Judy Glantzman, one painting and drawings

Sept 17 – Oct 31 1998

A collection of self-portraits (one painting and drawings) by Judy Glantzman, curated by Neil Grayson.

The Dactyl Foundation is proud to open the 1998 fall season with an exceptional exhibition of one painting and twelve drawings by Judy Glantzman. Her work has received a number of prestigious awards, and her reputation has been thoroughly established in national art publications over the past fifteen years. In the early 80s the talk was about her precedents (i.e. Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning or Edvard Munch), but, now that the force of her influence on contemporary artists is becoming more and more obvious, recent discussion has been engaged in finding a definition for her own unique style. Continue reading “Judy Glantzman, one painting and drawings”

Neil Grayson, press

June 1998

From Art in America

Neil Grayson at Dactyl Foundation –

In a group of new oil portraits and figure studies, 29-year-old Neil Grayson looks to the past, especially Rembrandt and Goya, for inspiration. Grayson is fixated on the contemporary individual going about his or her solipsistic, contemplative business. His figures, lost to the world, have the air of secular, 21st century saints.

Obscurities abound. In Ghost of a Man Thinking, a scumbly figure seated at a table emerges from the Rembrandtesque ground even as he retreats into it. His pose is ominously meditative, arms on the table, head in had; he is a Hamlet for our unthinking times. Brooding Figure features the same chiaroscuro around a man who rests his head directly on the table; a small paint can and brush are placed before him, on top of a barely discernible American flag. If this last tends to read as social commentary, well, it is and it isn’t; Grayson painted this canvas as a reaction to current events, but the flag also functions purely as a still-life element. While there are still traces of social commentary in Melancholia, the work is more poetic in effect, as the artist lovingly and bravely inspects an emaciated female figure for visible signs of life.

In his earlier work, Grayson presented the viewer with more overtly symbolic fables–a young girl gesticulating with a grotesquely elongated arm at a funeral pyre, a boy trying to keep his father from deploying a syringe raised above his track-ravaged arm. Today, Grayson is more interested in effecting a synthesis between the figurative and the abstract, to which end he is playing down inflammatory narrative and toning up his painterly technique.

But the real sea change in his new work is manifested in two completely different yet related paintings. The twice-life-sized Final Figure is a subtly frenzied rendering of an ambiguous, off-putting form that has deep iconological import for Grayson. A yellowy white, pod-like “thing” hangs in midair in the darkly luminous canvas, its “head” tilted to the left, its “body” ending in a spiraling tail. The form is reminiscent of the “Hanged Man” Tarot card as well as death-by-lynching. The artist commits himself to no single reading. In the mid-sized Light Triptych, a dim yellow glow shines through deep brown mist at the center of each panel-the fabled light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps, or the dawning of a new millennium? Grayson is a late-century illuminator of the confusions that surround not only our art but our lives.

–Gerrit Henry

John Ashbery & Gerrit Henry

May 1998

A poetry reading by John Ashbery & Gerrit Henry with introductions by Neil Grayson.

John Ashbery’s awards include the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award and a Fullbright fellowship. His work includes Wakefulness (1998); Can You Hear, Bird (1995); And The Stars Were Shining (1994); Hotel Lautremont (1992); Flow Chart (1991); April Galleons (1987); A Wave (1984); Self – Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) and Some Trees which was selected by W.H Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series.

Gerrit Henry is an art critic as well as a poet, his work has appeared in the Paris Review, Yale Review and the New York Times.

James Gilroy, Paintings

May 2 – 31 1998

A selection of paintings and works on paper by James Gilroy.

Two works in particular, Untitled 2, 1997 (33 x 25″ oilstick on paper) and Untitled 3, 1997 (33 x 25″ oilstick on paper), represent figures that could be falling or dancing. In a body of work painted a year later, there are figures that are clearly falling, for example, Boxers, 1999 (48 x 38″ oil on linen) and V, 1998 (48 x 32″, oil on linen). Continue reading “James Gilroy, Paintings”

The Interpreters: Shaping American Art, panel discussion

April 30, 1998

Panel Discussion:“The Interpreters: Shaping American Art.” Moderated by Steven Vincent, Wall Street Journal, Art & Auction. DACTYL asked five writers: Do your essays and reviews reveal or conceal your process of interpretation? As interpreter you shape the way art is perceived: as a self-evident sign or image; as a mysterious code that requires a professional interpretation; or as an “inkblot” in which one may find any meaning one likes. In your opinion, what is the best approach for engaging or creating a serious art audience? Over forty art professionals attended the discussion. Continue reading “The Interpreters: Shaping American Art, panel discussion”

Panel Discussion:”The Interpreters: Shaping American Art.

April 30 1998

Contributors include Carter Ratcliff, Rosie Schaap, Sarah Schmerler, Grady T. Turner, Alexi Worth, moderate by Steven Vincent, Wall Street Journal, Art & Auction. DACTYL asked five writers: Do your essays and reviews reveal or conceal your process of interpretation? As interpreter you shape the way art is perceived: as a self-evident sign or image; as a mysterious code that requires a professional interpretation; or as an “inkblot” in which one may find any meaning one likes. Continue reading “Panel Discussion:”The Interpreters: Shaping American Art.”

