Comments on: Pretty, Ugly, Beautiful: Florine Stettheimer at the Jewish Museum https://artcritical.com/2017/07/11/max-kozloff-on-florine-stettheimer/ Fri, 08 Dec 2017 23:08:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 By: Billy https://artcritical.com/2017/07/11/max-kozloff-on-florine-stettheimer/#comment-356300 Fri, 08 Dec 2017 23:08:00 +0000 https://www.artcritical.com/?p=70715#comment-356300 ISSUE NO. 1
Florine’s paintings are a feast for the eye and soul. Words become piffle in their presence. That said, “ugly” in connection to the paintings of Florine Stettheimer, does not compute.

ISSUE NO. 2
Virgil Thomson was the person who chose Florine to create costumes and sets for his opera, not Gertrude Stein. If memory serves, Stein had little or no knowledge of Florine or her paintings and was skeptical of the choice. After seeing her first performance of the opera, Stein was ecstatic regarding Florine’s contribution.

]]> By: Martha Nilsson Edelheit https://artcritical.com/2017/07/11/max-kozloff-on-florine-stettheimer/#comment-356012 Thu, 10 Aug 2017 21:11:00 +0000 https://www.artcritical.com/?p=70715#comment-356012 Several years ago I saw an exhibition at the Swedish Museum of Modern Art by a Swedish artist I’d never heard of, Nils Dardell.
I was startled at how like Stettheimer’s work it was, though it is darker in tone. His dates are close to hers. He was gay, and a dandy, and they may have met in Paris.
The Swedish artists that I was with at the exhibition had never heard
of Stettheimer.
Sweden has long been more accepting and open to ‘outsider’, ‘naive’, ‘none mainstream’ art as an important part of their intellectual and visual history.
Thank you for tackling the ‘pretty, beautiful/ugly, charming, frothy,
decorative, sweet’ in art criticism…usually used as pejorative terms!
It is a long overdue discussion.
I remember when using pink or lavender paint was damned as too feminine (also a pejorative)…
The Stettheimer show was a real delight.

]]> By: falzf https://artcritical.com/2017/07/11/max-kozloff-on-florine-stettheimer/#comment-355984 Tue, 11 Jul 2017 19:44:00 +0000 https://www.artcritical.com/?p=70715#comment-355984 Wow, I’m reeling. The words “pretty,” “beauty” and “ugliness” popping up in a headline in age of identity politics. Hell, next thing you know we’ll be checking in with Lessing and Hume.

]]> By: Dana Gordon https://artcritical.com/2017/07/11/max-kozloff-on-florine-stettheimer/#comment-355983 Tue, 11 Jul 2017 17:40:00 +0000 https://www.artcritical.com/?p=70715#comment-355983 Sigh. When will art writers cease to use Clement Greenberg as their bete noir, their crutch? Anyway, Clem himself said to me, don’t be afraid for your art to be pretty.

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