Palm Desert Gallery Walkthrough with Tom Venditti – 2022/2023 Season

PUBLISHED IN: Gallery Tours

Join Heather James Fine Art Director, Tom Venditti, as he tours our flagship gallery in Palm Desert, California. We feel fortunate to have Tom. Prior to joining Heather James Fine Art, Tom spent 14 years as the Senior Director of Art for the breathtaking Paul Allen Collection, which recently set several new records at auction in a triumphant display of the art market’s strength.

Heather James Fine Art endeavors to offer a wide selection of art of historical significance and aesthetic appeal and we can think of no one more capable of providing insights into a Claude Monet while seamlessly offering an informed perspective on a fabulous, new arrival by Wayne Thiebaud. We hope you enjoy Tom’s curated journey across several genres and blue-chip artists and that it will inform you and inspire a visit to our Palm Desert location to view the collection in person.

We are pleased to announce our winter hours at our Palm Desert location at 455188 Portola Avenue: Monday through Saturday from 9:00 – 5:00.

ARTWORK CURRENTLY ON VIEW AT HEATHER JAMES PALM DESERT

According to the catalogue raisonné compiled by The Brandywine River Museum of Art, the preliminary drawing for Puritan Cod Fishers was completed by N. C Wyeth prior to his death in October 1945. The entry records an image of the sketch as well as the artist’s inscriptions and its title, Puritan Cod Fishers, characterized by the catalogue as ‘alternate’. In either case, the large-scale canvas is a unique work that Andrew Wyeth later recalled was painted solely by his hand, a demarcated collaboration of the father’s design and composition brought to fruition by a remarkable son’s execution. For Andrew, it must have been a deeply felt and emotional experience. Given his father’s attention to detail and authenticity, the lines of the small sailing craft represent a shallot, in use during the sixteenth century. On the other hand, Andrew likely deepened the hues of the restless sea more so than his father might have, a choice that appropriately heightens the perilous nature of the task.

Andrew Wyeth & N. C. Wyeth

N.C. Wyeth’s extraordinary skills as an illustrator were borne of impeccable draftsmanship and as a painter, his warmly rich, harmonious sense of color, and ability to capture the quality of light itself. But it is his unmatched artistry in vivifying story and character with a powerful sense of mood that we admire most of all — the ability to transport himself to the world and time of his creation and to convey it with a beguiling sense of conviction. That ability is as apparent in the compositional complexities of Treasure Island’s “One More Step, Mr. Hands!” as it is here, in the summary account of a square-rigged, seventeenth-century merchant ship tossed upon the seas. The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 is a simple statement of observable facts, yet Wyeth’s impeccable genius as an illustrator imbues it with the bracing salt air and taste that captures the adventuresome spirit of the men and women who are largely credited with the founding of America. That spirit is carried on the wind and tautly billowed sails, the jaunty heeling of the ship at the nose of a stiff gale, the thrusting, streamed-limned clouds, and the gulls jauntily arranged to celebrate an arrival as they are the feathered angels of providence guiding it to safe harbor. <br> <br>The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 was based on two studies, a composition drawing in graphite and a small presentation painting. The finished mural appears to have been installed in 1941.

N.C. WYETH

Tom Wesselmann was a leader of the Pop Art movement. He is best remembered for large-scale works, including his Great American Nude series, in which Wesselmann combined sensual imagery with everyday objects depicted in bold and vibrant colors. As he developed in his practice, Wesselmann grew beyond the traditional canvas format and began creating shaped canvases and aluminum cut-outs that often functioned as sculptural drawings. Continuing his interest in playing with scale, Wesselmann began focusing more closely on the body parts that make up his nudes. He created his Mouth series and his Bedroom series in which particular elements, rather than the entire sitter, become the focus. <br>  <br>Bedroom Breast (2004) combines these techniques, using vivid hues painted on cut-out aluminum. The work was a special commission for a private collector's residence, and the idea of a bedroom breast piece in oil on 3-D cut-out aluminum was one Wesselmann had been working with for many years prior to this work's creation. The current owner of the piece believed in Wesselmann's vision and loved the idea of bringing the subject to his home. <br> <br>It's one of, if not the last, piece Wesselmann completed before he passed away. The present work is the only piece of its kind - there has never been an oil on aluminum in 3D at this scale or of this iconography.  

