New Gallery on Newtown

    Tomorrow the Halsey McKay Gallery will open its new space at 105 Newtown Lane with a show of paintings by Patrick Brennan titled “There Is an Ocean.”

    Hilary Schaffner and Ryan Wallace, both of whom have had curatorial experience in New York City, are running the gallery. Mr. Wallace is also a painter. The two met in art class 20 years ago and have remained friends and now will be business partners in this new venture.

    “It was a very organic process. We both have a strong connection out east, we grew up going out there.” The gallery’s name comes from their grandmothers’ maiden names. “My great-great-great-grandfather built a house in Southampton in the 1800s, but my family was centered in East Hampton in my life.”

    The gallery will be devoted to emerging artists that Ms. Schaffner has been following during her years in New York. In addition to Mr. Brennan’s paintings, the gallery will exhibit work by Joseph Hart and Ruby Sky Stiler, Chris Duncan, a group show organized by Rachel Uffner, and Glen Baldrige and Bryan Graf. The work will include installations, paintings, sculpture, and photography.

    They plan to be open from May to November.

    Mr. Brennan’s work is described by the gallery as “a series of charismatic pictures that operate just outside of the notion of painting’s convention and expectations.” A reception for his exhibit will be held on Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. The show will remain on view through June 8.

Marder’s “Big Show”

    The Silas Marder Gallery in Bridgehampton will open on Saturday with “The Big Show,” an exhibit of small works on canvas submitted by 50 artists. A reception will be held from 5 to 9 p.m.

    Each year, Mr. Marder invites a range of artists to submit three works on canvases that measure only 8 by 10 inches, with the only guideline being that the artists are to “reflect on where they are in their careers.” Mr. Marder said the exhibit manages to be cohesive through its “dialogue of texture and form.”

    The spontaneity of the endeavor paired with the variety of artists involved, makes for an interesting presentation. “It’s like a lively dinner party where the guests might have conflicting opinions, but they are all expressing themselves very politely at exactly the same volume.” He sees it as a communal experience as well, uniting international artists with those from here.

    “Local is important, but locals need exposure. No one should remain sheltered or underexposed. Exposure comes in different forms: Sometimes you go elsewhere; sometimes you invite others to you. ‘The Big Show’ helps me think about here — what it means to live here, be here, choose to remain here. My job is to connect that ‘here’ with a larger arts community. It’s like drawing concentric circles,” he said in a release.    

    This year, Billy Sullivan, Curt Hoppe, Jessica Benjamin, Michelle Suna, Christine Gray, Joe Fyfe, Audrey Lee, Kyung Jeon, David Geiser, Ellen Frank, Megan Berk, James Daga Albinson, and Stephanie Brody-Lederman are among the participants. The show will run through June 22.

“Mystical”at Kramoris

    The Romany Kramoris Gallery will present “Mystical,” a a show of paintings by Hadi Toron and Laura Rozenberg, beginning today. A reception will be held on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.

    As an artist, Mr. Toron has been informed by his experience as a diplomat, spending time in New York, Sudan, and the Caribbean. He has been working on his mystical Sudanese series for 20 years. Ms. Rozenberg, a longtime East Hampton resident who was born in Argentina, has a new new series of mystical flower paintings to share. She found her inspiration for these paintings while attending a writer’s workshop in the gardens of Diana Bellessi’s estate in Buenos Aires. The paintings may be unfamiliar to viewers of her previous work, which tended to be in collage.

    A vocal music presentation by Bisan Toron will open and close the exhibit. Ms.Toron is an experimental world music singer whose style is influenced by a multitude of cultures steeped in universal Sufism. The exhibit will run through June 9.

Student Curators at Ross

    Hiroyuki Hamada and Drew Shif­lett’s work will be featured in an exhibit at the Ross School in East Hampton opening on Wednesday. The show was organized by a group of the school’s seventh graders under the direction of Sue Heatley, their art teacher.

    Mr. Hamada is known for his sculptures in painted wood, foam, and plaster, which, while abstract, reference both organic and technologically advanced man-made objects. Ms. Shiflett uses handmade papers, pencil, ink, watercolor, and conte crayon.

    The title of the show “Passion and Process,” references the intricate and time-consuming processes each artist uses to arrive at their final works. A catalog will accompany the show.

    The students will host a reception on Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m., which is open to the public.

    On Sunday afternoon the Chamber Players of the Southampton Cultural Center presented the fifth annual Composers of the East End concert, featuring (this time) the music of Bruce Wolosoff, Stephen Dickman, Victoria Bond, and Eric Salzman. The concert was the last of the center’s chamber music series for 2010-11, with Marc Levine on violin, Gloria Shih on piano, and Dylan Benson on percussion.

    As one might guess, each composer’s style was very different and personal, and it was especially interesting to note that almost all of the titles gave a suggestion of an extra-musical source of inspiration.       

    Mr. Wolosoff’s “Mad Maude, and Other Tales,” scored for piano and violin, was first played at the Music Festival of the Hamptons a few years ago. I didn’t hear it then, but I was glad I heard it this time.     

    Each of the six movements is a bit autobiographical, he said. For example, the title piece refers to a woman he saw in a dream; “The Night Ferry” refers, yes, a ride on the Shelter Island ferry, and when he once fell ill he musically paraphrased Dylan Thomas, “I Will Not Go Gentle. . . .”    

