At Firestone in Manhattan
The Eric Firestone Gallery will open “Mosaic Is Light: Work by Jeanne Reynal, 1940-1970” today at its Great Jones Street outpost in Manhattan.
The retrospective marks the first opportunity to fully examine Reynal’s contribution to post-World War II American art, according to the gallery. A mosaicist and first-generation New York School artist, Reynal challenged the conventions of the medium by creating, as she said, “a new art of mosaic, a contemporary and fresh look for this ancient medium.”
For her largely abstract compositions, she applied tiles, stones, and shells to a ground of pigmented cement in loose formations. She worked directly, without preparatory designs, and reworked her surfaces by removing tesserae and reapplying thin layers of cement.
During her career, which took her from California to New York City in 1946, she counted among her close friends Arshile Gorky, Isamu Noguchi, and Elaine and Willem de Kooning. Her work is in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Menil Collection.
The exhibition will remain on view through April 10.
Porter and Schuyler
The Parrish Art Museum will present a live-stream conversation about the longtime friendship between Fairfield Porter and the poet James Schuyler Friday at 5 p.m. Alicia Longwell, the museum’s chief curator, will discuss the subject with Nathan Kernan, who is writing a biography of the poet.
As the editor of “The Diary of James Schuyler,” published in 1997, Mr. Kernan has a deep understanding of the poet’s life and work. He will share fresh insights into the relationship between Porter and Schuyler, which lasted from their first meeting in 1952 until Porter’s death in 1975. Both men wrote reviews for ARTnews and shared an admiration for the work of Willem de Kooning as well as the poets Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and Barbara Guest.
A link to the talk can be found on the museum’s website.
