Vinceent Pepi;s "Art Notes"

Beyond the Canon/Small Scale American Abstraction 1945-1965

file:///Users/vincent/Desktop/Beyond%20the%20Canon.doc

Viewing the artist's studio

Viewing the Artist's Studio

A Word to the Viewer

At this time we wish to inform our audience of  our continued dedication to the idea of this site...

"1964-H (Indian Red and Black," by Clyfford Still, oil on canvas, 198.8 by 173.7 centimeters, 1946


The process of Still’s work was conceived in the same manner as that of his peers in terms of the adventurousness and the central part played by the artist’s active presence. Still himself would note later on in his career that the term “action painter” was misleading, especially when one considers the period of contemplation prior to the creation of gestural forms in his canvases—in short, accident played no part. Untitled, 1946 and other Stills from this period can be contrasted with the gestural paintings of his peers in that his work relates the discipline and control enacted on the forms of his canvases. His technique of pallet and knife creates a considerable buildup of paint on the surface and stresses the portrayal of the surface’s organic, yet heavily worked quality. Still is just as much “in the painting” as Pollock et al, albeit in a more tempered and premeditated way.
Indeed, evidence of Still’s cathartic presence in works such as Untitled, 1946 is apparent in his statements—
…I seem to achieve a comparable ecstasy in bringing forth the flaming life through these large responsive areas of canvas. And as the blues or reds or blacks leap and quiver in their tenuous ambience or rise in austere thrusts to carry their power infinitely beyond the bounds of the limiting field, I move with them and find a resurrection from the moribund oppressions that held me only hours ago.

It is clear both after this statement and an examination of Untitled, 1946 that the work can be read as a biographical moment. Still creates a pictorial form which answers only to a subconscious guide. His work is not merely an extension on abstracting space in the cubist tradition; therefore, it cannot be said that Untitled, 1946 uses the novelty of abstracted space as an intermediary unto which Still’s handling of space relates meaning. Still’s generation of these forms is wholly tied to prompts of his cognitive being. The role of the canvas as an intermediary arena for dealing with three-dimensional space in two dimensional terms vanishes almost completely to the point at which the painting is more an extension of Clyfford Still than a representation of space.

Other Dimensions

In an Essay for "Abstract Expressionism; Other dimensions" Jeff Wechsler position's Vincent Pepi's work as the antithesis of his peers tendency to work with large canvases. Wechsler notes small-scale abstractions, like this one painted in 1950 while Pepi was in Rome, which was-according to Wechsler- a crucial time in the development of the New York School.



--Geographical destiny can be just as severe when a New York artist leaves New York at the wrong time, art historically speaking. This occured to a young, talented artist named Vincent Pepi, who may be used to represent any number of artists who traveled abroad during the late 1940's. Pepi's first absence from New York was not for artistic reasons; he served in the U. S. Navy from May 1944 to July 1946. In 1948, however, he studied in Mexico city, and in 1949 he decided upon further study abroad in Rome that continued through 1951. By chance, 1949 was the year Pepi reached a mature abstract style, but his art could not be seen in New York. From the first Pepi seems to have preferred small formats and media traditional to that scale, gouache and watercolor. But his work displays a fine understanding of the formal principles of gestural abstraction and a spontaneous linearity that contradicts traditional usages of those media.

His paintings in oil also show an absorbtion of the gestural and fragmented field modalities of contemporary Abstract Expressionism. Greta Berman's essay written to accompany a recent solo show of Pepi's paintings ( the artist's first since the 1960's, and held not in New York, but in Santa Fe), incidentally reviews many of the personality traits and career histories of painters of small scale abstractions. -

"Pepi separated himself from other artists of his time, since he felt uncomfortable with the New York "art Scene", and was never certain where he fit in (though it is clear from today's vantage point that he fit right in the center). He attended the "Club" from time to time, but preferred his own studio and a more solitary existence... Pepi's art certainly posseses affinities with other New York School Action painters, but retains its own uniquiness. His choice to live in Italy from1949 to 1951, as well as his preference for painting in a consistently smaller format may have obscured the recognition and fame that might have been his."

Pepi has acquired the habit of jotting down written notes- short remarks or lengthy essays-- in his sketch pad whenever his thoughts so move him. In a recent effort, he stated: " I have been very much pre-occupied with this idea of size for some time now. I have some strong convictions about this subject.... Everything I do in art I wish to resolve in the interest of art- and not in the interest of self aggrandizement., or self importance, or for personal gain.... A work of 8 x 10 inches can have the monumentality of a work 8 x 10 feet.... Let us beware of the art work that looms up at us in overwhelming proportions.... There is no rule for size- except beware of charlatans of art always go big and not small. With a philosophy like that, and a few crucial years spent in Italy, one can see how Pepi' art could escape public attention."


