Palm Desert

EXHIBITIONS        ARTWORK ON VIEW     RELATED NEWS     SERVICES

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Our gallery in Palm Desert is centrally located in the Palm Springs area of California, adjacent to the popular shopping and dining area of El Paseo. Our clientele appreciates our selection of Post War, Modern, and Contemporary art. The gorgeous weather during the winter months draws visitors from all over the world to see our beautiful desert, and stop by our gallery. The mountainous desert landscape outside provides the perfect scenic backdrop to the visual feast that awaits inside.

45188 Portola Avenue
Palm Desert, CA 92260
(760) 346-8926

Hours:
Monday – Saturday 9am-5pm

Exhibitions

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The Art of Gifting: Opportunities for the Holidays
CURRENT

The Art of Gifting: Opportunities for the Holidays

November 21, 2023 - January 20, 2024
Picasso: Beyond the Canvas
CURRENT

Picasso: Beyond the Canvas

October 4, 2023 - April 30, 2024
No Other Land: A Century of American Landscapes
CURRENT

No Other Land: A Century of American Landscapes

September 21, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Ansel Adams: Affirmation of Life
CURRENT

Ansel Adams: Affirmation of Life

September 21, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Art of the American West: A Prominent Collection
CURRENT

Art of the American West: A Prominent Collection

August 24, 2023 - February 29, 2024
Alexander Calder: Shaping a Primary Universe
CURRENT

Alexander Calder: Shaping a Primary Universe

August 23, 2023 - February 29, 2024
First Circle: Circles in Art
CURRENT

First Circle: Circles in Art

February 14, 2023 - February 29, 2024
Your Heart’s Blood: Intersections of Art and Literature
CURRENT

Your Heart’s Blood: Intersections of Art and Literature

September 12, 2022 - December 31, 2023
Andy Warhol Polaroids: Wicked Wonders
CURRENT

Andy Warhol Polaroids: Wicked Wonders

December 13, 2021 - March 31, 2024
California Here We Come: The California Impressionists
CURRENT

California Here We Come: The California Impressionists

July 12, 2021 - December 31, 2023
Pattern and Decoration: Feminism and Friendship
CURRENT

Pattern and Decoration: Feminism and Friendship

September 14, 2020 - December 31, 2023
Jae Kon Park: Life and Root
CURRENT

Jae Kon Park: Life and Root

March 12, 2020 - March 31, 2024
Irving Norman: Dark Matter
CURRENT

Irving Norman: Dark Matter

November 27, 2019 - March 31, 2024
Florals for Spring, Groundbreaking
ARCHIVE

Florals for Spring, Groundbreaking

May 8 - November 30, 2023
Pop Art: Can't Buy My Love
ARCHIVE

Pop Art: Can't Buy My Love

January 26 - October 31, 2023
Paper Cut: Unique Works on Paper
ARCHIVE

Paper Cut: Unique Works on Paper

April 27, 2022 - October 31, 2023
Andy Warhol: Glamour at the Edge
ARCHIVE

Andy Warhol: Glamour at the Edge

October 27, 2021 - September 30, 2023
A Beautiful Time: American Art in the Gilded Age
ARCHIVE

A Beautiful Time: American Art in the Gilded Age

June 24, 2021 - August 31, 2023
It Was Acceptable in the 80s
ARCHIVE

It Was Acceptable in the 80s

April 27, 2021 - August 31, 2023
More to Life: Impressionist Dialogues from Monet and Beyond
ARCHIVE

More to Life: Impressionist Dialogues from Monet and Beyond

August 17, 2022 - August 31, 2023
Alexander Calder: A Universe of Painting
ARCHIVE

Alexander Calder: A Universe of Painting

August 10, 2022 - August 31, 2023
Meeting Life: N.C. Wyeth and the MetLife Murals
ARCHIVE

Meeting Life: N.C. Wyeth and the MetLife Murals

July 18, 2022 - April 25, 2023
Paul Jenkins: Coloring the Phenomenal
ARCHIVE

Paul Jenkins: Coloring the Phenomenal

December 27, 2019 - March 31, 2023
N.C. Wyeth: A Decade of Painting
ARCHIVE

N.C. Wyeth: A Decade of Painting

September 29, 2022 - March 31, 2023
Herb Alpert: Whispered Conversations
ARCHIVE

Herb Alpert: Whispered Conversations

March 7 - March 13, 2023
Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley: Modern Minds
ARCHIVE

Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley: Modern Minds

February 1, 2022 - February 28, 2023
Norman Zammitt: The Progression of Color
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Norman Zammitt: The Progression of Color

March 19, 2020 - February 28, 2023
Sculpture for the Senses: Outdoor Sculpture
ARCHIVE

Sculpture for the Senses: Outdoor Sculpture

August 4, 2021 - February 28, 2023
Figurative Masters of the Americas
ARCHIVE

Figurative Masters of the Americas

January 4 - February 12, 2023
James Rosenquist: Potent Pop
ARCHIVE

James Rosenquist: Potent Pop

June 7, 2021 - January 31, 2023
Everyone Needs a Fantasy: Pop Art in America
ARCHIVE

Everyone Needs a Fantasy: Pop Art in America

June 7, 2021 - January 31, 2023
Abstract Expressionism: Transcending the Radical
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Abstract Expressionism: Transcending the Radical

January 12, 2022 - January 31, 2023
The Gift of Art
ARCHIVE

The Gift of Art

November 24, 2022 - January 7, 2023
A Sparkling Holiday: Art for Everyone
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A Sparkling Holiday: Art for Everyone

December 15, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Black Abstraction: Felandus Thames, Rodney McMillian, Sam Gilliam, and Theaster Gates
ARCHIVE

Black Abstraction: Felandus Thames, Rodney McMillian, Sam Gilliam, and Theaster Gates

May 2020 - December 2022
My Own Skin: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
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My Own Skin: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

June 16 - December 31, 2022
Josef Albers: The Heart of Painting
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Josef Albers: The Heart of Painting

May 12 - November 30, 2022
Subtle Opulence
ARCHIVE

Subtle Opulence

September 8, 2021 - August 31, 2022
Abstract Expressionism: The Persistent Women
ARCHIVE

Abstract Expressionism: The Persistent Women

November 1, 2021 - August 31, 2022
Alexander Calder: Painting the Cosmos
ARCHIVE

Alexander Calder: Painting the Cosmos

March 2 - August 12, 2022
Mercedes Matter: A Miraculous Quality
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Mercedes Matter: A Miraculous Quality

March 22, 2021 - June 30, 2022
The Rest So Beautiful: Contemporary Art and China
ARCHIVE

The Rest So Beautiful: Contemporary Art and China

May 12, 2020 - June 30, 2022
An Invisible State: Asian American Artists and Abstraction
ARCHIVE

An Invisible State: Asian American Artists and Abstraction

April 23, 2020 - June 30, 2022
Moore! Moore! Moore! Henry Moore and Sculpture
ARCHIVE

Moore! Moore! Moore! Henry Moore and Sculpture

March 3, 2021 - April 30, 2022
Still Life, Still
ARCHIVE

Still Life, Still

April 10, 2020 - April 30, 2022
Elaine and Willem de Kooning: Painting in the Light
ARCHIVE

Elaine and Willem de Kooning: Painting in the Light

August 3, 2021 - January 31, 2022
The Cool School
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The Cool School

March 30, 2020 - December 31, 2021
American Eye: Selections from the Pardee Collection
ARCHIVE

American Eye: Selections from the Pardee Collection

February 28 - December 31, 2021
Andy Warhol Polaroids: Ars Longa
ARCHIVE

Andy Warhol Polaroids: Ars Longa

December 10, 2020 - December 31, 2021
Andy Warhol Polaroids: Me, Myself, & I
ARCHIVE

Andy Warhol Polaroids: Me, Myself, & I

December 10, 2020 - December 31, 2021
Andy Warhol Polaroids: All That Glitters
ARCHIVE

Andy Warhol Polaroids: All That Glitters

December 10, 2020 - December 31, 2021
Andy Warhol Polaroids: Bring It to the Runway
ARCHIVE

Andy Warhol Polaroids: Bring It to the Runway

December 10, 2020 - December 31, 2021
Maurice Golubov
ARCHIVE

Maurice Golubov

October 1, 2020 - December 31, 2021
Jewish Modernism Part 2: Figuration from Chagall to Norman
ARCHIVE

Jewish Modernism Part 2: Figuration from Chagall to Norman

April 30, 2020 - December 31, 2021
Our Most Viewed Art for the Month
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Our Most Viewed Art for the Month

October 14 - November 14, 2021
The Gloria Luria Collection
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The Gloria Luria Collection

March 16, 2020 - October 31, 2021
Vincent van Gogh and The Great Impressionists of the Grand Boulevard
ARCHIVE

Vincent van Gogh and The Great Impressionists of the Grand Boulevard

March 2 - August 10, 2021
Modern Prints
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Modern Prints

December 26, 2020 - June 19, 2021
Pop Figures: Mel Ramos and Tom Wesselmann
ARCHIVE

Pop Figures: Mel Ramos and Tom Wesselmann

March 26, 2020 - April 30, 2021
The Radical Line
ARCHIVE

The Radical Line

April 11, 2020 - January 31, 2021
Herb Alpert: Recent Works
ARCHIVE

Herb Alpert: Recent Works

September 28 - December 13, 2020
Jewels of Impressionism and Modern Art
ARCHIVE

Jewels of Impressionism and Modern Art

February 19 - October 31, 2020
Cool Britannia: The Young British Artists
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Cool Britannia: The Young British Artists

April 2 - September 30, 2020
Weekly Opportunities
ARCHIVE

Weekly Opportunities

June 26 - August 31, 2020
Theophilus Brown and Paul Wonner: Seen Through Different Lenses
ARCHIVE

