Artistic Sights That Should Not Be Left ‘Unseen,’ Courtesy of the Bernsteins of Chicago

An intriguing sidenote to an exhibition at the 19th street branch of David Zwirner gallery, “The Great Unseen Collection: A Selection of Works from Joel and Carole Bernstein,” can be found in the accompanying press release. Up until the early 1980s, the Bernsteins had been collecting abstract art, primarily Colorfield painting, but ultimately switched their emphasis to figurative work. The reason? The couple “wanted to live with art that more directly reflected the circumstances of its era.”A cynic might wonder if the switch was indicative of an era in which the marketplace had had it up to here with Conceptualist bric-a-brac, Minimalist portent, and “pictures of nothing.” The late 1970s and early 1980s were the time of Neo-Expressionism, what with its overheated colors, flurried brushwork and recognizable, if often wildly distorted, imagery. The stuff was all the rage, and could make savvy observers of the art scene like Joel and Carole Bernstein wonder if someone like Helen Frankenthaler was a bit old hat. “The Great Unseen Collection” is less predictable than that, not least because the Bernsteins hail from Chicago, but more about geography anon. Joel, who passed away last year, was living in Hyde Park while pursuing studies in medicine. He had known Carole since they were teenagers, and continued to romance her in a way typical of students: On a shoestring. A cheap date was an afternoon trip visiting art galleries, including venues that once had a Manhattan outpost such as Allan Frumkin and venues that still do like Richard Gray.Joel came to know the owner of B.C. Holland Gallery, Bud Holland, a World War II vet who opened his space in 1957. Was it Bud who encouraged Joel to buy lithographs by Pablo Picasso and Jean Dubuffet? His classmates didn’t think much of the stuff, but Joel soldiered on, hitting the books, buying more art and, eventually, getting a job with a multinational health care concern, Abbott Laboratories. He later tried his hand as an art dealer, but quit the business in frustration. Why should his clients get all the good stuff?As for Chicago, the city has a tradition of cultivating figurative art, but not just any figurative art. For reasons likely best left to sociologists but that we can dub “Second City Syndrome,” Chicago painters and sculptors bristled against trends in mainstream art, preferring instead to pursue avenues that were more eccentric, often grotesque, and laced with humor. Groups of like-minds adopted monikers like the Monster Roster and the Hairy Who. Folk art was a touchstone, as were comic books, Surrealism, and a cock-eyed view of the world. Proud contrarians, all.All of which explains, to an extent anyway, how the Bernsteins’ collection is a bit off topic and of a piece. Not that Joel and Carol were immune to fashion: Among the pieces at Zwirner is an Andy Warhol silkscreen picture from 1978, “Judy and Liza,” and Alex Katz’s “Ada,” from 1980, both of which are as bland as they are brand name. But then consider a bravura installation that places Fairfield Porter’s terse encomium to an afternoon well-spent, “Iced Coffee,” which dates from 1966, amongst three cut-above canvases by the irascibly cack-handed Alice Neel. “Nancy,” from 1981, is particularly good, not least because it is markedly absent of Neel’s signature strain of cruelty.‘Twister,’ by Roger Brown, 1972. Detail. Roger Brown Estate and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Imagist Roger Brown and outsider savant Joseph Yoakum are on hand to represent Chicago, and a trio of works-on-paper by Dubuffet testify to the collection’s beginnings: “Chèvre,” from 1949, is a particularly elegant example of Art Brut, imagine that. Romare Bearden’s kaleidoscopic “Street Serenade,” made in 1979-80, is a handsome late effort just as “Sing Sing,” from 1962, is a rambunctious early piece by the forever scatalogical Peter Saul. The exhibition does hint at the non-representational: Jack Tworkov’s “The Father,” from 1954, traverses patriarchal iconography and Abstract Expressionism to tense effect. Alas, the Tworkov was taken down just minutes after I entered the gallery. A pair of friendly attendants replaced it with “Steven’s Broken Leg,” from 1957, a modestly-scaled canvas that captures Larry Rivers at his unkempt, pre-Pop best.Whether the Rivers piece will be up by the time this review sees the light of day is an open question, as is the provenance of the collection given that Mrs. Bernstein has deemed that the time is right for new guardianship. In the meantime, “The Great Unseen Collection” should not be left unseen.

Artistic Sights That Should Not Be Left ‘Unseen,’ Courtesy of the Bernsteins of Chicago

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