The title Entropvisions is in homage to my mother, the poet and art critic, Harriet Zinnes. In 1990 New Directions published a collection of her poems titled Entropisms, a word she made-up combining entropy - the tendency toward disorder - and tropism - the growth towards or away from a stimulus. Similarly, my short reviews combine entropy and tropism by suggesting growth towards a vision of art from the chaos of the art world. Through the back door, my title also pays homage to my physicist father, Irving Zinnes, whose long discussions with my mom got her thinking about entropy and tropism in the first place.
Although
usually thought of as a representational painter of flowers, and urban
and rural landscapes, as an artist of the New York School in the 1950’s
Jane Freilicher made gloriously colored semi-abstract paintings, and
some of these relatively large paintings, made between 1958-1962, are on
view at Kasmin Gallery
through April 22. This is must-see show for anyone who loves color and
light. Though clearly responses to specific places – the sea is a
common theme – the power of the
paintings lies in the movement of color, of the light and air created by
color, of the gestures created by the color. Sometimes open with vast
empty spaces of void, sometimes dense and heavy, sometimes joyful dance,
and sometimes contractions of dense energy, the varied marks use color
to surprise and console, to express mood and depict remembered
sensations of place.