VISUAL ART
WNY’s ever-more-fabulous art world: an early 2008 update
By Elizabeth Licata
Promenade, 1927-28 by Charles Burchfield.

If you’re at all connected with the local art scene, the area where Elmwood meets the Scajaqueda is like a magnetic field. On one side of the road, you have the new Burchfield-Penney Art Center, which seems to be racing toward completion. On the other, there is the Albright-Knox, where massive crowds gathered for a recent Stanley Cup event, and where a series of collection “remixes” have given us all a chance to see works that haven’t been displayed for years or perhaps have never been displayed until now.
Skyscrapers, ca. 1920
by Joseph Stella.

Excitement burgeons weekly about the BPAC building. When will it open? At press time, the date was October 17. A group of Spree staffers were lucky enough to get a preview in January; here’s the unanimous reaction of each and every one of us: “WOW!” (OK, some preferred “AWESOME”). For this viewer, the most impressive—and intimidating—feature of the new space was the gigantic first-floor exhibition hall for temporary exhibitions and contemporary art. As you look at the building from Elmwood, you are seeing the curving outer wall of this space. It is 145 feet long, 40 feet wide, and has 28-foot-high ceilings. Though there are partitions that can drop down to create intimate spaces within this hangar of a room, I am very eager to see it used to display artwork that is massive enough to fill it.

Heatwave, 1995 by Ken Price.
Others in our viewing party were entranced by the reception areas of the new building, which include a gorgeous terrace from which one can view the Albright-Knox and Delaware Park. With the addition of outdoor artworks and landscaping, this project is one of the most exciting pieces of new construction Buffalo has seen in decades.

Meanwhile, though we won’t be seeing construction at the Albright-Knox for some time yet, the museum staff is using their remix series to bring out works of art that are very rarely seen. Fact is, over seventy percent of the Albright-Knox’s collection is works on paper (drawings, prints, mixed media) and most of what we see are paintings and (some) sculpture. If the museum were to display everything worth displaying, they’d need three more buildings the size of what they have now. At least.

On a recent visit, I explored the current exhibition in the Clifton link, Art in the City (images from it illustrate this article). These are all works on paper from the collection. There are at least two showstoppers: Ken Price’s brilliant silkscreen series,
New York Bouquet, 1917 by Frederick Childe Hassam.
featuring sharp, appropriately technocolor—but unglamorous—scenes from Los Angeles; and Charles Burchfield’s Promenade, a painting that could have been taken from almost any street in Allentown, but wasn’t. The buildings that inspired it were on Niagara Street near Georgia; sadly, they have been demolished. Please do not ignore the link on your next visit—this is a great show, with a wide variety of traditional and historic depictions as well as modern and contemporary work. It runs through this month.

Spree art critic Bruce Adams will be reviewing the latest remix exhibition—which has a color theme—next issue, so I’ll simply comment here that it was refreshing to see lithographs by Edward Ruscha and silkscreens by Josef Albers in the exhibition, as well as paintings and sculpture. One note: Adams mentioned Clorox bottle sculptures as possible examples of undesirable art in his piece on critics last issue. I am sure I saw small Clorox bottles—or something very similar—in David Batchelor’s Idiot Stick, a gorgeous 2006 fluorescent sculpture that is one of the highlights of the current remix show.

Kate Koperski
Photo by Jim Bush.
Sadly, Spree’s production schedule makes it difficult to review or even list many of the other art exhibitions that open in Western New York on at least a monthly basis. However, we recognize that there are plenty of other places, small and large, where great art can be seen here. One of them is the Castellani Art Museum, where former folk arts curator Kate Koperski was recently appointed executive director. For well over ten years, Koperski has been overseeing the innovative program highlighting traditional art forms, artists, and ways-of-life in Western New York, including such genres as Polish Easter traditions, Native-American storytelling, and farmstand culture. Her meticulous and inclusive curating has been rewarded with a higher position, and we expect her to bring further honors to the Castellani and to Niagara University.

Elizabeth Licata is editor-in-chief of Buffalo Spree.


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