“Deborah Kass: feel good paintings for feel bad times,” Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York. Through Oct. 13.
Artnet critic Charlie Finch wallows in the Deborah Kass opening: “A fetid, humid Friday evening didn�t stop hordes of middle-aged admirers from pouring into the non-air-conditioned Paul Kasmin Gallery to view Deborah Kass� triumphant show of ‘happy’ pictures. We spied Marilyn Lerner, Matthew Abbott, Chrysanne Stachacos, Kathe Burckhardt, Laurie Thomas, Lisa Hoke and many other veterans marveling at Deborah steamrolling back into splendor. Slimmed-down lovers Kass and Pattie Cronin looked as if they had held up a beauty parlor, after mugging Oscar de la Renta. The middle years have never been so desirable.”Read more. In an earlier artnet essay, Finch says the Kass exhibition demonstrates that galleries, anticipating a market crash, are showing more interest in seasoned, mid-career artists. “Deborah Kass, a.k.a. ‘The Broadway Baby,’ epitomizes the paradigm. She triumphantly opens with a show of pop painting chronicles this week at Paul Kasmin Gallery, with the powerful joint backing of Kasmin and Andymeister Vincent Fremont, after years without representation, and a creative struggle to get from under her self-created identity as Andy with a vagina.” Read more.