--excerpted from: "Abstract Expressionism, Other Dimensions"/An introduction to small
scale painterly abstraction in America, 1940---1965. / Essay by Jeffrey Wechsler

Image-Rome 507A, 1950. Watercolor, 14 x 10 x 1 inches

Regarding Themes in Art

NY Times Article Sept 1, 2006
Art Review- Roberta Smith
"Power, Injustice, Death, Loss
Out of Time, A Contemporary View, at Sea in the Here and Now"

"Out of Time, A Contemporary View, at Sea in the Here and Now" is a superb article by Roberta Smith- not so much as there is any interest in the actual "review" of the Art in question, but for the way she knows how to remove a few pebbles from her shoes while she is writing her homework article. Let me underline the most cogent portions of her article...

"It is only among installations by R.G. and the sisters Jane and Louise W. that this unusually sterile selection of 49 works by 36 artists coheres with anything close to the kind of resonance and emotional usefulness that should be expected from an Art museum"

Wow.

"The point is that these selections and juxtapositions in "Out of Time" are so orthodox, so true to the minimalist, conceptualist gene pool, so loyal to a familiar cast of pre-approved artists and so risk-adverse and eccentrically intolerant that the art feels frozen and isolated like deer in the headlights"

"This display seems to have involved less thought than an exceptional summer group show in a commercial gallery. It makes me wonder about the curatorial imagination of the team behind it: Joachim Pisarro, curator of painting and sculpture and Eva Respini an assistant curator of photography. But mainly it makes me think about how MOMA is imprisoned by its own history and its new building."

Usually when it is felt necessary in an exhibition of art work to introduce a theme, that theme is seen by the purists among us as a contrivance, imposed by those who find themselves to be in positions of authority. Hence these super impositions in the form of a theme should be considered to be a distraction to the main subject, which is of course, the art work itself. We should remember that the theme should be spontaneous, in that it emanates from the art work to be shown rather than from something else which is superimposed on the art exhibit by a museum or gallery etc., here it is in danger of being viewed as a distraction.

"one wonders wether the theme of time was at least partly imposed by some higher up who felt the public needed an idea to hold on to. That may be no where near the truth, but it would explain the shows half-hearted alterations between the obvious and the arbitrary."She goes on to give examples like Robert Morris, B. Anastasi and Janine Antoni. Plus an example by Bill Viola's lugubrious slow motion video installation. paraphrase second to last paragraph . art is not illustration...."

"The basic question here is- what are the curators supposed to do? Perhaps they should give into the irrational, subjective nature of visual experience. This would mean letting their eyes betray them and take them places where carefully worked out theories and current fashions do not. Caught between fear of its supposedly formalist past and the apparent desire for a canon- any canon- the museum of Modern Art has its own particular problems. But for starters it needs to get over itself and figure out how to free its curators to do their work."

Amen,

Vincent Pepi, March 20, 2007

Hodgkin: a response

The blog you posted on Art notes recently is terrific. I have been watching this artist from London for some years now- and when I saw that our friend Kimmelman reviewed it
with such relish, I was delighted and wrote you an
e-mail about this exhibit. You were already "tuned-in on the subject" and wrote an e-mail to me. Good work. It is people like yourself and the intelligent and informed art critic such as Michael Kimmelman that people like myself can rejoice in the new found hope that some sanity and some validity in the documentation of that which is vital and vibrant in the world of art can be achieved and enjoyed. The same vigilance required to monitor the convolutions of government in today's world in upheaval, should also be used in the art world when listening to critics and also professors of art in the universities to make sure they are not teaching current events in the place of art history.That vigilance of which I refer, should be the true function of the art scholar. You have been very swift in connecting the things that
you and I have been discussing.
....For example-
what you brought out in your art comment regarding size, is very important. These are things which in my opinion have not as yet been pursued in depth. In the Exhibit in which I was included- "Abstract Expressionism, Other Dimensions", Jeff Wechsler, Asst. Director, Curator of The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, included in
the text a passage about me. and reproduced the painting; "Piazza del Popolo" which I painted in Rome, in 1950. The size, 27,3/8 x 17,1/2". Not very big. Wechsler made his
point beautifully in this landmark exhibit. It travelled and was a big success.

*Image- Piazza del Popolo, 1950,28" x 18", oil on canvas, permanent collection of Zimmerli Museum of Art



--Vincent Pepi 3/01/'07

Enlarge This Image

Showcasing Howard Hodgkin's small abstractions

Hodgkin, After Degas, 1993. Oil on wood. Private collection.

