Jan Müller at Lori Bookstein

Jan Müller, The Concert of Angels (1957, Oil on canvas, 56 1/2" x 148")

James writes:

In 1954, the 31-year-old painter Jan Müller (1922-1958) received a pacemaker, version 1.0, which kept him alive for a few desperate years and provided the drumbeat for his urgent artistic output. With a broken heart, he produced a heartbreaking series of paintings based on "Faust." Praised in their day, they are now largely, and sadly, forgotten. Lori Bookstein has brought them back for an exhibition that includes significant work from the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.

Jan Müller, Walpurgisnacht—Faust I (1956, Oil on canvas, 68" x 119")

Mr. Müller's last museum retrospective took place in 1962 at the Guggenheim; his reconsideration is long overdue.

Born in Hamburg, Mr. Müller fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and emigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1941. From 1945 to 1950 he studied under Hans Hofmann, the godfather of New York School abstraction. But Mr. Müller soon synthesized the influences of German Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism, becoming one of the first Hofmann students to return to figuration.

Jan Müller, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1957, Oil on canvas, 80" x 121 1/2")

In "The Concert of Angels" (1957), more than 12 feet wide, white ghosts reach down from the canvas edge. A row of figures with terrifying faces sing. Despite the gothic subject matter, the paint handling and composition reveal a modernist sensibility.

The blocky figures are mosaics writ large; the angular spirits are brush strokes—Abstract Expressionism meets animus.

Mr. Müller energized his final paintings with a life that could survive even death.

Jan Müller, Untitled (Temptation of St Anthony) (c. 1957, Oil on board, 15 3/4" x 17 3/4")

Jan Müller at the opening of his solo exhibition at the Hansa Gallery Photograph by Robert Frank, 1957. Müller (facing the camera) is standing in front of his painting Faust, II. MoMA purchased the similar painting Faust, I from this exhibition for $1,500, at that time the Hansa’s largest sale. (from MOMA)

Details:
Faust and Other Tales: The Paintings of Jan Müller
Lori Bookstein Fine Art
138 10th Ave., (212) 750-0949
Through June 23

--Adapted from "Course of Nature and Faust," The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2012

Cathy Nan Quinlan and Kurt Hoffman at Valentine

Cathy Nan Quinlan, Simple Still Life (2011)

James writes:

Valentine is an apartment gallery in the Ridgewood section of Queens, a vital little venue at the eastern edge of the arts wave that has washed over Williamsburg and now inundates Bushwick, Brooklyn. Fred Valentine, the gallery's owner, is a refugee from Williamsburg with an eye for off-the-grid art. His exhibition of still-life paintings by Cathy Nan Quinlan (b. 1953) and ink landscapes by Kurt Hoffman (b. 1957) demonstrates how alternative the alternative can be.

Cathy Nan Quinlan, Sunset (2011)

Ms. Quinlan starts with Giorgio Morandi's iconic etchings and recasts them in oil, painting her own hatch-marks. The work has an intimate, cool feel, with unexpected colors in place of Morandi's black and white. Ms. Quinlan once ran her own Williamsburg space called the "'temporary Museum" that, she writes on her website, prized the "compact, intense stillness" of oil on canvas.

Cathy Nan Quinlan, Optimism (2011)

At Valentine, her most intense statements are the ones that are the most compact and still, like "Optimism" (2011) and "Sunset" (2011).

Kurt Hoffman, Ramble, NYC, Jan 1, 2012 (2012)

Over the past decade Mr. Hoffman has gone from drawing lewd little pictures to serene large landscapes. Examples of both are now on view. In 2010 the Eastern tradition of ink brushed on paper compelled him to turn off the cartoons and head to Central Park to draw en plein air.

Kurt Hoffman, Japanese Maple (2010)

The resulting landscapes might border on chinoiserie, but the spare beauty of "Japanese Maple" (2010) rises above pastiche with its simple beauty.

Details:
Cathy Nan Quinlan and Kurt Hoffman
Valentine Gallery
464 Seneca Ave., Ridgewood, N.Y.
(718) 381-2962
Through June 24

--adapted from "Course of Nature and Faust," The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2012

Ridgewood Comes into its Own

James writes:

History isn’t always so precise, but it’s possible to declare May 12 as the day when the arts of Queens came into its own. On that Sunday, the Queens Museum of Art organized what it promised would be a “historic art crawl” through an event called “Actually, It’s Ridgewood.”

The title was an amusing response—a declaration of independence aimed at Bushwick, Brooklyn, the neighborhood bordering Ridgewood that usually claims the Queens arts spaces as its own. The symbol for the event included a rendering of Arbitration Rock, the traditional border delineating the two boroughs, and included the motto “vere, Ridgewood est.”

Among the stopovers was the ersatz “Bushwick” gallery building 1717 Troutman, the influential galleries Valentine and Small Black Door, and the temporary sculpture garden, curated by Deborah Brown and Lesley Heller, now at the Vander Ende-Onderdonk House, the oldest Dutch colonial building in New York City.

The event became the talk of Twitter and was a coup for the Queens Museum (the Brooklyn Museum, which must need a trail map whenever it steps off Eastern Parkway, was notably absent from the proceedings).

The crawl also showed how this neighborhood, once the bastard child of Bushwick, is coming into its own.

One Ridgewood show I am especially looking forward to it Cathy Nan Quinlan and Kurt Hoffman at Valentine Gallery, opening June 1. 

There's a gallery in there: Valentine Gallery (red brick building), 464 Seneca Avenue, Ridgewood, Queens 

Cathy Nan Quinlan, The Morandi Series: The Candy Dish (2010). 

Cathy Nan Quinlan, The Footed Bowl (2009)

--excerpted from Gallery Chronicle, The New Criterion, June 2012