    Mr. Wolosoff blends various styles, in this case mostly jazz, blues, and boogie, and even a bit of fiddling for Irish Maude, and he does so in a genuine and individual way. He is a composer who knows what he is doing.    

    Mr. Levine’s playing on the violin was exceptional from the beginning, and especially noticeable in the agitated and rhythmic “I Will Not Go Gentle. . . .”

    For quite a change of pace, Mr. Dickman’s “Audience Participation Piece” was next. He gave some stage directions, for those who wanted to be part of the chance music: Sing (or say) “ah” or “oh,” on any pitch, for any length of time, with various crescendos or decrescendos.

    And it happened. Someone started, others followed. It was quite effective and creative (remember, there were composers and musicians in the audience). The timbre was interesting, and it was apparent that many got into it. It reminded me somewhat of the Paul Winter Consort, which used whale song so effectively. The ah-ing and oh-ing went on for a few moments, and gradually of its own accord came to a natural, quiet ending. You had to be there to appreciate it. How ’60s and ’70s!     

    Mr. Dickman’s “Trees and Other Inclinations” was inspired by looking at tree branches and imagining musical lines based on their shapes. It is for piano solo, with somewhat sparse textures, prickly harmonies, and intricate rhythms.     

    It was an opportunity for Ms. Shih to shine. Often the pianist, though always present with a musical underpinning, is overshadowed. Ms. Shih was solid and unwavering throughout the afternoon, but this was one place where she had the spotlight, and she handled it superbly.     

    Who would have thought of radium, the chemical element, as a stimulus for music? Ms. Bond did, when she was commissioned to compose for an event in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the home of the Manhattan Project, on a program with Marie Curie as its theme. When a scientist friend said something to her about stable and unstable elements, she thought of the regular and irregular elements (to use a pun) in music, as in rhythm and form.     

    The result was the two-movement work “A New Light” for piano, violin, and percussion. Mr. Benson’s array of instruments — or, better, Ms. Bond’s choice and scoring of them — was remarkable: drums of various kinds, pitched and unpitched, cymbals, a gong, a glockenspiel, and wood blocks.

    The two movements, “Inner Light” and “Stable and Unstable Elements,” were evocative, intriguingly engaging, and, given the percussion forces at hand, wonderfully subtle. Each instrumentalist had a cadenza; Mr. Benson literally had to choreograph his, which in no way detracted from the musicality of it. A “wow” to the composer and players alike.     

    From radium to a gangster, circa the 1930s, Mr. Salzman’s theater piece “The True Last Words of Dutch Schultz” is based on a police stenographer’s record of the mobster’s last remarks, which the composer described as “an extraordinary gangster stream-of-consciousness poem.”    

    The full production has been mounted a number of times, including in New York and in Europe. What we heard was a suite adapted from it for piano, violin, and percussion. Mr. Salzman gave a brief description of each act.    

    In places, one could hear echoes of the big-band era. In other places one could hear plainer vocal lines, but I wondered what was being said. There were indeed many moods that were curiously juxtaposed.     

    It was not, honestly, and unfortunately, until I got home and looked up more about the original theater piece and the libretto that I had a fuller understanding of the work and its complexities. The words are sometimes feverish, sometimes rhymes; there are ramblings, outbursts, and even humor. Occasionally panting is portrayed, or a heartbeat.

    Having a written description or libretto to follow as the work unfolded would have added greatly to the audience’s appreciation of the music, since its form, color, and emotion are seemingly very connected to the very disjointed words. I would like to hear it again knowing what I know now.    

    As is too often the case with contemporary “classical” music, the audience size was disappointing. The big-name classical and romantic composers usually draw a rather full house. The four composers heard during this concert, as well as the performers, have numerous solid credentials. The afternoon was entertaining, uplifting, and edifying, and brought smiles, laughs, and bravos, and while it might have been just a bit of a listening stretch for some, it was well worth it.      

    In his opening remarks, Mr. Wolosoff quipped that one of the goals of the program was to dispute the notion that the only good composer is a dead composer. (Or, some might say, a European composer.) For the entire program, mission accomplished, and much more. 

    Heinz Emil Salloch has the kind of unlikely story one does not encounter every day. He was a refugee from Nazi Germany because he refused to join the National Socialist Party and continued to teach art to Jewish children. He fled the country in 1937 to Cuba first, then to the United States, where he found his way from Florida to New York, then to the South Fork, and finally Montauk in 1938. He died in 1985.

    Given the well-documented lore collected on the exploits and backgrounds of notable artists who visited this area over the past century or so, it is extraordinary to discover a new artist who made the trek out here, especially in the large gap that exists between the 19th-century painters and the mid-20th-century Moderns. What is particularly striking about his watercolors of sites such as Ditch Plain, Fort Pond Bay, Culloden Point, and the old Montauk Village, is not just how much has changed or not, but the expressive realist style, still prevalent in both Europe and even America at the time he chose to paint these subjects.

    With the Abstract Expressionists not due to arrive for another decade or so, Salloch captured Montauk in a style we are not accustomed to seeing. As a result, the strong linear focus of the work and the artist’s sharp use of shape and color seems remarkably fresh.