Hodgkin's abstract paintings from the last fifteen years are currently on exhibit at the Yale Center for British Art. In a review by Michael Kimmelman, the small scale of Hodgkin's work is mentioned, not without a tone of "othering" the works by abstract artists that are small in scale. This seems to confirm a fear that for many of us, size is a large factor in the ability of abstract work to connect or permeate the viewer's conscious (See Newman,Vir Heroicus Sublimins). What is it about the language (bad word) of abstract painting that necessitates size? One should stop and consider the oft forgotten mural tradition of the 1930's that was pounded into the first generation of American abstract expressionists via the W.P.A Federal Arts Project. Dealing in murals was the order of the day, and there is some inkling of carry-over in next phase of American art. Rothko presents perhaps the most blatant example of W.P.A. mural baggage, though most of them (New York School) tend to deal in a large scale. Its clear we are still looking at paintings in the shadow of this specific tradition.
Does an abstract work suffer from a smaller scale? Kimmelman and Hodgkin do not seem to think so. Kimmelman describes Hodgkin's work as "smart", "careful", and "serious"; overall he claims the better part of the small work is beautiful.

Kimmelman's NY Times Review

Yale Center for British Art

-Michael Pepi (02/16/07)

Giacometti

The lesson I believe that was taught to us by Giacometti, I will attempt to state in simple terms and as clearly as I can. It is based on the idea of space again. In this case however, with Giacometti, he is not expecting the space or the air within that space to do anything in the way of movement that will effect that sculpture which we are viewing.

Alberto Giacometti.Swiss, 1901 - 1966. Walking Man II, 1960
bronze, 188.5 x 27.9 x 110.7 cm (74 1/4 x 11 x 43 5/8 in.)

In Giacometti's case you might say it is the opposite of movement.
It is stillness. A profound sense of stillness which imbues the subject
with a spiritual quality.A quality which we believe he achieves by his intense
focus on the space in which he himself is immersed and into which he places his subject, the figure. Giacometti is an architect of space. Space is what he is always restling with. He has experimented tirelessly with his figures in different sizes, in different positioning and in dramatic scale juxtapositions. Whether we are viewing his drawings, his paintings, or the sculptures themselves, we always feel this tremendous tension created by his unique vision of space, and how he dramatizes it. As an artist dedicated to the mission of elevating his art to its loftiest position, he struggled with space and its representation as the first principle of his personal art. He travelled on the same path as did Cezanne, who was known to be his guiding star.

In the year 1950, while I was in Rome, Italy, on my own path of study,
I had occassion to attend the Venice Biennale in the company of the Italian
sculptor Pericle Fazzini with whom I was working as a paid assistant.
He was there in Venice as one of the judges, and I was part of his entourage.
It was at this time and during that event that I had the most awakening experience
of my stay in Italy. To have seen the beautiful Giacometti painting of a
single figure on view at this Venice biennale. I realized immediately that Giacometti was painting the space around the figure, with the same intensity as he painted the figure
itself, and that by so doing he was showing that it was the space that surrounded
the figure that was being handled as the main subject, andthat the figure
itself was of a secondary importance. This principle clearly explained to me, and made me feel that this is the way he approached all of his work. My feeling was that his vibrations of space,
came more from the cubicle of space which he was immersed in along with his
subject, than from the subject itsellf- OR to put it another way; the
subject and the space around the subject were one and the same. If we think of the space which exists in the phenomena of our existence as spiritual, and that the subject which exists in space, such as the figure of a person or a dog as material- then we can see how the more in our depiction of the material subject we attempt to show the subject's identity with the space which surrounds him or it, the more then, that subject will assume and absorb a spiritual essence.

Vincent Pepi, Jan.25,2007

Notes...

Sculpture

Upon viewing Umberto Boccioni's sculpture "Striding Man" for the first time, it was evident to me that in my opinion, this was the most significant important work of sculpture of its own time. All other works from Rodin to Boccioni may be dismissed. Excepting of course Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters and Giacometti. Let us take them one at a time: Alexander (Sandy) Calder- Like Joan Mitchell and many other Americans before him, spent much time in Paris and was obviously very much awareof the work of all of his contemporaries. This was good. What makes me personally so proud of him as a good example of America's contribution to the art of our time (modern art) is that he lifted sculpture to a higher plane. Whether he was or was not influenced by Futurism is really not too relevant to my discussion. What is important for me to focus on was that as an artist of "his time", he went forward on the right track.

