Terrain Gallery

Last updated

Location
  • 141 Greene Street, New York, New York 10012, United States
Coordinates 40°43′34″N73°59′56″W / 40.725989°N 73.99882°W / 40.725989; -73.99882
Co-Directors
Carrie Wilson and Marcia Rackow
Website TerrainGallery.org

The Terrain Gallery, or the Terrain, is an art gallery and educational center at 141 Greene Street in SoHo, Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 1955 with a philosophic basis: the ideas of Aesthetic Realism and the Siegel Theory of Opposites, developed by American poet and educator Eli Siegel. [1] [2] Its motto is a statement by Siegel: "In reality opposites are one; art shows this."

Contents

History

Dorothy Koppelman, 2002 Oron-Dorothy Koppelman-3.jpg
Dorothy Koppelman, 2002

Under the direction of painter Dorothy Koppelman, [3] the Terrain Gallery opened on February 26, 1955 with the publication of Siegel’s fifteen questions, Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites? (subsequently reprinted in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism ). [4] Reviewing the opening exhibition, "Intersection '55", Parker Tyler wrote in Art News of the “explicitly inquiring and venturesome spirit” at the Terrain. [5] Bennett Schiff in the New York Post wrote that "there probably hasn't been a gallery before this like the Terrain, which devotes itself to the integration of art with all of living according to an esthetic principle which is part of an entire, encompassing philosophic theory...Aesthetic Realism developed and taught by Eli Siegel". [6]

From the beginning, the Terrain was simultaneously an exhibition space for contemporary art and a cultural center with "a lively and unconventional approach to aesthetic issues" [7] where artists, scholars, and the general public could learn about and discuss principles of Aesthetic Realism, [8] such as "The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art." [9]

Although exhibiting artists were not required to endorse Aesthetic Realism, [6] many wrote comments on the Siegel Theory of Opposites in relation to their work, which were displayed with their art. [10] Over the years, dozens of exhibition announcements, catalogues, and broadsides were printed and circulated by the Terrain, describing how the opposites in reality are central in art. [11]

Artists whose work has been exhibited at the Terrain Gallery include Ad Reinhardt, Larry Rivers, Chaim Koppelman, Robert Blackburn, Roy Lichtenstein, Hans Namuth, Dorothy Koppelman, André Kertész, Mark Di Suvero, Will Barnet, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Richard Artschwager, George Tooker, Lois Dodd, Jim Dine, Elaine de Kooning, and Steve Poleskie. Pop artist Richard Bernstein, optical artist Arnold Alfred Schmidt, photographers Nancy Starrels, Lou Dienes, Nat Herz, and others had their first one-person shows at the Terrain. [10]

Vietnam War protests

In the book The Indignant Eye, Ralph Shikes writes of how the Vietnam War brought many American artists into "active agitation". [12] The Koppelmans were among hundreds of artists who signed their names to an ad in the New York Times protesting the war in Vietnam in 1962. [13] In 1967, 105 painters, sculptors, printmakers and photographers participated in the exhibition All Art Is For Life and Against the War in Vietnam held at the Terrain to benefit napalm-burned and crippled Vietnamese children. Of Chaim Koppelman's print, "Vietnam", Shikes writes that the artist's "protest springs from the art and is not superimposed on it.” [12]

Location changes

First located at 20 West 16th Street, the Terrain Gallery moved in 1964 to 39 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, where it continued to hold art exhibitions and dramatic presentations of Aesthetic Realism. [14]

In 1973 the Terrain moved to SoHo, Manhattan, becoming part of the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation located at 141 Greene Street. There, the gallery featured a one-man show of drawings and silkscreens by Charles Magistro, and continued exhibitions such as "Big and Small" ("Art shows that nothing, however small, is without largeness and meaning"), and “The Arts, They’re Here!: Ten Arts and the Opposites," which included music and architecture. [15]

"Art Answers the Questions of Your Life"

In 1984, the Terrain Gallery began a new series of weekly talks, free to the public, called Art Answers the Questions of Your Life. These talks discussed topics such as how precision and abandon are one in Jackson Pollock's action painting, [16] what mothers can learn about children from the art of Mary Cassatt, “Can Exuberance Be Sensible?: Hans Hofmann’s Rhapsody” by Bennett Cooperman, and "Logic and Emotion in Love and in the Shah Nameh by Barbara Buehler. [15] An overview of this series of more than 175 talks on art of diverse genres and periods was presented by co-directors Dorothy Koppelman and Carrie Wilson at the 31st World Congress of the International Society for Education through Art (Teachers College, Columbia University, 2003). [17]

In 2005, the Terrain Gallery held a 50th anniversary exhibition that brought together works by 52 artists, several of whom contributed statements about how the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel influenced their work. [18] A memorial exhibition for Chaim Koppelman, in 2010, included over six decades of the artist's prints, paintings, pastels, and sculpture, with critical comment.