    What is even more intriguing about the enterprise is that it comes with a bit of mystery. By the titles he gave his works, Salloch was often very detailed in locating his subjects. When he did not include a specific place name with a painting, one has to wonder where he might have been. Karen Dorothee Peters, a curator from Germany who now lives in New York, was introduced to the work by the artist’s son, Roger Salloch, and has since set about cataloging the paintings, locating those unknown subjects, and comparing the known ones to how they look today.

    In a recent visit to Montauk, Ms. Peters met up with Dick White, a historian and member of the Montauk Point Lighthouse committee, and Brian Pope, the assistant site manager at the Montauk Historical Society, who helped show her the sites that were notated and others that might be among those unknown. It was a bit of an art detective mission in the bright clear light of a Montauk spring day.

    There were several complications stemming from both man-made and natural forces. Salloch was painting here both before and after the Hurricane of 1938. He was also painting before Montauk Village moved from the Navy Road area to its present location. Heavy brush overgrowth has made some of the obvious vantage points inaccessible by foot today.

    In the early part of the day, the men took Ms. Peters to a hill overlooking Rocky Point and Culloden Point in the distance to show her where one painting might have been executed. For a painting titled “South Shore,” they went to the Lighthouse “and compared the shoreline, thinking it might have been done from the ledge; and then to Camp Hero as a surfer suggested it was made there,” she said.

    For a painting titled “Montauk Village,” from July of 1939, she was taken to a spot just up the hill from Duryea’s Lobster Deck, which, despite the fact that the village the painting refers to no longer exists and is replaced by condominiums, is indisputably the right spot.

    For a scene titled “The Old Windmill,” they went to Ditch Plain, but couldn’t really make out from exactly where it might have been painted. They ran into Jim Grimes, “who told us that his grandparents were caretakers of the windmill and his father was born in it.” They continued to debate it.

    The exact locations depicted in many of the works continue to be a mystery. A watercolor titled “Fishing Dock” appears to have been done around the present Gosman’s complex, but where exactly in the current configuration of buildings was difficult to determine.

    Still, the trip opened up a dialogue that Ms. Peters hopes will only continue in the future. (In addition to the images here, a slide show on The Star’s Web site and a link to her Facebook page will allow readers to share their own insights as to where a particular painting might have been executed.) She is in discussions with several venues to show the work on the South Fork in the near future.

    The artist’s son, who is a friend, asked Ms. Peters to help settle the German part of his estate some six years ago. “When I discovered the shoreline pieces, it became a second trip for me here. I was just arriving freshly from Europe and rediscovering the area, but knew these paintings had to go back to where they were made. No one else would appreciate them more.”

    A French film company has just acquired the rights to the story of how the the younger Mr. Salloch took his father’s paintings back to a German audience.

    The works Ms. Peters has been studying were part of a large storage area that had been mostly untouched during the artist’s lifetime and after his death. Each new discovery was a very exciting process for her. In all, the artist painted 30 Long Island works.

    Ms. Peters said that in Germany his style had been more traditionally expressionist. “The German watercolors have less of a documentary quality. . . . When he came here he became an acute and keen observer of detail in an effort to understand his new environment.”

    “That he was very introverted shows in his work,” she said. “He’s very intimate with what he sees. Mostly he paints with a focus on landscapes and seascapes, barely portraying people.” With their particularly frank 1930s style and the simplicity they depict, she said, “You may be able to see the old American dream in these paintings. For me they are very soulful connectors with land and identity.”

Please click on link to see some of these paintings.

http://www.easthamptonstar.com/Salloch_slideshow 

or http://kdpprojects.blogspot.com to leave comments on locations.

Steve Haweeli at Outeast

    Steve Haweeli’s paintings are on view in a solo show, “Excavations,” at the Outeast Gallery in Montauk.

    The dominant themes of the 20 works on display are saltwater seascapes and crosses. The artist, who is self-taught and known to the East End and much of Long Island as the president of WordHampton Public Relations, uses layers of oil paint, oil stick, charcoal, and acrylic paint in his canvases. Highly symbolic, they are inspired by Mr. Haweeli’s varied history of occupations, including gravedigger, linguist, actor, seminarian, barman, wordsmith, and entrepreneur.

    The show is on view through May 24.

Salomon Contemporary

Shows Alice Aycock

    James Salomon will have two exhibits through June at his West Chelsea gallery beginning tomorrow.

    The exhibit “E.V. Day: Butterfly” will be accompanied by “Alice Aycock: Twist of Fate.” Ms. Aycock, who lives in Noyac, will show her new wall sculpture of the same title and drawings from her series “Sum Over Particle Histories.” “Twist of Fate” alludes to the lives one does not lead in order to follow a particular path and what would happen if one went back in time to choose a different route. These journeys may be represented with ribbons of movement — gears and blades or other signs and symbols of movement — or those compositional components could be meaningless, according to the gallery.

    The exhibit opens tomorrow with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. It will be on view through June 25.

“Faces” and “Places”

At Southampton Historical

    The Southampton Historical Museum will show two new exhibits beginning Tuesday. “Famous Faces” are portraits by Zita Davisson of celebrities such as Diana, Princess of Wales, Princess Grace of Monaco and her children, Liza Minnelli, Jeremy Irons, Gloria Vanderbilt, Nancy Reagan, and Muhammad Ali. In “Phenomenal Places,” Gary Lawrance will present architectural models of houses he designed in Southampton and on Long Island.