Alexander Calder, Standing Mobile, 1937

World War I created a tremendous impact on the artists and writers of that time. It was truly an awakening and a clarion call to seek new vistas for the answers to the questions of human behavior amongst nations which was heretofore unrealized. There was perhaps a shift from microcosmic to macrocosmic. The telescope gave way to an inquiry into the mind-therefore whether or not Calder connected with the same infatuation of the Futurists regarding the dynamics of "our time" is not known. The airplane, space, the universe and speed, the radio, wireless communication were all contributing factors. It was obvious that we were over the threshold and into a new era. An era which would focus on the mind of man and its possibilities along with its limitations. The era of Freud and Jung and Adler were upon us.

In conclusion, the most important contribution of Alexander Calder was that of natural movement as part of ,or one of the ingredients of his sculptures. Moreover, not only
movement but definition of space- un-seen but felt. Space is always present. When a
person walks into a room- space is invaded. When the person stops in his tracks. He or she
replaces the space which was there before. The person then becomes like sculpture, or the equivelent of sculpture. This is the lesson I believe that was taught to us by Giacometti.


Next example- Giacometti. (to come)

V. Pepi, Cold Spring Harbor Studio- February, 1985

523, 1950. Watercolor. 16 x 20 x 1 inches

"We are now liberated as artists- Man continues in his futile aspirations for things which never will be. Art only continues forever- for it is pact and parcel of what we all are. The
dynamic forces that make up our existence... they will always be. Art is nourished on these forces. Art deviates when it is dictated by the political manipulations of man. The recognition of the artist in his own time, is a very haphazard affair. When the artist becomes involved in this concern, paradoxically he dilutes his own interests. The true artist if he is interested in art in its purest form, will have to relinquish the idea of being understood. If his art is sublime it will transcend these aspirations of recognition".

Response

On the "Villification of the W.P.A. Aesthetic"....


"Terrific job Mike. You have a tiger by the tail with this one. To answer your question. There is nothing in art history that refutes your claim. And you do touch upon certain aspects of this in your article. Of course I have not read what you have read recently in order to discorse on this subject, but I do recognize in what you have written so far, that this is an excellent subject in which to clarify for once and for all (at least in our own time) two things which we are constantly
dealing with -

1. History and how it should be defined and
understood.
2. Art. And how important it is in
giving us the true picture of man's everyday
struggle with the human condition. As you suggest art
is always subject to villification even though
paradoxically it is so important to us in our
understanding and compassion for man and his history.

I am now reading Jose Ortega y Gasset's "History as a System" and it fits in hand and glove with your project about the WPA. Please note that in this Friday issue of NY Times (Fine arts) 3 articles of note which fall right into
your subject- Holland Cotter writing about Art between 1960's and 1990's, reviewing a show at Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College. The first paragraph he writes captures the art scene at that time succinctly and in one fell swoop. Next Roberta
Smith reviwing -"Masterpieces of Europeaan art From the Cleveland Museum of Art"reminds us of the overwhelming importance of Art History and why we need to constantly Keep hold of what constitutes quality and integrity in all art whatever the period be. Lastly we have a great review by Michael Kimmelman on Velasquez. He quotes one of my favorite writers-Jose Ortega y Gasset-who said about Velaasquez's work..."It isn't art; it is life perpetuated"

V. Pepi, Sat, November 11, 2006

The Vilification of the W.P.A. Aesthetic

Post-Abstract Expressionism critics and memory

Art, even more than history, is pathetically committed to a teleological progression. It is rife with “natural phenomenon” which mark points in time, or departures, that cue an expected reaction from us (Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, or Duchamps 'ready mades'). It is not as deplorable, though, the fact that art can very rarely stand alone without cultural accompaniment. Such background support for art is certainly less hegemonic, and decidedly more utilitarian.

The problem begins and ends with three forms of bastardization in the “viewing of Art”. Hero worship, by which I mean the inflation of value and agency of an individual artist, which usually results from a failure to place the artist within a correct and comfortable cultural milieu.



The eclipse of a style, or chronological disregard of a “former” aesthetic whose role is pinned only as a precipitator of the aforementioned “natural phenomenon” is the second form. Common in the 20th century, though repeated throughout history by elite that sound the clarion call of “renaissance” or “revolt” or “rejection” in art. The Prime example of this is found in the wake of the America’s Abstract Expressionist movement. It ushered in a shift of style that led to a large scale disregard for the American Scene paintings of the preceding decade. Comprised of regionalists and social realists, 1930’s realism, exists now in this tightly sealed categorical box thanks to none other than the dismissive art critics that were the most enthusiastic proponents of the Abstract movement (Greenberg, Rosenberg). The W.P.A. stood in this crossfire, and was undeservedly dragged into the conflagration. As the perfect scapegoat, modernists charged the W.P.A. federal arts project with institutional maintenance and propagation of stolid realism through its decade long reign. Not only are their logistical fallacies in this charge, but more regrettably the framing is born out of a sort of agenda of the authors of this history.

