SPEED - - - at VMFA

Went to the VMFA on Sunday to drop off some of my postcard announcements. They don't have a bulletin board so I just taped them up in the men's room stall... oh well.

Speed is the latest of the four "work-from-the-collection" themed shows they are doing... I think the last one was Food, or something like that.

SOME HIGHLIGHTS:

Nicholas Krushenick - Nicholas Krushenick is one of the first artists featured, with Jungle Jim Liberman, from 1969. Krushenick is an artist I have been looking at recently, and it was a nice surprise to see this, and to be able to say "hey, that looks like a Krushenick", as I approached it. Now, whenever I see a painting dated 1969 or so, I relate it to the start of the High Times, Hard Times show... and think about how difficult it must have been to make selections for that show. There are/were so many artists! So many good artists!

I've just come from the Stephen Westfall lecture and am seeing some Krushenik in Westfall, although Krushenick isn't an artist Westfall mentioned. Not that Westfall was holding out or anything, he was very generous sharing the work of his friends and influences...


Malcolm Morley - This is Malcolm Morley's The Grand Bayonet Charge of the Legionnaires of the Sahara, 1979. The inspiration for this big painting of charging soldiers is actually one tiny little toy soldier that he painted large many times.

There is a painting in the collection, not in this show, that this Morley painting makes me think of and would have been good to include... one of my favorites and something I'll feature another time.

I really liked that Malcolm Morley I saw at Art Basel last year, but what is up with his NEW stuff? Am I not getting something? Yuk.


These tiny African equestrian figurines were a nice inclusion in the show, especially if you know about the Morley toy soldier thing.


Allan D'Arcangelo - U.S. Highway 1, Number 3, 1962.

This is good timing, because D'Arcangelo's great-nephew, Cory Arcangel, has a show opening at Solvent Space this Friday -


A Cory Arcangel GIF.

Stephen Fox - Local, shows at Reynolds. I think this used to hang next to that Gregory Gillespie.


Chris Nissen - This isn't a painting I am into exactly, but it's a 1981 painting of interstate construction in Philadelphia... maybe underneath that painted overpass-in-progress is the future location of Zoe Strauss' I-95 shows???


John Salt - This was like walking up to the Krushenik, and saying "hey, that looks like it might be a Krushenik", except I was wrong because I thought this might be a Bechtle. It is not a Bechtle, it is a Salt... someone I have never seen and maybe my favorite from the show. This crushed silver car was making me think of the Markel Building. This painting, Pontiac in a Desert Lot, 1971, is all silvery, the frame is silver. Nice.

Jacob Lawrence - Sweeeeet. I love his stuff, and all of the people coming up from the subway and crossing the street, mostly wearing green and red, echoed all the green and red lights and reflections on the wet road in Stephen Fox's painting.

All my highlights are men today, sorry ladies! Were there any women in that show? I can't even remember.