The Best Exhibitions of 2012

My list of the best shows that I saw this year is not very large, mainly because I didn’t see that many shows, or that many shows that I liked. I saw a lot of bad, mediocre or overrated exhibitions, and there were exhibitions by major artists that were anything but major. But to be fair It’s difficult to see everything because there is so much of everything.  Also of note were the really terrific works that passed in front of my eyes this year on Facebook, strong bodies of work by many of my facebook artist friends were at times more exciting and rewarding than what I saw in museums and galleries.  So in no order of preference is what I liked in 2012. These reviews originally appeared throughout the year on this very blog and on facebook.

Jean Dubuffet.  Pace Gallery

Today on my skip to my lou jaunt through Chelsea I took in the magnificent exhibition Jean Dubuffet: The Last Two Years at The Pace Gallery. The large and spacious space is filled with about 20 of this art brute’s paintings that mostly are very large in size consisting mostly of the colors red, blue yellow and white in abstract swirls and shapes and painted with acrylics. The sheer beauty of these works, (and they are indeed beautiful) made me dizzy with pleasure and delight. The guard on duty was eyeing me weirdly maybe because I had a soft big old smile on my face and was lingering longer than is usual and that I kept going back and forth between the two galleries. I’ve always loved this man Dubuffet’s work ever since I was a teenager. Here was an older artist with a young artist’s daring do, and he still had this daring & do right up to his death. This is an exhibit that I might have to go to again before it comes down in March.

Ralph Humphrey.  Gary Snyder Gallery

Chelsea in the rain, saw me taking in some exhibitions today, and without a doubt the best show on right now is the stunning Ralph Humphrey exhibition at the Gary Snyder Gallery. I've always liked his work, big colorful yet subtle with rich sculptural like textures. His colors are beautiful, very tactile and luscious and they sure have a presence.

Thomas Hirschhorn.  Gladstone Gallery

Also having a presence is the Thomas Hirschhorn spectacular installation inspired by the sinking of the cruise ship Costa Concordia at the Gladstone Gallery. You can't help but be amazed at this work, sort of like being on a movie set but not being allowed to walk around in it, and it does grab you and as the artist says he wanted to do something big, but big doesn't always mean good. It does come with the prerequisite wow affect, and it does startle, but what really are with left with? Maybe just another razzle dazzle Chelsea installation piece.

  

The Wedding (the Walker Evans Polaroid Project.  Andrea Rosen Gallery

The other show that I liked quite a bit, but with some very minor reservations was the complex and sometimes daunting The Wedding (The Walker Evans Polaroid Project) which was curated by Ydessa Hendeles, who calls it a curatorial composition. This is on view at the Adrea Rosen Gallery only until Feb. 4th. Hendeles who is also a wealthy collector and curator has brought together some intriguing objects including 83 of Walker Evans’s last works that are small color polaroids of buildings and structures + several photographs by Muybridge, Atget and bird photos by Roni Horn which are of taxidermied Icelandic wildfowl in close up and from the back. All are installed on walls that surround the main piece, the focus of the show, a large and beautiful mid 19th century birdhouse from England which is more like a playhouse than a refuge for birds. This lovely structure is surround by child’s settees designed by Stickley at the turn of the 20th Century that invite the viewer to sit for a while. It all gives the appearance of a stage set waiting for the play to begin and all told this is indeed an odd and intriguing installation that some might find dense and pedantic. In fact the gallery has piled on a counter in the front room small 35pg.very nice Spiral bound catalogs for the taking in which the curator goes to great lengths to explain the meanings behind the installation and the objects included written in a clear and casual text. Also on hand in the foyer of the gallery is an architectural model of a cooper’s workshop that sits on a Stickely child’s table, all of this is visually arresting but would this elegant installation work without a 35pg. Explanation of what we are looking at. The whole thing does have the feeling of being in a church and in the press release Hendeles writes how she has never come into the Andrea Rosen Gallery “without feeling the majesty of the cathedral-like architecture of its main gallery,” a feeling I might say I have never felt.

