Far Above the Hudson’s Waters – By Piri Halasz

High above the Hudson River, two hours by train from Manhattan, stands Olana, a national historic site once the home of the Hudson River School painter, Frederic E. Church (1826-1900).

Far Above the Hudson’s Waters
By Piri Halasz

 

 

 

High above the Hudson River, two hours by train from Manhattan, stands Olana, a national historic site once the home of the Hudson River School painter, Frederic E. Church (1826-1900). The spectacular sunsets in Church’s paintings appealed to critics of nearly every stripe in his era, but today, Manhattan critics are liable to express anger at beautiful abstract paintings descended in their idealistic spirit from landscapes not unlike those of Church.

Five miles from Olana, many such paintings have been and are being displayed in the village of Hudson this year. Hudson is better known for its handsome Federal and Victorian houses, and its antique stores, but in March, I saw paintings there by three fine artists, Paula DeLuccia, George Hofmann, and Arthur Yanoff, at Deborah Davis Fine Art. Using thick and often granular paint, DeLuccia covered her canvases with luscious, harmonious colors. Some of her vigorous, swooping forms appeared to have been brushed on, other areas scrubbed in, and while occasionally there was much of a muchness, mostly, they were a joy.

Hofmann showed acrylics on plywood, deriving their considerable charm as much from their ground as from their medium. The lovely grained surface of the plywood was mostly uncovered, except for a smallish patch or two of brightly-colored, variegated short acrylic brush strokes, most often in the upper left-hand corner of the panel. Two of Yanoff’s larger canvases, the mostly-black New York by Night, and grey-and-orange Flag Turned Orange, were very moving, though his characteristic technique of combining fields, areas and lines of paint with scatterings of very small collage elements is most effective when you can view the work from a distance.

All three artists live or spend much time outside major population centers, yet they acquired their sophistication in an urban milieu. Hofmann lives in Albany, but for many years taught at Hunter College in Manhattan. DeLuccia divides her time between East Durham NY and New York City. Yanoff spent years in the Boston area, though he resides in the Berkshires at present. A fourth painter, who began his career in the Big Apple, but moved upstate is Stanley Boxer (1926-2000). His work was displayed in Hudson this May in the gallery of the Columbia County Council on the Arts. Most ambitious is "Rural Artists with Urban Sensibilities," a traveling exhibition now at the Hudson Opera House (through August 21). Besides DeLuccia and Yanoff, this show includes paintings by Lauren Olitski of Marlboro VT, Susan Roth of Canastota NY, Roy Lerner of South Salem NY and Michael Williams of South Dorset VT.

Abstract painting is hardly a country flower, and to make good abstraction it is essential to be able to see the best abstraction of previous generations, on view (to the extent that it is on view) mostly in Manhattan. Yet already in 1986, Clement Greenberg was writing that much of the best art was being produced outside of the cities. He added that it still had to be "validated" in New York. The problem with such "validation" is New York itself, which (possibly because of its depressed economic situation) seems dominated by an appetite for the mediocre, at least in contemporary art. I do see work by younger artists that I like when I go around to the galleries, but it’s the exception, not the rule.

Part of New York’s problem appears to be a prejudice against art made by hand. This attitude was implied by a panel on criticism reported in the last issue of NY Arts, in which "the Greenbergian" was called a "luddite." Sure, I’m a luddite in that I prefer water to Pepsi-Cola, and use my feet instead of wheels to get around a lot of the time, but as far as artistic technology is concerned, Olitski makes the point in her introduction to "Rural Artists with Urban Sensibilities" that she and her colleagues not only use acrylics, a twentieth-century medium, but the latest varieties of them available from Golden Artist Colors (who work with artists to find new technologies).

Technology is fine, but if you’re a prisoner of the Duchampian mind set, you may tend to think that the only legitimate art is machine-produced. This is just as silly as thinking that the only legitimate art is hand-made. With me, results matter more than methods, but I do think that a rural artist, not being surrounded by the latest models in garbage bags piled high on the pavement, the loudest screams from fire engines and ambulances, and the newest in flashy billboards, may find it easier to choose just the right type and amount of technology for her or his own purposes.