TOM WESSELMANN

Tom Wesselmann will undoubtedly be remembered for associating his erotic themes with the colors of the American flag. But Wesselmann had considerable gifts as a draftsman, and the line was his principal preoccupation, first as a cartoonist and later as an ardent admirer of Matisse. That he also pioneered a method of turning drawings into laser-cut steel wall reliefs proved a revelation. He began to focus ever more on drawing for the sake of drawing, enchanted that the new medium could be lifted and held: “It really is like being able to pick up a delicate line drawing from the paper.” <br> <br>The Steel Drawings caused both excitement and confusion in the art world. After acquiring one of the ground-breaking works in 1985, the Whitney Museum of American Art wrote Wesselmann wondering if it should be cataloged as a drawing or a sculpture. The work had caused such a stir that when Eric Fischl visited Wesselmann at his studio and saw steel-cut works for the first time, he remembered feeling jealous. He wanted to try it but dared not. It was clear: ‘Tom owned the technique completely.’ <br> <br>Wesselmann owed much of that technique to his year-long collaboration with metalwork fabricator Alfred Lippincott. Together, in 1984 they honed a method for cutting the steel with a laser that provided the precision he needed to show the spontaneity of his sketches. Wesselmann called it ‘the best year of my life’, elated at the results that he never fully achieved with aluminum that required each shape be hand-cut. “I anticipated how exciting it would be for me to get a drawing back in steel. I could hold it in my hands. I could pick it up by the lines…it was so exciting…a kind of near ecstasy, anyway, but there’s really been something about the new work that grabbed me.” <br> <br>Bedroom Brunette with Irises is a Steel Drawing masterwork that despite its uber-generous scale, utilizes tight cropping to provide an unimposing intimacy while maintaining a free and spontaneous quality. The figure’s outstretched arms and limbs and body intertwine with the petals and the interior elements providing a flowing investigative foray of black lines and white ‘drop out’ shapes provided by the wall. It recalls Matisse and any number of his reclining odalisque paintings. Wesselmann often tested monochromatic values to discover the extent to which color would transform his hybrid objects into newly developed Steel Drawing works and, in this case, continued with a color steel-cut version of the composition Bedroom Blonde with Irises (1987) and later still, in 1993 with a large-scale drawing in charcoal and pastel on paper.

TOM WESSELMANN

It is not difficult to grasp how Robert Indiana’s brilliant two-row arrangement of four letters came to help empower a movement during the 1960s. Its origin emerged from deeply felt exposure to religion and from friend and mentor Ellsworth Kelly, whose hard-edged style and sensuous, unaccented color made a lasting impression. But as Indiana exclaimed, it was a moment of kismet that just happened when “LOVE bit me!” and the design came to him sharp and focused. Indiana, of course, put the design through many paces, and then the logo began to sprout up everywhere. The message, best conveyed in sculpture, stands in cities worldwide and has been translated into several languages, not least of which, is its Italian iteration, “Amor” with its fortuitous “O” also tilted to the right. But rather than being kicked by the foot of the “L”, this version lends a beautifully staged teetering effect to the “A” above. It gives a new, but no less profound, impression of love and its emotionally charged nature. In either case, Love’s tilted “O” imparts instability to an otherwise stable design, a profound projection of Indiana’s implicit critique of “the often-hollow sentimentality associated with the word, metaphorically suggesting unrequited longing and disappointment rather than saccharine affection” (Robert Indiana’s Best: A Mini Retrospective, New York Times, May 24, 2018). Repetition, of course has a nasty habit of dampening our appreciation for the genius of simplicity and, groundbreaking design. Late in life, Indiana lamented that “it was a marvelous idea, but also terrible mistake. It became too popular. And there are people who don’t like popularity.” But we, denizens of a world fraught with divisiveness and caught in turmoil, thank you. “Love” and its many versions are strong reminders of our capacity for love, and that is our best everlasting hope for a better future.