Aesthetic Realism and the Siegel Theory of Opposites

The Terrain Gallery differed from other art galleries of the time in several ways. It held large group exhibitions that successfully combined diverse stylistic tendencies, such as realism and abstraction, when this was unusual. [19] Painting, sculpture, watercolor, and graphics were brought together under the titles "Abstract and Concrete," [20] "Depth and Surface," [21] "Logic and Emotion," [22] and "Rest and Motion". [23] The Terrain Gallery also held “one of the first exhibitions honoring photography as a fine art” [24] and silkscreens as major work. [15]

The Seurat Art Club and the George Saintsbury Poetry Club

In 1955, the year it opened, the Terrain began a series of talks by the Seurat Art Club, working artists who spoke about the relevance of the Siegel Theory of Opposites to contemporary art and life.

Discussing both classical and contemporary work, club members considered the relation of composition in art and in life. They described art as having ethical implications, being "not an escape from life but a true picture of reality". [11]

Existing records of one of the discussions held at the Terrain in 1961 indicate that many artists felt that while opposites were undeniably present in their work, the conscious awareness of them would "lessen, or somehow destroy, the 'magic,' the 'talent,' the 'je ne sais quoi'" of art. [10] Others believed that "study of the opposites makes for an entirely new level of perception, a surer technique, a wider field of vision." [10] Painter Rolph Scarlett wrote: "The Siegel Theory of Opposites, which is the motivating consideration of this gallery, is inspiring." [10] Sculptor Barbara Lekberg, in an interview that appeared in the magazine American Artist, stated that Aesthetic Realism shows "not only that conscious knowledge can cause the unconscious to give up its riches, but also that this process of giving form to feeling has in it the principles of happiness for all people, not just artists." [25]

In addition to talks on art, the Terrain held poetry readings and discussions by the George Saintsbury Poetry Club. [26] The Terrain Gallery published Personal & Impersonal: Six Aesthetic Realists, a book of poems by Sheldon Kranz, Louis Dienes, Nancy Starrels, Nat Hertz, Martha Baird and Rebecca Fein [27] and held an exhibition of work by 45 artists, including Leonard Baskin, Robert Andrew Parker, and Nathan Cabot Hale, inspired by the poems. [28]

Response

Art critics generally praised exhibitions at the Terrain, but many ignored the philosophy behind these exhibitions, or wrote of it disparagingly. [2] When Art News published an interview with Tiffany award-winner Chaim Koppelman, founder of the printmaking division of the School of Visual Arts, an artist who considered Aesthetic Realism central to his work, the magazine omitted all mention of the philosophy, and even the word "opposites" did not appear. [29]

In response to the art critics, Mr. and Mrs. Koppelman placed an ad in The Village Voice in which they asked critics and artists to be fair to Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel:

We ask you, personally, to be fair to Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel...We find bizarre the tendency in artists and critics to call Aesthetic Realism a cult while using it—under cover of "common knowledge"—to crystallize their own thoughts and writing on art...We cannot consider any person a friend who does not want to be fair to Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel. [30]

Dorothy and Chaim Koppelman both had one-person shows at the Terrain, and both were chosen for MoMA's 1962 exhibition "Recent Painting USA: The Figure." [15]

Related Research Articles

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and the nature of taste; and functions as the philosophy of art. Aesthetics examines the philosophy of aesthetic value, which is determined by critical judgements of artistic taste; thus, the function of aesthetics is the "critical reflection on art, culture and nature".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eli Siegel</span> Latvian-American poet, philosopher (1902-1978)

Eli Siegel was a poet, critic, and educator. He founded Aesthetic Realism, a philosophical movement based in New York City. An idea central to Aesthetic Realism—that every person, place or thing in reality has something in common with all other things—was expressed in the title poem of his first volume, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems. His second volume was Hail, American Development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amédée Ozenfant</span> French painter (1886–1966)

Amédée Ozenfant was a French cubist painter and writer. Together with Charles-Edouard Jeanneret he founded the Purist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aesthetic Realism</span> School of philosophy

Aesthetic Realism is a philosophy founded in 1941 by the American poet and critic Eli Siegel (1902–1978). He defined it as a three-part study: "[T]hese three divisions can be described as: One, Liking the world; Two, The opposites; Three, The meaning of contempt."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art criticism</span> Discussion or evaluation of visual art

Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is questionable whether such criticism can transcend prevailing socio-political circumstances.