Theophilus Brown and Paul Wonner: Seen Through Different Lenses

November 1, 2019 - July 31, 2020
Hassel Smith: The Measured Paintings
ARCHIVE

Hassel Smith: The Measured Paintings

February 12 - April 20, 2020
Mesa Modern
ARCHIVE

Mesa Modern

February 13 - February 29, 2020
The Californians
ARCHIVE

The Californians

November 1, 2019 - February 14, 2020
Opulent Minimalism
ARCHIVE

Opulent Minimalism

December 3, 2019 - January 31, 2020
Paul Jenkins and Robert Natkin
ARCHIVE

Paul Jenkins and Robert Natkin

November 1 - December 27, 2019
Morris Louis - The Early Paintings
ARCHIVE

Morris Louis - The Early Paintings

October 11 - November 30, 2019
Anselm Kiefer
ARCHIVE

Anselm Kiefer

August 15 - September 30, 2019
Paul Jenkins: Phenomenal
ARCHIVE

Paul Jenkins: Phenomenal

July 1 - August 31, 2019
The Estate of Paul Wonner and William Theophilus Brown
ARCHIVE

The Estate of Paul Wonner and William Theophilus Brown

July 21 - August 31, 2019
Material and Abstraction: Theaster Gates, Sam Gilliam, and Rodney McMillian
ARCHIVE

Material and Abstraction: Theaster Gates, Sam Gilliam, and Rodney McMillian

July 25 - August 31, 2019
Peter Shelton: A Thing You Bump Into
ARCHIVE

Peter Shelton: A Thing You Bump Into

July 16 - August 31, 2019
Alexander Calder: Cosmic Abstraction
ARCHIVE

Alexander Calder: Cosmic Abstraction

June 21 - August 30, 2019
Julian Schnabel
ARCHIVE

Julian Schnabel

June 4 - July 31, 2019
Hassel Smith
ARCHIVE

Hassel Smith

May 6 - June 30, 2019
Luc Bernard: Unconventional Borders
ARCHIVE

Luc Bernard: Unconventional Borders

May 3 - May 31, 2019
Sam Francis: From Dusk to Dawn
ARCHIVE

Sam Francis: From Dusk to Dawn

November 15, 2018 - April 29, 2019
Architectural Landscapes
ARCHIVE

Architectural Landscapes

December 1, 2018 - January 31, 2019
N.C. Wyeth: Paintings and Illustrations
ARCHIVE

N.C. Wyeth: Paintings and Illustrations

February 1 - May 31, 2018
Herb Alpert: A Visual Melody
ARCHIVE

Herb Alpert: A Visual Melody

February 17 - May 31, 2018
Gregory Sumida: Americana
ARCHIVE

Gregory Sumida: Americana

April 5 - May 31, 2018
Sublime Abstraction
ARCHIVE

Sublime Abstraction

November 25, 2017 - May 31, 2018
The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill
ARCHIVE

The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill

March 21 - May 30, 2018
Wojciech Fangor
ARCHIVE

Wojciech Fangor

November 25, 2017 - March 17, 2018
Edward S. Curtis
ARCHIVE

Edward S. Curtis

February 3 - March 17, 2018
Ferrari and Futurists: An Italian Look at Speed
ARCHIVE

Ferrari and Futurists: An Italian Look at Speed

November 21, 2016 - January 30, 2017
Alexander Calder
ARCHIVE

Alexander Calder

November 21, 2015 - May 28, 2016
Masters of California Impressionism
ARCHIVE

Masters of California Impressionism

November 22, 2014 - May 23, 2015
Lawrence Schiller: Marilyn Monroe and Great Moments from the 60s
ARCHIVE

Lawrence Schiller: Marilyn Monroe and Great Moments from the 60s

November 23, 2012 - January 31, 2013
Painterly Abstraction: Spheres of AbEx
ARCHIVE

Painterly Abstraction: Spheres of AbEx

November 25, 2011 - May 31, 2012
Washi Tales: Works by Kyoko Ibe
ARCHIVE

Washi Tales: Works by Kyoko Ibe

December 11, 2011 - January 28, 2012
Masters of Impressionism and Modern Art
ARCHIVE

Masters of Impressionism and Modern Art

November 20, 2010 - September 25, 2011
Picasso
ARCHIVE

Picasso

November 20, 2009 - May 25, 2010

ARTWORK ON VIEW

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On May 15, 1886, a visual manifesto for a new art movement was born when Georges Seurat’s crowning achievement, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was unveiled at the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition. Seurat can claim title as the original “Scientific Impressionist” working in a manner that came to be known as Pointillism or Divisionism. It was, however, his friend and the confidant, 24-year-old Paul Signac and their constant dialogue that led to a collaboration in understanding the physics of light and color and the style that emerged. Signac was an untrained, yet a blazingly talented, Impressionist painter whose temperament was perfectly suited to the rigor and discipline required to achieve the painstakingly laborious brushwork and color. Signac quickly assimilated the technique. He also bore witness to Seurat’s arduous two-year journey building myriad layers of unblended dots of color on the colossally-sized La Grande Jatte. Together, Signac, the brash extrovert, and Seurat, a secretive introvert, were about to subvert the course of Impressionism, and change the course of modern art.

PAUL SIGNAC

Alexander Calder was a key figure in the development of abstract sculpture and is renowned for his groundbreaking work in kinetic art; he is one of the most influential artists of the Twentieth Century. "Prelude to Man-Eater" is a delicately balanced standing sculpture that responds to air currents, creating a constantly changing and dynamic visual experience. <br> <br>Calder's Standing Mobiles were a result of his continuous experimentation with materials, form, and balance. This Standing Mobile is a historically significant prelude to a larger work commissioned in 1945 by Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "Prelude to Maneater" is designed to be viewed from multiple angles, encouraging viewers to walk around and interact with it. <br> <br>The present work is a formal study for Man-Eater With Pennant (1945), part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work is also represented in "Sketches for Mobiles: Prelude to Man-Eater; Starfish; Octopus", which is in the permanent collection of the Harvard Fogg Museum. <br> <br>Calder's mobiles and stabiles can be found in esteemed private collections and the collections of major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate Gallery in London among others.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Between Île-de-France and Burgundy and on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest lies the medieval village of Moret-sur-Loing, established in the 12th century. When Alfred Sisley described its character to Monet in a letter dated 31 August 1881 as “a chocolate-box landscape…” he meant it as a memento of enticement; that its keep, the ramparts, the church, the fortified gates, and the ornate facades nestled along the river were, for a painter, a setting of unmatched charm. An ancient church, always the most striking townscape feature along the Seine Valley, would be a presence in Sisley’s townscape views as it was for Corot, and for Monet at Vétheuil. But unlike Monet whose thirty views of Rouen Cathedral were executed so he could trace the play of light and shadow across the cathedral façade and capture the ephemeral nature of moment-to-moment changes of light and atmosphere, Sisley set out to affirm the permanent nature of the church of Notre-Dame at Moret-sur-Loing. Monet’s sole concern was air and light, and Sisley’s appears to be an homage keepsake. The painting exudes respect for the original architects and builders of a structure so impregnable and resolute, it stood then as it did in those medieval times, and which for us, stands today, as it will, for time immemorial. <br> <br>Nevertheless, Sisley strived to show the changing appearance of the motif through a series of atmospheric changes. He gave the works titles such as “In Sunshine”, “Under Frost”, and “In Rain” and exhibited them as a group at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in 1894, factors that suggest he thought of them as serial interpretations. Nevertheless, unlike Monet’s work, l’église de Moret, le Soir reveals that Sisley chose to display the motif within a spatial context that accentuates its compositional attributes — the plunging perspective of the narrow street at left, the strong diagonal recession of the building lines as a counterbalance to the right, and the imposing weight of the stony building above the line of sight.

ALFRED SISLEY

Alexander Calder executed a surprising number of oil paintings during the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. By this time, the shock of his 1930 visit to Mondrian’s studio, where he was impressed not by the paintings but by the environment, had developed into an artistic language of Calder’s own. So, as Calder was painting The Cross in 1948, he was already on the cusp of international recognition and on his way to winning the XX VI Venice Biennale’s grand prize for sculpture in 1952. Working on his paintings in concert with his sculptural practice, Calder approached both mediums with the same formal language and mastery of shape and color. <br> <br>Calder was deeply intrigued by the unseen forces that keep objects in motion. Taking this interest from sculpture to canvas, we see that Calder built a sense of torque within The Cross by shifting its planes and balance. Using these elements, he created implied motion suggesting that the figure is pressing forward or even descending from the skies above. The Cross’s determined momentum is further amplified by details such as the subject’s emphatically outstretched arms, the fist-like curlicue vector on the left, and the silhouetted serpentine figure. <br> <br>Calder also adopts a strong thread of poetic abandon throughout The Cross’s surface. It resonates with his good friend Miró’s hieratic and distinctly personal visual language, but it is all Calder in the effective animation of this painting’s various elements. No artist has earned more poetic license than Calder, and throughout his career, the artist remained convivially flexible in his understanding of form and composition. He even welcomed the myriad interpretations of others, writing in 1951, “That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.” <br> <br>Either way, it is important to remember that The Cross was painted shortly after the upheaval of the Second World War and to some appears to be a sobering reflection of the time. Most of all, The Cross proves that Alexander Calder loaded his brush first to work out ideas about form, structure, relationships in space, and most importantly, movement.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Trained as a woodcarver, Emil Nolde was almost 30 years old before he made his first paintings. The early paintings resembled his drawings and woodcuts: grotesque figures with bold lines and strong contrasts. The style was new, and it inspired the nascent movement Die Brücke (The Bridge), whose members invited Nolde to join them in 1906. But, it was not until the garden became his locus operandi by 1915 that he built upon his mastery of contrasting luminosities to focus on color as the supreme means of expression. Later, Nolde claimed “color is strength, strength is life,” and he could not have better characterized why his flower paintings reinvigorate our perception of color. <br> <br>Much of the strength of Nolde’s dramatic, Wagnerian-like color sensibilities is the effect of staging primary colors, such as the deep reds and golden yellows of Sonnenblumen, Abend II, against a somber palette. The contrast highlights and deepens the luminosity of the flowers, not just visually, but emotionally as well. In 1937, when Nolde’s art was rejected, confiscated, and defiled, his paintings were paraded as “degenerate art” throughout Nazi Germany in dimly lit galleries. Despite that treatment, Nolde’s status as a degenerate artist gave his art more breathing space because he seized the opportunity to produce more than 1,300 watercolors, which he called “unpainted pictures.” No novice in handling watercolor, his free-flowing style of painting had been a hallmark of his highly-charge, transparent washes since 1918. Sonnenblumen, Abend II, painted in 1944, is a rare wartime oil. He let his imagination run wild with this work, and his utilization of wet-on-wet techniques heightened the drama of each petal. <br> <br>Nolde’s intense preoccupation with color and flowers, particularly sunflowers, reflects his continuing devotion to van Gogh. He was aware of van Gogh as early as 1899 and, during the 1920s and early 1930s, visited several exhibitions of the Dutch artist’s work. They shared a profound love of nature. Nolde’s dedication to expression and the symbolic use of color found fullness in the sunflower subject, and it became a personal symbol for him, as it did for Van Gogh.