Weegee.  Kasher Gallery.  Bill Jensen.  Cheim & Read

In spite of the crummy weather yesterday I took in a few shows in Chelsea, and no I did not see the Damien Hurst dots, but I did see the terrific Weegee show at Kasher. I've always loved his photographs, and I have an original edition of his Naked City. His work kinda smashes you in the face. Also of note was Bill Jensen's elegant show of diptychs and triptychs at Cheim & Read. His surfaces are always compelling. I should add that he is an old friend, and I had for many years one of his early paintings which I sold in the late 80's, a sad day for me. The piece of mine that Bill had was destroyed in the awful fire in Margrit's loft, another sad day for me.

The Birth Of Promotion. Inventing Film Publicity in The Silent Film Era. New York Public Library for The Performing Arts.

Got to this show at The New York Public Library For The Performing Arts just under the wire as it's closing very soon. Its a very lovely installation as you could tell from the photos I've posted and the show was  full of posters, lobby cards, pressbooks, sheet music, photos and programs, and some really nice star promo material like the Colleen Moore cosmetics and the Chaplin doll. Some of the matting of the pieces was odd, and annoying as they cut off some of the images, it was as if they had the mats laying around and used the material to fit into the mats, a small annoyance considering the thought and curatorial finesse that went into the show. They do really nice shows at the Lincoln Center Library For The Performing arts, and I was the only one viewing the exhibition. They always do nice fold over programs which they give out for free, and the one for this show was no exception. It was a large 4pg. foldover that imitated the pressbooks of the period

Happenings. The Pace Gallery

The Pace Gallery in Chelsea has just mounted another one of their wonderful museum quality exhibitions, this one documenting the Happenings movement that occurred in the young downtown art scene of the late 1950’s and early 60’s.  These were free and loose theatrical events that had the impression of just “happening” but of course a lot of planning and time went into these performances and events that had their roots not only in theatre and dance but also in the surreal and dada movements.   The exhibition is big and loaded with great stuff including photographs (some in color), videos, rare documents, sculptures, paintings and drawings by then unknown artists such as Claes Oldenberg, Jim Dine, Lucas Samaras, Red Grooms and many others.  I kept thinking to myself how did I miss seeing these works when they were originally done, well of course I was only 8 or 9 at the time, so that's how come I missed them, but later on I would meet some of these marvelous artists who made up this brief moment in American Art that would lead to Pop Art, and influence dance, music and poetry. The show is spiffy and the installation is very impressive, looking like a million bucks, which I'm sure it came close to costing.

John Chamberlain: Choices. The Guggenheim Museum

Saw this rousing retrospective today of John Chamberlain at the Guggenheim Museum. I wasn't feeling all that great, but I've always loved his work. But be aware the Guggenheim has hired some young men from Hitler's youth organization who are extremely rude and aggressive. I was snapping a few innocent photos when this young piece of shit screamed at me to stop taking pictures. I said that I'm surprised that we can't take pictures of this extraordinary building, only on the ground floor he garbage answered. So I put my camera away and went back to looking at the sculptures, and he had the audacity to tell me I'm not done don't turn your back on me. Can you imagine. At that point I should have gone downstairs and filed a complaint against this little turd. I told him to stop harassing me. Have a good day the prick said. Really.

The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. The Metropolitan Museum

Saw this beautiful exhibit today at the Met which is my home away from home and I urge all to see it. As usual with shows here, the installation is stunning, and the paintings well what can I say. The only gallery that I could have done without is the one devoted to some of the work done at Matisse's private studio classes that he gave. I suppose they felt they had to include it because Sarah Stein took classes there, and some of her work is included. Interesting because I never knew this about Matisse. Also of note were the wonderful little dolls and models that Florine Stettheimer designed for Four Saints In Three Acts, and photos of the fabulous house that Le Corbusier designed for Sarah & Michael Stein, also there is short movies of four saints and home movies of the steins at the Le Corbusier house. At times viewing the show brought tears to my eyes, that's how moving I found it. The crowds are manageable if you get there early.