This is an alphabetical index of articles about aesthetics.

The Devětsil was an association of Czech avant-garde artists, founded in 1920 in Prague. From 1923 on there was also an active group in Brno. The movement discontinued its activities in 1930.

Marxist aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics based on, or derived from, the theories of Karl Marx. It involves a dialectical and materialist, or dialectical materialist, approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifically areas related to taste such as art, beauty, and so forth. Marxists believe that economic and social conditions, and especially the class relations that derive from them, affect every aspect of an individual's life, from religious beliefs to legal systems to cultural frameworks. From one classic Marxist point of view, the role of art is not only to represent such conditions truthfully, but also to seek to improve them ; however, this is a contentious interpretation of the limited but significant writing by Marx and Engels on art and especially on aesthetics. For instance, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, who greatly influenced the art of the early Soviet Union, followed the secular humanism of Ludwig Feuerbach more than he followed Marx.

Atelier 17 was an art school and studio that was influential in the teaching and promotion of printmaking in the 20th century. Originally located in Paris, the studio relocated to New York during the years surrounding World War II. It moved back to Paris in 1950.

Minotauromachy is a 19.5 by 27.4” etching and engraving created by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in Paris in 1935. The etching and resulting prints, literally entitled Minotaur Battle, feature many compositional aspects and themes seen often in Picasso’s art throughout the 1930s. These include the Minotaur, an unconscious or dying female matador on an injured horse, a young girl holding a candle and flowers, a man scaling a ladder, and two women watching with doves from a window. Created during a time of personal turmoil within which Picasso created little artwork, Minotauromachy stands out as a seminal and striking piece with no shortage of artistic interpretations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chaim Koppelman</span> American painter

Chaim Koppelman was an American artist, art educator, and Aesthetic Realism consultant. Best known as a printmaker, he also produced sculpture, paintings, and drawings. A member of the National Academy of Design since 1978, he was president of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), which presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. He established the Printmaking Department of the School of Visual Arts in 1959, and taught there until 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hila Lulu Lin</span> Israeli multi-disciplinary artist

Hila Lulu Lin is an Israeli multi-disciplinary artist, engaged in painting, cinema, poetry, sculpture, visual arts, photography, performance and video art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Kimmelman</span> American film director and animator

Ken Kimmelman is an American filmmaker, animator, and Aesthetic Realism consultant. He is the president of Imagery Film, Ltd. and is known for his films opposing racism and prejudice, including The Heart Knows Better, a public service film for which he received a National Emmy Award and Brushstrokes, produced for the United Nations. Both films were inspired by Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy whose founder, Eli Siegel, identified contempt, "the addition to self through the lessening of something else" as the cause of racism and all human injustice. Kimmelman is also noted for his Poetry film, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana, based on the prize-winning poem by Eli Siegel. Historian Howard Zinn said of this film, "It matches, in its visual beauty, the elegance of Siegel's words, and adds the dimension of stunning imagery to an already profound work of art."

Lou Bernstein was an American photographer and teacher. His career began during the Great Depression and the Photo League and ended shortly before he died.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sari Dienes</span> Hungarian-born American artist (1898–1992)

Sari Dienes was a Hungarian-born American artist. During a career spanning six decades she worked in a wide range of media, creating paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, ceramics, textile designs, sets and costumes for theatre and dance, sound-art installations, mixed-media environments, music and performance art. Her large-scale 'Sidewalk Rubbings' of 1953–55 - bold, graphic, geometrical compositions, combining rubbings of manhole covers, subway gratings and other elements of the urban streetscape - signaled a move away from the gestural mark making of Abstract Expressionism towards the indexical appropriation of the environment that would be further developed in Pop art, and exerted a significant influence on Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard Hack</span> American painter (1932–2015)

Howard Edwin Hack was an American representational painter and graphic artist, with works in numerous museum collections. Known for an innovative approach to a variety of media, as well as use of traditional oil paints, Hack began working in the late 1940s. He was active in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Fran Herndon was an American artist associated with the central poets of the San Francisco Renaissance. Trained at the California School of Fine Arts in print-making and painting, Herndon is known for her lithographs and collages, many of which were produced in tandem with Jack Spicer's poetry, and intended for joint viewing and reading. More recently, Herndon has branched out to work in drawing and pastels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nat Herz</span> American photographer, poet, and writer