    The exhibit will be on view through Sept. 3.

Fischl’s “America: Now and Here” Opens in Kansas City

    Kansas City, Mo., is now home to the first presentation of the multimedia art event called “America: Now and Here,” which includes artwork, poetry, theater, dance, music, film, and discussions about the project and its themes.

    The mission of Eric Fischl, who developed the idea a decade ago, is to take the various regions and attitudes that make up the 3.8 million square miles and some 300 million people of the United States and bring them together around the idea of art. Inspired by Sept. 11 and its aftermath, the North Haven artist and a team of organizers have amassed a group of 150 visual artists, poets, playwrights, musicians, and filmmakers to make works specifically about America in the last 10 years.

    “The idea for the show is to have the works created mounted onto trailers specifically designed to convoy to different regions of the country, both major cities and outlying towns, to the local university and military bases,” he told The Star last year.

    For the past few years he has been trying to raise money to realize that vision, but has fallen short, so he will instead take the shows to existing spaces in three cities and their outlying areas over the next year. After the Kansas City presentation closes at the end the month, the show will travel to Detroit and Chicago. In 2012 the organizers expect the project to be mounted on trucks that will interlock at the sites to provide a venue in each city the show visits. The project also engages the creative community in each city, calling for works by local artists, poets, and playwrights and involving actors, musicians, and other performers and speakers.

    The show opened last week and will continue through May 28.

Jesus Matheus Visits Solar

    Jesus Matheus, a Venezuelan artist who now lives in Boston, will show his work beginning on Saturday at the Solar Gallery in East Hampton.

    Mr. Matheus works in paint, sculpture, and drawing. He uses an “abstract language concentrated on geometric form, often in very saturated color or reduced to a palette of black and white or hues of brown,” according to the gallery. The exhibit will be on view through June 20. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Munk and Panero at Firestone

    Loren Munk, an artist known for his Cubist-inspired paintings, and James Panero, the managing editor of The New Criterion, will discuss Mr. Munk’s artwork at the Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton on Saturday from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

    Mr. Munk, who is also known as James Kalm for his role as a writer and curator, combines urban imagery with historic research in his work. His most recent subject has been art itself.

    In addition to his editorial duties, Mr. Panero serves as his magazine’s art gallery critic. His writings on art and culture have appeared in New York magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes, among other publications. He wrote about Mr. Munk in February.

Pace Gallery Shows

De Kooning and Chamberlain

    The Pace Gallery is devoting shows to Willem de Kooning, who lived and worked in Springs, and John Chamberlain of Shelter Island in two of its sites in New York City.

    “Willem de Kooning: The Figure: Movement and Gesture” at 32 East 57th Street is the first show the gallery has mounted in its new role as exclusive representative of the artist’s estate. It features work from the late 1960s to late 1970s and has a catalog with an essay by Richard Shiff, an art historian. Some of the work is from private collections and rarely seen — paintings, sculpture, and drawings. The show is on view through July 29.

    The John Chamberlain exhibit, which includes sculptures from 1982 to 2008, will be on view at the gallery’s 545 West 22nd Street location through June 11. Mr. Chamberlain studied at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the 1950s and is known for his 1960s films as well as his sculpture in steel and foam. He has also used photography and painting as mediums.

Zacks and Castan

At Montauk Library

    Fran Castan and Lewis Zacks will celebrate their collaborative effort “Venice: City that Paints Itself” on Saturday at the Montauk Library.

    The festivities will begin with Ms. Castan reading poetry from the book at 2:30 p.m., followed by a reception and opening of an exhibit of Mr. Zacks’s artwork from the book. 

    The couple were inspired to write the book by an extended stay in the city, where Ms. Castan said she could imagine Robert Browning writing his poetry at his palazzo, and where Mr. Zacks said he was inspired to follow in Claude Monet’s and John Singer Sargent’s footsteps in painting the Santa Maria della Salute church.

    The event has been rescheduled from a previously announced time in the library newsletter.

   I thought she would not stay nor  last, part of last month and this one, in hospital watching foul weather settle over a Southampton neighborhood painted over and over by Fairfield Porter so that I saw brushstrokes where plants were and dabs of thick color where light hit a cornice and much freezing and thawing and some snow and then some more and frozen rain might be added to the general instability of the planet — an Australia rent by floods and fires, a Japan juddering from major earthquake and brutal tsunami, fires in our continent’s West as well as tornadoes and blizzards, firestorms in the Middle East, endless Iraq and terminal Pakistan and Afghanistan and I am forgetting African republics am I not in his lamentable birdsong and ululation of brutality and suffering. Is this fit world for a goddess? One from half of a year in the darkness of the nether world, driven more than a bit mad by all of this light? And filthy, too. She needs water and soap and a haircut and pedicure and manicure and please a sprightly new dress to bedeck a bit and give pleasure to us all this new season. But the days they grind on slowly, slowly and not green at all. I watch from my large window the passing of the mean days.

