Hunterian Gallery, University
of Glasgow until January 12, 2020
If every picture tells a
story, this first instalment of a major donation to the Hunterian by New
York based curator and collector Phillip A. Bruno has anecdotes immortalised in
every frame. For over sixty years, the Paris-born former co-director of the
Staempfli and Marlborough galleries in New York has amassed a personal treasure
trove of largely American contemporary artists, many of whom he’s curated
various shows.
With his ninetieth
birthday looming, Bruno has now brought some 74 paintings, sculptures, drawings
and prints to his second home in Glasgow. While only a quarter of the gifted
works feature in this initial showcase, the selection becomes a trailer of
sorts for those still in boxes waiting to be unwrapped.
In the meantime, there
are stories aplenty by Japanese artist Masayuki Nagare, who made works that sat
beside the World Trade Centre, and whose granite sculpture, Bachi (1974), now
looks like an accidental survivor. Tom Otterness’s Maquette for Crying Giant (2002)
is a response to 9/11 that also sired a much bigger version that currently sits
in Kansas.
The oldest work on show is Jacques Villon’s
George Braque inspired aqua-tint, Still Life (1923), which nestles next to the
most recent, Alan Magee’s Pebbles and Pencil (2006). Inbetween, Jose Luis
Cuevos’ Portrait of David Siquerios (1953) captures the Mexican artist’s mentor, with
Red Grooms’ Portrait of Francis Bacon (1999) doing something similar.
Joseph Glasco’s Head
(1956) is more abstract, while the watercolour sunbather in Coney Island (1969)
by some-time New York Review of Books illustrator David Levine, and the
shadow-dancers at play in Bill Jacklin’s Bathers, Coney Island (1991) show two
sides of the same landscape. Vincent Desiderio moves things indoors into the
anticipation-heavy scarlet room of Study for Romance and Reunion (1991)
More abstractions come
in Night Court (1954) by Lee Gatch, the collages of newspaper small ads in
William Dole’s Untitled (1970) and the Coleridge inspired Pleasure Dome (1952)
by Robert Andrew Parker, who was the hand double for Kirk Douglas in Vincente
Minelli’s 1956 Vincent Van Gogh bio-pic, Lust for Life. In the centre of the room, Leroy Lamie’s
light-box based Construction 108 (1965) beams out a voguishly plastic blue and
green glow.
Many of the works are
etched with hand-written dedications to Bruno, while a small selection of
ephemera includes a signed poster by Red Grooms, a ticket to Lust for Life and an
Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup rosette and badge. All of which sums up a gift that
is just part of the story of Bruno’s life in art. With so much more to come, it
is a gift that looks set to keep on giving.
Scottish Art News, November / Autumn 2019
ends
Comments