new criticism

I have two new off-site reviews. First off, from the Times:

John Hartell was a local painter of considerable national prominence. Although born in New York City, he spent most of his life in Ithaca, first as a Cornell student in the early 1920s, and later as a Cornell professor. He taught art and architecture from 1930 until his retirement in 1968, influencing several generations of students in the process. His current exhibit at the Upstairs Gallery is his second in Ithaca this year; there was a more extensive retrospective of his work at the Johnson Museum this past summer. Like the Johnson show, most of the work here is from the last three decades of his career. He died in Ithaca in 1995.

More here.

From Big Red & Shiny:

Among the many paradoxes that pervade Gerry Bergstein's life and art (and these interpenetrate in myriad ways), perhaps the most central is that of his status in the world of art. He is at once a classic painter, reaching toward the to be hoped-for fecundity of old age, and an exceptionally contemporary artist, immersed in the flotsam and jetsam of today's popular culture. He deploys his immense painterly skill and bravura - techniques ranging from trompe l'oeil to paint scratching and impasto - in the service of a jumbled up imagery, non-sequiturs seemingly more at home in the worlds of comics and electronic multimedia. He is both a respectable Newbury Street painter (with links to Boston Expressionism), and one of the most iconoclastic (and iconophiliac) artists in town.

More...

UPDATE (11/20): Just a small clarification: Homage is a 2005 reworking of a piece from 1999, not a new piece as I suggested in the article.