    I am brought two tightly budded bunches of yellow tulips that rouse a smile from all. My progress goes by numbers, the lower the better and slowly, slowly they are dropping. “Let me go home and see how quickly they will fall.” “We can’t do that,” they say. And I say that peace and quiet do not come at 6 in the morning when the lawn below my window, a twigless and leafless lawn, is blown for twigs and leaves. Shouldn’t wonder if my “numbers” went up after that.

    “You live alone? No one to help you?” But this, my dear, is the very great South Fork of the amazing Hamptons and there are even shoppers to assist you through the mazes and alleys of King Kullen and, for a few, you can get just about anyone at anytime to do anything and if I live alone it is because of choice and not tragedy, planning not a lurch in life’s surface. If there is food to be bought, soups and sushi and salads and sandwiches and hot and cold dishes and bisques and roast this and marinated that can be delivered.

    Alone? Yes. How I would wish to live alone in this hospital and not have my room cleaned at 2 in the morning and have my blood taken then. No one has blood at that hour.

    Alone is missing spring which I fear I am or am not, certainly not from this window or reports I get from Alejandro or Carlos: “Stay warm. It’s awful outside. You’re not missing a thing.”

    And my numbers fall and I am sent home to my oblivion waiting for the goddess to appear and some Chinese takeout find my doorstep still hot and steaming.

   In their praise and wonder, they, the very largest vegetables we grow in our gardens yet begin as all, as seeds, or, if we are lazy, as rooted cuttings, whips or grown plants of varying sizes, bagged and burlapped and ready to bloom, give fruit, shade, privacy, or that sense of timelessness we all so yearn for. Who plants a tree is generous, they say, but it can be a selfish act, a smug one, one that is a plea for praise, an act of no little tyranny to put in place a monster, an enormous caster of shade, a green monument not unlike a great temple or a hall devoted to the memory of oneself. Intention is all. Intention will out. What one is planting is view itself, destination, a spiritual endeavor and let us leave it at that, a tree is no different than a spear of grass.

   In your arms, for a moment, you might be holding a forest, or an orchard, or a spinney, or a copse. At the least, a little wood, a monument.

   So many turn to giants, thinking that they will give glory soonest but this is not at all so. It is advisable never to plant a tree more than seven or so feet in height lest you install something borderline mature that will take years adjusting to the site, years before growing in earnest, years before looking like it belongs. Unless, of course, you plant single, narrow-stem trees. For that purpose, Gingko biloba fastigiata is one of my favorites, can be installed in quincunx fashion, or as a little wood since the fastigiates can be planted quite close together. There are also singe spire apple trees that can be similarly handled.

But your property may not take to a truly huge old fellow. Your neighbor’s trees may already be overwhelming your plot. In that event, one turns to the large and wonderful world of the modest tree, low in height, modest in girth, capable of giving enormous satisfactions.

    I might start with the rather neglected Japanese tree lilac, last of the breed to bloom and blessed with intriguing cherry-like shining bark, immune to disease and of a handsome demeanor come leaf-drop.

Or I might go into the quite wonderfully varied world of the dogwood, particularly the oriental, kousa, types that are immune to anthracnose that miserably attacks our floridas, skipping them some years but then, in others, leaving them quite dead, quite quickly. The kousas have other recommendations — fine and distinguished bark hues (some with peeling), lovely autumn fruit, and fine spring buds displayed through the winter.

    You may want, as well, to go into variegated foliage dogwoods or dogwoods, for obvious reasons, subtitled “pagoda” types. Dogwoods fulfill the other obligations of the smaller tree that they be of interest and beauty all seasons of the year.

    More? Think of Stewartia, also known as the poached egg tree for its blossoms seemingly edible, for the brilliant fashioning and coloring of its bark, for its modest demeanor and fine deportment in the smaller garden.

    Others coming to mind with varying reward and configurations are the hardy orange (bloom, fruit, jagged, lethal limbs of an electric green and splendid in large pots on the terrace), the lissome, fruited spring blooming, summer and autumn-fruited amelanchier, Jefferson’s favorite tree, also known as the Sarvis (read service) tree, being the only bloomer available to bedeck coffins after the long, hard winter when they stacked up until the earth thawed.

    A thriller in autumn is the recently introduced Seven Sons’/Brother’s tree, Heptacodium micoinides, the last modest tree to bloom in the autumn with quite thrilling feathered and torn bark almost as fine as raffia.

    The list is long and you be inventive.

    One may discover space on one’s property through the daunting but necessary rigors of pruning.

    Or one may seize the reins of the garden firmly (always a test of the gardener) and remove a tree that is really substandard to one’s needs, one that was planted by the previous owners and has become a burden of accommodation, an unwanted usurper of space.

    Then there is an entirely different approach to planting trees, planting many and keeping them small.

    But that is an entirely different essay, not for the faint of heart or weak of arm.

    Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor has announced both its Mainstage and All-Star Comedy Club events for this summer, its 20th season.

    The theater will produce three plays this year. First up is “Tru,” a biographical work by Jay Presson Allen based on Truman Capote’s writings about himself. Capote, who lived in Sagaponack, wrote such works as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood.” The play takes place in 1975 just after Capote published an article in Esquire magazine skewering his famous friends, who were thinly veiled characters in the piece.

    At Bay Street, Judith Ivey will direct Darrell Hammond as Capote. Mr. Hammond is known for his “Saturday Night Live” impersonations of people such as former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Sean Connery. Previews begin on May 31; the play runs from June 4 through June 26.

