Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Gallery Notes

1938; Volume: 10; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/15436314.1938.11466988

2325-5420

Elizabeth McCausland, Roger Oilman,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

WHILE civil liberties invade Jersey City, “modern art” for two years has been quietly fighting its battle in Newark, in the modest quarters of the Cooperative Gallery, two blocks down the street from the Newark Museum. The only private gallery in Newark—on indeed in the state of New Jersey—devoted to the cause of contemporary American work, this gallery plans to exhibit painting, sculpture, prints, drawings and photographs by prominent artists, as well as to bring to light the younger artists of its own community. Until March 5 it is showing paintings, water colors and pastels by Bernard Gussow; the previous month it displayed work by five New Jersey artists, in which a considerable degree of talent is to be found.A painter who has been through the wars for modern art, Gussow makes an ingratiating representative of his cause in this small exhibition. The oils, with a surface dry and cool in quality, are simple and lyrical in appeal. Low in key, they do not shout their theme. Yet a large canvas like Subway Passage is interesting both for its formal attributes as its use of a simplified composition, and for its invocation of social suggestions, as are Down the ‘El’, Strap Hangers and Strollers. Though one would not call the artist's approach “social” in the current usage, yet such a picture as that of a child practising against a flat yellow background, does not suggest any retreat from reality; the child playing is a fact, presented without nostalgia or Weltschmerz. A sincere, honest feeling, is the feeling for nature shown in the two pastels, Trees and Autumn Woods, and in the water colors Child in Summer and Shoeing the Horse.