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Aaron Siskind at galleryKayafas, studio furniture at the MFA
BY RANDI HOPKINS
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Aaron Siskind’s astute eye and poetic sensibility led him to create photographs that had a great impact on the art of his times, from his works documenting life in Harlem in the early 1930s to the increasingly abstract, metaphoric vision he pursued beginning later that decade, preceding and influencing his close friends Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock in their painters’ exploration of Abstract Expressionism. This year would have marked Siskind’s 100th birthday, and this Friday, to celebrate the occasion, galleryKayafas — the South End’s excellent new photography venue — is opening an extensive selection of his works beginning in 1930 and continuing to just before his death in 1991, in "Aaron Siskind: Six Decades of Photographs." Siskind is probably best remembered for his powerful images of two-dimensional surfaces, which include rock walls in Martha’s Vineyard, peeling paint and paper on building walls, architectural façades, and tar patches on the highway. It was these seemingly abstract photographs that caught the attention of the young painters in New York in the 1940s, and Siskind was the only photographer included in the famed "Ninth Street Show" of 1951, the seminal event of Abstract Expressionism (and Leo Castelli’s fledgling American curatorial effort, before he opened his first gallery). Siskind was an important teacher as well as an artist, at the Institute of Design in Chicago and later at the Rhode Island School of Design, from 1971 to 1976; he was known not only for his passion for shape, texture, and scale but also for his strong social conscience and his lively interactions with the people in his life. Gus Kayafas, student, friend, and colleague of Siskind’s for 20 years, will be at the gallery on Saturday to speak about him. The past half-century has also been a productive period in American furniture design, starting with the "America at Home" display at the New York World’s Fair in 1940, where millions were introduced to the finely crafted, one-of-a-kind furniture of Wharton Esherick, the founder of what has come to be called the American studio furniture movement. American studio furniture — defined as high-end, custom-made work produced in small shops — is the subject of "The Maker’s Hand: American Studio Furniture, 1940–1990," which opens at the Museum of Fine Arts this Wednesday, and the exciting range of work — from the sleek modernist pieces of the ’40s and ’50s to the freewheeling, expressive examples from the ’60s and on to the innovations of the ’70s and ’80s — merges high-minded æsthetics with practical concerns in a way that anyone who’s ever sat on a sofa can relate to. The Boston area is rightly proud of its ongoing contribution to studio furniture design; this exhibition includes witty, enchanting work by local favorites Judy Kensley McKie and Mitch Ryerson that you may want to take home with you. And on the art/theater front: Genovese/Sullivan Gallery is hosting the first public reading of a new one-man, one-act show by my fellow Phoenix art critic Christopher Millis, who is also a widely published poet and playwright and the author of three Off Broadway productions. Splitting Image tells the story of one man’s reluctant discovery as a family secret moves out of the past to reveal itself as central in the writer’s own life. It will have its first public reading next Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Genovese/Sullivan. "Aaron Siskind: Six Decades of Photographs" is at galleryKayafas, 450 Harrison Avenue in the South End, November 7 through 29, with an opening reception on November 7 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and a conversation with Gus Kayafas on November 8 from 2 to 3:30 p.m.; call (617) 482-0411. "The Maker’s Hand: American Studio Furniture, 1940–1990" is at the Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, November 12 through February 8; call (617) 267-9300. "Splitting Image" will be performed at Genovese/Sullivan Gallery, 27 Thayer Street in the South End, on November 14 at 7:30 p.m. The performance is free, but reservations are required; call (617) 426-9738.
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