ROBERT INDIANA

In "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2", Mel Ramos playfully intertwines the legacy of Marcel Duchamp's modernist masterpiece with the vibrant aesthetics of Pop Art, crafting a clever and visually stimulating reinterpretation. By associating Duchamp's abstract motion with his signature pin-up style, Ramos creates a dynamic dialogue between the revered traditions of fine art and the bold, graphic qualities of commercial imagery. This work exemplifies Ramos's skill in navigating art history and contemporary culture, using the allure of female nudity to explore and satirize societal obsessions with beauty, desire, and commodification. In doing so, Ramos's piece becomes a quintessential Pop Art concoction, reveling in its playful association with Duchamp while simultaneously critiquing and celebrating the visual culture of its time.

MEL RAMOS

Katharine Grosse's Untitled of 2016 extends our appreciation of an artist who brings the same energy, boldness, and disregard for convention seen in her monumental architectural installations to the traditional medium of paint on canvas. The color explodes, lifted from a complex, richly layered surface of poured applications of paint that run, drizzle, or splatter, radiant transparent veils, and overlapping straps of color misted to create soft gradient transitions. The result is a fascinating impression of spatial depth and three-dimensionality. But it is also a tour de force that reveals Grosse's brilliance in blending chaos and control, spontaneity, and intention. Her range of techniques creates a compelling dialogue between the accidental and the deliberate, a hallmark of her unique style.

KATHARINA GROSSE

A major figure in both the Abstract Expressionist and American Figurative Expressionist movements of the 1940s and 1950s, Elaine de Kooning's prolific output defied singular categorization. Her versatile styles explored the spectrum of realism to abstraction, resulting in a career characterized by intense expression and artistic boundary-pushing. A striking example of de Kooning's explosive creativity is Untitled (Totem Pole), an extremely rare sculptural painting by the artist that showcases her command of color.  <br> <br>She created this piece around 1960, the same period as her well-known bullfight paintings. She left New York in 1957 to begin teaching at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and from there would visit Ciudad Juárez, where she observed the bullfights that inspired her work. An avid traveler, de Kooning drew inspiration from various sources, resulting in a diverse and experimental body of work.

ELAINE DE KOONING

Théo van Rysselberghe’s Portrait de Sylvie Lacombe, painted in 1906, is a classic masterwork by one of the most refined and consistent portrait painters of his time. The color is harmonious, the brushwork vigorous and tailored to its material task, her body and countenance true and revealing. The sitter is the daughter of his good friend, the painter Georges Lacombe, who shared a close association with Gauguin, and was a member of Les Nabis with artists Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard, among others. We now know about Sylvie Lacombe because Van Rysselberghe is so skilled at rendering subtle facial expressions and through careful observation and attention to detail, provided insights into her inner world. He has chosen a direct gaze, her eyes to yours, an inescapable covenant between subject and viewer regardless of our physical relationship to the painting. Van Rysselberghe had largely abandoned the Pointillist technique when he painted this portrait. But he continued to apply color theory guidelines by using tints of red — pinks and mauves — against greens to create a harmonious ameliorated palette of complementary colors to which he added a strong accent to draw the eye – an intensely saturated, red bow asymmetrically laid to the side of her head.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

HERB ALPERT - Arrowhead - bronze - 201 x 48 x 48 in.

HERB ALPERT

Of Herb Albert’s many bronze cast, silky-black patinated spirit totems, few have the distinctively masculine feel of Warrior. Topped with a descending, serrated crown that could as easily refer to the crest of a bird of prey as the headdress of a Plains Indian chief the title “Warrior” is an apt description that addresses the attributes of strength, courage, and unbreakable spirit among others. Much like the work of Henry Moore, those associations depend, in part, upon negative space to create the dynamic and strong impression this formidable sculpture makes.

