Blue Mountain Gallery, an artists’ cooperative, are launching a projected annual lecture series this week in Chelsea. “New Perspectives: Alternative Histories of the Art of the Last 60 Years” has serious revisionist ambitions, as its subtitle signals.
David Cohen, founder and editor of artcritical.com, has been invited to deliver the inaugural lecture on April 16, at the gallery, 530 West 25th, 4th floor, at 7PM.
His title is “Canons for Contrarians” and offers something of a personal manifesto, he tells artcritical. “I have often felt a particular kind of heat when it comes to juggling certain anti-establishment, personal tastes I have with what I’d call civic responsibilities, whether as critic, educator and publisher. You want to tell it as you see it but you have to give an accurate, fair picture of the way things stand.” The lecture also draws on what he feels are paired lectures he has delivered in the last few years on his maverick painter heroes, Walter Sickert and André Derain, as well as his ongoing fascination with the influence and reputation of Alex Katz, “an artist caught between the stools of established and alternative taste.”
The second lecture in the series is to be given next year by Jennifer Samet, and fund raising is ongoing for the series, as their website explains. Revisionism is a gradual process, as is – be warned – taking the elevator to the fourth floor of 530 West 25th Street when there is a crowd!