Perception of Ecstacy
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“There is a supple gracefulness to Bluhm’s paintings that feels as choreographed and inevitable as Fred Astaire’s defiance of gravity,” writes John Yau in the catalog for the exhibition of Norman Bluhm at Loretta Howard Gallery. “His hybrid forms often evoke bodies, landscapes, or clouds, but they resist any literal interpretation. And yet for all the masking and deliberate ambiguity that the artist achieves in his painting, the underlying subject, which is to say the perception that you cannot ever get away from, is ecstasy.”
Norman Bluhm: Paintings 1967-1974 runs through May 27 at Loretta Howard Gallery, 525-531 West 26th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, 212-695-0164, lorettahoward.com.
Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer.