HERB ALPERT

After disappointing sales at Weyhe Gallery in 1928, Calder turned from sculpted wire portraits and figures to the more conventional medium of wood. On the advice of sculptor Chaim Gross, he purchased small blocks of wood from Monteath, a Brooklyn supplier of tropical woods. He spent much of that summer on a Peekskill, New York farm carving. In each case, the woodblock suggested how he might preserve its overall shape and character as he subsumed those attributes in a single form. There was a directness about working in wood that appealed to him. Carved from a single block of wood, Woman with Square Umbrella is not very different from the subjects of his wire sculptures except that he supplanted the ethereal nature of using wire with a more corporeal medium. <br>© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

IRVING NORMAN - How Come - oil on canvas - 90 x 60 in.

IRVING NORMAN

Alexander Calder's Rouge Mouille (Wet Red) features a background of red circles, some dispersing like explosions, creating a sense of energetic expansion, and others running downward as if streaming trails of a firework display. This animated backdrop is adorned with numerous opaque round balls, predominantly black, but interspersed with striking blue, red, and subtle yellow spheres. The strategic placement of the colorful spheres against the explosive reds captures the awe and spectacle of a fireworks show, transforming the painting into a visual metaphor for this dazzling and celebratory event. The artwork resonates with excitement and vibrancy, encapsulating its ephemeral beauty in a static medium.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Frank Stella's Bali series of sculptures is characterized by float and flow forms, extending into the viewer's space and inviting interaction between the object and its environment. The "dadap," a type of tree associated with growth and ritual significance in Balinese culture, mirrors Stella's sculptures' organic and dynamic nature. In shifting to stainless steel and aluminum from bamboo, Stella has preserved the essential nature of Balinese aesthetics that extol forms that are organic, fluid, and dynamically engage with their space. Dadap presents a continuity in Stella's thematic exploration where the spirit of his work transcends the materiality. Metal affords a different texture, reflectivity, and interaction with light and space, yet it adheres to the principles of movement and interactivity. It is a creative transference of form and concept across different mediums, retaining the spirit of the initial inspiration while allowing the new material's properties to express these ideas in a fresh context.

FRANK STELLA

PAUL JENKINS - Phenomena By Return - acrylic on canvas - 104 3/4 x 49 5/8 in.

PAUL JENKINS

Manuel Neri was a central figure in the Bay Area Figurative Movement in the 1960s. Instead of abstract forms, the group emphasized emotion through the power of the human form. The present work, "Untitled" (1982), explores the female form on a life-sized scale. Neri preferred to work with just one model throughout his 60-year career, Maria Julia Klimenko. The absence of a face in many of the sculptures adds an element of mystery and ambiguity. The focus of the composition in "Untitled" is the structure and form of the figure. Manuel Neri is represented in numerous museum collections worldwide, including the Addison Gallery/Phillips Academy; Anderson Collection at Stanford University; Art Institute of Chicago; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University; Cincinnati Art Museum; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Denver Art Museum, the El Paso Museum of Art, Texas; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Harvard University Art Museums; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Honolulu Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

MANUEL NERI

Irving Norman was born in 1906 in Vilna, then part of the Russian Empire, now Lithuania. Norman's immigration to New York City in 1923 was short-lived, as he would return to Europe to fight as part of the Abraham Lincoln battalion against the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. After the War, Norman would eventually settle in Half Moon Bay, California, where he embarked on a prolific studio practice. <br> <br>Norman's work portrays the horrors of war and his firsthand knowledge of totalitarian dictatorships. Norman's work has been described as "Social Surrealism," and his grand scenes are immediate and arresting. The large-scale works of Norman truly capture the power of his lived experiences; they are as much a visual record as they are a warning for the future, intended to inspire change.