EMIL NOLDE

Tom Wesselmann was a leader of the Pop Art movement. He is best remembered for large-scale works, including his Great American Nude series, in which Wesselmann combined sensual imagery with everyday objects depicted in bold and vibrant colors. As he developed in his practice, Wesselmann grew beyond the traditional canvas format and began creating shaped canvases and aluminum cut-outs that often functioned as sculptural drawings. Continuing his interest in playing with scale, Wesselmann began focusing more closely on the body parts that make up his nudes. He created his Mouth series and his Bedroom series in which particular elements, rather than the entire sitter, become the focus. <br>  <br>Bedroom Breast (2004) combines these techniques, using vivid hues painted on cut-out aluminum. The work was a special commission for a private collector's residence, and the idea of a bedroom breast piece in oil on 3-D cut-out aluminum was one Wesselmann had been working with for many years prior to this work's creation. The current owner of the piece believed in Wesselmann's vision and loved the idea of bringing the subject to his home. <br> <br>It's one of, if not the last, piece Wesselmann completed before he passed away. The present work is the only piece of its kind - there has never been an oil on aluminum in 3D at this scale or of this iconography.  

TOM WESSELMANN

During the early 1870s, Winslow Homer frequently painted scenes of country living near a small farm hamlet renowned for generations for its remarkable stands of wheat, situated between the Hudson River and the Catskills in New York state. Today Hurley is far more famous for inspiring one of Homer’s greatest works, Snap the Whip painted the summer of 1872. Among the many other paintings inspired by the region, Girl Standing in the Wheatfield is rich in sentiment, but not over sentimentalized. It directly relates to an 1866 study painted in France entitled, In the Wheatfields, and another, painted the following year after he returned to America. But Homer would have undoubtedly been most proud of this one. It is a portrait, a costume study, a genre painting in the great tradition of European pastoral painting, and a dramatically backlit, atmospheric tour de force steeped in the quickly fading gloaming hour light buoyed with lambent, flowery notes and wheat spike touches. In 1874, Homer sent four paintings to the National Academy of Design exhibition. One was titled, “Girl”. Might it not be this one?

WINSLOW HOMER

The frame of reference for Irish American Sean Scully’s signature blocks and stripes is vast. From Malevich’s central premise that geometry can provide the means for universal understanding to Rothko’s impassioned approach to color and rendering of the dramatic sublime, Scully learned how to condense the splendor of the natural world into simple modes of color, light, and composition. Born in Dublin in 1945 and London-raised, Scully was well-schooled in figurative drawing when he decided to catch the spirit of his lodestar, Henri Matisse, by visiting Morocco in 1969. He was captivated by the dazzling tessellated mosaics and richly dyed fabrics and began to paint grids and stipes of color. Subsequent adventures provided further inspiration as the play of intense light on the reflective surfaces of Mayan ruins and the ancient slabs of stone at Stonehenge brought the sensation of light, space, and geometric movement to Scully’s paintings. The ability to trace the impact of Scully’s travels throughout his paintings reaffirms the value of abstract art as a touchstone for real-life experience. <br> <br> <br>Painted in rich, deep hues and layered, nuanced surfaces, Grey Red is both poetic and full of muscular formalism. Scully appropriately refers to these elemental forms as ‘bricks,’ suggesting the formal calculations of an architect. As he explained, “these relationships that I see in the street doorways, in windows between buildings, and in the traces of structures that were once full of life, I take for my work. I use these colors and forms and put them together in a way that perhaps reminds you of something, though you’re not sure of that” (David Carrier, Sean Scully, 2004, pg. 98). His approach is organic, less formulaic; intuitive painter’s choices are layering one color upon another so that contrasting hues and colors vibrate with subliminal energy. Diebenkorn comes to mind in his pursuit of radiant light. But here, the radiant bands of terracotta red, gray, taupe, and black of Grey Red resonate with deep, smoldering energy and evoke far more affecting passion than you would think it could impart. As his good friend, Bono wrote, “Sean approaches the canvas like a kickboxer, a plasterer, a builder. The quality of painting screams of a life being lived.”

SEAN SCULLY

The world of Marc Chagall cannot be contained or limited by the labels we attach to it. It is a world of images and meanings which form their own splendidly mystical discourse. Les Mariés sous le baldaquin (The Bride and Groom under the Canopy) was begun as the artist entered his 90th year, a man who had known tragedy and strife, but who never forgot life’s moments of rapturous pleasure. Here, the dreamy delights of a Russian village wedding with its arrangements of well-worn attendees are brought to us with such happy wit and cheerful innocence that there is no resisting its charm. Using a golden toned emulsion combining oil and opaque, water-based gouache, the warmth, happiness, and optimism of Chagall’s usual positivism is wrapped in a luminous radiance suggesting the influence of gold-leaf religious icons or early Renaissance painting that sought to impart the impression of divine light or spiritual enlightenment. Using a combination of oil and gouache can be challenging. But here, in Les Mariés sous le baldaquin, Chagall employs it to give the scene an otherworldly quality, almost as if it has just materialized out of his mind’s eye. Its textural delicacy creates the impression that light is emanating from the work itself and gives a spectral quality to the figures floating the sky.

MARC CHAGALL

"La femme au tambourin" (1939) is one of Pablo Picasso’s greatest graphic works. Partially based on compositions by Degas and Poussin, the work exudes a strong Classical presence with a Modernist edge. Thought to be a depiction of Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover at the time, the print is highly coveted by institutional and private collectors. One impression from this edition is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and another is included in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. <br> <br>Picasso’s experimentations in printmaking began in the first decade of the 20th century and engaged him for many decades, into the 1970s. In this time, Picasso embraced multiple methods of printmaking, including lithography, etching, aquatint, and linoleum block printing. His earliest prints were, like the present work, intaglio. With La femme au tambourin, Picasso incorporated the additional medium of aquatint, which yielded a watercolor-like effect throughout the composition and an extreme range of tonal qualities. This technique in particular afforded opportunities for expression that could not be found in painting. For his experimental reach and depth of mastery, Picasso’s corpus of graphic work is among the most highly respected and coveted in the history of art, rivaling that of Rembrandt.

PABLO PICASSO

Tom Wesselmann will undoubtedly be remembered for associating his erotic themes with the colors of the American flag. But Wesselmann had considerable gifts as a draftsman, and the line was his principal preoccupation, first as a cartoonist and later as an ardent admirer of Matisse. That he also pioneered a method of turning drawings into laser-cut steel wall reliefs proved a revelation. He began to focus ever more on drawing for the sake of drawing, enchanted that the new medium could be lifted and held: “It really is like being able to pick up a delicate line drawing from the paper.” <br> <br>The Steel Drawings caused both excitement and confusion in the art world. After acquiring one of the ground-breaking works in 1985, the Whitney Museum of American Art wrote Wesselmann wondering if it should be cataloged as a drawing or a sculpture. The work had caused such a stir that when Eric Fischl visited Wesselmann at his studio and saw steel-cut works for the first time, he remembered feeling jealous. He wanted to try it but dared not. It was clear: ‘Tom owned the technique completely.’ <br> <br>Wesselmann owed much of that technique to his year-long collaboration with metalwork fabricator Alfred Lippincott. Together, in 1984 they honed a method for cutting the steel with a laser that provided the precision he needed to show the spontaneity of his sketches. Wesselmann called it ‘the best year of my life’, elated at the results that he never fully achieved with aluminum that required each shape be hand-cut. “I anticipated how exciting it would be for me to get a drawing back in steel. I could hold it in my hands. I could pick it up by the lines…it was so exciting…a kind of near ecstasy, anyway, but there’s really been something about the new work that grabbed me.” <br> <br>Bedroom Brunette with Irises is a Steel Drawing masterwork that despite its uber-generous scale, utilizes tight cropping to provide an unimposing intimacy while maintaining a free and spontaneous quality. The figure’s outstretched arms and limbs and body intertwine with the petals and the interior elements providing a flowing investigative foray of black lines and white ‘drop out’ shapes provided by the wall. It recalls Matisse and any number of his reclining odalisque paintings. Wesselmann often tested monochromatic values to discover the extent to which color would transform his hybrid objects into newly developed Steel Drawing works and, in this case, continued with a color steel-cut version of the composition Bedroom Blonde with Irises (1987) and later still, in 1993 with a large-scale drawing in charcoal and pastel on paper.

