This week: Jim Nutt, Giorgio Griffa, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, connoisseurship & more from the world of culture.
“Jim Nutt: Shouldn’t We Be More Careful?” at David Nolan Gallery, New York (September 6 through October 14): Jim Nutt may have been one of the founders of the “Hairy Who”—the group of six “Chicago Imagists” who emerged from the Art Institute in the 1960s with an aggressive, comic, and sometimes grotesque representational style—but his paintings over the years have become closely shaved. Opening this week at David Nolan Gallery, “Shouldn’t We Be More Careful?,” an exhibition of twenty-three of Nutt’s latest works on paper, reveals the sharpness of his cutting blade. Returning to the same strange figure he has drawn since the 1980s, Nutt here conveys a maximum of emotion with a minimum of line, all drawn with laser precision. —JP
“Giorgio Griffa: Océanie,” at Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York (September 8 through October 28): “With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft,” wrote Henri Matisse. Such witchcraft is at play in the new work of Giorgio Griffa, on view in “Océanie” at Casey Kaplan Gallery. Indeed, the influence of Matisse abounds in these canvases: playful, thoughtful, and thrilling, these are vibrant jaunts that evoke the French master’s Cut-Outs, though they’re constructed of completely different material. These nineteen pieces conceal sturdy, controlled composition behind a mask of looseness and ease, and they make for a happy bewitching. —LL
“In Remembrance,” by the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players at Good Shepherd Church (September 11): The amiable César Franck dedicated his Piano Quintet in F Minor (1879) to his sometime rival Saint-Saëns, who played the piano at the premiere; at the concert’s end, the story goes, Saint-Saëns stormed off, leaving the manuscript on the stage. Perhaps Saint-Saëns found its heady romanticism antithetical to his refined, classicizing style; perhaps he also had in mind his recent tussle with Franck over a young woman who had caught both their eyes. Regardless, the quintet’s Sturm und Drang has long evoked strong reactions both positive and negative, in critics ranging from Harold Schonberg to Roger Scruton. This coming Monday, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players will open their season with a concert of the Franck quintet and works by Chopin, Reicha, Ravel, and Offenbach, music at turns stirring and somber for that memorial day. —IS
“The Invention of Connoisseurship,” with Peter Burke at the Bard Graduate Center (September 6): The word connoisseur has so many connotations now as to be almost meaningless, encompassing as it does both a sense of competence in passing judgment on some aspect of the arts (or life in general) and a sense of mere appreciation. But was it always thus? This Wednesday at the Bard Graduate Center, the historian Peter Burke will discuss his belief that the rise of connoisseurship dates to the seventeenth century, a view that runs counter to others who trace its origins as a phenomenon to either the Renaissance or the Victorian era. —BR
Podcasts:
“Music for a While #79: Flicka-fest.” Jay Nordlinger, The New Criterion’s music critic, talks music—but, more important, plays music.
From the Archives:
“The resurrection of the ‘Last Supper,’” by Creighton Gilbert (March 1984). On the restoration of the Last Supper.
Dispatch:
“Dreamy art in a sleepy town,” by Sean McGlynn. On the Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art, Piacenza.