January 25 to March 10, 2018
520 West 27th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues
New York City, nancyhoffmangallery.com

In writing about this exhibition of eight paintings and three collages by Peter Plagens at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, I happily abandon any pretense of objectivity. My point of view comes from nearly 37 years of marriage to the artist, more than three decades of sharing a studio with him, and our ongoing conversations and arguments—big and small—about painting and its meaning. That Peter doesn’t know I’m writing this essay, and won’t know about it until after it’s published, makes clear, I hope, that I alone am responsible for any errors in description of either his studio practice or artistic intentions.

At first glance, Peter’s paintings and collages seem poles apart. At one end, we’re talking enormous, aggressively vibrant abstract paintings; at the other, restrained, elegant collages containing words and images. That said, it’s not hard to suss out that Peter is on a quest to reconcile opposites—clean and messy, refined and rough, colorful and neutral, abstract and figurative, orderly and anarchic, certain and uncertain.

With over a thousand art reviews and essays about art to his credit, Peter has probably written more words about art than any other serious practicing American artist. His art criticism is clear, jargon-free, and peppered with cheeky turns of phrases (“the shitification of the art world,” or “the calculated indolence of a road crew”), easy colloquialisms (“punches above his weight,” or “a second body blow delivered to art”), and snappy references to popular culture (in a recent review of an exhibition, he referred to the artist as “the Sara Lee of the art world”).

This rough and tumble attitude in his writing also shows up in his painting, which he’s been tenaciously going at for more than fifty years. When he slathers wet paint across the surface of a canvas, oblivious to the possibility of “mistakes,” or when he decides a color, once chosen, cannot be altered, he’s opening up his art to the peculiar beauties of randomness. Even so, he lets paint off its leash only briefly; most of the time, his work rests on deft brush handling, acute awareness of the properties of color, and close attention to detail. It’s no surprise that his favorite artists are the Flems.

Peter begins his collages by tacking a piece of paper to the floor. Next, he slowly nudges pools of different hues around its edges. After the paper dries, he places it on his table and slaps down an image in the center—a word or phrase cut from an artist’s announcement, a little snippet from a piece of paper found on the street, an image cut from a photograph or an advertisement. From then on, his task becomes one of bridging the gap between the concrete image in the center and the indeterminate colors hovering along the paper’s edges. His method is always to gradually surround the center with collaged bits of colored paper and painted abstract shapes until, like Goldilocks, he finally senses things are “just right.”

Peter’s paintings, from the start, are made on the wall. He begins by covering the surface with loose and squiggly Gorky-esque marks, letting drips fall where they may. After this dries, he applies successive layers of paint to make a large, rough-hewn shape—sometimes a neutral gray, sometimes a saturated color—that sits on the original messy ground. Last comes a geometric form, drawn intuitively and placed approximately in the middle of the painting, and divided into six or seven shapes; these he fills in with pre-determined colors. His rule in painting, as in his collages, is to never correct anything.

Peter is not a formalist. His art is an impassioned, full-blown expression of his worldview. He understands the universe to be indecipherable, unfathomable, unknowable—existentially speaking, absurd. To deny this, in his mind, would be both foolish and futile. Painting makes him feel he’s among the lucky ones, for in wrestling with the wordlessness of paint, the ineffable wonders of color, and the chance-driven associations generated by making collages, he finds a way to assert meaning. If one of his paintings or collages manages to generate a small, shivering sensation of beauty along the way, he’s fully satisfied. Blathering on about its social or metaphysical properties would only muck things up.

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For the final meet up of its tenth anniversary season at the National Academy Museum,  it looks like some scratching and biting can be expected at The Review Panel. Power critics Christina Kee, Peter Plagens and Roberta Smith will join moderator David Cohen on May 29, and the shows they are considering, all downtown for a change, somehow reference or allude to wild beasts. They are “Natalie Frank: The Brother Grimm,” at the Drawing Center, “Rosy Keyser: The Hell Bitch,” at Maccarone; C. “Michael Norton: The Wolf I Feed,” at Brian Morris Gallery and “Buddy Warren, Inc.,” and “Christine Rebet: Paysage Fautif at Bureau.” Let’s see if fur flies.

Natalie Frank: The Brothers Grimm at The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, 212 219 2166
Rosy Keyser: The Hell Bitch at Maccarone,  630 Greenwich Street, 212 431 4977
C. Michael Norton: The Wolf I Feed at Brian Morris Gallery and Buddy Warren, Inc., 171 Chrystie Street, 347 261 8228
Christine Rebet: Paysage Fautif at Bureau, 178 Norfolk Street, 212 227 2783

The post From the archives: Peter Plagens in 2015, with Christina Kee and Roberta Smith appeared first on artcritical.

