Philip Pearlstein/ Al Held Show's Belated NYT Review

In November we made a blog entry on the early reception of Philip Pearlstein/ Al Held "PEARLSTEIN/HELD: Five Decades" exhibition at Betty Cuningham Gallery, which was at the time on Dick's want-to-see list and also triggered my interest because of the video report by one of my favorite NY art voices, James Kalm. That was soon after show's opening, which Dick missed, but saw the show several weeks later. Here is the link to our original blog entry.

After time passed we thought that this exhibition might not be covered by the NYT. To our surprise, just three days before the scheduled closing a review by Roberta Smith made it to the Wednesday cover of the Arts as "last chance" here.

Some points of interest to Dick made by the reviewer were the way the two artist make three dimensional space on the flat surface of the canvas. Abstract and figurative art have been seen to be at war by misconceptions of how paintings are made and how they can create sensations of three dimensional space.

Dick goes into the subject of abstraction, form and space in his paintings in all of our videos on YouTube, but particularly in Designs within Design.

Pearlstein/ Held exhibition bridges the gap between figurative and abstract painting, well expressed by the reviewer, says Dick.

Portraits: Backgrounds

The father of Dick's current model, Stephanie, remarked on the variety of backgrounds for Dick's figures,

which often contrast the realism of the bodies. This remark made Dick think about the various abstract

and figurative backgrounds he's used. The following video shows examples of those backgrounds,

how they came to be used and how they work with the figure.

Portraits: Tom Johnson

Today we're posting another portrait. This time it's a model, Tom Johnson, whom Dick painted in four major works. The video tells the story of Tom, as Dick knew him, from before they met until Tom's death.

Design Within Design Cont.

About a week ago, we posted on Designs within Design and we heard from many of you. Dick realized that there is more to say on the subject of designs within the design as well as framing and composition and we made this follow up video.