TOM WESSELMANN

ALBERT BIERSTADT - The Golden Gate - oil on canvas - 27 3/8 x 38 3/4 in.

ALBERT BIERSTADT

Théo van Rysselberghe’s Portrait de Sylvie Lacombe, painted in 1906, is a classic masterwork by one of the most refined and consistent portrait painters of his time. The color is harmonious, the brushwork vigorous and tailored to its material task, her body and countenance true and revealing. The sitter is the daughter of his good friend, the painter Georges Lacombe, who shared a close association with Gauguin, and was a member of Les Nabis with artists Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard, among others. We now know about Sylvie Lacombe because Van Rysselberghe is so skilled at rendering subtle facial expressions and through careful observation and attention to detail, provided insights into her inner world. He has chosen a direct gaze, her eyes to yours, an inescapable covenant between subject and viewer regardless of our physical relationship to the painting. Van Rysselberghe had largely abandoned the Pointillist technique when he painted this portrait. But he continued to apply color theory guidelines by using tints of red — pinks and mauves — against greens to create a harmonious ameliorated palette of complementary colors to which he added a strong accent to draw the eye – an intensely saturated, red bow asymmetrically laid to the side of her head.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

The Pop Art Movement is notable for its rewriting of Art History and the idea of what could be considered a work of art. Larry Rivers association with Pop-Art and the New York School set him aside as one of the great American painters of the Post-War period. <br> <br>In addition to being a visual artist, Larry Rivers was a jazz saxophonist who studied at the Juilliard School of Music from 1945-1946. This painting's subject echoes the artists' interest in Jazz and the musical scene in New York City, particularly Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. <br> <br>“Untitled” (1958) is notable bas the same owner has held it since the work was acquired directly from the artist several decades ago. This work is from the apex of the artists' career in New York and could comfortably hang in a museum's permanent collection.

LARRY RIVERS

It is not difficult to grasp how Robert Indiana’s brilliant two-row arrangement of four letters came to help empower a movement during the 1960s. Its origin emerged from deeply felt exposure to religion and from friend and mentor Ellsworth Kelly, whose hard-edged style and sensuous, unaccented color made a lasting impression. But as Indiana exclaimed, it was a moment of kismet that just happened when “LOVE bit me!” and the design came to him sharp and focused. Indiana, of course, put the design through many paces, and then the logo began to sprout up everywhere. The message, best conveyed in sculpture, stands in cities worldwide and has been translated into several languages, not least of which, is its Italian iteration, “Amor” with its fortuitous “O” also tilted to the right. But rather than being kicked by the foot of the “L”, this version lends a beautifully staged teetering effect to the “A” above. It gives a new, but no less profound, impression of love and its emotionally charged nature. In either case, Love’s tilted “O” imparts instability to an otherwise stable design, a profound projection of Indiana’s implicit critique of “the often-hollow sentimentality associated with the word, metaphorically suggesting unrequited longing and disappointment rather than saccharine affection” (Robert Indiana’s Best: A Mini Retrospective, New York Times, May 24, 2018). Repetition, of course has a nasty habit of dampening our appreciation for the genius of simplicity and, groundbreaking design. Late in life, Indiana lamented that “it was a marvelous idea, but also terrible mistake. It became too popular. And there are people who don’t like popularity.” But we, denizens of a world fraught with divisiveness and caught in turmoil, thank you. “Love” and its many versions are strong reminders of our capacity for love, and that is our best everlasting hope for a better future.

ROBERT INDIANA

An undisputed master of the booming Belgian Neo-Impressionist movement from 1887 onward, Théo van Rysselberghe painted this portrait of his wife, Maria (née Monnom) during the first decade of the twentieth century. He had pressed onward from the influence of Whistler’s Tonalism, Impressionism, and the Pointillism of Seurat to perfect a highly refined understanding of color, its harmonic resonances, and a meticulous rendering of formal elements. An exemplary draftsman, optical impressions based on color interactions remained a principal concern for Van Rysselberghe. Here, short strokes of color replaced the small dots of a Pointillist, and the color scheme is not the homogenized, harmonious one for which the artist has a well-deserved reputation. Rather, this portrait advances color theory in an entirely different manner. Its visual interest rests with the dynamic contrasts of his wife’s silvered coiffure, her platinum-hued dress, and the stark-white fireplace mantle — all staged within the optical vibrancy of the surround dominated by complementary reds and greens. It is a visually stimulating demonstration by a painter who understood the dynamic impact of this unusual color scheme and who arranged the sitter with a strong accent on a diagonal and executed the formula with the craft and agility of a painter in full control of his painterly assets.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

Irving Norman's masterpiece, "The Human Condition," from 1980, draws upon the artist's lifetime of acquired experiences and knowledge. Surviving as a volunteer fighter during the Spanish Civil War, the artist returned to the United States after the loyalist defeat. Upon his return, fervent studio practice in Half Moon Bay, California, would become his life's devotion. <br> <br>The present work, a nearly 16-foot-wide triptych, is reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych, "The Garden of Earthly Delights," c. 1510. The dystopian vision portrayed in 'The Human Condition" is a warning - a lesson from the European dictatorships Norman experienced firsthand during the 1930s. Disturbing tableaus show the darkness of humanity and the evil that can rise to prominence when humanity is at its worst. There is hope, however, in the experience of the viewer: Norman thought of his audience as the greatest hope for humankind.

IRVING NORMAN

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT - Untitled (Pigeon Anatomy) - oil, graphite, and chalk on paper - 22 x 30 in.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

The figures of Nues are freely developed around a central odalisque figure in a manner that suggests a theme that occupied Picasso as early as 1906 that of female indulgences within a harem setting. In describing his late drawings, Picasso noted that, “one never knows what’s going to come out, but as soon as the drawing gets underway, a story or an idea is born… I spend hour after hour while I draw, observing my creatures and thinking about the mad things they’re up to… It’s great fun, believe me.” Nues is evocative of that appraisal, a freewheeling frolic as only Picasso can achieve. Among the many poses, the abbreviated figure swimming in the pool is particularly charming.

PABLO PICASSO

MEL RAMOS - Nude Descending a Staircase #2 - oil on canvas - 70 x 52 1/8 in.

MEL RAMOS

PIERRE BONNARD - Soleil Couchant - oil on canvas - 14 1/2 x 22 1/2 in.

PIERRE BONNARD

JEAN ARP - Sculpture Mythique - bronze - 25 x 9 1/2 x 12 in.

JEAN ARP

GEORGES ROUAULT - Carlotta - oil on canvas - 15 7/8 x 12 1/4 in.

GEORGES ROUAULT

EDVARD MUNCH - House on the Coast I - woodcut on wove paper with watercolor hand-additions by artist - 16 x 23 in.

EDVARD MUNCH

SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL - A Dune Landscape with Figures Resting and a Couple on Horseback, a View of Nijmegen Cathedral Beyond - oil on canvas - 26 1/2 x 41 1/2 in.

SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL

ALFRED SISLEY - Vaches au paturage sur les bords de la Seine - pastel on paper - 11 1/4 x 15 1/2 in.

ALFRED SISLEY

HERB ALPERT - Arrowhead - bronze - 201 x 48 x 48 in.

HERB ALPERT

Ruldof Bauer’s reputation as a forebear of non-objective abstraction is most often coupled with that of Wassily Kandinsky. That hallowed place within the greatest abstract artists is well deserved. But for better and worse, Bauer’s place in art history is inextricably linked to the ill-fated contract he signed with Soloman R. Guggenheim with the guidance of his former lover, Hilla Rebay. Presto 10 was created in 1917 when Bauer was a fixture at Galerie Der Sturm, the Berlin gallery and likely exhibited at one of the artist’s solo exhibitions in 1917, 1918, and 1920. It was also among the paintings chosen by Bauer and Hilla Rebay to be included at the New York World’s Fair “Art of Tomorrow” exhibition that opened 1 June 1939. It is listed in the fifth catalogue of the Solomon R. Guggenheim collection of non-objective paintings.

RUDOLF BAUER

CAMILLE PISSARRO - Paysage avec batteuse a Montfoucault - pastel on paper laid down on board - 10 3/8 x 14 3/4 in.

CAMILLE PISSARRO

Well known for his candor and pragmatic sensibility, Alexander Calder was as direct, ingenious, and straight to the point in life as he was in his art. “Personnages”, for example, is unabashedly dynamic, a work that recalls his early love of the action of the circus as well as his insights into human nature. The character of “Personnages” suggests a spontaneous drawing-in-space, recalling his radical wire sculptures of the 1920s. <br>© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

JOAN MIRO - L'Oiseau - bronze and cinderblock - 23 7/8 x 20 x 16 1/8 in.

JOAN MIRO

Of Herb Albert’s many bronze cast, silky-black patinated spirit totems, few have the distinctively masculine feel of Warrior. Topped with a descending, serrated crown that could as easily refer to the crest of a bird of prey as the headdress of a Plains Indian chief the title “Warrior” is an apt description that addresses the attributes of strength, courage, and unbreakable spirit among others. Much like the work of Henry Moore, those associations depend, in part, upon negative space to create the dynamic and strong impression this formidable sculpture makes.

HERB ALPERT

JOSEPH STELLA - Reclining Nude - oil on canvas - 50 x 52 1/2 in.

JOSEPH STELLA

GERARD CURTIS DELANO - Navajo Camp - oil on panel - 23 1/2 x 29 1/2 in.

GERARD CURTIS DELANO

RODOLFO MORALES - Untitled - oil on canvas - 37 1/4 x 39 1/4 in.

