On Display in Brattleboro

 

Figuration Never Died

Overboard

Ice Shanties

Ice Visions

Our Storied Landscape

Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Battleboro, Vermont

Through February 14, 2021.

 

I know I’m starting to sound like a shill for the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center (BAMC). Forgive me, it’s just that I’m constantly impressed that a museum in a town of 12,000 people consistently launches such fascinating exhibits in such small galleries. BAMC always manages to display a tantalizing mix of the things one expects to see in an art museum and others that stretch expectations.

 

The most traditional exhibit is Figuration Never Died: New York Painterly Painting. The subtitle is neither a typo nor a redundancy. In the first half of the 20^th century abstract expression came into its own, with individualism on both the creative and psychological level embedded within non-representational works. It remained in vogue in the 1950s but dominant styles tend to spawn the seeds of their own fall from grace. In New York City, a group of painters began to explore ways to fuse the “painterly” qualities of expressionism–its emphasis on form, color, and texture instead of precise lines–but apply them in figurative (recognizable) ways. BAMC presents works from ten such artists. 

 

 
A good example comes from Robert De Niro. Sr. His Portrait of a Young Man with Red Face (1961) is as titled. We see a figure against a swirled blue background that our brains instantly register as a man, despite the heavy black outline of his face, the indistinct lines, and the unrealistic colors. It makes one ponder the porous boundaries of art without forcing the viewer to ask, “What is it?” (Yes, De Niro was the father of actor Robert De Niro.) 

 

 

The same qualities come through in Paul Georges, Artist in Studio. We see him standing in front of a seated nude model–in a figurative manner–but the overall look is that it’s about to explode into a Duchamp or a Picasso. Perhaps the most recognizable name in the exhibit is Alex Katz. The other seven on display are:  Lois Dodd, Jane Freilicher, Grace Hartigan, Wolf Kahn, Albert Kresch, Paul Resika, and Anne Tabachnick. For those in Western Massachusetts, Kahn has a localconnection; he briefly taught World War II refugees–most of whom were Jews fleeing fascism–in Cummington, MA.   

 

Artists draw inspiration from many things. Andy Yoder found his in “The Great Show Spill of 1990,” hence his title of Overboard. Five crates of Nikes fell off a freighter and some 61,820 washed up on the shores of Oregon and Washington. (You might remember that this was about the time Air Jordans went supernova.) Yoder and others fashioned art from the flotsam. You are confronted by what looks to be a mall display of basketball shoes. Most are actually cardboard, parts of shoes, packing materials, and other flotsam fashioned into artistic kicks. Some are whimsical, some representational, and some fanciful. It’s a riot of color and imagination.

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BMAC generally has a local focus and this time there are three good ones. Federico Pardo brings together his facility with photography, filmmaking, and academic training to show us a slice of Vermont folklife. Ice Shanties: Fishing, People & Culture displays photos on aluminum of an ephemeral seasonal phenomenon that baffles non-New Englanders: ice fishing. What tempts someone to fish over a drilled hole in the ice during subzero temperatures? It helps if you have a shanty. They run the gamut from makeshift plywood boxes and repurposed packing crates to more elaborate buildings that are like mini hunting cabins. The ephemeral part is that if you don’t get them to shore in time, they become lake and river wrecks. Pardo’s photos capture both the indomitable spirit of those who engage in ice fishing, and ethereal beauty of the depths of winter.  

 

Photographer Erik Hoffner was drawn to ice fishing differently. If you’re not a Vermonter, you might not know the name Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley (1865-1931). He  proved no two snowflakes are alike by sitting outside in winter, capturing flakes on black boards, and photographing them on a special microscope/camera of his devising. Hoffner, who was inspired by Bentley, wondered what he would see if he looked into ice fishing holes the next day, after the evening temperatures refroze them. He ventured onto the ice, brushed away the snow, and recorded his observations. Some look like the iris of a frozen eye, some like galaxies, and some are more abstract. Fascinating stuff!

 

The final local exhibit is one in which yours truly has a small part. Our Storied Landscape; Revealing the Brattleboro Words Trail is the sgraffito ceramic map fashioned by Cynthia Parker-Houghton. It accompanies Brattleboro Words, an NEH-funded project to collect stories and create audio tours and podcasts of characters who have lived in or near Brattleboro. Some are famous, some eccentrics, and some more famous locally than outside of Vermont. The map is Parker-Houghton’s clever scratch depictions of rivers, valleys, mountains, and landforms that will eventually (in paper form) orient those touring the region in search of the fascinating people tucked away in the folds of the landscape. (My contribution was a podcast on Madame Antoinette Sherri, who redefines the term eccentric.)

 

 

Also on display is Jazz by John Gibson, a painting of two opposing balls. They have target-like patterns on them and the effect is akin to a mismatched pair of googly eyes.

 

Hair by Rachel Portesi, is a series of architectural hair styles photographed as tintypes. She asks us to see in them as a veritable laundry list of social issues but in my view, she mises the mark by trying too hard to freight a fun thing with too much baggage. Oddly, her small images are much more engaging than the larger ones, which work against her tintype model.

 

Rob Weir