Revisions and resurrections: “The Silo” curated by Raphael Rubinstein at Garth Greenan

Getting recognition in the art world is difficult, but remaining relevant over the course of a lifetime is nearly impossible. Raphael Rubinstein is fascinated by old art magazines from the 1960s and 1970s, where he finds images of work by artists who were once widely admired but have fallen off the art world�s radar. “I can�t quite explain the strange allure of vintage art magazines, though I think it may have something to do with the satisfaction of knowing what people back then didn�t: which artists were destined for fame, which critics would be proved embarrassingly wrong, etc.� he wrote in a recent essay. �I�d see a reproduction in an old Artforum article or an ad with work reproduced in Arts Magazine or Art in America and think how contemporary the sculptures looked.”

[Image at top: Jonathan Borofsky, Untitled, 1978, ink on paper]

Gene Beery, Note, 1970, acrylic on canvas

This month Garth Greenan is hosting a show of the same title that includes work by 29 of the artists whose work Rubinstein has featured on his blog. They range far and wide: Europeans who came of age in the 1960s and have had impressive careers in Paris but have never been widely known in the United States; Americans whose work was overlooked during the onslaught of Abstract Expressionism; and outliers like Gene Beery and Llyn Foulkes who have never fit comfortably into dominant trends. Some of the artists, in Rubinstein’s mind, are simply under-recognized or misinterpreted.

The exhibition, hung in a loose salon style, comprises mainly small work. So presented, it scans as a diary or scrapbook, or perhaps Rubinstein�s private collection. (Although Rubinstein borrowed most of the work in the show from galleries and artists, he does in fact collect artists� books; the publications located in the vitrine near the gallery entrance are from his own stash.) The personal feel of the exhibition is warm and charming. It induced me look more closely at the work, read the text, and imagine the circumstances of each piece�s creation.

The idea that there are alternative narratives to those that critics and art historians have crystallized is a compelling one and seems to be gaining currency. Dushko Petrovich recently wrote an essay in ArtNews noting the recent curatorial inclination to put dead artists alongside emerging artists in contemporary surveys like “Greater New York” and the 2014 Whitney Biennial, which he dubbed the  ‘Biennial of the Dead.”