    Beginning with previews on July 5, Christopher Durang’s comedy “Betty’s Summer Vacation” will be next on the Bay Street stage. It looks at the pitfalls of a summer share house in a beach town and will be directed by Trip Cullman, who has numerous Broadway and off-Broadway credits.

    The broad comedy is in the tradition of several recent productions at the theater that include “Romance,” “Dinner,” and “Beyond Therapy.” The play will run through July 31.

    The season concludes with “Enter Laughing: The Musical” from Aug. 9 to Sept. 4. The book is by Joseph Stein, with music and lyrics by Stan Daniels. The story of a boy from the Bronx with dreams of making it on Broadway, it is based on the semiautobiographical novel by Carl Reiner.

    The characters include the eccentrics of the world he eventually encounters. The musical will be produced on Broadway as well. Stuart Ross will direct.

    On the comedy stage this year will be Richard Belzer, Patton Oswalt, Fred Armi­sen, Patrice O’Neal, Elayne Boos­ler, Tom Papa, and a special presentation of “Andrea Martin: Final Days, Everything Must Go.” The shows are on Monday nights at 8 p.m.

    Tickets for all shows are $65, $60 for members, and are on sale Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through the box office or online at baystreet.org. Subscriptions are available for the Mainstage season.

Grooving at Ashawagh

    “Art Groove,” an exhibit at Ashawagh Hall in Springs this weekend, will feature the work of 12 contemporary artists organized by Geralyne Lewandowski. The show will include her work, along with art by Michael McDowell, Siv Cedering, Brian Flynn, Claudia Dunn, Debbi Fritz, Laurette Kovary, Joyce Riamondo, Robert Rosenbaum, Joe Strand, Ursula Thomas, and Kris Warrenburg.

     The show will open on Saturday at noon with a reception featuring a D.J. spinning music from Aretha Franklin to Lady Gaga and the Far East Movement from 6 to 11 p.m. The exhibit will also be on view on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Boltax Salutes Abstraction

    As spring returns to Shelter Island, so does Boltax Gallery with a show featuring abstract works by Jonathan Eckel, Osamu Kobayashi, Danielle Mysliwiec, Jacob Ouillette, Kate Parnell, and Regina Scully that opens on Saturday, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and an artists talk from 5 to 6 p.m.

    “Abiding Abstraction” looks at the state of abstraction today, some 100 years after the first non-objective paintings by Wassily Kandinsky. Although declared dead as a means of expression on more than one occasion, abstract art still flourishes. Jacob Ouillette, a painter in the show, is also its curator, and used the work of six emerging artists to examine the relevance and vibrancy of abstract art today. The show is on view through May 23.

“Spring Flight” at Demato

    The work of Devorah Jacoby and Bart Vargas will be featured in a new show at the Richard Demato Gallery in Sag Harbor opening Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. “Spring Flight” is the first show of the gallery’s spring season.

    Ms. Jacoby’s work is figurative, but slightly abstracted and also can have a Surrealistic aspect in a quiet, rather tonal palette sometimes fired up with a red element. Mr. Vargas is a geometric abstractionist whose imagery features bold colors emanating from a central point in shardlike rays and broken circles. His target and cluster paintings are somewhat referential but appear to be the basis for examining the relationships of color and form rather than to be referring to something else.

    The exhibit will be on view through May.

Artist in Residency Program

    The William Steeple Davis Trust in Orient is accepting applications for its artist-in-residence program from Oct. 15, 2011, through Oct. 1, 2012. Applications are due by June 30.

    The program was established in 1976 under the will of Mr. Davis to “provide a temporary place of abode for persons of good character who are or have been actively engaged in cultural professions, particularly in the arts, and who are without adequate funds to provide for such accommodations.” Past residents have worked in painting, photography, writing, sculpting, poetry, and music.

    The house and studio are in Orient in a quiet location within sight of Orient Harbor, and within walking distance of public beaches, open fields and marshes, a post office, and a small country store. It is possible, but inconvenient, to live in the house without a car. Children and pets are not allowed, and smoking is prohibited in both the house and studio.

    Inquiries may be sent to the trust at P.O. Box 371, Orient 11957.

Call for Artists

    The Southampton Cultural Center will hold an art exhibit juried by Christina Mossaides Strassfield at its gallery on Pond Lane in Southampton from Sept. 14 to Oct. 22.

    Entries, which are due by June 15, may include oils, acrylics, watercolors, drawings, prints, mixed-media works, photography, and sculpture, but may be no larger than 25 by 25 inches for paintings and 30 by 20 by 20 inches for sculpture. Artists who enter sculpture pieces will be asked to provide their own pedestals.

    All artwork must be original and available for purchase. The cultural center will receive a 50-percent commission on sales to support its programming. The entry fee is $25 for each entry with a maximum of three allowed.

    Applications will be accepted by mail with CDs of the works to be considered. Applications and further information are available at www.scc-arts.org. The artist who is “acknowledged for outstanding merit” will be given a solo exhibit at the center in 2012.

    It has become trite to say that an art exhibit is revelatory, but when a show like the Museum of Modern Art’s “Abstract-Expressionist New York: The Big Picture” comes along and manages to debunk the very history and assumptions that the museum has encouraged since the first stirrings of the Modernist impulse, it is difficult to find other words to describe it.

