seen at the New York Academy Museum at the end of 2001. 

VSOP Projects
Greenport, New York
April 13 - May 19, 2019

As a formal device, the grid defines and divides space, serving as a framework for which a given subject might be expressed. As an art historical element, the grid has been employed as a compositional guide in renaissance painting, an ideal in the Bauhaus, and a form to be obliterated by the abstract expressionists and action painters. In many ways, modern life has been influenced by grids, from city planning to microchips, and yet, for every practicality imposed on the utilitarian x and y axis, there is a possibility for chance, spontaneity, and art.

Artists participating in "On the Grid" include Sabra Moon Elliot, Darlene Charneco, Bastienne Schmidt, Christine Sciulli, Mike Solomon, Colin Goldberg, Drew Shiflett, Patience Pollock, Daniel Sullivan, Robert Otto Epstein, Ryan DaWalt, and Josh Cohen.

Please contact info@vsopprojects.com for more information.