I will get back to the topic of my unfinished essay later. I did manage to get to an opening, Stanley's new show. He is always surprising. This time, for the first time he has gotten his gnarled and curious detail, which has been so great in the big drawings, into the paintings!!! They now have a whole series of changes in color within any plane which help both to organize the larger shapes and to produce a counter melody [as it were]. I think that at least in some ways these are his finest paintings yet. Starting on your right as you enter, and around the corner, those three paintings are the ones which can be seen to do it best. One problem is that the light on the short end wall, opposite, does not do its best for the two very fine paintings hanging on it and the light in the opening corner is just fine. There also are wonderful drawings of all sizes, some of which seem to have new ideas which are wonderful to see.
He is a completely independent artist with his own pictorial needs, which are different from every one else's and he keeps on making giant moves towards ideas he has about what he wants to get. It becomes clearer and clearer that there is no artist out there who can be his model. He has learned from great 19th century masters and from 20th century ones, but he looks like something new. Now, is this something avant garde, new? No it is not. It is not hard to understand where he is coming from and what new portions of his sensibility he is adding into the work. It is hard to understand why he wants to do it, until you see it done. I would say that he is not so much an innovator as another voice to add to past masters, who enriches our understanding of them and of the world outside by seeing it in a another way. It does not require the kind of great jump that fauve or cubist art required of their audiences, but it presents new ways of getting at those same truths which so many 19th century pleine aire painters had, as also reconstructions from nature as in Soutine, Matisse, Marquet or Modigliani.
Don't Miss The Show!!! There is nothing else like it, and there won't be until he shows again.
Love,
Gabriel
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