IRVING NORMAN

The daughter of minimalist sculptor Tony Smith, Kiki's art is not limited to any single medium or technique, and her work often invites multiple interpretations. Club embodies the form and dimensions of a human leg, the essential element for movement and stability. Smith's title invites the viewer to reimagine a leg as a weapon and consider the fragility of the human condition, the power dynamics of bodily autonomy, and the complex interplay between strength and vulnerability. Such a transformation of a body part into an object conveys both protection and aggression and reflects upon how gender-specific bodies navigate our social and personal environment. Club exemplifies Smith's ability to create pieces rich in symbolism, open to interpretation, and provoke thought about the human experience.

KIKI SMITH

When a horse lies down, it is because it feels safe, which, for Deborah Butterfield, is a way of saying that it is okay to make ourselves vulnerable. "Echo", constructed in ways that respect her foraging skills and ability to weld metalwork, does not adhere to a traditional portrayal of a horse but instead reveals something of its essential nature. Constructed from pieced-together steel sheets, some rippled, others folded or crimped, it is a piece that bears the mark of time, aged to a rust-brown patina, imperfections celebrated rather than concealed. Butterfield's deliberate choice of materials and their treatment adds depth and character, transforming Untitled, Echo into more than just an equine representation — it reflects the rugged beauty and the resilience of the animal it represents.

DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD

An undisputed master of the booming Belgian Neo-Impressionist movement from 1887 onward, Théo van Rysselberghe painted this portrait of his wife, Maria (née Monnom) during the first decade of the twentieth century. He had pressed onward from the influence of Whistler’s Tonalism, Impressionism, and the Pointillism of Seurat to perfect a highly refined understanding of color, its harmonic resonances, and a meticulous rendering of formal elements. An exemplary draftsman, optical impressions based on color interactions remained a principal concern for Van Rysselberghe. Here, short strokes of color replaced the small dots of a Pointillist, and the color scheme is not the homogenized, harmonious one for which the artist has a well-deserved reputation. Rather, this portrait advances color theory in an entirely different manner. Its visual interest rests with the dynamic contrasts of his wife’s silvered coiffure, her platinum-hued dress, and the stark-white fireplace mantle — all staged within the optical vibrancy of the surround dominated by complementary reds and greens. It is a visually stimulating demonstration by a painter who understood the dynamic impact of this unusual color scheme and who arranged the sitter with a strong accent on a diagonal and executed the formula with the craft and agility of a painter in full control of his painterly assets.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

Manuel Neri's early paper mâché works broke ground in sculptural technique, and his approach to painting his sculptures reflects his deep engagement with the expressive potential of color and form. The choice and placement of colors in Hombre Colorado II create a particularly visceral response that reflects his nuanced understanding of the psychological and emotional dimension of color. Conceptualized and produced in 1958, Hombre Colorado II reflects a time when Neri and his wife Joan Brown were engaged in a rich artistic exchange of creativity and contributed significantly to the evolution of their respective styles and the Bay Area Figurative Movement, in which they played vital roles.

MANUEL NERI

Deborah Butterfield is an American sculptor, best known for her sculptures of horses made of objects ranging from wood, metal, and other found objects. The 1981 piece, Untitled (Horse), is comprised of sticks and paper on wire armature. The impressive scale of this piece creates a remarkable effect in person, presenting a striking example of Butterfield's celebrated subject matter. Butterfield originally created the horses from wood and other materials found on her property in Bozeman, Montana and saw the horses as a metaphorical self-portrait, mining the emotional resonance of these forms.

DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD

Shaped by his native Italy and adopted America, Joseph Stella investigated an extraordinary range of styles and mediums in artworks of astonishing diversity and originality. In 1911, Stella rode the avant-garde wave of Fauvist, Cubist, and Futurist trends, but he was the only American modernist who lived day-to-day with the Italian Old Masters. The pose and handling of "Reclining Nude" relates to a series of works Stella painted during the 1920s depicting seductive women from mythological or fantasy sources such as "Leda and the Swan" and Ondine, a beautiful water nymph from a popular 19th-century romantic German fairy tale. Portrayed instead without floral or symbolist imagery, Reclining Nude, painted in the 1930s, more appropriately reflects that sobering time.