Janet Fish, Charles Burchfield. D.C. Moore Gallery.  Tom Friedman. Luhring Augustine Gallery, Milton Avery. Fischbach Gallery.  Jonathan Lasker. Cheim & Read

The Janet Fish show at D.C. Moore of still life's are bold and complex in her handling of her paint and her set ups, also in the smaller gallery is a marvelous small show of watercolor Landscapes by the great Charles Burchfield.  The Tom Friedman show which closes soon, has some of his wow sculptures. His work usually brings a smile to my face, and although not all of them are successful this is still a very good show. The two shows that I liked the most is the wonderful exhibit of Milton Avery that the painter McWillie Chambers put together for Fischbach Gallery and the really beautiful show of Jonathan Lasker at Cheim & Read. These are "early works" from 1977-1985 and there is not a weak work in the entire exhibition. So there you have it.

 Lucio Fontana at the Gagosian Gallery.

This is a superb exhibition of the important Italian artist who might not be so well known in this country. His most famous works are probably his slashed and lacerated canvases, and they are well represented here, but there is much more in this marvelous show. The only things that I didn't care for were the Ambienti Spaziali  which are environments that play with light and which the gallery has lovingly reconstructed. In order to view them you have to enter small black rooms which turned me off immediately because of my claustrophobia and my trepidation made me stay clear of them after I had ventured into one, and besides I haven't been in any small black rooms since 1984, and I wasn't about to start going into them at this late date. Otherwise I was completely spellbound by his work and was surprised by what a wonderful artist he was, because quite frankly I haven't given Mr. Fontana much thought in all my years as an artist. This is easily one of the best shows I have seen in 2012. 

Bryan Hunt Danese Gallery. Ronnie Bladen.  Loretta Howard Gallery, Brice Marden Matthew Marks Gallery

I went to some galleries today, well more than some, and I wish I could say that I loved everything I saw. I didn’t. In fact I saw very little that I did like. I guess I should start with what I thought was worth my time and maybe yours. The Bryan Hunt show at Danese has some marvelous pieces, beautifully crafted and intriguing. They kinda reminded me a bit of Brancusi which is funny because right before seeing the Hunts I saw a show of photographs by the master. Most of course I had seen before, and I love his work, but as photographs these are basically documentations of his studio and I could just as easily look at them in a book as I could on the white walls of a gallery.  Getting back to Hunt, I especially liked the sculptures that he’s call dirigibles and are attached to the walls way above the viewer and seem to float in space. Really nice stuff.  The show of Ronnie Bladen’s early paintings from 1955-1962 at the Loretta Howard Gallery (this is fast becoming one of my favorite galleries) is a jolt because he’s known as being a minimalist and these oil paintings are anything but, plus I love the fact that he hid them away for years behind a wall that he built in his studio. These are big and colorful and have enough oil on them to keep the country supplied for the next 100 years. See this show. I also was very much taken with Brice Marden’s new paintings, which are small pieces of marble with oil paint applied to them. They’re as elegant as one would expect from him, but they also took me by surprise, not what I was expecting to see. 

Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000. The Museum Of Modern Art