RODOLFO MORALES

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

Andy Warhol is synonymous with American art in the second half of the 20th century and is known for his iconic portraits and consumer products, mixing popular culture and fine art, redefining what art could be and how we approach art. While many of Warhol’s works may not represent famed individuals, his depictions of inanimate objects elevate his subjects to a level of celebrity. Warhol first depicted shoes early in his career when he worked as a fashion illustrator and returned to the theme in the 1980s, combining his fascination with consumerism and glamour. With his constant desire to fuse high and low culture, Warhol chose to highlight something that is so ubiquitous as shoes. The subject can denote poverty or wealth, function, or fashion. Warhol glamorizes the pile of footwear, covering them with a patina of glitzy diamond dust, further blurring the meaning between utilitarian need and stylized statement piece.

ANDY WARHOL

IRVING NORMAN - The Academy - oil on canvas - 110 x 90 in.

IRVING NORMAN

FREDERICK CARL FRIESEKE - Hill at Giverny - oil on canvas - 25 1/4 x 31 1/4 in.

FREDERICK CARL FRIESEKE

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

PAUL JENKINS - Phenomena By Return - acrylic on canvas - 104 3/4 x 49 5/8 in.

PAUL JENKINS

Ross Bleckner is a celebrated American painter whose works reference loss, memory, and change such as explorations of the cell during the AIDS epidemic or in response to his father’s cancer diagnosis. The 1965 MoMA exhibition that brought Op Art to the fore, The Responsive Eye and included artists Richard Anuszkiewicz, Tadasky, and Francis Celentano, had a profound influence on him as an artist. This painting, like his other immersive, large-scale works, elicit a powerful, hypnotic, dizzying effect. Aesthetically pleasing, Bleckner’s canvases explore perception – visual, emotional, physical, time. Bleckner is part of the same generation of and friends with Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Eric Fischl, and Peter Halley, all of whom returned painterly technique to the canvas.

ROSS BLECKNER

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

IRVING NORMAN - Farewell - oil on canvas - 90 x 100 in.

IRVING NORMAN

ANSEL ADAMS - Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine - gelatin silver print - 18 3/4 x 22 3/4 in.

ANSEL ADAMS

MARC QUINN - Lovebomb - photo laminate on aluminum - 108 1/4 x 71 3/4 x 37 3/4 in.

MARC QUINN

JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN GOYEN - River Landscape with a Windmill and Chapel - oil on panel - 22 1/2 x 31 3/4 in.

JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN GOYEN

IRVING NORMAN - Totems - oil on canvas - 72 x 110 in.

IRVING NORMAN

Deborah Butterfield is an American sculptor, best known for her sculptures of horses made of objects ranging from wood, metal, and other found objects. The 1981 piece, Untitled (Horse), is comprised of sticks and paper on wire armature. The impressive scale of this piece creates a remarkable effect in person, presenting a striking example of Butterfield's celebrated subject matter. Butterfield originally created the horses from wood and other materials found on her property in Bozeman, Montana and saw the horses as a metaphorical self-portrait, mining the emotional resonance of these forms.

DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD

HERB ALPERT - Inspired - bronze - 100 x 20 x 12 in.

HERB ALPERT

HERB ALPERT - Concert Master - bronze - 93 x 14 in.

HERB ALPERT

ANDY WARHOL - Goethe - silkscreen in colors - 38 x 38 in.

ANDY WARHOL

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE - Navajos at Rest - oil on canvas - 19 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE

ANDY WARHOL - Goethe - silkscreen in colors - 38 x 38 in.

ANDY WARHOL

MERCEDES MATTER - Still Life - oil on canvas laid down on board - 36 x 40 in.

MERCEDES MATTER

MILTON AVERY - Village by the Sea - watercolor, reed pen and pencil on paper - 21 1/2 x 30 1/4 in.

MILTON AVERY

Jaudon was one of the founders of the Pattern and Decoration movement. With a foundation of feminist theory, Jaudon repositioned what were considered trivial art forms and minor visual images. These forms and symbols were relegated because of their association with the feminine or non-Western. <br> <br>At the same time, Palmyra exemplifies the ability of Jaudon to create aesthetically beautiful works. Jaudon interweaves shades of red into ornate arabesques recalling gothic stonework, celtic knots, and Islamic calligraphy. The crispness of the lines against the impasto and the layering of red tones makes it appear that the lines are carved like stone.

VALERIE JAUDON

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) was a prosperous cultural period that helped shape Chinese history's foundations for future centuries. This era was marked by notable technological and cultural advances, including gunpowder and printing. Among artistic advances during this period was the perfection of the sancai glaze technique, which was a prominent attribute of sculpture during this period. Sancai (tri-colored) glazing; the three glaze-colors used were ochre or brown, green and clear. Glazed wares where much more costly to produce than other terracotta wares, and were therefore only reserved for the wealthiest patrons. <br> <br>The Sancai-Glazed Earth Spirit offered here depicts a "Zhenmushou." These are mythical hybrid creatures whose bodies are a combination of dogs, lions, boars and other animals. These fierce looking beasts would be found in pairs guarding the entrance of Tang Dynasty tombs.

CHINESE

ANDY WARHOL - Ford car - graphite on paper - 11 1/2 x 15 3/4 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ANSEL ADAMS - Aspens, Northern New Mexico - gelatin silver print - 15 1/4 x 19 1/4 in.

ANSEL ADAMS

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE - Venetian Boats at Sotto Marino - oil on panel - 23 3/8 x 26 1/4 in.

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE

Richard Diebenkorn once explained, “All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression.” Known for his defining role in the Bay Area Figurative Art movement, a counter to the abstraction dominating post-war New York City, Diebenkorn often oscillated between figuration and abstraction. In 1952, he took a faculty position at the University of Illinois in Urbana for one academic year. There, he taught beginning drawing to architecture students and used one of the bedrooms in his house as a studio. This period from 1952-53, known as the Urbana series, was a productive and pivotal time in the development of Diebenkorn's style. His innovative exploration of figuration through abstraction began in these crucial early years and would come to full realization in his widely celebrated Ocean Park series of the late 1960s-80s.

RICHARD DIEBENKORN

ANDY WARHOL - Pepper Pot from Campbell's Soup - screenprint in colors - 35 x 23 in.

ANDY WARHOL

"Bouquets de Fleurs" (1901) is a glowing Post-Impressionist still life. As the revolutionary wave of Impressionism receded from its apex, artists such as Henri Manguin, Henri Matisse, Kees van Dongen, Louis Valtat, and others emerged as part of the new avant-garde in Europe. These “Fauves,” or roughly translated “wild beasts,” would attack their canvases with a bold and vibrant new palette. This completely new way of painting was not initially celebrated by critics, or the artistic elite, but is today recognized among the most innovative and original artistic movements of the 20th Century. <br> <br>The present work, painted just before the revolution of Fauvism took hold, demonstrates a critical transitionary period in Modern Art. The subject is depicted with a masterful compositional sense and attention to spatial relationships. Manguin’s competency in composition would allow him to experiment freely with color during the first decade of the 20th Century. The slightly later but comparable Manguin still life “Flowers” (1915) is in the permanent collection of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

HENRI MANGUIN

WAYNE THIEBAUD - Paint Cans - lithograph in colors on wove paper - 38 3/4 x 29 1/8 in.

WAYNE THIEBAUD

ELAINE DE KOONING - The Matador - gouache on paper - 7 3/4 x 9 1/2 in.

ELAINE DE KOONING

SETH KAUFMAN - Lignum Spire - bronze with green patina - 103 1/2 x 22 x 17 in.

SETH KAUFMAN

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) was a prosperous cultural period that helped shape Chinese history's foundations for future centuries. This era was marked by notable technological and cultural advances, including gunpowder and printing. Among artistic advances during this period was the perfection of the sancai glaze technique, which was a prominent attribute of sculpture during this period. Sancai (tri-colored) glazing; the three glaze-colors used were ochre or brown, green and clear. Glazed wares where much more costly to produce than other terracotta wares, and were therefore only reserved for the wealthiest patrons. <br> <br>The Sancai-Glazed Earth Spirit offered here depicts a "Zhenmushou." These are mythical hybrid creatures whose bodies are a combination of dogs, lions, boars and other animals. These fierce looking beasts would be found in pairs guarding the entrance of Tang Dynasty tombs.

CHINESE

WILLIAM WENDT - California Landscape - oil on canvas - 23 1/2 x 31 3/4 in.

WILLIAM WENDT

ANDY WARHOL - Untitled (Flowers) - ink and watercolor on paper - 15 1/4 x 12 3/8 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL - The Shadow (from Myths) - color screenprint with diamond dust on paper - 37 1/2 x 37 1/2 in.

ANDY WARHOL

DONALD SULTAN - Yellow Tulip #18 - oil and tar on paper - 20 x 20 in.

DONALD SULTAN

BLANCHE LAZZELL - Study No. 4 for “Painting XII” - gouache on paper - 8 7/8 x 8 in.

BLANCHE LAZZELL

HERB ALPERT - Counter Balance - bronze - 28 x 28 in.

HERB ALPERT

HERB ALPERT - Human Nature - bronze - 44 x 10 x 7 in.

HERB ALPERT

AI WEIWEI - "Fairytale" Chairs - wood - 49 x 45 x 17 1/2 in.

AI WEIWEI

JULIAN OPIE - Bijou Gets Undressed 5 - screenprint on Fedrigoni Sirio paper - 20 1/2 x 38 1/8 in.

JULIAN OPIE

JULIAN OPIE - Bijou Gets Undressed 8 - screenprint on Fedrigoni Sirio paper - 20 1/2 x 38 1/8 in.

JULIAN OPIE

CARL MORRIS - White Field - acrylic on canvas - 75 x 63 in.

CARL MORRIS

ROSS BLECKNER - Untitled - oil on photographic paper - 37 1/2 x 24 3/4 in.

ROSS BLECKNER

HERB ALPERT - Golden Dreams - acrylic on canvas - 48 x 72 in.