    Drawn entirely from the museum’s collection, with many of the works not likely to have seen the light of day in decades, the exhibit reminds us of the exclusive role the museum had in forming what would become the accepted Modernist cannon.

    Any student of early-20th-century art will immediately recall the chart Alfred H. Barr Jr., MoMA’s first director, devised to explain the derivation of the major movements of that period. This exhibit shows how that same influence moved into the midcentury. It presents the almost exclusively New York artistic phenomenon that could really only be navigated and understood by a New York institution.

    According to the exhibit’s catalog, the last time the museum mounted a similar comprehensive show of these artists was in 1969 by William Rubin, the museum’s curator through the last part of the 20th century. Ann Temkin, the curator of this exhibit, noted that generations of museum visitors and even museum staff have not had a similar opportunity to examine this period of the museum’s collection in depth.

    The “superstars” of the collection have always been on view, whether in the old museum or in its remodeled and expanded galleries. Rather than gallery upon gallery of “high” Abstract Expressionism, the show presents several artists’ journey there, with their work sometimes mixed in with the rest and other times given a monographic treatment in solo galleries.

    Surprises occur just in the breadth of examples of some artists’ work and the dearth, or at least lack of good examples, of others’ work. That represents a lost opportunity for the museum, which could have collected so many more works at the time of their creation had it wanted to do so.

    The Willem de Kooning painting “Woman I” is here, of course, because of its iconic stature, but it is only one of four paintings included by the artist. A black- and-white “Painting” from 1947 is also included. Both of these paintings were purchases by the museum and show an early commitment to the artist.

    Jackson Pollock’s “One: Number 31” is another work never likely to go off view and was also a museum purchase. But the exhibit also shows 12 other works by Pollock, including a painting called “The Flame” from the mid-1930s and a number of Surrealist-inspired abstract works in addition to the iconic drip paintings and those quirky ones that came after.

    Mark Rothko has received similar career-spanning treatment by the museum. He is so well collected by the Modern that in a series of rooms and walls devoted to him, a viewer can trace his Surrealist beginnings through his first patchy departures, to the solidification of those patches into the striated mass of colors that would define his mature style, up to one of the last paintings he completed before he died.

    More surprising is the treatment of Adolph Gottlieb, who spent the last decade or so of his life in East Hampton, and whose mysterious blasts and pictograms have always defied a neat inclusion among this group. Gottlieb is represented by six works, a respectable number, and the paintings are shown in small groupings in different rooms, demonstrating their easy assimilation within the other tendencies in painting happening at the time.

    Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, and David Smith are also granted a range of examples in this show.

    With a public used to the “greatest hits” kind of presentation that most museums can afford these days in terms of space, it bears acknowledgement that  the assumptions these “drive-by” examinations foster and preserve need to be shaken up once in a while.

    By its inclusionary nature alone, this show manages to engage in some welcome revisionism. Larry Rivers’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” might have been unthinkable in such company even a decade ago. His proto-Pop realism was never embraced by the formalists championing the abstract artists of this era, even though Frank O’Hara, a curator of the museum, was a friend and supporter. That the painting was acquired thanks to an “anonymous gift” around the time of its painting seems to be a kind of rebuke to the museum.

    The quality of the museum’s Franz Kline paintings also points to a similar oversight or even slight of the artist during his lifetime. The paintings are certainly not his strongest works. Had the museum made him a priority, there are far better examples it could have collected. Instead, the assemblage of gifts and bequests are weakened by the circumstance and take away from the artist’s actual achievement.

    Hans Hofmann’s three works early on in the show are a nod to the artist’s overarching influence on this group, stemming from his education of many of them, but again show a surprisingly lax approach by the museum to acquiring his work.

    The inclusion of women in any significant way is always news in this group known for macho attitudes and behavior. Lee Krasner is represented by three very strong paintings, but all of the women in show have important pieces there.  Hedda Sterne, Grace Hartigan, Louise Nevelson, and Joan Mitchell look right at home and should because in the early days their work was included in many cooperative gallery shows with the same male artists. The women’s work is particularly powerful because it had to be exceptional in order to attract the same attention as the men’s.

    Many male artists of the period whose recognition at the time was lost to history are back on the wall. It is great to see a painting by East Hampton’s James Brooks included here, and there are still more by artists, some of whom I had not heard of, who were doing great work at the time. Photographers are also included and given a context for their point of view during this time.

    In a separate exhibit of art and documents that ran concurrently with “The Big Picture,” the museum examined the role of the Eighth Street club of artists led by Philip Pavia, known informally as “The Club,” whose weekly discussions and panels solidified the ideas that underpinned the movement. That show, along with an exhibit of works on paper from the era, closed in February. “The Big Picture” is on view through April 25.

One of art’s sharpest, most dedicated personalities, Lee Krasner (1908-1984) was fiercely determined to produce paintings that pushed the envelope, and she was fiercely devoted to the work and career of her husband, Jackson Pollock. While acquaintances totally respected her intellect, most also regarded her as fiercely no-nonsense and direct.

Krasner looked to the evolving currents of 20th-century abstraction to arrive at her own style of painting, as seen in “Image Surfacing,” above, from 1945, and “Igor,” below, from 1943.

