Ida Applebroog: A Long Road

Ida Applebroog - Beulahland (For Marilyn Monroe) - 1987 - Oil on canvas - 96 x 72in. (243.8 x 182.9cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkIda Applebroog (born 1929) is an American painter who studied at the New York State Institute of Applied Arts and Sciences (1947-1950) and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1966-1968). In 1974 she moved to New York City. Her work is figurative, often suggesting narratives of everyday life, and is held in numerous public collections in the USA.

She began her artistic career by studying graphic arts and then working in advertising. Applebroog stated that she, “couldn’t make art without also making money.” She eventually left that business to work as a free-lance illustrator of children’s books and greeting cards. In 1950, she married her high school sweetheart (Gideon Horowitz) While her husband completed his degree and embarked on his career (requiring several relocations), Applebroog made jewelry in the basement of the family home, which her husband and their four children sold at art fairs.

In the late 1960s Applebroog was hospitalized for depression. She was released in 1970 and moved back to New York City in 1974 (at age 44). It was there, after changing her name from "Ida Horowitz" to "Ida Applebroog" (based on her maiden name, Applebaum), where she began to develop her own signature artistic style. She developed a series of cartoon-like figures that merged the comic-strip format with the advertising industry’s use of story-boards to explain a concept. Since the 1970s, Applebroog has been best known for creating paintings, sculptures, artists' books and several films that often explore the themes of gender, sexual identity, violence and politics.

During the decades of the 1990s, Applebroog received multiple prestigious honors and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Her art was the subject of a retrospective at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C., and is held in a number of public collections in the USA. She continues to live in New York and is represented by Hauser & Wirth.

Magic Realism: Philip Evergood

Philip Evergood - Don’t Cry Mother - 1938-44 - Oil on canvas - 26 x 18 in. - Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York (click photo for larger image) Magic Realism is an American style of art with Surrealist undercurrents. The art is anchored in everyday reality, but has overtones of fantasy or wonder. The term was later also applied to the literary works of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez.

One of the style’s practitioners was American painter, etcher, lithographer, sculptor, illustrator and writer, Philip Evergood (1901-1973). Born Philip Blashki, he became (with the name Philip Evergood) one of the leading modernists of the 20th Century, with styles combining abstraction and realism, and with subjects (during the 1930s) that made him one of the leading social realists of his time.

Although born in New York City, Evergood was raised in London, where he moved in 1909 with his parents until 1923. He studied at Eton and Cambridge University and then at the Slade School. Returning to New York, he was a student of Ashcan School painter George Luks (1866-1933) at the Art Students League.

From 1924 to 1926, he traveled in Europe and studied in Paris at the Academie Julian. He lived abroad again from 1929 to 1931. During the 1920s and 1930s, Evergood explored themes with a distorted style reflective of both Cezanne and El Greco. His figures seemed to exist in fanciful worlds or “imagined space”. (Baigell) By 1935, he had completed politically and socially charged American Scene paintings, focused on the unhappiness of people caught in the Depression.

During the 1930s, Evergood was a muralist for the WPA. in the Federal Art Project, and his mural works include The Story of Richmond Hill for the library in that part of New York City, and Cotton from Field to Mill for the Post Office in Jackson, Georgia. Remaining politically active, Evergood served as President of the New York Artists Union.

Evergood taught both art and music at various institutions in the 1940s. During this time, he distanced himself from political and social issues to create figures that were more fanciful and free.

In 1952, he moved to Connecticut until his death. Sadly, Evergood was killed in a house fire in Bridgewater, Connecticut, in 1973, at the age of 72.

Marsden Hartley: An American Expressionist

Marsden Hartley - Mount Katahdin, Autumn No. 1 - 1939-40 - Oil on canvas - Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (click photo for larger image)Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was one of a circle of American modernist painters that included Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, Arthur Dove and Charles Demuth.  

Hartley had his first solo exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery in New York. Extensive travels acquainted him with a variety of modern movements. He was first moved by Cézanne, and the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, then later by his contact with the German Expressionists. All of what Hartley absorbed contributed to a distinctive, personal style, seen best in his bold paintings of the harsh landscape of Maine. 

