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.
Stanley Lewis at Betty Cuningham Gallery
2022.5.15
What a powerful voice is that of Stanley Lewis. Thank you Betty Cuningham Gallery for the official art-world recognition he has deserved for decades - certainly since I've known him, and I've known him a long time. He was one of my first teachers, the summer of New York's major blackout. Throughout what was probably a 3-hour evening drawing class at The Studio School, Stanley had pumped us into a frenzied concentration. Finally he proclaimed "We have five more minutes. The last five minutes can make or break it. Give it all you can!" And at that moment the room went dark. I truly felt it was the power of Stanley's passions that had exploded the circuitry. That passion and power remain flowing through the paintings and drawings in what I think is Stanley's best show. The first thing I was struck with was the force of space thrusting back and permeating every painterly move. But immediately Stanley's determination to create space was articulated even further through the bumps in the underlying canvas support and the digs into the paint. Even the drawings were made on mountainous surfaces, along with slashes into the deep pencil marks. I highly recommend a visit to this powerful show, up through July 1. In my photos are details of the preceding painting, to give a sense of the literally 3-dimensional construction of a Stanley Lewis work of art.
Notice the painting is not quite
floating in the frame but being
supported by the frame's bottom
ledge