Old New Yorker, New New Yorker

Sometime last year, the New Yorker reduced “Goings On about Town” to “Goings On” and fit it onto a single page. On January 1^st of this year, I noticed there was not a single listing for the visual arts. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to the NYer to find out what was “goin’ on”, but still.
I mentioned this to a few artist friends and got a few shrugs in return.

After all, there are places online that are much more thorough in the listing of art shows. (Shout out to Two Coats of Paint Gallery Guide.)
But wouldn’t a person have to have a special interest in the arts to know about Two Coats?
It does suggest that a general audience, even a sophisticated one, is not very interested in the visual arts. That same audience will travel to the remotest corners of the boroughs to sample a taco from a truck on a highway or a single raw piece of tuna “mirror glazed in stone-fruit vinegar” on a square of kombu in a warehouse.* Maybe that’s because the true poets have all become food critics–where they can be more honest, you know. Or maybe it’s that the chefs do care about their audience. Something to think about maybe.

In the fall of 1979, when I moved to New York, there were listings of 35 solo shows and 18 group shows, not including the museums, in the September 4^th issue. Each show had an exegetic statement of no more than three sentences. They are hype-less, uncannily descriptive and witty.

From the September 24, 1979 issue:

“Louise Bourgeois—Pole-like carved-wood sculptures dated 1942 to 1952.

Phyllis Bramson—Colored drawings in which simple narratives get depicted, usually on a stage—the fall of Eve, for instance.

Paul Jenkins—This artist is known for pouring acrylics onto a canvas and tilting it this way and that to get the effects he wants. In these new canvases, he brushes the paint on instead. The background is snowy white and the colors are explosive.

Peter Flaccus—The artist’s personal stamp is an oblong emblem, variously colored that he painted on the background of his earlier works to break up an otherwise more or less solid color surface. In these new works the emblems are the same in shape but have increased in size and number and now dominate the background rather than accent it.

Joyce Kozloff—A sumptuous environment that takes up the whole space and has a Middle Eastern atmosphere.

Louise Fishman—Abstract architectural forms, evocative of doorways and windows, by an artist who apples the oil with a palette knife.

Frank Lincoln Viner—Delicate hanging constructions of reeds, straw, cloth, wire, paint and so on, inspired (recognizably in most cases) by such marine creatures as shrimp, spiral sea worms and Portuguese men-o-war.”

This is why people read the magazine cover to cover including all the listings. For moments like “pole-like carved-wood sculptures” “tilting it this way and that” and “reeds, straw, cloth, wire, paint and so on,” The tone was not reverent— which can be so cloying these days; they weren’t copying the press release, trying to “sell it” or urging you to take your vitamins; they were trying to give an accurate physical description and by the way, amuse. There was an assumption that the viewer might be intelligent enough to make up their own mind by going to see the work.

The short reviews were not attributed but what a great training ground for critics and a source of income. Anybody know who wrote them?

—CNQ

The New Yorker, Jan. 29, 2024:

Tables for Two: Ilis