New York City Galleries’ Fall Schedules Enlivened by Living Artists

As New York City’s museums gear up for major exhibitions dedicated to major talents — most notably, “Manet/Degas” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick,” MoMA’s “Picasso at Fontainebleau,” and “Max Beckmann: The Formative Years, 1915-1925” at the Neue Galerie — not a few commercial galleries are dedicating their fall schedules to veteran artists whose work is testament to dedication sustained over the long haul. Living artists, in other words, have got it going on.Janet Borden Inc. started the ball rolling in June with “Sandy Skoglund: The Outtakes.” The exhibition has a point to make and, yes, something of an ax to grind in that it offers a “fresh view of her magical work before Photoshop.” Ms. Skoglund is best known for photos of cloistered interiors overrun by vividly colored animals, pop-surrealist tableaux that were created entirely by hand. “The Outtakes” revisits these works and pairs them with small-scale sculptures of the featured animals in which, fancy that, digital means were employed. The show has been extended until the end of the month.At David Nolan Gallery, Jim Nutt is exhibiting a suite of graphite portraits — or, rather, portraits of a sort. Mr. Nutt was among the nose-thumbing cadre of artists known as The Hairy Who, the Chicago equivalent of Pop Art. At 85 years of age, he’s spent the better part of his life delineating a series of imaginary personages whose contours bring to mind both the bumptious ideograms of Joan Miró and the sinuous exactitude of a Florentine master like Domenico Ghirlandaio. The drawings are as odd as they are elegant — funny, too. “Jim Nutt: Shouldn’t We Be More Careful” runs until October 14.Jim Nutt, ‘Untitled,’ 2023. Via David Nolan GalleryThe weight of history can be felt in the paintings of John Lees, whose current show at Betty Cuningham Gallery, “Krazy Paradise,” is up-and-running on the Lower East Side until October 28. “Double Portrait, Cairo, NY. Summer 1991-2023” (1990-2023) brings to mind the frescoes lining the villas of Pompei, and “Large Landscape” (2007-23) recalls the turbulent surfaces seen in the paintings of Chaim Soutine. Viewers shouldn’t be surprised by the work’s nubbly, scab-like facture: working 30 years on a canvas is, for Mr. Lees, no anomaly. Few artists can retain the freshness of improvisation through such laborious means. Here is one of them.The paintings of Jane Dickson were among the high points of the most recent Whitney Biennial. The title of her current show at KARMA, “Promised Land,” evinces a fascination with public signage — but also, and just as crucially, an ability to replicate the lurid, over-saturated ambiance of artificial lighting. Using as inspiration her stash of photos taken at Times Square circa 1980, Ms. Dickson revisits the seamy environs in which kung fu films, pornography, and “sizzlin chikin” were mainstays. It seems appropriate that her mixed-media pictures are being shown on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a neighborhood that maintains a fingernail grasp on the grittiness of yore.Lastly, let me test the boundaries of critical integrity by mentioning Elisa D’Arrigo (a friend) and Elizabeth Harris Gallery (a gallery representing my paintings). Would I otherwise be singing the praises of her ceramics, discomfiting extensions of the biomorphic vases she has been pursuing for the last 10 years or so? My gut votes “yes.” Ms. D’Arrigo traverses contradictory impulses — not least among them, embracing the grotesque and courting the whimsical — with a hard-won brevity. The rich raiments of color, texture and pattern adorning the pieces are an aesthete’s delight; their humor is generous; their eccentricities, unfeigned, and, believe it or not, kind of adorable.“Elisa D’Arrigo: Taking Shapes” rounds out a tidy handful of exhibitions that any New Yorker worth their cultural salt will want to visit not a few times over.

New York City Galleries’ Fall Schedules Enlivened by Living Artists

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