The third agent of degradation is the monopolistic concentration of cultural leadership held in elite institutions. These various forms of “authority”: museums, university art departments, few powerful and widely-read publications, as well as high-priced auction houses and galleries, exist outside of popular access. These organs define the value of art as well as write it’s history. They serve as proponents of the established paradigm, which not only frames the present Art world, but suffocates individual exploration into the past.

Natural and social histories can be formed largely on its own, without authors. Authors of social history can only do so much to distort, hide, and make meaning were none exists. While there is no such thing as truth in history, the social historians have much less room for error in representation. Art History, though, is (like a new born baby) wholeheartedly dependent on others to write its history for it. Without historians to their own, Art history exists as a mere series of paintings and sculptures strewn across time.

These acts are then destined to be committed by art historians and other elite ministers of taste. Perhaps it is futile to try and correct such injustices when faced with their deep roots and fervent offspring. However, there always is hope, for if one thing is certain about the Art world, it is that there is no certainty at all. In a world full of so many revolts and rejects just maybe the rights to the many wrongs is just around the corner.


Picture notes:(left)Thomas Benton. Boomtown 1928 American. Oil on canvas
46 1/8 in. x 54 1/4 in. (117.16 cm x 137.8 cm), O. Louis Gugliemi (American, born Egypt, 1906-1956)Odd Fellows Hall, 1934. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30”

1051A

Vincent Pepi, "1051A", Painting Oil, 1990, 67 x 55 inches

September 23, 2006

some peculiar happenings....

The other day one of my friends (an art history major) looked at a reproduction of one of your paintings in my room and mistook it for Gorky. She swore it was a Gorky, until I told her it was, in fact a Pepi. I dont know how you will interpret that, being that, despite your admiration for Gorky, you have always crafted a unique style that perhaps a more educated eye can discern. either way it should serve to confirm, in a present day context, what you already knew about your work in relation to your peers.














503, 1950,Oil Painting
20 x 14 x 1 inches

I am not to judge whether your reatcion about this confusion with Gorky,
that is your place as the artist to decide I suppose. I thought it was a worthy discussion point. Also this tells us more about the art audience and "art world" than it does about the craft. I tell you all this not to pass judgment on the events or to try to get any certain reaction from you other than I felt as if , this instance was a clever incident in gaging a new generation's view of art and their nterpretations. Even through your own style, the inventiveness of which this painting communicates, the tendecies and norms upon which the eye of the new generation operates emerge. Exercises like this are often overlooked in the progression of viewing and interpreting art. What directs the eye in viewing art through the change of generations or shifts in cultural consciousness? Instead of confronting these questions head on, we comfortably rest on the laurels and theories (sometimes incorrect) of the progression of art. We are pre-instructed what to look for in art before we even get to the parking lot.

just some things that sprouted out from that event. Thought you would like
to hear them.

-Mike Pepi

Morandi at Lucas Schoormans Gallery

ART REVIEW | GIORGIO MORANDI
Looking Long and Hard at Morandi

In honor of this weekend's Morandi show at the Paul Thiebaud Gallery, Art Notes features Michael Kimmelman's review of the 2004 Morandi show at the Lucas Schoormans Gallery.


October 14, 2004

For the Record: Not another day should pass without noting that the most wonderful little show in memory has landed in town. It consists of just six paintings and two drawings by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi. And if the world were a perfect place, it would be on view forever at the Lucas Schoormans Gallery at 508 West 26th Street in Chelsea, so that we might remind ourselves at any time what heaven looks like. The world not being perfect, the show is around only through Dec. 4. Consider yourself forewarned.

Lucas Schoormans is clearly a patient man, with a perseverance befitting the object of his devotion. He spent 12 years struggling to assemble this Morandi exhibition, the first in New York in a long while. He cajoled loans from museums and collectors who were understandably reluctant to part with their art even for a few weeks. Fortunately, they did.

Morandi, who died at 73 in 1964 in the modest house on Via Fondazza in Bologna where he had lived his whole life with his mother (until her death in 1950) and with three unmarried sisters, devoted his career to painting pretty much the same dusty bunch of bottles, bowls and biscuit tins. He worked in a studio that doubled as his bedroom. "One can travel the world and see nothing,'' he said, "To achieve understanding it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.''