Maine held some very painful childhood memories for the artist, and yet it became his primary and most profound resource later in life. In his last ten years, Hartley alternated between New York City and Maine. When he was sixty-two years old, he made a pilgrimage to Mount Katahdin, the highest peak in the state. This painting commemorates that accomplishment and captures a view of the mountain beloved by decades of American writers and painters. This work “embraces the modernist potential of the famous mountain while capturing a vivid sense of Hartley’s intimate relationship to his native countryside.”

Hartley was also a poet and essayist, and his writings continue to move people.

I’ll be offering an art history class on Marsden Hartley next Fall at LMCCE. Keep your eyes open for that one.

Ian Cheng: Emissaries

Ian Cheng - The narrative agents and wildlife of Emissaries (2015-2017) (click photo for larger image)American artist Ian Cheng (b. 1984 was born in Los Angeles, CA. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 2006, with a dual degree in cognitive science and art practice. 

Cheng worked at the special visual effects company of George Lucas (Industrial Light and Magic) and earned his MFA at Columbia University in NY, in 2009. “Cheng coined the art form ‘live simulations’ and popularized the use of simulation as a medium available to artistic practice.”

MoMA PS1 presents Ian Cheng’s first US museum solo presentation, featuring the artist’s complete Emissary Trilogy (2015–17). ‘Ian Cheng: Emissaries’ is a series of live simulation works created using a video game engine. Described by the artist as ‘a video game that plays itself,’ the series is comprised of computer-generated simulations like those used in predictive technologies for complex scenarios such as climate change or elections. Populated by a cast of characters and wildlife that interact, intervene, and recombine in open-ended narratives, Cheng’s simulations evolve endlessly as self-contained ecosystems. The exhibition Emissaries marks the completion of this series of works, which contemplate timeless questions about evolution, the origins of human consciousness, and ways of relating to a chaotic existence.” Cheng worked on the trilogy from 2015-2017. The exhibition is currently at MoMA PS1, through September 25, 2017. It has been organized by Peter Eleey, Chief Curator, MoMA PS1, with Jocelyn Miller, Curatorial Associate, MoMA PS1.

MoMA PS1 is one of the largest art institutions in the United States dedicated solely to contemporary art. The museum is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, across the Queensboro Bridge from midtown Manhattan, and is easily accessible by bus and subway. By subway, take either the E or M to Court Square-23 Street; the 7 to Court Square; or the G to Court Sq or 21 St-Van Alst. By bus, take the Q67 to Jackson and 46th Ave or the B62 to 46th Ave.

Floreine Stettheimer: An Idiosyncratic Style

Florine Stettheimer - The Cathedrals of Art - 1942 - Oil on canvas - 60 1/4 x 50 1/4 in. (153 x 127.6 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (click photo for larger image)American painter, designer, and poet Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944) developed a highly personal and idiosyncratic style that was characterized by vivid color, a purposeful naiveté, and whimsical humor—often in the service of wry social comment.

Stettheimer received training at New York’s Art Students League, where she studied from 1892 to 1895. In 1906 she moved to Europe with her mother and two sisters. While living abroad, she continued her studies in painting and was exposed to the work of the Symbolists and the Postimpressionists. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the family returned to New York City, where the Stettheimer women began hosting salons for Modernists. 

Stettheimer did receive some recognition during her lifetime. In 1932 her work was included in the First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painters at the Whitney Museum. Her most ambitious work was a series of four canvases (one of which is featured here) in which she glorified and critiqued the cathedrals of the modern city: the financial district, the theatre, department stores, and the art museum. In this series, Stettheimer created extraordinary composite visions of New York’s economic, social, and cultural institutions. 

The Cathedrals of Art is a fantastical portrait of the New York art world. Microcosms of three of the city’s major museums and their collections are watched over by their directors: the Museum of Modern Art (upper left), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (center), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (upper right). A gathering of art critics, dealers, and photographers of the day, including Stettheimer herself (lower right), appears around the Metropolitan’s grand staircase. She was still working on The Cathedrals of Art when she died.