HERB ALPERT

HERB ALPERT - Now Hear This - acrylic on canvas - 48 x 72 in.

HERB ALPERT

HERB ALPERT - Against the Wind - acrylic on canvas - 48 x 72 in.

HERB ALPERT

ANDY WARHOL - Carolina Herrera - Polaroid, Polacolor - 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL - Andy Warhol - gelatin silver print - 10 x 8 in. ea.

ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL - George - Polaroid, Polacolor - 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ROY LICHTENSTEIN - Haystack #6 - lithograph - 13 1/4 x 23 1/2 in.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

ROY LICHTENSTEIN - Haystack #4 - lithograph - 13 1/4 x 23 1/2 in.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

PAUL JENKINS - Untitled - watercolor and ink on paper - 29 3/4 x 42 3/4 in.

PAUL JENKINS

HERB ALPERT - The Observer - acrylic on canvas - 60 x 36 in.

HERB ALPERT

HERB ALPERT - Fractured Memories - acrylic on canvas - 60 x 36 in.

HERB ALPERT

HERB ALPERT - Just a Dream Away - acrylic on canvas - 60 x 36 in.

HERB ALPERT

MICAELA AMATO - Cameroon Girl - cast glass - 16 x 12 x 10 1/2 in.

MICAELA AMATO

JOHN BALDESSARI - Front Row (Valentine) - 17 color screenprint - 37 3/4 x 33 3/4 in.

JOHN BALDESSARI

JOHN MILLEI - Untitled - oil on mylar - 24 x 28 in.

JOHN MILLEI

JOSEF ALBERS - Formulation: Articulation - screenprint - 12 x 14 5/8 in. ea.

JOSEF ALBERS

JOSEF ALBERS - Formulation: Articulation - screenprint - 10 x 13 in. ea.

JOSEF ALBERS

JOSEF ALBERS - Formulation: Articulation - screenprint - 9 1/8 x 13 7/8 in. ea.

JOSEF ALBERS

JOSEF ALBERS - Formulation: Articulation - screenprint - 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. ea.

JOSEF ALBERS

MELVIN MARTINEZ - Bubble - mixed media on paper - 14 x 18 in.

MELVIN MARTINEZ

JOSEF ALBERS - Formulation: Articulation - screenprint - 10 x 12 7/8 in.

JOSEF ALBERS

GEORGE ORTMAN - Ten Works X Ten Painters - screenprint - 24 x 20 in.

GEORGE ORTMAN

JOSEF ALBERS - Formulation: Articulation - screenprint - 12 7/8 x 15 3/4 in.

JOSEF ALBERS

JOSEF ALBERS - Formulation: Articulation - screenprint - 8 1/4 x 17 in.

JOSEF ALBERS

JOSEF ALBERS - Formulation: Articulation - screenprint - 12 1/4 x 12 1/4 in.

JOSEF ALBERS

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FEATURED ART

According to the catalogue raisonné compiled by The Brandywine River Museum of Art, the preliminary drawing for Puritan Cod Fishers was completed by N. C Wyeth prior to his death in October 1945. The entry records an image of the sketch as well as the artist’s inscriptions and its title, Puritan Cod Fishers, characterized by the catalogue as ‘alternate’. In either case, the large-scale canvas is a unique work that Andrew Wyeth later recalled was painted solely by his hand, a demarcated collaboration of the father’s design and composition brought to fruition by a remarkable son’s execution. For Andrew, it must have been a deeply felt and emotional experience. Given his father’s attention to detail and authenticity, the lines of the small sailing craft represent a shallot, in use during the sixteenth century. On the other hand, Andrew likely deepened the hues of the restless sea more so than his father might have, a choice that appropriately heightens the perilous nature of the task.

Andrew Wyeth & N. C. Wyeth

Having unwittingly inserted himself into the Pop Art conversation with his Great American Nude series, Tom Wesselmann spent the rest of his career explaining that his motivation was not to focus excessively on a subject matter or to generate social commentary but instead, to give form to what titillated him most as beautiful and exciting. His disembodied Mouth series of 1965 established that an image did not have to rely on extraneous elements to communicate meaning. But it was his follow-up performances with the Smoker series and its seductive, fetish allure that raised his standing among true sybarites everywhere. Apart from perceiving smoking as cool and chic, a painting such as Smoker #21 is the consummate celebration of Wesselmann’s abilities as a painter. Enticed by the undulating smoke, Wesselmann took great pains to accurately depict its sinuous movements and observe the momentary pauses that heightened his appreciation of its sensual nature. Like all of Wesselmann’s prodigious scaled artworks, Smoker #21 has the commanding presence of an altarpiece. It was produced during long hours in his impressive Manhattan studio in Cooper Square, and the result is one of sultry dynamism — evocative, sensual, alluring, sleek, luscious, and perhaps, even sinister — a painting that flaunts his graphic supremacy and potent realism varnished with his patented sex appeal flair. <br> <br>Tom Wesselmann expanded upon the success of his Great American Nudes by focusing on singular features of his subjects and began painting his Mouth series in 1965. In 1967, Wesselmann’s friend Peggy Sarno paused for a cigarette while modeling for Wesselmann’s Mouth series, inspiring his Smoker paintings. The whisps of smoke were challenging to paint and required Wesselmann to utilize photographs as source material to capture the smoke’s ephemeral nature properly. The images here show Wesselmann photographing his friend, the screenwriter Danièle Thompson, as she posed for some of Wesselmann’s source images.

TOM WESSELMANN

Between Île-de-France and Burgundy and on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest lies the medieval village of Moret-sur-Loing, established in the 12th century. When Alfred Sisley described its character to Monet in a letter dated 31 August 1881 as “a chocolate-box landscape…” he meant it as a memento of enticement; that its keep, the ramparts, the church, the fortified gates, and the ornate facades nestled along the river were, for a painter, a setting of unmatched charm. An ancient church, always the most striking townscape feature along the Seine Valley, would be a presence in Sisley’s townscape views as it was for Corot, and for Monet at Vétheuil. But unlike Monet whose thirty views of Rouen Cathedral were executed so he could trace the play of light and shadow across the cathedral façade and capture the ephemeral nature of moment-to-moment changes of light and atmosphere, Sisley set out to affirm the permanent nature of the church of Notre-Dame at Moret-sur-Loing. Monet’s sole concern was air and light, and Sisley’s appears to be an homage keepsake. The painting exudes respect for the original architects and builders of a structure so impregnable and resolute, it stood then as it did in those medieval times, and which for us, stands today, as it will, for time immemorial. <br> <br>Nevertheless, Sisley strived to show the changing appearance of the motif through a series of atmospheric changes. He gave the works titles such as “In Sunshine”, “Under Frost”, and “In Rain” and exhibited them as a group at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in 1894, factors that suggest he thought of them as serial interpretations. Nevertheless, unlike Monet’s work, l’église de Moret, le Soir reveals that Sisley chose to display the motif within a spatial context that accentuates its compositional attributes — the plunging perspective of the narrow street at left, the strong diagonal recession of the building lines as a counterbalance to the right, and the imposing weight of the stony building above the line of sight.

ALFRED SISLEY

When forty rural Sacramento Delta landscapes by Wayne Thiebaud were unveiled at a San Francisco gallery opening in November 1997, attendees were amazed by paintings they never anticipated. This new frontier betrayed neither Thiebaud’s mastery of confectionary-shop colors nor his impeccable eye for formal relationships. Rather, his admirers were shocked to learn that all but seven of these forty interpretations had been completed in just two years. As his son Paul recalled, “the refinements of my father’s artistic process were ever changing in a chameleon-like frenzy.” The new direction had proved an exhilarating experience, each painting an affirmation of Wayne Thiebaud’s impassioned response to the fields and levees of the local environment he dearly loved. <br> <br>Viewed from the perspective of a bird or a plane, The Riverhouse is an agrarian tapestry conceived with a kaleidoscopic range of shapes and simple forms; fields striped with furrows or striated fans, deliriously colored parallelograms and trapezoids, an orchard garnished pizza-shaped wedge, and a boldly limned river, the lifeline of a thirsty California central valley largely dependent upon transported water. <br> <br>The Riverhouse is a painting that ‘moves’ between seamlessly shifting planes of aerial mapping that recalls Richard Diebenkorn’s stroke of insight when he took his first commercial flight the spring of 1951, and those partitions engaging a more standard vanishing point perspective. Thiebaud explained his process as “orchestrating with as much variety and tempo as I can.” Brightly lit with a fauve-like intensity, The Riverhouse is a heady concoction of vibrant pigment and rich impasto; one that recalls his indebtedness to Pierre Bonnard whose color Thiebaud referred to as “a bucket full of hot coals and ice cubes.” Among his many other influences, the insertion of objects — often tiny — that defy a rational sense of scale that reflects his interest in Chinese landscape painting. <br> <br>As always, his mastery as a painter recalls his titular pies and cakes with their bewitching rainbow-like halos and side-by-side colors of equal intensity but differing in hues to create the vibratory effect of an aura, what Thiebaud explained “denotes an attempt to develop as much energy and light and visual power as you can.” Thiebaud’s Sacramento Delta landscapes are an integral and important part of his oeuvre. Paintings such as The Riverhouse rival the best abstract art of the twentieth century. His good friend, Willem de Kooning thought so, too.