That is the message of his pictures: there is a universe in life's little things. And even when just shuffling a few humble objects around a table, unending variety and humor can be achieved through the subtlest distinctions of color and brushstroke. Look closely, Morandi instructs us. The moral implications are clear.

The show consists only of mature examples, works from 1950 to 1963. As always with Morandi, forms are stripped to their essence, and the art dwells on the precipice of abstraction. The same row of bottles may summon images of ducklings following their mother, or throngs of people in a sunny city square, or the skyline of a town spilling down the side of hill. See a row of brown boxes huddled behind two preening long-necked bottles - one white, one blue - while an oval box gently nudges another swanning bottle to the side.

Suitors at a dance, perhaps.

Pure heaven.

For the Record: Oct. 20, 2004, Wednesday

Morandi

at The Paul Thiebaud Gallery

Italian painter of landscape and still life. Born in Bologna in 1890, the reclusive Morandi spent his entire life there working from his studio.

He is most famous for his subtle and contemplative groupings of domestic objects, painted in muted tones. He pursued this representation of form almost obsessively for many years, and only late in his career he began experimenting with abstraction.





Painting and drawing focused on the everyday.
Thru 10/28/06 Tue-Sat, 10am-6pm
42 E. 76th St., New York, NY 10021
at Madison Ave.
212-737-9759

excerpted from essay; "Vincent Pepi by Harry Rand",1996 "

" Vincent Pepi graduated from the H.S.of Music & Art.In 1944 he volunteered to serve in the Navy, which allowed him to paint in North Africa. After this, he lived for a time in Mexico City. Further studies include enrollment in Cooper Union and Pratt Institute. In 1949 he left for Rome, Italy where he remained until 1951. During this time he painted some of his most important work."

"Pepi has never lost his grounding in manual virtuosity and as in other "first generation" Abstract Expressionists his surety of line and form elevates his art. As a painter who shared his time and environs with such as de Kooning and Kline, Pepi is very much an individual, with a consistency which courses through all of his work, which is both thoughtful and fervent. Long overlooked, partly by his own choices, Pepi is returned, a player in history. The past will care for the future."

Kimmelman does it again.....

Here Michael Kimmelman is right on. His review of the recent show at the Whitney reveals a nice sense of the slow turn that is occuring in the methods of viewing American art. "Everybody loves Pablo" argues a point that, independent of its central indictment of the Whitney, aims to bring everyone back down to earth, so to speak. As per usual with Kimmelman, the abbreviator's comments do not do him justice.

Notwithstanding the glamorous pictures in it, “Picasso and American Art” at the Whitney Museum is one of those dull affairs incubated in the world of academe: a walk-through textbook that goes to extraordinary lengths to state the obvious. It has the numbing feel of a compare-and-contrast slide lecture, the scholastic consequence of art forced to service information. Picasso’s “Woman in White,” a picture of heavenly arrogance, hangs between Arshile Gorky’s “Artist and His Mother” and de Kooning’s “Standing Man,” terrific paintings too. We are meant to register the plain insinuation of Picasso’s Neoclassicism, then move on. Next slide, please.

Fittingly, the show ends not with the lively question of Picasso’s impact on young artists today but with a virtual retrospective of the later, Picasso-inspired works by Jasper Johns, that most hermetic and constipated of American masters. In picture after picture Johns buries allusions to the great Spaniard, aspiring presumably to Picasso’s own late meditations on Velázquez. Except that even when he was old and running out of steam, Picasso still had joie de vivre. Johns doesn’t so much enthrone Picasso as repeatedly entomb him. The exhibition tracks the impact of Picasso on American artists from Max Weber on. (Who outside Scholar World cares about Max Weber in the first place is a mystery.) Pictures by Picasso that influenced pictures by Americans have been rounded up and brought together. The scholarship, the result of years of serious work by Michael FitzGerald, a Picasso expert, seems unimpeachable and fills a fat book, where, ultimately, it belongs. Mr. FitzGerald documents a legacy of Picasso displays: one in New York in 1911, in the Armory Show in 1913, another show in 1915, a survey in Brooklyn in 1921, yet another Picasso exhibition in 1923, at the Whitney Studio Club. That one is partly recreated here, a nice touch, with paintings by Stuart Davis in an adjacent gallery, from a year or so later, which jazz up Picasso’s Cubism by giving it various American twists (painted comics, the image of a Lucky Strike pack).