So what would she have thought of Gail Levin’s probing, thoroughly researched, and well-documented biography?

Speculations about any negatives make a rather short list: Like most artists, Krasner preferred to be known primarily for what she achieved in the studio. Second, she probably would have felt that her very subjective, ever-fertile thoughts about life’s existential character should resist confinement in a hardcover biography.

Yet Krasner’s keen mind understood and appreciated accomplishment, so it is likely that she would have admired Ms. Levin’s investigative efforts, including the detailing of the education of an immigrant girl growing up in early-20th-century Brooklyn and the detailing of financial struggles made worse by the Depression. Most certainly she would have been pleased by the interweaving of seemingly every document relating to her art career and by the solid review of the ideas that influenced artists of her generation. She probably would have welcomed the description of liberal attitudes toward sexual relationships, and welcomed the attempt at clarifying the desire to be modern and to rebel against traditional religious constraints.

Human-interest factors contribute to the book’s flow, but a broad, serious look at social issues provides shape to most chapters. The goal, early on, is to define a real person striving in a real world. There is plenty of context, and much introspection.

All the key elements of the Krasner-Pollock legend are here, including the couple’s permanent move to a farmhouse in the Springs section of East Hampton in 1945 and Pollock’s fatal car crash on Springs-Fireplace Road in 1956. Ms. Levin expands the history through the perspective of Krasner, bringing in the artist’s emotional drive and offering some rationale for her decisions in life.

Krasner’s roots in a traditional Jewish, Old World family are portrayed as a formative influence that remained part of her story long after she struck her independent path. One particularly interesting point emerging from the discussion of the artist’s siblings is the role her brother, Irving, played in introducing her to the writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche while she was still a high school student.

Issues of anti-Semitism and issues related to widespread discrimination against women are part of this full saga. Pushing further, Ms. Levin — who first interviewed Krasner in 1971 while still a graduate student — has sifted through and added the artist’s occasional remarks about the range of feminist causes. In Krasner’s experience, it was acceptable to be a female artist enrolled in New York art classes and later at the Works Progress Administration, but everything changed once the European artists established themselves here during the war era, dominated the scene, and brought a change in attitude toward equality.

Perhaps the headiest social insights come from the section on New York’s avant-garde politics in the ’30s, when creative people and progressive ideas merged to launch important careers, new publications, and new alliances among artists. Ms. Levin’s treatment of the immigrant attraction to Communism is especially revealing. While not a party member, here is Krasner, engaged in the activist pursuits of the Artists Union. And here is Krasner agreeing with Meyer Schapiro in his argument (published in Art Front in 1936) against nationalism in art, against American representational art, and against fascism in art. Here is Krasner, about the same time, taking a role beside Ad Reinhardt, Ibram Lassaw, Balcomb Greene, and others in the American Abstract Artists group.

A very substantial portrayal of Krasner’s project responsibilities while involved in the W.P.A. and other federal support programs for artists provides valuable information. Interactions among project artists are well covered, and so are the specifics of mural assignments and the possibilities of fitting abstraction into the program. The seeds of Krasner’s interest in exploring the possibilities of abstraction on a very large scale are here, providing an illuminating thread leading to the sizable canvases she began decades later, after she turned Pollock’s barn-studio into her work space.

After Pollock’s death, people frequently looked to Krasner for further understanding of the couple’s life and work. She gave numerous interviews and must have become increasingly conscious of her participation in history. Ms. Levin, who has written biographies of Edward Hopper and Judy Chicago, has been diligent in studying this material and generous in inserting citations. For example, in discussing Krasner’s “Little Image” paintings, begun in 1946, the author brings in supporting information from at least seven sources.

Ms. Levin’s own very thorough oral history process includes interviews with scores of people who were involved in the artist’s life. Thus the sensitive issues surrounding Krasner’s handling of the Pollock estate take their proper, thoroughly interesting role in the biography. There are contracts, and then new contracts. Relationships develop. Relationships end.

An experienced art historian, Ms. Levin gives careful attention to the evolving stylistic adjustments in Krasner’s painting and integrates the information smoothly into the text — an approach that always helps in fully understanding an artist’s life. The view of Krasner’s developing interests is crucial, for we see them here in the context of her contacts with others in her New York circle. She cared about Picasso’s picture plane, Matisse’s color, Kandinsky’s rhythm, Mondrian’s space, and Miro’s synthesis, and she discussed turning them into a new visual language. It was her outstanding grasp of visual possibilities that enabled her to recognize Pollock’s path to genius.

Another parallel thread, the subconscious as an ever-present meaningful resource, runs throughout the book. It emerges in the form of Krasner’s dream content, as a long-term interest in psychoanalysis, and in her own comments about her belief in the intuitive, the subjective, the undiscovered or unknown. She was attracted to the words of writers like Rimbaud, whose philosophical insights lent comfort to her search.

Clearly many routes to abstraction were part of Krasner’s creative process, and of her world. Possibly some will regard the tale of this world as the book’s most significant contribution since it underscores Krasner’s role in Abstract Expressionism. Yet the full saga, with its multiple messages of 20th-century stress and achievement, makes a biography worth celebrating.

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Gail Levin, a professor at Baruch College, lives part time in Bridgehampton.

Phyllis Braff is an art critic who has a house in Springs.