JOSEPH STELLA

HERB ALPERT - Inspired - bronze - 100 x 20 x 12 in.

HERB ALPERT

IRVING NORMAN - Snapshots - oil on canvas - 40 x 90 in.

IRVING NORMAN

During the late 1990s, Manuel Neri began to transform numerous plaster sculptures into bronze, frequently returning to earlier works to produce newly imagined renditions of each piece. These series, nearly indistinguishable in shape and surface detail, explore the impact of varying color schemes and mark-making that involve various actions, including incising brushing, scraping, or layering materials. By experimenting with different marking techniques, Neri could explore the interplay between form, color, texture, and light. In the context of Standing Figure No. 3, Neri limited his palette to an analogous color scheme, thinning the paint to create subtle gradations that enhance the sculpture's sleek, refined exterior.

MANUEL NERI

Magic Wands is a 2004-2005 creation by India’s most renowned contemporary artist, Subodh Gupta. The work seamlessly blends a sculptural approach with an installation art aesthetic to create a statement on his heritage and universal themes. Since Gupta’s first installation in 1996, “Twenty-nine Mornings,” the artist has been driven to incorporate daily, utilitarian objects into his work. Bicycles, wands, pans all play heavily in the work of Gupta. <br> <br>Gupta’s work often reflects the economic transformations in India- and provides a view into the lives of those whose lives are changed by the rise of the country as a global economic power. Gupta is widely collected as the pre-eminent Indian Contemporary artist. His work is included in the permanent collections of the MFA Houston and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among many others.

SUBODH GUPTA

MARC QUINN - Lovebomb - photo laminate on aluminum - 108 1/4 x 71 3/4 x 37 3/4 in.

MARC QUINN

IRVING NORMAN - Man and Time - oil on canvas - 58 x 30 in.

IRVING NORMAN

CHARLES ARNOLDI - Sticky Wicket - acrylic, modeling paste and sticks on plywood - 44 1/4 x 91 x 3 in.

CHARLES ARNOLDI

Wayne Thiebaud is widely admired as a painter. Yet his ability as a draftsman is equally compelling and particularly evident in lithography, an autographic medium celebrated for documenting an artist's every gesture. As Paint Cans fully demonstrates, lithography also provides the freedom to layer texturally and with colors to achieve a canny representation of an artist's articulated intentions. In composition, "Paint Cans" displays Thiebaud's keen sense of order, deriving from an emphasis on focal points and directional lines that demonstrate the unique ways he can highlight a grouping of everyday items. It is yet another work that amazes the viewer with his highly detailed technique and skills.

WAYNE THIEBAUD

SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL - A Dune Landscape with Figures Resting and a Couple on Horseback, a View of Nijmegen Cathedral Beyond - oil on canvas - 26 1/2 x 41 1/2 in.

SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL

Pellegrini returns to Classical Mythology to paint an adapted narration of the love story of Cupid and Psyche. Traditionally, Psyche was a young princess who was hailed for her beauty and unfortunately caught the eye of a jealous Venus. Venus entrusted Cupid to punish Psyche by making her fall in love with something hideous. Cupid accidently scratched himself with his amorous dart, by which he immediately fell in love with Psyche. As a result, Cupid disobeyed his mother’s orders to punish Psyche. Ultimately they married, but not before Psyche completed a number of painstaking and nearly impossible tasks at the behest of Venus. <br> <br>Pellegrini’s interpretation of this myth is cast over two canvases with different chromatic palettes, oscillating on a spectrum of abstraction and representation. This creates a disorienting temporal effect that creates a sense of mystery surrounding the passage of time between two lovers.