Davis holds his own in this show, likewise de Kooning, Pollock and a few others, who make a hardy case for burgeoning American independence. By the mid-1930’s, about halfway through the exhibition, the home team has almost shed its obsequiousness. At that point Picasso’s “Studio,” from 1927-28, is still the colorful Tinker Toy centerpiece in a congress of David Smiths, de Koonings, Lee Krasners and Gorkys that collectively play Charlie McCarthy to its Edgar Bergen. But gradually de Kooning and Gorky deconstruct Picasso’s linear style; they explode the tight Cubist grid, remaking their own beholden, puzzlelike images into maelstroms of fleshy pigment.

Into the 1940’s and 50’s Americans respond as much to one another as to Picasso, whose “Demoiselles d’Avignon” nevertheless remains the ghost in the machine of works like de Kooning’s blowsy “Woman” series. Pollock, literally covering up Picassolike shapes with drips and splashes, finally invents himself by this act. Louise Bourgeois fills a cameo role with a pair of pictures that eccentrically riff on Picasso’s Janus-headed motifs.

Picasso has by then become a living monument, his “Guernica” (not here of course, but at the time at the Museum of Modern Art) imitating the look of a black and white cartoon, with a newspaper illustration’s implicit delivery of second-hand emotion, felicitously helping pave the way for Pop years later.

Accordingly, the show rustles up an early Roy Lichtenstein, a delicate little nothing, from 1953, which wrestles with bits of the architecture of Picasso’s “Three Musicians.” A decade later, a mature Lichtenstein swallows whole Picassos, mixes and regurgitates them as coldly rapturous meditations on the great man’s resourceful palette, Cubist patterning and celebrity. Lichtenstein’s laconic absorption of Picasso hawks American industry. His art looks immaculate and, like Johns’s and Warhol’s, chilly as such. Picasso, by contrast, remains dashingly, fiercely handcrafted. His pictures never try to look fresh. They just are. All of which reiterates what we knew already. The unanswerable question is what role Picasso might play next. Historical precedents are hard to come by, Picasso being so modern, his art linked to 20th-century ideas of required novelty and constant reinvention, his fame accelerated by the mass media.

There is Rubens, the dominant figure of his day, who laid out a map for Baroque art, and like Picasso was universally admired, sought after by every patron, emulated by Rembrandt and van Dyck. But now, history having been reconfigured, it’s Velázquez, an artist few people outside Spain had heard of at the time, who looms largest from an era that also produced Bernini and Poussin.

On the other hand there is Michelangelo, as Picasso would be, a stultifying presence for generations, casting a shadow over the equivalent of countless anxious sheep, until Caravaggio came along and turned obeisance into a dialectic. Michelangelo fell out of fashion, but he remained a persona, the heroic ideal of the artist. We could use a few more heroes in art today, don’t you think? Their absence partly accounts for Picasso’s enduring aura. At the end of his “Discourses,” delivered as lectures at the Royal Academy in London, the 18th-century painter Joshua Reynolds, whose style couldn’t have been farther from Michelangelo’s, said what plenty of artists might now think about Picasso. “I have taken another course, one more suited to my abilities, and to the taste of the times in which I live,” Reynolds wrote. “Yet however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master.” He ended, in 18th-century fashion: “I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of — MICHAEL ANGELO.”

De Kooning said something oddly similar, out of frustration, when Picasso died in 1973. An interviewer asked him about Picasso’s influence. “There are certain things I like to keep to myself,” de Kooning barked. “He’s always with me — certain artists are always with me. And surely Picasso is one of them.”

He added: “I’m not going to answer your questions because to me the answers are self-evident.” Which ought to have given the Whitney pause.

-Michael Kimmelman, "Everybody Loves Pablo" Sept 29th

I am pleased to invite all those interested in art as a dynamic force, to view my portfolio. It is no coincidence that in the study and history of man, ART has always played the dominant roll. To study man, we study History. Written history is plagued with lies and distortions causing us to read between the lines, to get to the truth. The language of art on the other hand is sublime in its intention. It (art) always seeks to reveal the truth. Thus we feel safe in the study of Art as "The Study of Man". Man is what we want to know about. Not "History”, since history by itself is nothing but a series of anecdotes. ART, instead, is in fact its own measuring stick. When art is false it smells sour. Sometimes it stinks. It reveals itself as Kitsch. When this happens we must resign to the realization that we are in that sorry state of decadence, sometimes referred to as narcissism. The pendulum swings up and then down, and so it is.