WAYNE THIEBAUD

Alexander Calder executed a surprising number of oil paintings during the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. By this time, the shock of his 1930 visit to Mondrian’s studio, where he was impressed not by the paintings but by the environment, had developed into an artistic language of Calder’s own. So, as Calder was painting The Cross in 1948, he was already on the cusp of international recognition and on his way to winning the XX VI Venice Biennale’s grand prize for sculpture in 1952. Working on his paintings in concert with his sculptural practice, Calder approached both mediums with the same formal language and mastery of shape and color. <br> <br>Calder was deeply intrigued by the unseen forces that keep objects in motion. Taking this interest from sculpture to canvas, we see that Calder built a sense of torque within The Cross by shifting its planes and balance. Using these elements, he created implied motion suggesting that the figure is pressing forward or even descending from the skies above. The Cross’s determined momentum is further amplified by details such as the subject’s emphatically outstretched arms, the fist-like curlicue vector on the left, and the silhouetted serpentine figure. <br> <br>Calder also adopts a strong thread of poetic abandon throughout The Cross’s surface. It resonates with his good friend Miró’s hieratic and distinctly personal visual language, but it is all Calder in the effective animation of this painting’s various elements. No artist has earned more poetic license than Calder, and throughout his career, the artist remained convivially flexible in his understanding of form and composition. He even welcomed the myriad interpretations of others, writing in 1951, “That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.” <br> <br>Either way, it is important to remember that The Cross was painted shortly after the upheaval of the Second World War and to some appears to be a sobering reflection of the time. Most of all, The Cross proves that Alexander Calder loaded his brush first to work out ideas about form, structure, relationships in space, and most importantly, movement.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Trained as a woodcarver, Emil Nolde was almost 30 years old before he made his first paintings. The early paintings resembled his drawings and woodcuts: grotesque figures with bold lines and strong contrasts. The style was new, and it inspired the nascent movement Die Brücke (The Bridge), whose members invited Nolde to join them in 1906. But, it was not until the garden became his locus operandi by 1915 that he built upon his mastery of contrasting luminosities to focus on color as the supreme means of expression. Later, Nolde claimed “color is strength, strength is life,” and he could not have better characterized why his flower paintings reinvigorate our perception of color. <br> <br>Much of the strength of Nolde’s dramatic, Wagnerian-like color sensibilities is the effect of staging primary colors, such as the deep reds and golden yellows of Sonnenblumen, Abend II, against a somber palette. The contrast highlights and deepens the luminosity of the flowers, not just visually, but emotionally as well. In 1937, when Nolde’s art was rejected, confiscated, and defiled, his paintings were paraded as “degenerate art” throughout Nazi Germany in dimly lit galleries. Despite that treatment, Nolde’s status as a degenerate artist gave his art more breathing space because he seized the opportunity to produce more than 1,300 watercolors, which he called “unpainted pictures.” No novice in handling watercolor, his free-flowing style of painting had been a hallmark of his highly-charge, transparent washes since 1918. Sonnenblumen, Abend II, painted in 1944, is a rare wartime oil. He let his imagination run wild with this work, and his utilization of wet-on-wet techniques heightened the drama of each petal. <br> <br>Nolde’s intense preoccupation with color and flowers, particularly sunflowers, reflects his continuing devotion to van Gogh. He was aware of van Gogh as early as 1899 and, during the 1920s and early 1930s, visited several exhibitions of the Dutch artist’s work. They shared a profound love of nature. Nolde’s dedication to expression and the symbolic use of color found fullness in the sunflower subject, and it became a personal symbol for him, as it did for Van Gogh.

EMIL NOLDE

During the early 1870s, Winslow Homer frequently painted scenes of country living near a small farm hamlet renowned for generations for its remarkable stands of wheat, situated between the Hudson River and the Catskills in New York state. Today Hurley is far more famous for inspiring one of Homer’s greatest works, Snap the Whip painted the summer of 1872. Among the many other paintings inspired by the region, Girl Standing in the Wheatfield is rich in sentiment, but not over sentimentalized. It directly relates to an 1866 study painted in France entitled, In the Wheatfields, and another, painted the following year after he returned to America. But Homer would have undoubtedly been most proud of this one. It is a portrait, a costume study, a genre painting in the great tradition of European pastoral painting, and a dramatically backlit, atmospheric tour de force steeped in the quickly fading gloaming hour light buoyed with lambent, flowery notes and wheat spike touches. In 1874, Homer sent four paintings to the National Academy of Design exhibition. One was titled, “Girl”. Might it not be this one?

WINSLOW HOMER

Emerging at the end of the Gilded Age, N.C. Wyeth was one of the most important American artists and illustrators. His paintings and illustrations brought life to classic literature from Treasure Island to The Boy’s King Arthur and more. He is most remembered for his ability to capture crucial moments in narratives, fleshing out just a few words into a visual representation of deep drama and tension. Patriarch of the Wyeth artistic dynasty which includes his son Andrew and grandson Jamie, his influence touched future illustrators and artists. <br> <br>Perhaps his most important legacy is how he shaped American imagination – of America itself and of wild possibilities. Wyeth’s powerful paintings gave life to many of the stories America told of itself. His early paintings captured life of the American West and some of his most beloved illustrations were for novels such as The Last of the Mohicans or short stories like “Rip Van Winkle”. Despite this success, Wyeth struggled with the commercialism of illustrations and advertisements, seeking his work to be accepted as fine art. Throughout his career, he experimented with different styles shifting from Impressionism to Divisionism to Regionalism. <br> <br>N.C. Wyeth produced over 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books. His illustrations for the publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons were so popular they became known as Scribner’s Classics and remain in print to this day. <br> <br>This quietly powerful painting of a Native American forms part of a quartet of paintings, inspired by and a metaphor for the four seasons. The paintings were used to illustrate George T. Marsh’s set of poems “The Moods”. Wyeth recognized that the series came at a crucial moment in his career in which the paintings go beyond realism to capture atmosphere and mood, an internal world of emotion made external. He even contemplated and attempted to write his own poems based on these paintings. <br> <br> <br>Summer, Hush is a striking example of Wyeth pulling from his imagination and melding it with careful observation of nature. As noted in a letter to his mother, Wyeth combined the fictional subject with natural effects as in the sky. Native Americans were a subject he returned to numerous times; these paintings reflect not only Wyeth’s fascination but also of America. As observed by art historian Krstine Ronan, Wyeth was part of a larger dialogue that developed around Native Americans, cementing a general Native American culture in the imagination of the United States. Thus, the painting operates on numerous levels simultaneously. How do we relate to this painting and its conception of the four seasons? How do we interpret Wyeth’s depiction of a Native American? What role do Native Americans play in America’s imagination? <br> <br>We must also not forget that these works were first used to illustrate the poems of George T. Marsh. Marsh, a poet born in New York who often also wrote of the Canadian wilderness, provides subtle evocations of the seasons hinted at in the series title “The Moods”. This painting was used alongside “Hush,” which ends: <br> <br>Are they runes of summers perished <br> <br>That the fisher hears –and ceases— <br> <br>Or the voice of one he cherished. <br> <br>Within these few lines, Wyeth gives us a thoughtful and restrained painting that stirs from within. The poem and the painting avoid obvious clichés to represent the seasons. They develop a profound interpretation filled with sensitivity. <br> <br>These paintings were important to Wyeth who hoped that “they may suggest to some architect the idea that such decorations would be appropriate in a library or capitol or some public building.” Summer, Hush demonstrates Wyeth’s control of color and composition so that small touches such as the ripples of water or the towering cloud that envelopes the figure are in service to sketch out the feeling of summer and of the poem. Through exploring this rich and complex painting, we are better able to appreciate NC Wyeth as an artist and the role this specific painting plays in the context of art history.

N.C. WYETH

The frame of reference for Irish American Sean Scully’s signature blocks and stripes is vast. From Malevich’s central premise that geometry can provide the means for universal understanding to Rothko’s impassioned approach to color and rendering of the dramatic sublime, Scully learned how to condense the splendor of the natural world into simple modes of color, light, and composition. Born in Dublin in 1945 and London-raised, Scully was well-schooled in figurative drawing when he decided to catch the spirit of his lodestar, Henri Matisse, by visiting Morocco in 1969. He was captivated by the dazzling tessellated mosaics and richly dyed fabrics and began to paint grids and stipes of color. Subsequent adventures provided further inspiration as the play of intense light on the reflective surfaces of Mayan ruins and the ancient slabs of stone at Stonehenge brought the sensation of light, space, and geometric movement to Scully’s paintings. The ability to trace the impact of Scully’s travels throughout his paintings reaffirms the value of abstract art as a touchstone for real-life experience. <br> <br> <br>Painted in rich, deep hues and layered, nuanced surfaces, Grey Red is both poetic and full of muscular formalism. Scully appropriately refers to these elemental forms as ‘bricks,’ suggesting the formal calculations of an architect. As he explained, “these relationships that I see in the street doorways, in windows between buildings, and in the traces of structures that were once full of life, I take for my work. I use these colors and forms and put them together in a way that perhaps reminds you of something, though you’re not sure of that” (David Carrier, Sean Scully, 2004, pg. 98). His approach is organic, less formulaic; intuitive painter’s choices are layering one color upon another so that contrasting hues and colors vibrate with subliminal energy. Diebenkorn comes to mind in his pursuit of radiant light. But here, the radiant bands of terracotta red, gray, taupe, and black of Grey Red resonate with deep, smoldering energy and evoke far more affecting passion than you would think it could impart. As his good friend, Bono wrote, “Sean approaches the canvas like a kickboxer, a plasterer, a builder. The quality of painting screams of a life being lived.”

SEAN SCULLY

The world of Marc Chagall cannot be contained or limited by the labels we attach to it. It is a world of images and meanings which form their own splendidly mystical discourse. Les Mariés sous le baldaquin (The Bride and Groom under the Canopy) was begun as the artist entered his 90th year, a man who had known tragedy and strife, but who never forgot life’s moments of rapturous pleasure. Here, the dreamy delights of a Russian village wedding with its arrangements of well-worn attendees are brought to us with such happy wit and cheerful innocence that there is no resisting its charm. Using a golden toned emulsion combining oil and opaque, water-based gouache, the warmth, happiness, and optimism of Chagall’s usual positivism is wrapped in a luminous radiance suggesting the influence of gold-leaf religious icons or early Renaissance painting that sought to impart the impression of divine light or spiritual enlightenment. Using a combination of oil and gouache can be challenging. But here, in Les Mariés sous le baldaquin, Chagall employs it to give the scene an otherworldly quality, almost as if it has just materialized out of his mind’s eye. Its textural delicacy creates the impression that light is emanating from the work itself and gives a spectral quality to the figures floating the sky.