MAX PELLEGRINI

Irving Norman was born in 1906 in Vilna, then part of the Russian Empire, now Lithuania. Norman's immigration to New York City in 1923 was short-lived, as he would return to Europe to fight as part of the Abraham Lincoln battalion against the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. After the War, Norman would eventually settle in Half Moon Bay, California, where he embarked on a prolific studio practice. <br> <br>Norman's work portrays the horrors of war and his firsthand knowledge of totalitarian dictatorships. Norman's work has been described as "Social Surrealism," and his grand scenes are immediate and arresting. The large-scale works of Norman truly capture the power of his lived experiences; they are as much a visual record as they are a warning for the future, intended to inspire change.

IRVING NORMAN

Jaudon was one of the founders of the Pattern and Decoration movement. With a foundation of feminist theory, Jaudon repositioned what were considered trivial art forms and minor visual images. These forms and symbols were relegated because of their association with the feminine or non-Western. <br> <br>At the same time, Palmyra exemplifies the ability of Jaudon to create aesthetically beautiful works. Jaudon interweaves shades of red into ornate arabesques recalling gothic stonework, celtic knots, and Islamic calligraphy. The crispness of the lines against the impasto and the layering of red tones makes it appear that the lines are carved like stone.

VALERIE JAUDON

Few celebrities define the 70s like Farrah Fawcett. A charter member of the television show "Charlie's Angels," her iconic hairstyle known as "The Farrah," featuring soft, flowing layers that framed the face, with a bouncy, voluminous appearance achieved by flipping the ends of the layers outward became a defining look of the decade. Warhol's portrait represents Fawcett herself and provides broader commentary on the period's social and cultural trends. Most compellingly, these two gorgeous portraits testify to her natural, sun-kissed features and healthy, athletic physique that resonated as a symbol of ideal beauty during her time.

ANDY WARHOL

Harry Bertoia’s Willow sculpture resonates as an expression of grace and delicacy; qualities that bely the usual associations we have with the intrinsic properties of the alloy of which it is made. This suspended version – the rare version of Willow - seems to have a self-aware presence; one that delights in that contrast of properties. Yet it invites nothing more than existential pleasure in the viewing of it. Think of Willow as a boldly articulated version of Calder if the latter master had a more organic or corporeal evocation in mind. Suspended, it commands its area yet respects its spatial relationship to its surround. Light, form, space – these are conceptual tools of the sculptor. But who else would think to use reflective material more readily associated with inflexibility and tensor strength to create a bouquet of cascading strands of stainless steel, suspended in space, flora-like and so gracefully beautiful?

HARRY BERTOIA

JOANNA POUSETTE-DART - Untitled (Red Desert Study) - acrylic on wood panel - 33 1/2 x 42 x 3/4 in.

JOANNA POUSETTE-DART

SETH KAUFMAN - Lignum Spire - bronze with green patina - 103 1/2 x 22 x 17 in.

SETH KAUFMAN

Andy Warhol carried a Polaroid camera as a relentless chronicler of life and its encounters from the late 1950s until he died in 1987. The vast collection of Polaroids he amassed are spontaneous, unpolished, often raw, and serve as a chronicle of his time, similar to how Instagram reflects our current era. Another person could have taken this self-portrait, creating a thinly veiled proposition asking the viewer to accept it as a self-portrait, or perhaps it was achieved solely by Warhol using an external self-timer accessory. It is a portrait that celebrates the device upon which Warhol's life essentially turned, a carefully staged homage to his relationship with the Polaroid camera.

ANDY WARHOL

ROBERT NATKIN - Apollo XL - acrylic on canvas - 88 x 116 1/4 in.

ROBERT NATKIN

ANDY WARHOL - Self-Portrait with Camera (diptych) - Polaroid, Polacolor - 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in. ea.

ANDY WARHOL

"Interior" is one of Maurice Askenazy’s more modern compositions, calling to mind the work of Bonnard or Vuillard. The intimate scene shows a nude female model, dramatically seen in profile, posing for a painter in a sun-drenched studio. The door to the room is open, giving the impression that the viewer is stealing a glimpse of a private interaction between artist and model. A cleverly placed mirror on the back of the open door reveals the reflection of the painter, who we are meant to take as Askenazy himself, at work. Askenazy takes great care to depict the details of the room, from the patterned ottoman to the framed paintings on the walls, each a mosaic of Impressionistic color.