For the final meet up of its tenth anniversary season at the National Academy Museum,  it looks like some scratching and biting can be expected at The Review Panel. Power critics Christina Kee, Peter Plagens and Roberta Smith will join moderator David Cohen on May 29, and the shows they are considering, all downtown for a change, somehow reference or allude to wild beasts. They are “Natalie Frank: The Brother Grimm,” at the Drawing Center, “Rosy Keyser: The Hell Bitch,” at Maccarone; C. “Michael Norton: The Wolf I Feed,” at Brian Morris Gallery and “Buddy Warren, Inc.,” and “Christine Rebet: Paysage Fautif at Bureau.” Let’s see if fur flies.

Natalie Frank: The Brothers Grimm at The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, 212 219 2166
Rosy Keyser: The Hell Bitch at Maccarone,  630 Greenwich Street, 212 431 4977
C. Michael Norton: The Wolf I Feed at Brian Morris Gallery and Buddy Warren, Inc., 171 Chrystie Street, 347 261 8228
Christine Rebet: Paysage Fautif at Bureau, 178 Norfolk Street, 212 227 2783

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Bronson appears on the panel for the first time while Berwick and Plagens are “repeat offenders.”  Other confirmed guests for the 2011/12 season include Patricia Milder, David Brody, Karen Gover, Ken Johnson, Michèle Cone, Ana Finel Honigman, Anthony Haden-Guest, Christina Kee, Franklin Einspruch, Faye Hirsch, Bill Berkson, Karen Wilkin, Lance Esplund, Maddie Phinney and Barry Schwabsky.

The Review Panel conducted much of its 2010/11 season in an otherwise shuttered Huntington Mansion as the headquarters of the National Academy underwent extensive renovations.  The building is scheduled to reopen to the public in September 2011 with a series of festivities including a retrospective of Will Barnet, the artist, who recently turned 100.

The dates of the panel in the 2011/12 season will be  September 30, October 28, November 18, January 27, February 24, March 30, and April 27.  Cohen will moderate each evening, as he has all panels since the inception of the program in October 2004 when the guests were Ken Johnson, Maureen Mullarkey and Jerry Saltz.

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A question for arcritical readers: Has a married couple ever had overlapping, solo exhibitions at separate galleries in Manhattan? Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens couldn’t think of one, and nor could I. If their case is indeed unique, then her exhibition at Gary Snyder Project Space and his at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, which overlap for nine days, is an item for the record books. Adding a delicious romantic twists is the fact that the overlap includes Valentine’s Day.

The two were wed in 1981 and they share a painting studio in a barn in upstate New York. There is also discussion of renovating a room in their Tribeca apartment so that she can work on her drawings and he on his collages while they’re in the city. “Actually, ‘renovating’ is too strong a word,” says Plagens. ‘Ridding of junk’ would be more accurate.” Both of them have had storied independent careers. He was art critic for Newsweek from 1989 to 2003, has received Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and has shown with Hoffman since 1974. She is a professor at Hofstra University, writes for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and was recently the subject of a two-decade career overview at Scripps College in Claremont, California that will travel to the University of Montana in March.

They bring disparate sensibilities to their painting practices. Plagens’ work – with its gestural application and improvisatory attitude – has roots in Abstract Expressionism. The abrasions in his paint surfaces are signs of happy accident and copious correction.   He resolves his disorderly backgrounds by laying geometric elements on top of them. Multicolored polygons, dubbed “badges” by Nancy Hoffman, take on the role of Hans Hofmann’s structure-imposing rectangles.

Fendrich’s work, while no less improvised, builds more slowly, in a manner recalling Cubists like Juan Gris and California hard-edge painters like Frederick Hammersley. Using oils, she glazes her surfaces into a reproduction-defying shimmer, while enclosing her geometric shapes with a painted line that takes its soft, textured character from hard pastels. The day after viewing the 1993 Seurat exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum she went out and bought a box of Conté crayons. Her drawings, also on view at Gary Snyder,are constructed in the same careful manner, resulting in a smoldering intensity.

“Laurie is the optimist who keeps Jane Austen novels and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations by her bedside,” explains Plagens. “I’m the card-carrying existentialist who thinks that the universe is held together with chewing gum and baling wire and could fall apart at any moment. My paintings reflect that sense of barely contained order. Hers assume more order from the beginning.”

But having worked alongside one another for many years, some inevitable exchange has occurred, suggesting a productive if subtle collaboration. Plagens’s works show increasing decision and clarity between 2007 and 2010, while Fendrich’s grow in contrast and whimsy. “Laurie’s paintings may have become a little more playful over the years as a consequence of my work having been around the studio,” says Plagens. Fendrich adds, “I may have prompted him to clean up his act a little bit.” But they don’t offer each other unsolicited critiques. Creative support takes the form instead of an occasional shoulder rub.

Are there any problems with sharing a studio?

“Only the music, sometimes,” says Plagens. “Laurie can listen to anything except rock ‘n roll. I can listen to anything except, well…”

“Regina Spektor, for instance,” she finishes. “I like girl music.”

“She’ll also put her iPod on the dock and set one song to play on repeat. She’ll start working, and I’ll come back into the studio a couple of hours later and the same song is still playing. I get myself out of there.”