I really enjoyed this exhibition and seeing it at a member’s only showing without the hoards helped. But that being said I do have my reservations. This being a typical Moma “historical” show it looks great as it sprawls its way through those large galleries on the 6^th floor. The exhibit documents how children around the world played and learned from 1900 to 2000. However this being the Museum Of Modern Art the work is geared to modernism and “good” design, so I found it to be somewhat narrow and elitist in its approach and curatorial decisions. Don’t get me wrong I love Lyonel Feininger’s wooden toys as much as the next artist, and there are many beautiful examples of other toys, books, furniture and games by other artists, architects and designers but it helps if one keeps in mind that this is a show for MOMA’s kinder and not for mommy’s kids. So everything in the show is beautiful and well designed, after all we know that children only like beautiful and well-designed toys. There is a nod to the commercial toy which includes colorforms (loved those colorforms as a kid), Etch A Sketch (loved my Etch A Sketch, but its too much in the news these days), Lego and slinky but not a can of Play Doh is to be found, nor are marbles, pick up sticks, Jacks or any toy that one could have purchased at a Woolworth’s. Most of the toys and games look like they were expensive even when new, and now they look like the toys that sometimes turn up on Antiques Road show, you know those great tin cars in their original boxes which is also represented in the show. But where are the Lionel Train sets, the Lincoln Logs (the only building block set that turns up is of course very Bauhausy even though it’s from the 1950’s)  or a View Master (would it have killed them to include a View Master?), and not one doll. The Moma’s idea of a doll is some of Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s wonderful puppets. There is not one toy from the Disney Empire, in fact there are no movie or TV tie-in games at all. There is not a ball, or a cheap beach toy either; in fact games and toys of the streets are completely left out. Like many of these historical shows, by the time you get to the final galleries, it’s a big downer, I mean why would the curators devoted an entire wall pasted with pages from The Whole Earth Catalog along with a poster of the Mai Lai massacre. Is this to point out and educate us that our childhoods came to an end with the 60’s? How many small kids are going to have nightmares after viewing that shocking poster, one woman standing next to me looked visibly upset and ironically it’s the one image from this exhibition on childhood that stays with me, its the image that I took home with me. Sure there are other political images and objects throughout the show. There are some charming Nazi and Italian Fascist board games (in mint condition I might add), that made me a little queasy and uncomfortable, but the Moma’s nod to the holocaust and its children is faint and is pretty much inconsequential consisting of a propaganda film that the Nazi’s produced to show the world how marvelous the concentration camp at Terezin was. There are no coloring books nor paper dolls and no Mr. And Mrs. Potato Head, now that omission really upset me. There are also toys of the space age, and stuff from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse but the newest toys and games look so uninviting to me, that I thought to myself what kid would want to play with them, I certainly wouldn’t and do we really need a wall featuring a boring photograph by Andreas Gurksy of an ugly suburban Toy’s “R” Us, oh wait of course its in their collection. Also when you exit through the gift shop you will be able to pick up nice reproductions of some of the toys and books featured in the exhibition  which makes me wonder what came first the chicken or the exhibition.

  

Yayoi Kusama & Signs & Symbols. The Whitney Museum

Went up to the Whitney Museum today (thankfully the terrible heat wave broke) to see the Yayoi Kusama show which was pretty much marvelous. I especially liked seeing her early work, the paintings and drawings. Her Phallic sculptures or accumulations as she calls them were not my favorites, even though they have a tacky look and feel to them. She is certainly a unique presence and I applaud the Whitney for mounting this show.. I also liked (what's not to like as my mother use to say) The Signs and Symbols show that is a beautifully installed exhibit of lots of beautiful paintings from their collection, its not the kind of show that is going to send you home thinking, but it did make me swoon a bit and made my knees a little weak.

  

Art Of Another Kind. The Guggenheim Museum

Just back from seeing this perfect show for a hot summer day. Filled to the brim with beautiful paintings by a wide range of international artists some of whom I never heard of ("lesser known" as the Guggenheim refers to them), and beautifully installed (large paintings always look great in this place.) All the works were dusted off and taken out of their permanent collection storage bins, and works that I liked a lot were by Dubuffet, Rauschenberg, (an early all red abstract collaged heavily painted painting), Marca-Relli, Burri, Fontana, Klein, Pollock, Hoffman and many others. The pieces of sculpture scattered about here and there don't do so well, but thats to be expected, but the early Louise Bourgeois and a few Noguchi's stood out for me..

Lunch Hour.  New York Public Library

Went to see the "Lunch Hour" exhibit now on at the Main branch of the New York Public Library, you know its the building with those big lions out front. Its on until Feb. so there is no hurry to see it. I enjoyed it, but would have liked more photos and such. They cover every thing from lunch at home, the quick lunch, power lunches, charitable meals and of course the Automat which gets a nifty recreation of those beloved compartments that held our many favorite dishes, this time when you lift the doors there are recipe postcards for the taking of some of their most favorite dishes ie the baked beans, macaroni and cheese. There are also many menus from a wide range of restaurants and man those low low prices, but was surprised to see that even in the 60's the four seasons prices were very expensive. This is the kind of exhibit in which strangers strike up conversations with each other reminiscing about this and that. Also its always a pleasure just to take in this magnificent building, one of the truly great spaces in the city, and while you're there check out wonderful Bryant Park which over the recent years has turned into one of the outdoor gems of my city. This is a beautiful park full of places to sit and eat, lots of greenery, attractive people, jugglers and even a small carousel. I do hate though what they have done to 42nd st from 7th ave down to 5th, its now total wall to wall bland skyscrapers, gone forever are the funky small buildings that gave the area a little down and dirty flavor. Sometimes this city of mine that I love with a passion (a close friend when talking about Manhattan and me sometimes refers to it as "my beloved") gets me upset with all the tearing down of the unique, the odd and the special and replacing it with the bland.

Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets. The Museum Of Modern Art

Went up to the Moma on Wednesday to view the Quay Brothers retrospective and I found it pretty charming if not always compelling. I suppose the attention must be paid factor would depend on ones interest in animation and Eastern European animation at that. Although the twin brothers are American having been born in Penn. in 1947 they have lived mainly in Europe. The boys were influenced by Polish surrealism and animation and those bold and strange Polish film posters of the 1960's and 70's that I also love. The tightly installed exhibition is in a small space and is filled with many screens showing their charming and very odd animated films along with examples of the work that influenced them. There are lots of examples of their graphic work including book covers which sort of fade into the air and memory, but the intricate dioramas that they use in their films are beautiful if somewhat precious and coying. I once again took advantage of my artist pass which allowed me to see the show during the members preview and I urge artists to take advantage of this pass which is $50.00 a year, and a better bargain is not to be found in all of Manhattan. I've already gotten my money's worth many times over since I'm there all the time. I practically had the show to myself and could leisurely look at the exhibit without those annoying hoards of tourists with their busy little cameras, snapping away at the art, instead of looking at the art. Me I like taking pictures of them taking pictures and I sometimes go out of my way to walk in front of them as they click click on their smart (who says) phones and cameras all the while tweeting away like annoying flies circling around my head. True I do take snaps of the hubba hubba men when I can, sometimes its difficult to catch them unaware and sometimes the hubba hubba guys know that I'm snapping them and pose for me, without posing if you know what I mean. I can only take this place for short periods of time, because it sometimes feels like I'm in a large mental hospital with the inmates running wild or a large airline terminal where all the flights have been delayed or canceled permanently. This place is sterile and vapid but the collection when you can actually see it is great, except of course for the trendy up to the moment Chelsea looking Contemporary Galleries: 1980–Now which is full of some really dreadful shit.

Leonardo Drew at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Jackson Pollock & Tony Smith.  Mathew Marks Gallery

Chelsea on a beautiful Fall day. I started the Fall art season by going to many galleries in Chelsea, covering a 3 block stretch. It can get very tiring looking bad art. There was the usual amount of installation art including big gallery spaces thrown into total darkness and featuring dull films and videos with moaning and groaning sounds, a couple of shows featuring accumulation installations (man am I sick of these) where the artists think that I would be intrigued by them putting lots of crap artfully arranged on tables and in little rooms, a show of chairs by one of the most overrated international artists, a dreadful group show that uses books and libraries as a theme, and a couple of painting-sculpture group shows that are hit and miss in terms of quality. However I did really like the massive and very impressive exhibition of sculptures by Leonardo Drew at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. These are huge and I mean huge installations using mostly wood that fill the entire gallery and are not only beautiful but impressively dangerous looking. I also thought the show of early Jackson Pollock and Tony Smith small sculptures at Mathew Marks were nice and organic but if they weren't by them just how interesting would they really be. The large Tony Smith minimal sculpture at another one of Marks' galleries was actually refreshing after all of the junk yard flea market like installations that I saw, and as I turned on to 22st I walked smack into a fashion show letting out and the street was full of models and photographers posing and snapping, and I joined in and took lots of photos also. Who are these people I thought. What fun.

Toxic Beauty: The Art Of Frank Moore. Grey Art Gallery NYU.

