September 3 - Natalie Frank
Artist's Talk

Ms. Frank is a rising star whose radically figurative paintings are both dramatic and elusive.  She received a MFA from Columbia and has had two solo shows in New York most recently at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, in 2007.

September 10 - Crispin Sartwell
"The Politics of Pleasure: Beauty, Truth, and Totalitarianism in Modern Art"

"Crispin Sartwell has written a classic book on experiencing the world aesthetically. It is rich with real examples and personal knowledge of the way each of the six names of beauty discloses a different mode of beauty's meaning in human life. The book has the clarity and acuity of philosophy at its best, without jargon or dogma or the kind of heaviness that typically weighs down the discussion of what should be marvelous to think about. I enjoyed it greatly, and would recommend it as an antidote to those that believe aesthetics is marginal or minor, and a treat for those who realize that beauty is what gives value to life at its best."

-Arthur C. Danto, Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University, and author of The Abuse of Beauty

September 17 - Eleanor Heartney
"Art Today - Tales of plastic surgery, genetically altered rabbits, and other acts of art"

Art & Today (Phaidon, 2008) ) is the most comprehensive survey of contemporary art of the past three decades. The book's original thematic organization gives a welcome order to the flux of contemporary art. Over four hundred of the most significant contemporary artists from around the world are represented, including emerging as well as established figures. The book's lively, straightforward, and authoritative writing makes the volume a perfect introduction to contemporary art for students in the field as well as anyone interested in the subject. This book is the follow-up to Phaidon's extremely successful Art Today.

September 24 - Klaus Ottmann
"What is Art?"

"In order to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease considering it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life."
--Leo Tolstoy, "What Is Art?" (1896)
           
Today's conflation of art, commerce, and entertainment is shifting the attention from galleries and museums to auction-result headlines and society pages; with the critical debate on art increasingly turning into complacency with economic globalization. 

The art market now encompasses New York, Beijing and Shanghai, London, Dubai, Berlin, Mexico City, and Mumbai. While globalization can benefit local situations, in this case, artists working in geographical regions previously ignored by curators, critics, and galleries, it can also dilute local traditions. Much of the new art that is entering the global art market appears to be “emptied of soul” –-- it is mere commodity, and having no roots in local traditions, it is out of place without ever being in place.

Klaus Ottmann has curated over forty exhibitions internationally, including SITE Santa Fe’s Sixth International Biennial. He is the Robert Lehman Adjunct Curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York, and the author of The Genius Decision and the Postmodern Condition and The Essential Mark Rothko.

October 1 - Barry Schwabsky
"Object or Project? A Critic's Reflections on the Ontology of Art"

Barry Schwabsky is the author of many works of art criticism, including The Widening Circle: Consequences of Modernism in Contemporary Art (Cambridge University Press) and contributions to the volumes Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting (Phaidon Press), Jessica Stockholder (Phaidon Press), and Gillian Wearing: Mass Observation (Merrill Publishers). He writes regularly for Artforum and other publications and has taught at New York University, Yale University, and Goldsmiths College, University of London, among others.

October 8 - Anna-Louise Kratzsch
Curator's talk: "New German Figurative Painting"

Anna-Louise Kratzsch is Curator of the LIA - Leipzig International Art Programme gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mbH

October 15 - Jansson Stegner
Artist's talk

Throughout Stegner’s paintings is a sense of punk-ish aggression, where the authority is questioned, subverted, and manipulated both through his subject matter and ‘slack’ style of painting, which contrive a taboo intimacy from generic emblems of power.

October 22 - Lesley Dill
Artist’s talk

Ms. Dill is an eminent figurative artist whose sculptures and installations place the feminist discourse of the body in fresh focus.  Her work has long engaged with the written language as a historical touchstone. Most recently the work was connected in unexpected ways to  poems by Emily Dickinson. She is represented in New York by George Adams gallery and her work is in the collections of museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

October 29 - Thomas Woodruff
Artist's talk

On “Freak Parade”: Thomas Woodruff was still in his twenties when he collaborated with avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson on the decor for his opera Edison. A former tattoo artist, his artwork spans an incredible range of techniques, appearances, and emotions. The complexity of his enterprise reaches a new high with the paintings in this book -- his most ambitious project, five years in the making. Beyond their fanatical visual complexity and impact, these creations embody the metaphysical sense of what it means to be a "freak" -- those who by circumstances of birth or choice are outside of the norm, vilified, misunderstood, feared, and demonized. The strange hybrids that appear in these paintings parade their elaborate beauty and dignity with a vengeance, celebrating the essential right to be different.

November 5 - Terrie Sultan, Director, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton
Discussion of the history and future of this venerable institution

Terrie Sultan was previously the director of Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston before assuming this new post in April of 2008.  She is the author of 40 publications, including “Chuck Close: Process and Collaboration” and the upcoming book, “Damaged Romanticism.” She will oversee the relocation and expansion of the Parrish. The new $70 million project, designed by the internationally-renowned architecture firm of Herzog & de Meuron, will offer expanded space for the museum’s permanent collection, as well as improve upon the museum’s resources for special exhibitions, public programming and education.

November 12 - Jerome Witkin
Artist's talk

Jerome Witkin is regarded to be amongst the pre-imminent contemporary figurative artists today.  Known for his large scale paintings, Witkin also demonstrates tremendous poignancy and skill as a draftsman. Inspired by a broad range of subjects as he addresses intimate figure studies and portraits, as well as urban landscapes, Jerome Witkin has been hailed by artists, critics and art historians alike, likened to Lucien Freud, Manet, Ingres, and Goya for both his technical mastery and psychological insight.  Art historian Donald Kuspit, called Witkin's works "dreams in the grand visionary manner of the Old Masters" . . . painted with the rhapsodic abandon of pure sensation . . . unequivocal masterpieces." Indeed, art critic Kenneth Baker has declared that "Witkin's only peer is Lucien Freud."

Jerome Witkin's works are included in many major museum collections internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and many more." - Jack Ruthberg Gallery

*Friday, November 21 - Jonas Burgert
Artist's talk

Berlin based artists has shown work in many exhibitions including Rohkunstbau at Stipendiaten in Berlin, Geschichtenerzähler at Hamburg Kunsthalle and Dis-Positiv at Staatsbank in Berlin. Burgert has exhibited internationally at museums and galleries such as Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Beirut and Villa Manin, Passariano, Italy and was part of the Malerei Biennale in Stockholm in 2003. He is represented by Produzentengalerie in Hamburg.

December 3
"Ecstasy and Agony- art and madness in the studio”
Lecture by Catherine Howe

December 10 - David Altmejd
Artist's Talk

David Altmejd was born in 1974 in Montreal. He earned a B.F.A. from the University of Quebec in Montreal (1998) and an M.F.A. from Columbia University in New York (1991). Galerie SKOL in Montreal hosted his first solo exhibition in 1998. With a repertoire of incongruous elements (handcrafted werewolf heads and limbs, Stars of David, crystals, mirrors, fake hair, junk jewelry), Altmejd fashions intricate sculptural environments that call to mind miniature stage sets, museum dioramas, architectural models, and reliquaries. He most recently exhibited in New York, May, 2008,with a solo show at Andrea Rosen gallery.