They laugh, as they often do.

Peter Plagens: I Don’t Give a Damn/Every Moment Counts, at Nancy Hoffman Gallery
January 20 – February 19, 2011.  520 West 27 Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, New York City, (212) 966-6676

Laurie Fendrich: Recent Paintings, at Gary Snyder Project Space.
February 10 – April 2, 2011. 250 West 26 Street, between 7th and 8th avenues.  New York City, (212) 929-1351

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Alexandra Anderson-Spivy, Stephanie Buhmann, and Peter Plagens joined David Cohen to discuss James Casebere at Sean Kelly Gallery, Sherrie Levine at Paula Cooper Gallery, Wangechi Mutu at Gladstone Gallery, and Roxy Paine at James Cohan Gallery.

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I’ve long felt that Peter Plagens and I had a community of interest, as we’ve both written about art for weekly newsmagazines (he for Newsweek, I for Time, having preceded Robert Hughes in that slot). Imagine my delight when I learned last August that Plagens was publishing his second novel, The Art Critic, in 24 installments on artnet! Twenty-four installments later, I’m happy to report that I really enjoyed this book, but that the author and I turn out to have less in common than I supposed. For one thing, Plagens is certainly no Greenbergian. Though his take on the current art scene is somewhat dyspeptic, he finds more to like about it than I do, nor do any of the many characters resemble the late, great Clement. However, they do bear tantalizing resemblances to other art-world denizens.

We have, for example, Tony Givens, director of the Atelier Academy, an art school in Greenwich Village—but this can’t possibly be Graham Nickson, of the New York Studio School, since Nickson is a Brit, whereas Givens comes from Australia. The school building was formerly owned by Amanda Cartwright, a rich society sculptor who patronized herds of artists—but this can’t possibly be Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, since instead of founding the Whitney Museum, Amanda left her money to found the Atelier Academy. And so it goes. Another prominent character is an art critic named Jonathan Hirsch, whose tastes are no more avant-garde than conventional landscapes and still-lifes. This makes him sound like Hilton Kramer, except that Hirsch writes for The Financial Journal, which makes him sound also a bit like Eric Gibson, of The Wall Street Journal. Then again, he’s portrayed as young and very prolific, suggesting a dash of David Cohen of artcritical as well.

The plot is slender and not unfamiliar—a romantic triangle, with two talented men competing for a gorgeous young woman. She’s named Helen Issacson, but this can’t possibly be Helen Frankenthaler as she’s not an artist, but assistant to an art-book publisher. Her father Mel is a fabulously wealthy collector and owner of a magazine empire, sort of a cross between Peter Brant and Si Newhouse, with perhaps a soupcon of Charles Cowles thrown in. The rivals for Helen’s attentions are the eponymous Arthur, a single, fifty-ish art critic for the second-largest newsweekly whose last name nobody seems to be able to remember, and Tom Mannheim, a married abstract constructivist sculptor whose work sounds like a cross between that of Mark di Suvero, Clement Meadmore and maybe Michael Steiner—except that he’s struggling to jazz it up for the contemporary market with video monitors (Bruce Nauman? Plagens is currently working on a book about Nauman).

Arthur and Tom Mannheim sound like Plagens at war with himself, since in reality he’s both an art critic and an artist (exhibiting at Nancy Hoffman). The subplot involves the agonies that Mannheim undergoes while trying to bring his latest project to fruition, and persuade his gallery to give him a show (he gets solid support from his very smart, gay black studio assistant, Jimmy O’Doole). The ending is bittersweet, but the real fun of the book lies in its encyclopedic portrayal of the art scene as Arthur sees it in his weekly rounds. Plagens has it all spot on, from the basse-couture fashions worn by Chelsea gallery-goers to the gobbledegook of museum brochures, from the glitz of Manhattan openings and the grue of gallery intrigues to artists’ colonies in the Northeast Corridor and the attitudes of artists marooned in Arizona or San Diego.

What do Arthur and I have in common, and where do we part company? I suffered as he does from the almost total lack of interest in art upon the part of my newsweekly colleagues, but I didn’t have to struggle with editors to get stories about art into the magazine the way that Arthur does. In my day, color photography was still something of a novelty on newsmagazines, and Time was so proud of its superior color reproduction that it was happy to show it off with art. Also, Arthur seems to think of his mass-audience readers, those millions out there in the heartland, as complete yahoos—but by comparison with Time’s readers, those of Newsweek in the ‘60s were relatively enlightened, nor do I see any reason to doubt that these differences persist today. Finally, Plagens is a man and I’m a woman. InThe Art Critic, two of three main female characters are sexual predators, while both principal male characters are incurable romantics. As I see it, women are more likely to be romantics, while men are the ones hipped on sex. Still, Plagens’ way of telling it does enable him to work in a few lively bedroom scenes. As Spencer Tracy says, at the end ofAdam’s Rib, Vive la différence!

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R.C. Baker, Carly Berwick and Peter Plagens joined David Cohen to review the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

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