Nat Herz (1920–1964) was an American photographer, poet, and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Equator Art Society</span> Artist group in 50s Singapore

The Equator Art Society was an artists' group founded in 1956 in Singapore, known for promoting social realist art. The Equator Art Society sought to represent the realities and struggles of the masses, depicting Singapore's working classes and the poor often through the use of portraiture painting, woodcut prints, and sculpture. Founding society members and leaders included artists such as Lim Yew Kuan, Lai Kui Fang, Chua Mia Tee, Ong Kim Seng and Koeh Sia Yong.

References

  1. ↑ "Terrain Gallery records · SOVA". sova.si.edu. Retrieved June 4, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Dunsterville, Hilary, Art News, December 31, 1959.
  3. ↑ "Dorothy Koppelman A Life of Art and Ethics", Journal of the Print World, July 2018
  4. ↑ Siegel, Eli. “Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?” The Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, Vol. XIV, No. 2, December 1955.
  5. ↑ "Intersection '55", Art News, May 1955.
  6. 1 2 Schiff, Bennett (Sunday, June 16, 1957) "In the Art Galleries..." New York Post.
  7. ↑ Siegel, Eli (1957). "Free Poem on "The Siegel Theory of Opposites" in Relation to Aesthetics". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 16 (1): 148–150. doi:10.2307/427148. JSTOR   427148.
  8. ↑ S.F. in Arts Digest, April 15, 1955.
  9. ↑ Reiss, Ellen (February 21, 2007). "Art & Your Life: The Same Subject". The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known. Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Retrieved May 31, 2010.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 "Terrain Gallery records, 1955–2005". Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives. Retrieved June 4, 2021.
  11. 1 2 Kranz, Sheldon (1969). Sheldon Kranz (ed.). Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There: Six Artists on the Siegel Theory of Opposites. Definition Press.
  12. 1 2 Shikes, Ralph E. (1969). The Indignant Eye: The Artist as Social Critic in Prints and Drawings from the Fifteenth Century to Picasso . Beacon Press. pp.  369–370. ISBN   978-0-8070-6670-6.
  13. ↑ New York Times, Tuesday, June 26, 1962.
  14. ↑ Stern, Faith (February 13, 2002). "Scene of her mind change". The Villager. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Wilson, Carrie (May 7, 2005). "A Brief History of the Terrain Gallery". Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
  16. ↑ Mariano, Lore. "Jackson Pollock's Number 1A, 1948 or – How Can We Be Abandoned and Accurate at the Same Time?". TERRAIN GALLERY AESTHETIC REALISM FOUNDATION ONLINE LIBRARY. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
  17. ↑ "International Conversations through Art", Teachers College, Columbia University, 2003.
  18. ↑ Eaton, J. Sanders, Gallery & Studio, September/October 2005.
  19. ↑ Stone, Robert, "Abstract and Concrete", The Village Voice, March 28, 1956.
  20. ↑ Seckler, Dorothy Gees, Art in America, Spring 1956.
  21. ↑ Rackliffe, Howard, The Village Voice, May 9, 1956.
  22. ↑ "Logic and Emotion Mark Group Show". NY Times. December 17, 1955. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
  23. ↑ Goodman, Elizabeth, The Village Voice, May 29, 1957.
  24. ↑ Russo, Michael (May 11, 1980). "CAMERA; Some Galleries That Do Welcome New Talent". New York Times. Retrieved May 31, 2010.
  25. ↑ Dorothy Grafly, "Three Women Sculptors", Vol. 16, No. 2, February 1952, p. 58.
  26. ↑ ”Society Holds Poetry Inquiry,” The Village Voice, December 1, 1955.
  27. ↑ “Personal and Impersonal, Six Esthetic (sic) Realists: Poems by Sheldon Kranz, Louis Dienes, Nancy Starrels, Nat Hertz, Martha Baird, Rebecca Fein, with critical preface by Eli Siegel (Terrain Gallery)", "Books Today", New York Times, 1 June 1959,
  28. ↑ ”45 Artists and a Book of Poems,” The Villager May 14, 1959.
  29. ↑ William Kolodney, "Chaim Koppelman", ArtNews, September 1960.
  30. ↑ Koppelman, Chaim and Dorothy, “A Statement to the Art World”, The Village Voice, 1 March 1962.
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