MARC CHAGALL

Tom Wesselmann will undoubtedly be remembered for associating his erotic themes with the colors of the American flag. But Wesselmann had considerable gifts as a draftsman, and the line was his principal preoccupation, first as a cartoonist and later as an ardent admirer of Matisse. That he also pioneered a method of turning drawings into laser-cut steel wall reliefs proved a revelation. He began to focus ever more on drawing for the sake of drawing, enchanted that the new medium could be lifted and held: “It really is like being able to pick up a delicate line drawing from the paper.” <br> <br>The Steel Drawings caused both excitement and confusion in the art world. After acquiring one of the ground-breaking works in 1985, the Whitney Museum of American Art wrote Wesselmann wondering if it should be cataloged as a drawing or a sculpture. The work had caused such a stir that when Eric Fischl visited Wesselmann at his studio and saw steel-cut works for the first time, he remembered feeling jealous. He wanted to try it but dared not. It was clear: ‘Tom owned the technique completely.’ <br> <br>Wesselmann owed much of that technique to his year-long collaboration with metalwork fabricator Alfred Lippincott. Together, in 1984 they honed a method for cutting the steel with a laser that provided the precision he needed to show the spontaneity of his sketches. Wesselmann called it ‘the best year of my life’, elated at the results that he never fully achieved with aluminum that required each shape be hand-cut. “I anticipated how exciting it would be for me to get a drawing back in steel. I could hold it in my hands. I could pick it up by the lines…it was so exciting…a kind of near ecstasy, anyway, but there’s really been something about the new work that grabbed me.” <br> <br>Bedroom Brunette with Irises is a Steel Drawing masterwork that despite its uber-generous scale, utilizes tight cropping to provide an unimposing intimacy while maintaining a free and spontaneous quality. The figure’s outstretched arms and limbs and body intertwine with the petals and the interior elements providing a flowing investigative foray of black lines and white ‘drop out’ shapes provided by the wall. It recalls Matisse and any number of his reclining odalisque paintings. Wesselmann often tested monochromatic values to discover the extent to which color would transform his hybrid objects into newly developed Steel Drawing works and, in this case, continued with a color steel-cut version of the composition Bedroom Blonde with Irises (1987) and later still, in 1993 with a large-scale drawing in charcoal and pastel on paper.

TOM WESSELMANN

Shortly after arriving in Paris by April 1912, Marsden Hartley received an invitation. It had come from Gertrude Stein and what he saw at her 27 rue de Fleurus flat stunned him. Despite his presumptions and preparedness, “I had to get used to so much of everything all at once…a room full of staggering pictures, a room full of strangers and two remarkable looking women, Alice and Gertrude Stein…I went often I think after that on Saturday evenings — always thinking, in my reserved New England tone, ‘ how do people do things like that — let everyone in off the street to look at their pictures?… So one got to see a vast array of astounding pictures — all burning with life and new ideas — and as strange as the ideas seemed to be — all of them terrifically stimulating — a new kind of words for an old theme.” (Susan Elizabeth Ryan, The Autobiography of Marsden Hartley, pg. 77) <br> <br>The repeated visits had a profound effect. Later that year, Hartley was clearly disappointed when Arthur B. Davies and Walt Kuhn chose two of his still-life paintings for the upcoming New York Armory show in February 1913. “He (Kuhn) speaks highly of them (but) I would not have chosen them myself chiefly because I am so interested at this time in the directly abstract things of the present. But Davies says that no American has done this kind of thing and they would (not) serve me and the exhibition best at this time.” (Correspondence, Marsden Hartley to Alfred Stieglitz, early November 1912) A month later, he announced his departure from formal representationalism in “favor of intuitive abstraction…a variety of expression I find to be closest to my temperament and ideals. It is not like anything here. It is not like Picasso, it is not like Kandinsky, not like any cubism. For want of a better name, subliminal or cosmic cubism.” (Correspondence, Marsden Hartley to Alfred Stieglitz, December 1912) <br> <br>At the time, Hartley consumed Wassily Kandinsky’s recently published treatise Uber das Geistige in der Kunst (The Art of Spiritual Harmony) and Stieglitz followed the artist’s thoughts with great interest. For certain, they both embraced musical analogy as an opportunity for establishing a new visual language of abstraction. Their shared interest in the synergetic effects of music and art can be traced to at least 1909 when Hartley exhibited landscape paintings of Maine under titles such as “Songs of Autumn” and “Songs of Winter” at the 291 Gallery. The gravity of Hartley’s response to the treatise likely sparked Stieglitz’s determination to purchase Kandinsky’s seminal painting Improvisation no. 27 (Garden of Love II) at the Armory Show. As for Hartley, he announced to his niece his conviction that an aural/vision synesthetic pairing of art and music was a way forward for modern art. “Did you ever hear of anyone trying to paint music — or the equivalent of sound in color?…there is only one artist in Europe working on it (Wassily Kandinsky) and he is a pure theorist and his work is quite without feeling — whereas I work wholly from intuition and the subliminal.” (D. Cassidy, Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, Washington, D.C., pg. 6) <br> <br>In Paris, during 1912 and 1913 Hartley was inspired to create a series of six musically themed oil paintings, the first of which, Bach Preludes et Fugues, no. 1 (Musical Theme), incorporates strong Cubist elements as well as Kandinsky’s essential spirituality and synesthesia. Here, incorporating both elements seems particularly appropriate. Whereas Kandinsky’s concepts were inspired by Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method of composition whereby no note could be reused until the other eleven had been played, Hartley chose Bach’s highly structured, rigorously controlled twenty-four Preludes and Fugues from his Well-Tempered Clavier, each of which establishes an absolute tonality. The towering grid of Bach Preludes et Fugues, no. 1 suggests the formal structure of an organ, its pipes ever-rising under a high, vaulted church ceiling to which Hartley extends an invitation to stand within the lower portion of the picture plane amongst the triangular and circular ‘sound tesserae’ and absorb its essential sonority and deeply reverberating sound. All of it is cast with gradients of color that conjures an impression of Cézanne’s conceptual approach rather than Picasso’s, Analytic Cubism. Yet Bach Preludes et Fugues, no. 1, in its entirety suggests the formal structural of Picasso’s Maisons à Horta (Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebro), one of the many Picasso paintings Gertrude Stein owned and presumably staged in her residence on the many occasions he came to visit.

MARSDEN HARTLEY

Théo van Rysselberghe’s Portrait de Sylvie Lacombe, painted in 1906, is a classic masterwork by one of the most refined and consistent portrait painters of his time. The color is harmonious, the brushwork vigorous and tailored to its material task, her body and countenance true and revealing. The sitter is the daughter of his good friend, the painter Georges Lacombe, who shared a close association with Gauguin, and was a member of Les Nabis with artists Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard, among others. We now know about Sylvie Lacombe because Van Rysselberghe is so skilled at rendering subtle facial expressions and through careful observation and attention to detail, provided insights into her inner world. He has chosen a direct gaze, her eyes to yours, an inescapable covenant between subject and viewer regardless of our physical relationship to the painting. Van Rysselberghe had largely abandoned the Pointillist technique when he painted this portrait. But he continued to apply color theory guidelines by using tints of red — pinks and mauves — against greens to create a harmonious ameliorated palette of complementary colors to which he added a strong accent to draw the eye – an intensely saturated, red bow asymmetrically laid to the side of her head.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

It is not difficult to grasp how Robert Indiana’s brilliant two-row arrangement of four letters came to help empower a movement during the 1960s. Its origin emerged from deeply felt exposure to religion and from friend and mentor Ellsworth Kelly, whose hard-edged style and sensuous, unaccented color made a lasting impression. But as Indiana exclaimed, it was a moment of kismet that just happened when “LOVE bit me!” and the design came to him sharp and focused. Indiana, of course, put the design through many paces, and then the logo began to sprout up everywhere. The message, best conveyed in sculpture, stands in cities worldwide and has been translated into several languages, not least of which, is its Italian iteration, “Amor” with its fortuitous “O” also tilted to the right. But rather than being kicked by the foot of the “L”, this version lends a beautifully staged teetering effect to the “A” above. It gives a new, but no less profound, impression of love and its emotionally charged nature. In either case, Love’s tilted “O” imparts instability to an otherwise stable design, a profound projection of Indiana’s implicit critique of “the often-hollow sentimentality associated with the word, metaphorically suggesting unrequited longing and disappointment rather than saccharine affection” (Robert Indiana’s Best: A Mini Retrospective, New York Times, May 24, 2018). Repetition, of course has a nasty habit of dampening our appreciation for the genius of simplicity and, groundbreaking design. Late in life, Indiana lamented that “it was a marvelous idea, but also terrible mistake. It became too popular. And there are people who don’t like popularity.” But we, denizens of a world fraught with divisiveness and caught in turmoil, thank you. “Love” and its many versions are strong reminders of our capacity for love, and that is our best everlasting hope for a better future.

ROBERT INDIANA

SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL - A Dune Landscape with Figures Resting and a Couple on Horseback, a View of Nijmegen Cathedral Beyond - oil on canvas - 26 1/2 x 41 1/2 in.

SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL

JOAN MIRO - L'Oiseau - bronze and cinderblock - 23 7/8 x 20 x 16 1/8 in.

JOAN MIRO

JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN GOYEN - River Landscape with a Windmill and Chapel - oil on panel - 22 1/2 x 31 3/4 in.

JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN GOYEN

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