Spring Forward, Look Back

The opening of the new MoMA and the Christo extravaganza in Central Park may have New Yorkers feeling that the main events in art take place in public megaspaces, but actually, the city’s commercial galleries continue to do most of the substantial work in the departments of presenting the new and reassessing the established.Spring promises many opportunities for historic dusting downs. At Robert Miller, for instance, there are to be two shows in succession of once-lauded School of Paris abstractionists, who are long overdue for reconsideration: first the Canadian, Jean-Paul Riopelle (opens March 31), then the Frenchman, Pierre Soulages (May 5), whose trademark gutsy, open brushstrokes, pitting black against white, are often compared to the Abstract Expressionist Franz Kline (especially by those with conspiracy theories about the relationship between French and American postwar art). Then there are underrated homegrown talents: Jacobson Howard, for instance, will present four decades of paintings by Friedel Dzubas (May 18).More recent artists also have pasts to be explored. A much anticipated show this season is C&M’s upcoming retrospective of Julian Schnabel (April 7). The quintessential “1980s artist,” known for his smashed crockery in that period, has fared ill with critics in his recent shows at PaceWildenstein; it will be interesting to see if a rediscovery of his vintage efforts will revive his critical fortunes. On the subject of crockery, by the way, he may have spurned a new genre: Independent curator Lori Ortiz has pulled together a three-woman show entitled “Crockery,” featuring Daphne Cummings, Susan Hamburger, and Rachel Youen, which opens March 24 at Gallery The in Brooklyn.PaceWildenstein, meanwhile, has several shows from their distinguished stable that will provoke attention. At the uptown branch sculptor Joel Shapiro will be followed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s “The Music Room” (April 22), a show of sculptures of the last few years on the theme of musical instruments. In their Chelsea space are shows of new work by Lucas Samaras (April 8) and Chuck Close (May 10).Matthew Marks also has new work by a big gun on offer this season: the first presentation of new works by Jasper Johns in eight years (May 7). Mr. Johns’s show, called “Catenary,” explores his preoccupation with curves as a basis for compositions. And Sperone Westwater has recent expressionist works from the onetime hyperrealist Malcolm Morley (May 5).This season is proving a major boon, by the way, for lovers of sculpture. Knoedler, on the reassessment theme, will host an unjustly forgotten figure of the 1950s: Herbert Ferber (March 24). Actually, his career was much longer than that, but we do so love to pigeonhole artists to their decade of initial impact. This show examines work of the 1970s. It is followed at Knoedler by the constructivist sculptor, Mark di Suvero (May 12), whose exhibition coincides with a summertime outdoor display at the Storm King Sculpture Center in upstate New York.Ferber belonged to a generation of quite remarkable artists who forged in metal but emerged at the wrong moment from the point of view of correct taste: Too late to be pioneers, yet with a vintage modern look that made them seem too safe for the burgeoning avant-garde that came after them. Ferger’s peer, Seymour Lipton, is being shown by Michael Rosenfeld (March 18).Sculpture has been a major strength of British artists since the early 20th century, and this spring sculpting Brits invade New York galleries. McKee has new work by William Tucker (April 21), who admittedly has lived in America since the 1970s: He is known for his monumental, very loosely figural, heavily pummeled, turd-like bronzes.Like Mr. Tucker, Englishman Graham Nickson has made his career almost entirely in America. He is presenting new Australian landscapes in oil and watercolor at Salander-O’Reilly. The uptown gallery that has come to straddle the divide between contemporary and old master painting is opening a second palatial space on East 70th Street, on the same block as the Frick. Their first display in the new space, expected in May or June, will be a display of French landscapes by Corot, Courbet and Theodore Rousseau.Meanwhile, Sean Kelly is to present their first exhibition with a younger Brit concerned with primal materials and the body, Antony Gormley (May 6). Betty Cuningham is presenting his contemporary, Alison Wilding (open), with enigmatic, subtle, thoughtful works in a variety of materials. D’Amelio Terras will show Cornelia Parker (May 5), known primarily for her installations with objects suspended by string in dense clusters. And Forum will present David Mach, who emerged in the 1980s with works in found materials such as arranged auto tires.Luckily a few galleries are able to show that sculpture is made in other countries than Britain. James Cohan will present a four-man group show, “Sculpture,” featuring Vito Acconci, Roxy Paine, the Korean Nam June Paik, and Japanese Hiraki Sawa (May 7). Mr. Paine is known for two bodies of work: mushrooms, and paintings that are produced by specially devised machines. Another artist who produces sculpture out of dense, plastic accumulations of paint is Scott Richter, just opened at Elizabeth Harris. And Marian Goodman will present the German sculptor Thomas Schutte (May 11), who continues a German theme at the gallery, following photographer Thomas Struth (April 7).Mary Ryan has a pair of shows opening May 11 of two artists with an obsession for capturing in still form essentially fluid natural phenomena: They are recent cloud studies by master watercolorist Jacqueline Gourevitch, and 1970s swimming pools by David Hockney. Mr. Hockney’s show nicely overlaps with Pamela Crimmins’s otherwordly, underwater photographs, taken from within swimming pools, with views looking up to surrounding people, nature, and houses, at Littlejohn Contemporary (April 28).Peter Howson, the Scots realist known for his brutal evocations of cruel urban anarchy, has recently turned to religion with a set of Passion pictures that recall Grunewald and Mel Gibson in equal measure (at Flowers until May 7). The Passion, of course, is art’s great narrative, but not its only one. “Every Picture Tells a Story” (April 5) – a thematic, historic, and contemporary group show at the ever thoughtful Galerie St. Etienne – will outline a narrative thread in artists as diverse as Sue Coe, Gregory Crewdson, Eric Fischl, William Kentridge, Neo Rauch, Martha Rosler, and Alexis Rockman, alongside the expressionists and outsider artists for whom this gallery is renowned, among them Beckmann, Kokoschka, Kollwitz, and Henry Darger.

Spring Forward, Look Back

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