No Images of Man: Curated by Mitchell Algus
June 25 - August 22, 2008
Selected Works
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Installation view
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Installation view
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Installation view
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KAREL APPEL
Promenade dans la Nuit
1964
Mixed media on paper mounted on canvas
25 ¼ x 20 in
image 10
MIRIAM BEERMAN
The Plagues (Cattle Disease)
1985
Oil on canvas
56 x 63 in
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GENE BEERY
Carcass After Dissection of the Rational Animal
1960
Oil on cardboard with latex, steel wool, rope & staples
56 x 40 x 1 ½ in
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BERNARD BUFFET
The Studio
1953
Oil on canvas, framed
24 x 15 in
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DAN BURKHART
Entombment, The Last Gasp
1979-91
Oil on canvas
82 x 55 ¾ in
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REG BUTLER
Figure In Space
1957-58
Bronze #6/8
36 x 36 x 21 in
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ALBERTO GIACOMETTI
Annette dans l'Atelier
1956
Lithograph
28 x 24 ½ in
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TETSUMI KUDO
Portrait D'Artiste dans la Crise
1977
Mixed media with birdcage
34 x 16 x 9 in
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RICO LEBRUN
Sleeping Soldier
1949
India ink & charcoal on paper
24 ¾ x 18 ½ in
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ROBERT MALLARY
Leaning Tuxedo Piece
1962
Fabric, resin, steel
110 x 46 x 30 in
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NICHOLAS MARSICANO
Duo
1956
Oil on canvas
63 x 51 in
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MARYAN
Personage With Donkey Ears
1964
Oil on canvas
50 x 50 in
image 21
ROBERTO MATTA
Figure In Torment
1950
Pastel on paper
28 ½ x 36 in
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PAUL MCCARTHY
Pot Head (Gold)
2003
Silicon, wood, steel
32 x 58 x 50 in
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JONATHAN MEESE
Susse Babycalamarie Stuehard
2007
Oil and mixed media on canvas
19 ¾ x 15 ¾ in
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JOYCE PENSATO
Abominable Snow Mickey
1995
Enamel on linen
90 x 72 in
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RICHARD PRINCE
Britney Spears
(The Bitch of the Bunch)
2000
Conte crayon, felt pen, ballpoint pen & pencil on paper
14 x 11 in
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THEODORE ROSAK
Rite of Passage
1952-53
Nickel-silver brazed on steel
50 ½ x 26 x 13 in
image 27
ANTONIO SAURA
Retrato de Audrey Hepburn
1974
Mixed media on photographic background
10 x 8 in
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NICOLA TYSON
Self Portrait Dancing
2000
Acrylic on linen
74 x 52 in
Press Release

Reception: Wednesday, June 25, 6-8 pm

Gering & López Gallery is pleased to present No Images of Man curated by Mitchell Algus. The exhibition will feature work by twenty internationally renowned artists:

Karel Appel
Miriam Beerman
Gene Beery
Bernard Buffet
Dan Burkhart
Reg Butler
Alberto Giacometti
Tetsumi Kudo
Rico Lebrun
Robert Mallary
Nicholas Marsicano
Maryan
Roberto Matta
Paul McCarthy
Jonathan Meese
Joyce Pensato
Richard Prince
Theodore Roszak
Antonio Saura
Nicola Tyson

"First there was the Museum of Modern Art's 'New Images of Man' exhibition. I had rather hoped we would be spared another such foray into the banalities of crackpot existentialism… but no such luck."
-Hilton Kramer, The New York Times, October 28, 1973

In 1959 the Museum of Modern Art presented New Images of Man, an exhibition of recent imagist art from Europe and the United States assembled by the expatriate German art historian Peter Selz. Coming at a time when Abstract Expressionism was ascendant and figurative work widely viewed as retrograde, the show seemed a twisted paragon of high-minded humanism for a traumatized cold war world. Reviews were almost uniformly negative.1 Writing in The New Yorker Robert Coates found the show "so capricious and so far from representing any broad, true impression of the atmosphere of today that it is hardly worthwhile going into any critical appraisal of it." Manny Farber said in Art News that "[r]ather than being the 'long awaited' answer to Abstract-Expressionism, the Museum's monster show is confusion with wishful thinking buried under its sentimental hide." Notable in his lonely praise was The New York Times' John Canaday who stated earnestly and outright: "this is an important exhibition…it demonstrates that the cultivation of expressive imagery by artists who have seemed isolated from one another has been a pervasive constant in contemporary painting and sculpture."

The figurative expressionism, which characterized New Images of Man, is indeed a persistent leitmotif, not only in the art being made after World War II but also recurring since with regularity – and varying degrees of empathy and enmity – despite wanton shifts in focus and rationale.

The current exhibition is reprise, reconsideration and sequel. Giacometti, Butler, Appel, Lebrun and Roszak were in the original 1959 MoMA show. Saura, whose anguished paintings made in Franco's post-war Spain echoed similar concerns, was central to Frank O'Hara's follow-up MoMA exhibition of 1960, New Spanish Painting and Sculpture. Through the 1960s artists like Mallary, Maryan, Marsicano and Beerman manifested deep, oblique, and déclassé existential concerns, often tinged with an absurdism made overt in the work of Beery and Kudo. Today, McCarthy, Meese, Prince, Pensato, Tyson and Burkhart demonstrate that ecstatic transgression and deliriously misanthropic humanism continue to be odd and interesting bedfellows.

1. Dennis Raverty, Critical Perspectives on "New Images of Man", Art Journal, Winter 1994


-Mitchell Algus

Mitchell Algus, a long-time presence in the New York art world, currently has a gallery on West 25th Street in Manhattan. He opened his first gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1989 with Licha Jimenez. In 1992, he moved the gallery to Thompson Street in Soho where it remained until 2001, when he relocated to the current space in Chelsea. The gallery has exhibited work by Harold Stevenson, Lee Lozano, Betty Tompkins, Peter Young, Bill Bollinger, Jack Smith, Martha Wilson, Judith Bernstein, Agustin Fermandez, Joan Semmel, Wojciech Fangor, Boyd Rice, among many others. Since getting a doctoral degree in physical geography from McGill University in 1986, Algus has not only pursued his interests in art but has also maintained a career as a teacher of science in New York City.

Summer gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10am to 6pm and Monday by appointment. For more information and images please contact Lauren Cicione at 646.336.7183.

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