From “Notes about art: April, 2006, Vincent Pepi”

"Space & Gesture: The Paintings of Vincent Pepi" exhibit at Deutsch Gallery, New York City, 1992

"Amid the large number of American participants in the development and spread of Abstract Expressionism in the late 40's and early 50's, Vincent Pepi produced a body of work representing a serious, distinctive vision worthy of individual consideration." After having studied at both Pratt Institute and Cooper Union in New York, Pepi spent 2 years painting in Rome, before returning to America. His art continues in the exploration of semi-illusionistic abstract phenomena, at times evoking a nearly palpable though fluctuant sense of space, that comprises an intriguing personal deviation from the American Abstract Expessionist norm, so often given to the pursuit of flatness of form and color. As on going research enriches the already remarkable story of mid-20th- Century painterly abstraction in America, Vincent Pepi's vital, vibrant oeuvre of small scale gestures and spatial inventivness offers timely reminder that much remains in this field to be appreciated anew."

Partially excerpted from catalogue essay "Space & Gesture:The Paintings of Vincent Pepi" exhibit at Duetsch Gallery, New York City,1992

NEXT EPISODE...

(Having to do with the BLT sandwich on white toast and I meet Betty Parsons)

...When we got downstairs and were sitting at the lunch counter I did a silly thing. Catherine Viviano ordered a dainty little sandwich of something or other and I ordered Bacon lettuce and tomato on white toast with mayo.

It was a very unwieldly sandwich especially the mayo part. I managed
to make it disappear along with some engaging conversation about Rome and
such. How exciting it was to be back in New York City after so long etc. Then she said -" I would like you to meet Betty Parsons. Her gallery is just across the
street". I said "great", and along we went. Betty Parsons was very pleasant and friendly. They both got a good look at the paintings I brought with me. One was a portrait of my wife, Teresa. My professor Beppe Guzzi Loved it. Matta also had seen it and liked it as well. But all of the abstract work I had produced while I was in Rome, I did not show them. I did not have it with me. I guess I thought I would show them one or two things and then they would say. Have you done any abstract work? And of course I would have said; "Oh yes, I have done quite a bit." And then they would make an appointment with me to come out to Corona Queens where I lived under the Elevated subway and look at all of my "stuff". All of this never happened. They told me that I was very talented (which I already knew) and that I should keep up the good work. That most of the artists now coming up and being noticed were well into their late thirties and early forties. So, I went home . When I got home, I found my lovely, sweet wife and my gorgeous little boy with beautiful eyes as big as ever. When I would return home from work every night and come down the steps of the elevated train, there was my wife with the baby in the carriage and invariably a couple of people crowding around the carriage to say what a beautiful baby he was. What more could I want.?


NEXT EPISODE... to come

Welcome

Welcome to Vincent Pepi's Web Log, "ART NOTES"

I welcome all those interested in Art, as a dynamic
Force to step inside my studio and participate in a
free exchange of ideas having to do with art.
Those of us who are in the art business. That is:
anyone who either makes, or sells or writes about
Art,or delivers/ or is a collector, or stores art in a
museum basement/ or those people who are advisers to
those who admit that they know very little about art
and consequently require an art advisor(educator) in
order to purchase some art for the wall. All these
people and including Art students, Art history
students and scholars are all in the art business.
Andy Warhol was the first one to my knowledge who
was quick to understand how the art business works,
here in New York City. After studying at Carnegie Art
Institute, he did not rush down to Miami or to the
west coast to put out his shingle announcing..
"Artist- Open for business". He saw immediately that
there were Two ART departments here in Manhattan. The
Fine art dept. And the Commercial art department. You
would really be committing an act of sacrilege, if you
should per chance confuse the two. Fine art and
commercial art were not to be mixed up with one
another. This basic tenant holds true to this day. But
Andy
saw it differently. He knew that it was only one dept.
Commercial art business. So when he wrote a letter
back home in Pittsburgh to his mom. He wrote: I'm in
the art business. He made no distinction between Fine
and and commercial art. God Bless him.
When I came back to NYC. in 1951, after my sojourn
in Rome Italy, I had a note from Robert Matta. He was
with my wife and I in my Rome
studio (via Vittorio Colonna,# 35), when he asked me.
"What do you plan to do when you get back to NYC?" I
replied, I don't know?
He suggested that I drop in to see Catherine Viviano
at her gallery.
He asked me for a sheet of paper and proceeded to
write a note for me to give her. The note read: " I
introduce you to the painter Vincent Pepi who I
recommend to you and who's work I find to be very
dynamic." When I arrived at her gallery on 57th
street, I was greeted by her brother, who brought me
into her office. She took the note, read it and then
we talked. I knew very little about the art world at
that time, but I was very enthused. I asked her if she
would like to have lunch with me at the Drug store
lunch counter. She accepted

next episode... "Bacon lettuce and tomato on
white toast- after
which I am introduced to Betty Parsons across the
Street"