MAURICE ASKENAZY

ANDY WARHOL - The Shadow (from Myths) - color screenprint with diamond dust on paper - 37 1/2 x 37 1/2 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL - Self-Portrait - Polaroid, Polacolor - 4 1/2 x 3 3/8 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL - Self-Portrait in Drag - Polaroid - 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.

ANDY WARHOL

The Queen of the Night drinks water from the clasped hands of faith, while two shepherds embrace each other, unaware of Jesus’ birth. Angels, portrayed almost translucently on the canvas, spray holy water and bring about the giving of gifts. A precious jewel is depicted in the right corner, while a humble basket of turkeys sits on the cape of the Madonna. Nearby rests a basket with a goldfinch, an ancient symbol, which is a harbinger of good luck for newborn babies. The baby Jesus, just as the clasped hands that the Queen drinks out of, represents faith – the angels have sprinkled with holy water and he will soon make himself known to the world. <br> <br>“For me the faith in religion becomes faith in painting and will defeat the giants." – Max Pellegrini, July 2015, in conversation with Curator Chip Tom

MAX PELLEGRINI

A young man and woman embrace one another, a woman holds a child, a sleeping baby holds a black and red thread, another young woman undresses, and an angel spreads its wings in this collage like composition. Together, these characters create a narrative in which young love, fate, and life are intertwined: the sleeping baby holds a red thread and black thread, reminiscent of the mythological three Fates, who spun life and death on their loom. These threads are physically connected to the young lovers, who embrace each other, wholly unaware of the hold that the infant has on them. A woman holding a child watches over the love of the youthful boy and girl, just as Mary and Jesus watch over and defend mankind. The merging of narratives and symbols is a common element in Pellegrini’s oeuvre, and is masterfully expressed here.

MAX PELLEGRINI

Mirror images of a cloaked figure embrace a bare-chested and bearded man, who is almost child-like in his relative stature. Their embrace mirrors that of Michelangelo’s Pieta, and the many similar depictions of Christ and the Madonna. A dark shade of blue casts a shadow over the composition, assuredly a temporal indicator, but possibly a reference to Picasso’s blue period as well, a major influencer on Pellegrini’s artwork. The wall panels behind the figures depict religious scenes, and remind the viewer of stained glass walls in churches and chapels. Light shines from windows in the city below, also illuminated by a full moon peaking over mountainous scenery.

MAX PELLEGRINI

From the late 1990’s to the early 2000’s, Pellegrini returned to his paintings in the Life of an Anarchist series, “reworked them, constructed them in ‘layers,’ corrected them, initiated series or returned to iconographies of his past works.” These paintings, which are dedicated to Pellegrini’s wife Roberta, depict a woman who is free and positive, and are part of a long line of works in which there is an absolute female protagonist. (Sara D’Alessandro, “Biography,” in Max Pellegrini, ed. Danilo Eccher, 2014). Pellegrini had his wife in mind for these paintings, since “she considers herself an integrated anarchist, a woman with no prejudice but not fanatical or destructive.” <br> <br>- Partial text adapted from Max Pellegrini, July 2015, in conversation with Curator Chip Tom

MAX PELLEGRINI

In an abstracted image of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome, Pellegrini returns to religious narratives to express his “anti-ideological and anti-pauperist” impression of the church and its relationship with faith (Antonio Monda, “Interview with Max Pellegrini). In the lower half of the painting, the birth of Jesus is the central focus, while the life of the church is highlighted in the upper half. According to Pellegrini, he depicted the birth of Jesus in the style of a baroque 18th century Neapolitan nativity scene that can be interpreted “as a feast for the birth of faith.” This faith is conceived of as “the material support for the Popes’ power and of the Church’s glory,” represented in this painting by the Pope clutching the moon in his hand. <br> <br> <br>- Partial text adapted from Max Pellegrini, July 2015, in conversation with Curator Chip Tom

MAX PELLEGRINI