Stephen Jay Gould, lecture

April 23, 1998

LectureStephen Jay Gould and the Antioch Review, with an introduction by Robert S. Fogarty. Gould teaches biology, geology and the history of science at Harvard University, where he has been on the faculty since1967. Well known for his popular scientific writings, in particular his monthly column in Natural History magazine, he is the author of thirteen books, including: Ever Since Darwin; Evolution & Extinction : Eassys; Full House : The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin; Human Evolution; Mismeasure of Man; Ontogeny and Phylogeny; and Why People Believe Weird Things : Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. “The history of life is not necessarily progressive; it is certainly not predictable. History includes too much chaos, or extremely sensitive dependence on minute and unmeasurable differences in initial conditions, leading to massively divergent outcomes based on tiny and unknowable disparities in starting points.” -Stephen J. Gould.

Stephen Jay Gould

April 23 1998

Stephen Jay Gould and the Antioch Review, with an introduction by Robert S. Fogarty. Gould teaches biology, geology and the history of science at Harvard University, where he has been on the faculty since1967. Well known for his popular scientific writings, in particular his monthly column in Natural History magazine, he is the author of thirteen books, including: Ever Since Darwin; Evolution & Extinction : Eassys; Full House : The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin; Human Evolution; Mismeasure of Man; Ontogeny and Phylogeny; and Why People Believe Weird Things : Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. “The history of life is not necessarily progressive; it is certainly not predictable. History includes too much chaos, or extremely sensitive dependence on minute and unmeasurable differences in initial conditions, leading to massively divergent outcomes based on tiny and unknowable disparities in starting points.” -Stephen J. Gould.


Artist Neil Grayson Gets Favorable Showing at Sussman Home

Monday, March 16, 1998
Miami Herald
Article by Buddy Clarke

Insurance executive Stanley Sussman and his wife Janice are longtime admirers of the paintings of young artist Neil Grayson. The Sussmans have many of Grayson’s unusual paintings hanging in their 8,000 square-foot Boca West penthouse. Their son, David J. Sussman, of Westport, Conn., has his share as well; besides being an admirer of Grayson” art, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Dactyl Foundation, an organization that Grayson founded. Continue reading “Artist Neil Grayson Gets Favorable Showing at Sussman Home”

Ann Lauterbach & Heather Ramsdell, poetry review in Zing Magazine

9:35 A.M. My clock radio clicks into a jazz riff as it has for a week. In my haze of half-sleep I reach to it and turn the dial , winding slowly through a cross-section of morning radio. Phrases, words, half words the faster I wind. Soon it is only sounds that pulse in and out, blend, and break-up. Slowing, I allow it to become whole again, turning back into words and phrases that muster a familiarity that has no context save that to which my still dreaming mind refers. Continue reading “Ann Lauterbach & Heather Ramsdell, poetry review in Zing Magazine”

Wai Chee Dimock, 1998 essay award recipient

1998

Wai Chee Dimock’s essay, “A Theory of Resonance,” which appeared in the October 1997 issue of PMLA, offers the concept of “noise” as a provocative analogy for interpretive contexts. Unlike many other writers on the same topic, Dimock makes the claim that noise is positive, “a necessary feature of a reader’s meaning-making process. Continue reading “Wai Chee Dimock, 1998 essay award recipient”

Audrey Code, paintings

September 1997

The inaugural exhibition at the Dactyl Foundation for the Arts & Humanities featured New York artist Audrey Code. PBS Television (channel 21 in New York).

PBS Television (channel 21 in New York)
MetroGuide August 27, 1997
Interview with Audrey Code and Neil Grayson.


“I’m very much interested in classical drawing, classical painting. . . but updated. I place the canvas on the floor and do a lot of splattering and pouring of paint, not randomly. It’s controlled. I call my technique a kind of learned intuition.

“Oftentimes I see representational painting that impresses me on a technical level but doesn’t move me or get me excited. I oftentimes see abstract painting that is so detached from the form that I can’t relate to it in any real way. I can’t recognize it. What I think every great artist is always searching for is a way to express the ineffable and still hold on to something tangible that the viewer can relate to as well. Audrey manages to get these two qualities in a single image. It moves you.”

Steven Vincent, 1997 essay award recipient

1997

In his essay, “Listening to Pop.” Vincent demonstrates how the lesson of Claes Oldenburg’s work is distorted as it is reinterpreted today. According to the argument, representational art has reinforced the illusion of a knowable, static reality, while at the same time it has always explicitly deconstructed that illusion by its very nature of being artificial. Pop Art attempted to apply this lesson at large, showing how everyday objects should be seen as signs trying to establish an eternal logos. An important lesson indeed. But one that has backfired. As Vincent argues, these everyday objects have come to re-present themselves as signifiers of a signified, reversing Pop Art’s intention. They now “represent” the Mythology of the era in which they were produced. Vincent captures the eeriness involved in such a reinterpretation and reminds us how deeply invested the human race is in its will to believe. Copies of the essay can be obtained for $7 by writing to info@dactyl.org. Note: Steven Vincent was murdered in Iraq in 2006 for questioning political practices in a NYTimes Letter to the Editor.