Philadelphia City Paper
December 2- 8, 2004

by Susan Hagen


According to Picasso, "A good artist borrows, a great artist steals." Besides being a sincere form of flattery, imitating or copying another artist's work is a common, centuries-old educational practice. Shelley Spector, owner and director of Spector gallery, had long considered organizing a show in which local artists reproduced or reinterpreted famous works of art. She was especially interested in original sources in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA)—"since over the years it has had such a big influence on so many artists"—but she decided not to be dogmatic. When a scheduled exhibition fell through this fall, she called a few Spector regulars and a few new artists and told them about her idea for "The Great (re)Masters." They got right to work.
Viewers can compare the new version with a nearby photocopy of the original, and indeed, many of the 21 artists have tried to stay very close to the form and spirit of these works. With only a small change in the composition, Sarah McEneaney has respectfully recreated the Vincent Van Gogh painting Rain in the PMA. Like Van Gogh, she looked out her window and painted a trapezoidal chunk of land enclosed by walls (urban, instead of rural) covered with a silvery sheet of rain. In his horizontally elongated painting of tiny, rock-star-like people in a vast landscape, Thom Lessner has captured the spirit of the PMA's Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks. Lessner's animals are sparse and simplified, and the reclining leopard is so relaxed, it's stretched out to double its natural length. Sarah Roche has painted two versions of Courbet's The Wave, while and Rob Matthews has made an attentive and intimate graphite drawing of Edward Hopper's Office at Night.
Other artists have reinterpreted their source in more surprising ways. Ben Woodward's Nude Descending a Staircase is particularly witty. In his decorative ink-on-paper drawing, Woodward turns Duchamp's early masterpiece in the PMA into a burly male écorché, with an animal snout and pointy ears, stepping heavily off some chunky rowhouse steps. Titian's Venus of Urbino is deftly reinterpreted by Whitney Lee using a found patterned latch-hook rug that has been partially unraveled and rewoven with yarn in subtle shades of gray, green, brown and purple. Paul Santoleri reworked Rubens' masterpiece Prometheus Bound, one of the highlights of the PMA collection, using patterns of oil derricks, expressways and architectural elements. Jim Houser's amazing compression of Fifty Days at Ilium (a series of 10 huge Cy Twombly paintings at the PMA) into eight modest panels of different shapes, painted with small symbols and handwritten words from the Iliad, is an original and fascinating interpretation.
Some artists transformed their sources even more, exploring their sociological or psychological implications. The subject of Eduard Charlemont's Orientalist painting The Moorish Chief in the PMA is re-envisioned by Max Lawrence in the bright, rich colors of gouache and resin on board as a contemporary African-American man wearing a 76ers jersey, a gold necklace and a Phillies cap. Lawrence has vested his subject with the fierce, noble expression of the original. Fay Stanford's encaustic version of John James Audubon's Snowy Owls is reminiscent of Goya—a dark and visionary interpretation of the relationship between two owls, with human features, perched in a dead tree. Mitch Gillette has transformed Michelangelo's extroverted David into an intense psychological portrait. He has drawn, using the fretful lines of red, black and blue ballpoint pen, a close-up of the head with an expression that is angry and bitter, but deeply vulnerable. Shown without the rest of his body—his greatest asset—Gillette's David is just like anyone else. 


Philadelphia Weekly
Dec 1, 2004

by Roberta Fallon


Don't miss "The Great (re)Masters" at Spector. Wickedly funny in some places, the theme exhibit, in which 22 local artists retool the masters for a 2004 audience, is full of love for the old warhorses but demonstrates that the classics should be saluted like family--with a kiss, a chuckle and an occasional jab in the ribs.
The show hops around from Leonardo to Paul Klee, from Cy Twombly to medieval armor. But it hangs together because the original sources, with few exceptions, are archetypal and immediately recognizable as "museum" art.
But these aren't copies of the originals--they're translations. And even though the artists have left enough of the source material intact to be recognizable, they've placed their personalities and styles front and center in playful juxtaposition (or competition) with the original.
Some artists who reimagine old master works do so to comment on art or art history. Lucky for us, these works go farther afield. By dipping into personal territory or pop culture, the art here brings the master works out of the museum and breathes a dose of the real world into them.
Sarah McEneaney updates the scene of her source material (van Gogh's Rain), changing it to a more personal locale (from a farm field to her own yard). Randall Sellers adds politics to his take on Manet's Luncheon on the Grass by inserting a man laughing out loud at a toy monkey wearing an Uncle Sam top hat. Mitch Gillette's redo of Michelangelo's David ages the icon a little and accentuates his worry.
Several artists create whimsy by inserting their own signature motifs or characters into the works. Thom Lessner, known for his painted homages to rock bands, paints the animals of Edward Hicks' The Peaceable Kingdom in his great naïf manner. Then he transforms the background figures into a kind of ancient rock group, William Penn and the Quakers, by posing them with the cocky attitude of a metal band.
Whitney Lee's Titian, Venus of Urbino is a hook rug of the Venus image that's been married to another hooked rug with a bright- colored modern paisley pattern. The new work is a great pop baptism for Venus.
In a work that made me laugh out loud, Matt Fisher's Figure in a Mountain Landscape III, a redo of Peter Doig's painting, pokes fun at the somber pastel wall-spanning piece that features a mysterious hooded figure by changing it into a little canvas whose hero is one of Fisher's sweet, romantic toy soldiers.
Finally, Max Lawrence's new version of the Eduard Charlemont Moorish Chief claims the black icon for Philadelphia. And newcomer (to me) Pinky Pierce transformed Paul Klee's Senecio into a far more interesting piece. Fay Stanford's owl-men, based on Audubon's Snowy Owls, are odd and great.
Theme shows can be dicey. But because gallerist Shelley Spector set the charge broadly and allowed artists to pick and choose the era, medium and size of their translations, the resulting show is snappy and terrific.
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