INSIDE:
Raleigh on Film; Bethune on Theatre; Behrens on Music; Profile: Cornelia Seckel; Reviews: Eugene Ludins & Anthony Panzera at Dorsky; Seckel on the Cultural Scene; Trevens on Dance; New Art Books; Short Fiction & Poetry; Extensive Calendar of Events…and more!
ART TIMES
Vol. 28 No. 5
March/ April 2012
Eugene Ludins: An American Fantasist
Courtesy: ART TIMES Collection
Courtesy: Estate of Eugene Ludins
at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art
Courtesy: ART TIMES Collection
Untitled Drawing undated ink wash and graphite on paper
several vitrines displaying memorabilia, For those of us who photographs, and sketchbooks. couldn’t perform Lest you think that Eugene Ludins was that feat, visiting merely a jokester and producer of comic this exhibition is Untitled Drawing undated ink and wash on paper Family Portrait, 1934, Oil on canvas, 54 x 46 in. caricatures, be assured that he was first the next best thing. and foremost a painter. This is perhaps It was in his drawings that Ludins By RAYMOND J. STEINER mirror into Wonderland. To casually most evident in his use of color — for when ONE IS TEMPTED to ask if Eugene slough him off as just one more “surre- seemed to really “let himself go” — here you make that first step into his land of Ludins’ last name was derived from the alist” or some such glib catchphrase, is we see the Magister Ludi at his best. Althe absurd you cannot but help to be capthough they are obviously little vignettes Latin word ludi — “game”. I kind of doubt simply a too-easy pigeonholing of a talent tivated by richly-hued landscapes, skies, it, but if there was ever a “Magister Ludi” that defies easy categorization. Titles of — a party, a picnic, a gathering of friends, mountains and fields. If at times, even — or “master of the games” — it would paintings or drawings do little or nothing a couple of lovers or friends walking his use of color does not “make sense” it together — there would almost always surely be the man I’d come to know after to “clear things up.” If Ludins began as always delights the eye. Give yourself a gift profiling him nearly thirty years ago in an American realist, it did not take long be a ludicrous element included, some — even a casual stroll through this exhibihis Woodstock studio. A quick wit but a for him to wander off into becoming — as unexpected gesture or facial expression tion will reward the viewer with a welcome gentle critic, he loved to ‘collect’ his wife’s Leval notes — an American fantasist. that would stop you in your tracks: one recess from a world that can sometimes be or both walkers stark naked (“Couple”); inadvertent witticisms to share with oth- Bodies, faces, buildings, landscapes, on overwhelmingly too predictable. ers, for example when he told a group of us closer inspection seem to lose perspective, a man kneeling alongside a dog eyeing about her old cranky old Hoover Vacuum proportion — at times — simple common a bone next to a dish (“Bone of Conten*“Eugene Ludins: An American FanCleaner: “Well,” she said, “at least it’s sense. If rooted in some piece of reality tion”); a cockamamie construction with tasist” (thru Jul 12): Samuel Dorsky better than nothing.” Gene would give that might have confronted Ludins, he both clothed and naked people working Museum of Art, The State University that impish grin and say, “’Vacuum’ — would soon turn a vista, a group of people on it (“Live Sculpture with Sculptor”; a of New York at New Paltz, One Hawk disheveled painter in front of his easel ‘nothing’. Get it?” in case the slow ones — whatever — into something dreamlike. Drive, New Paltz, NY (875) 257-3844. missed the unintended verbal pun. Susana “To Space”, at first glance, appears to in- with three disgruntled women nearby A fully-illustrated catalog of the same Torruella Leval, curator and author of the clude a space capsule — but includes two (“Untitled Drawing”) — and so on, and so name accompanies the exhibit. www. on. The exhibition, which covers several catalog accompanying the exhibit*, gives hugging couples nearby and a mish-mash newpaltz.edu/museum for more inrooms and comprises some 60 paintings a complete account of Ludins’s life and of gadgets attached to the spacecraft that formation. ef career (dubbing him an “American fanta- looks anything but technically feasible. In and 20 drawings, is complemented by sist”, an apt name for an artist — a man “Regenerator” we see some kind of out— who never seemed to allow a whimsy go landish contraption — a “regenerator” I CSS Publications, Inc. Support the Arts; to waste) so I will concentrate my remarks suppose — composed of pulleys, columns, PO Box 730 Enrich your Life on the exhibition. stove pipes, vases and unknown objects Mt. Marion, NY 12456-0730 It does not take very many steps into with a scantily-clad woman alongside and, www.arttimesjournal.com 845-246-6944 the gallery before you begin to feel that a little distance away, a group of naked and you’ve stepped into another land, another dressed people along a river- or lake-bank. dimension where distortion reigns and His wife Hannah, once said to me, “Don’t disorientation begins — sort of like a leap you wish you could look into his head?” through Alice’s (in this case, Ludins’s)
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