I saw the Frank Moore show at The Grey Art Gallery  today, and I found it very good, and intriguing. I wasn't so familiar with his work, maybe that had to do with me shutting down during the 80's because of the stress and strain I was going through from the AIDS epidemic. I lost many people, including my best friend so the New York art world was not on my short list of what needed my attention. These paintings are at first glance quite cheerful colorful, clever and bouncy. Its only until you get close and start looking intently do you see the anger and sadness that Moore who died of AIDS brought to his work. They are still very appealing and beautiful, lushly painted and put together with elaborate frames that become part of the work in themselves. The imagery is crowded and surreal, figurative and fantastic, pop and bucolic, referential and vastly imaginative. Moore was aware. He was aware of the harshness of the politic scene that ignored this disease for so long and like many other artists he brought his illness into his art. He was also concerned about our environment and the horrors we were and still are doing to it. His was a heavy palette. His work should startle and appeal to everyone regardless of gender or sexual orientation, but for this gay man, viewing this show was like a slap to my face.

Tatzu Nishi  Discovering Columbus. Columbus Circle

I saw this marvelous installation today and I loved it. Its a spectacular spectacular and I loved everything about it from the ordering of my ticket on line, to waiting in the Queue, to the walking up the 6 flights of stairs (ok I didn't like that so much) and the shock and giddiness upon entering the living room and seeing this statue up close and watching the expressions on people's faces. Talk about your gorilla in the room. Nishi took a 130 year old icon of New York City and turned it on its head, creating a dada moment for the 21st Century. And the views from the exhibition were brilliant and beautiful even on this overcast day. One of the best exhibitions of the year. God I love this fucking city

Scooter LaForge Munch Gallery

The first thing I noticed about these works, these densely packed and colorful paintings is how much I was smiling as I took them in. They are charming works to be sure, in fact I thought they were going to jump off the walls and start hugging me, that’s how tender they are. But they are also scary, like childhood nightmares where creatures and animals jump out at you ready to huff and puff and blow your house down. These are fractured fairy tales for adults (but they also appeal I would think to children). His paintings in the show (and in general) are full of so much outstretched and hidden psychological and personal meanings and feelings that I could only begin to take it all in on one initial viewing. They are also sexual and gay, comical and pop and very much in your face.  Some of the paintings have stuff attached to them, and there is an abundance of themes and images that make many appearances in his fantastic world.  Bears, and cats are favorites of his (one painting has a mommy cat spanking her kitten while he watches a R rates movie on an old fashioned Tv.) In fact his work in general is usually full of animals some with two heads and some just floating around and about, Mary’s little lamb and skeletons and clowns walking through landscapes full of Ensor like people staring at us are also favorite motifs of his. His colors are lush and generous, thickly painted and bright. These are on the edge outlaw paintings, Very East Village other, but also fashionable in the sense that LaForge also decorates tee shirts and clothes and loves to pose for photographers usually nude or semi nude. His show runs through Dec. 2.   

George Bellows at the Met.

There once was an artist named Bellows who died very young poor fellow. Bellows who died at the young age of 42 from a ruptured appendix is now the subject of a large leisurely paced and nicely installed retrospective at the Met and has enough marvelous paintings in it, to make it worth a look for anyone interested in American painting at the beginning of the 20^th Century. Granted for me the most wonderful works are in the early galleries where Bellows taking the advice of his teacher Robert Henri painted scenes of everyday life in Manhattan. Some of these were rowdy and kinetic with a lush and expressionistic handling of his paint. His boxing paintings from this period are probably his most famous and best known works presenting the viewer with violent images of fighters going at each other while scary looking aficionados of the sport look on. These works are still an influence today, just take a look at the poster for the recent revival of “Golden Boy”. Also strong are his early portraits of everyday people and his portrait of Paddy Flannigan a street kid bearing his chest and buck teeth is superb, moving  and memorable. Also terrific are his large canvases of street kids many of them swimming nude in the murky waters of the East River and his street scenes especially “Cave Dwellers” that was painted almost 100 years ago, and is teeming with color and crowded city life. Bellows was part of the Ashcan school whose work was shocking in its day because of the raw look at New York City life that the artists showed, yet his work was also accepted and rewarded. I must admit that the later galleries which include many bucolic landscapes and stiff and stilted portraits of family and friends didn’t impress me all that much There is also a gallery devoted to large paintings that he did in response to the rumors about German atrocities to the people of Belgium in World War I that work more as propaganda than as singular works of art. The exhibition ends with his last boxing painting the wonderful Dempsey and Firpo that has always been a favorite of mine and it marked a change in his painting style with the promise of great things to come. 

Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt: Tender Love Among the Junk. P.S 1. Moma

This is an extraordinary overflowing beautiful retrospective of the art of Thomas Lanigan- Schmidt that is full of marvelous sculptures, drawings and objects that are generally made from everyday materials that one might find at home or in the street. The images and themes that have interested Schmidt for over 40 years include religion, pop culture and sexuality of the gay kind. His work is also political and kind, sweet and caring. Its also emotional and all embracing, something that the Catholic Church which plays such an important part in his life and art, constantly fails to do. The first thing of course one notices is the wild and garish use of color and surfaces, tinsel and foil shinny and hot. Our lady of the 99 cents store. This show is an eyeful and is overwhelming in its imagery and beauty. There is plenty to get just from the surface of his objects, and I suppose one can enjoy them in a superficial and camp way a chuckle here a giggle there, but deep down underneath this surface is also a running stream which is full of hurt, joy, hope, loss, remembrance and emotion. I don’t think I have ever seen such a raw and open autobiographical display by a contemporary artist or a body of art as profoundly moving as Schmidt’s. Obsessive (that’s putting it mildly) and childlike in its craft, this is a childhood never lost, no matter how painful it may have been, Schmidt is an artist who taps into his background for inspiration and ideas, and then lays it out like a banquet for us to pick from. Brought up in the Catholic church this upbringing as I said plays a huge part in his artistic oeuvre, so everywhere we look we see icons, chalices, Madonna’s alters, nuns, angels and religious artifacts and images mostly made of the ever present color foils and tinsels. Religion and the church meet up in pieces with tinfoil rats and amazingly big and colorful cockroaches along with homoerotic images and faded photos of movie stars. There is a large and wonderful series of vivid beautiful drawings set in tin foil pans that form ready-made frames for the drawings, I mean what else would one use tin foil pans for? I should mention that I’ve known Tommy for over 40 years and our paths probably first crossed the night of the Stonewall Riots in which he played a pivotal role and turns up in some of Fred McDarrah’s iconic photographs of that event. I was there also but only as an onlooker a 22 year old pretty Jewish boy from Brooklyn new to the city just coming home (and coming out) from the bars, I often wonder if Tommy ran by me as I nervously watched these brave street kids and drag queens take back the night. I was on the cusp of my art world baptism and a few months later my poet friend would take me to meet Tommy or Mr. T, as he was then known at his Lower East Side apartment. I was thrown off guard by him and his art and his place both actual and otherwise, and he gifted me with a pair of foil sunglasses that I hope I still have somewhere. I think my poet friend brought me to meet him for a number of reasons one of which was to show me that there was another way to be an artist, another way to make art, and that it was fine Ira Joel for you to hang out with your big shot art world friends in their big Soho lofts and to be the youngest artist to ever be in a Whitney Annual, but please take note that this is not the only way to be an artist and that nothing last forever. Eventually I did get it.  This is the best exhibition of 2012.

Other shows seen noted and liked

Anne  Truitt Drawings. Matthew Marks Gallery

Jubilation  Rumination  Life Real and Imagined. American Folk Art Museum

Jesús Soto. NYU Grey Art Gallery

Robert Grosenor Paula Cooper Gallery

Lori Ellison McKenzie Fine Art

Thomas Woodruff  The Four Temperament Variations. P-P-O-W Gallery

Kindergarten   Ricco Maresca

Dee Shapiro Andre Zarre Gallery

Alice Neel Late Portraits and Still Lifes.  David Zwirner Gallery

August Sander Citizens of The Twentieth Century Edwynn Houk Gallery

Ron Gorchov Chem & Read

Douglas Florian  BravinLee Gallery

Bob Witz New York Studio School Gallery

Mira Schor Voice and Speech Marvelli Gallery

Robert Frank Danziger Gallery

Mad as Hell. New Work (and some classics) by Sue Coe. Galerie St. Etienne