art

Synchronicity in the City: Why Art, Why a World? by Sam Abelow

I inspect the meticulous layers and sophisticated use of color: “The discipline and commitment to a particular mode and approach in a serious way, makes EJ’s works art.” I pause, “The paintings seem rather buyable to me. There’s a decorative value to them. I could imagine a young live streamer with expendable income putting that lime green one on the wall.” Another pause, “And then, there's also effort and intention involved. One person makes a doodle on the back of their homework, another invests a year investigating doodles on large format canvases and puts it in a gallery for commercial sale. Is not the intention and follow-through relevant to what defines art?”

Read More

Jewish Art in Times of War: How We Can Creatively Combat Antisemitism by Sam Abelow

On October 7th, about two weeks before this excursion described above, Hamas infamously attacked civilians in Southern Israel. The terrorists performed barbaric acts. The mystic asks: Where is this Hamas in me? That is the red fox. My own inner animal, which when left untamed, can do the unspeakable.

I traveled to the university museum on a Wednesday. That previous Saturday, as the Sabbath came to a close, my friend Levi Paris asleep upstairs, I flipped through the New Yorker – a magazine subscription my parents have had for decades. The very last page was an advertisement for an exhibition at the local university gallery: In Real Times - Arthur Szyk:

Read More

Naudline Cluvie Pierre's Paintings and the Interwoven Black and Jewish Histories by Sam Abelow

This essay explores how Naudline Cluvie Pierre’s mystical paintings have a profound impact on the expression of blackness in America. Written from the perspective of a Jewish-American author, it uncovers the intricate connections between black and Jewish histories, highlighting their respectful interactions and distinct yet intertwined experiences.

By examining Pierre's symbolism, such as serpents, faces, and flames, the essay delves into the artist's ability to evoke profound narratives of transformation. It celebrates Pierre's role in creating a space where black audiences find representation while fostering a universal sense of connection that transcends cultural boundaries.

Read More

A Heroic Sort of Journey by Sam Abelow

I have felt a sense of chaos and disorder and pain in my life. I produce talismans to help myself with this. These images harness emotion and bring coherence to my fragmented sense of world and self. Today, after many years of working with symbolic images, I have obtained a more clear sense of self – recognizing my Jewish ancestry and ethnic identity. Art is my way of communicating: I want to help transform and develop our collective conversations and impact individual lives, which are interconnected through culture.

Read More

Mapping ORIGINS: The Art of Integration by Sam Abelow

Artists seek resolution of inner and outer tensions, personally, in relationships and between cultural groups. This is a call to rise above flagrant moral negligence on the part of the academy, curators and artists themselves, to recognize that what we do has consequences, on a personal, national and global stage. In order to grow together:

Read More

Mapping ORIGINS: Conflicted Artists Position by Sam Abelow

The contemporary artist is tasked with reintegrating the multitude of past art movements, resolving disassociated conflicts, into a greater whole. A multicultural, multifaceted — that is, a comprehensive approach — is thus the progression beyond arbitrary obsessions & expressions of dualism, towards a greater union of self — intrapsychic, interpersonal and transpersonal.

Read More

Why Paint? Artist's Sacrifice & The Shadow Goddess by Sam Abelow

I remember the controversy of whether or not the “Balthus should still hang at the Met,” and the formidable articles asking “If Men Should Still Be Able to Paint the Female Nude” in 2019.

What is art history and painting, “without the nude” though, anyways?

The model makes themselves available, vulnerable, open; the artist does too.

Every portrait is a self-portrait. — Spring Art Review: Why Paint? Contemporary Art and the Academic Painter's Sacrifice to Beauty (The Archetypal Shadow and Feminine, Great Mother, as per Carl Jung, Erich Neumann) (Essay Describes Kali, The Artist, The Jew, The Black Model) (A Review and Summarization of my work)

Read More

The Coming Decade: What to Expect in Culture & Art by Sam Abelow

Pioneering markets (Germany, Silicon Valley) have been integrating insights of Western psychology and Eastern spirituality, Meanwhile, in the past decade, Paganism was America’s largest growing religion. The reintroduction and proliferation of cannabis, recreational and laboratory use of psychedelics, affects the cultural psyche causing vast individuals to calibrate or fall into catastrophe over their innate spirituality, religious archetypal substructures and inner conflicts.  This is a backdrop of what’s to come.

Read More

Immersive Art Is Millennial Art: X-Mas With Hudson Valley Surrealist Daniel Giordano by Sam Abelow

Giordano is a Newburgh native fresh off a well-deserved print feature in the New York Times Arts section. He didn’t get there by looking like Justin Bieber (eternally young), and Harry Styles (gender-bending style), but by a strong dose of a 1920’s Italian workman blood — as he labors, in constant production.

Read More

Gerhard Richter, David Wiseman, The Hudson Yards: The Cultural Realization of The Aesthetic Life by Sam Abelow

New York City: Within a few square miles in Chelsea and the new construction in the Hudson Yards, a strange renaissance of contemporary culture and art is flourishing. Amongst all of this, it is hard to tell whether or not the hyper-real and superficial aspects of this renaissance are so excessive that we are doomed, or that, redeemingly, it is rather that these are flaws and areas of gray in a bizarre cultural evolution. However, there is undoubtedly the sensation of a moment in culture that is of great importance. 

Read More

The Black Model at the Crux of Western Culture: Sweeping Exhibition at Musée d’Orsay by Sam Abelow

The “Black Models” show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris reveals the Western neglect of the archetypal feminine, which accounts for racial and gender subjugation and ultimately a disregard for the planet itself. In this view of the show, we poignantly discover a cultural progression, but also a dire need for further understanding today.

Read More

From Paris: l'Orangerie & The Louvre (Archetypal Feminine and the Greek Mentalité) by Sam Abelow

Artists’ are driven by an immortality fantasy. Also, they are poetic types who feel the contents of life-psyche deeply. They need a subject, many of the Europeans chose “woman,” for she is at the center of their psyche; her unending pull both profound fodder for inspiration, sparking their instincts, stimulating the artist towards production.

Also, this obsession with the woman is a form of masochistic self-torture to tease themselves unending, turning an interest into a fascination, and finally into an addiction. (As one painting will not do, and one lover neither; all the complications of this muse relationship come with it!) On the contrary, it has been a form of liberation (hence, the “libertine”) to feel their erotic nature.

Read More

Juicy Color Hits In Marc Horowitz’s High-Flying Act by Sam Abelow

Marc Horowitz’s newest paintings are all variations on the same composition: stark backgrounds resonate like a crisp sky, as chunky stick figures pulse like balloons. As in Rothko’s chapel, or Rembrandt's self-portraits, Horowitz repeats and alters the same idea in a series. And, as Rothko reduced his palette to shades of black, focusing on rectangular forms, and Rembrandt to shades of brown, focusing on the self-portrait, Horowitz’s latest interest can be compared to these exalted masters: his works, as packed with juicy color as ever before, have discarded earlier structures and devices (inkjet prints which allowed for complex puns on rendered horses, landscapes, etc.) in favor of an undeniably primal composition.

Read More

Spencer Sweeney's Liberated Masterworks at Gagosian by Sam Abelow

This December the Gagosian gallery, located on Park Ave. and 75th Street in New York City, presented about a half dozen of Spencer Sweeney’s latest works. The figurative painter, who is also a DJ and club owner, has been a legend of the Downtown scene for two decades. Sweeney’s latest works exemplify his approach to life and art, now as ever before, as free, spontaneous and full of vibrant energy.  

Read More