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Phyllis Bramson: "Love, Kisses, Tears (and Heartache!) St. Louis Post-Dispatch Get Out

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Don artists from Chicago have a more unobstructed pipeline to the unconscious than artists elsewhere? Chicago artists have a tendency to explore a dreamland where the depraved rubs up against the obsessed and taste is a consideration best left to others. The Philip Slein Gallery is the local showcase of Chicago School surrealism. The latest artist to be featured is Phyllis Bramson, who writes that her paintings are "ruminations about submerged eroticism played out against operatic opulence, refined and dressed to reflect the terrible melancholy of nostalgia and loss." Whoa! Bramso will be at the opening, so you will be able to ask her about her libidinal imagery. Also: In its middle gallery, Slein will reprise a nice idea from last year: 40 (small) works of art by 40 artists local and national. Included will be more works from the Windy City.

Black Line Fever! -David Bonetti, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Attention "Da Vinci Code" fans: Bill Kreplin's paintings at the Slein Gallery are based on legends of the Holy Grail given a "Da Vinci Code" twist. For those not up on either the Knights of the Round Table or Dan Brown's best-seller, the back story: The grail was the cup Jesus passed around the table to his disciples at the Last Supper. Later, Joseph of Arimathea caught Jesus' blood in it as he hung on the cross. During the Middle Ages, knights sought it in all sorts of unlikely places, giving rise to narratives of heroism and devotion that are still read today. Among the knights associated with the quest for the Holy Grail was Parsifal. Kreplin has painted two pictures of the knight, one of him as a young man receiving his mission to retrieve the grail, the other of him as an adult in ecstasy at the sight of it. Kreplin's images are not historicist; there are no knights in shining armor mounted on noble steeds. He has appropriated media images from the time of his youth, the 1950s. The adult Parsifal is a businessman wearing a trench coat and fedora. His arms are open at his side like those of St. Francis in Giovanni Bellini's painting "The Ecstasy of St. Francis" at the Frick Museum. Through a window, the ziggurat roofline of the civil courts locates him in downtown St. Louis. What makes the picture provocative, however, is that the sight that apparently leads Parsifal to ecstasy is not of the Holy Grail but of a shop window filled with women's high heels. "Magdalene and the Freemasons," which shows Mary Magdalene playing pingpong in a basement rec room, alone with several men, has a few Brownian twists. The picture abounds in Masonic symbols. You probably need to have read the book (which I haven't) to know that Brown promotes the heresy that Magdalene was Christ's wife and the mother of his child. Whether you buy the (bad) theology or the richly reinterpreted legend or not, you might find the paintings appealing. Crisply printed on canvas in the giclée technique, the images are delineated like those in a coloring book with broad painted blocks of flat color that do not always conform to the printed shapes' contours. The results are graphically bold yet airy. They make you want to pop open a bottle of Pepsi or maybe put a Chet Baker LP on the hi-fi. In the middle gallery, Cameron Fuller's paintings come out of another aesthetic world altogether, but Slein has grouped them with Kreplin's on the basis of their common use of a black line. Fuller's work, too, is based on legends: Grimm's fairy tales. You might not recognize the stories in the work, which might not really matter all that much. Fuller's work is all about bravura technique and presentation. His paintings are centerpieces of compositions made with black masking tape that move out across the gallery's walls, creating an enveloping work. The story "The Bear and the Willow-Wren" is the source of Fuller's current work, which abounds in kid-friendly animal imagery. Among other things, there are six small pictures of birds arranged as if each bird is sitting on the branch of a tree painted directly on the wall.

Washington University Professor Leax Gets Award-Saint Louis Post-Dispatch

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Washington University Professor Ronald Leax has won the 2008 Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association. Leax, a sculptor who explores the differences and similiarities between scientific and artistic disciplines, has taught sculpture at Washington University since 1986. The award will be given on Feb. 21st in Dallas at the CAA's annual conference, the largest annual gathering of artists, art historians, students and art professionals in the United States.

RIVERFRONT TIMES BEST LOCAL ARTIST --TOM HUCK

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Ask printmaker Tom Huck what fuels his work --large, meticulously detailed woodcuts, always grotesque and often violent --and the 36 year old artist doesn't mince words. It's all about revenge. Huck still smarts when he thinks about his adolescence in rural Potosi, Missouri. Few people thoguht he would make it as an artist; few people cared about his art, period. They were far more concerned about the Potosi High School football team (on which he played defensive line man). Huck's is a simmering revenge, though. He carves it out day by day, square inch by square inch. A single woodcut can take months to complete, but the finished product is a remarkable work. His two major suites of prints, " 2 Weeks in August" and "The Bloody Bucket" aren't merely dark, dark satires of his hometown's small-mindedness. They are also historical documents of a uniquely American time and place. But maybe the surest sign of Huck's rapidly rising stature is his own ambition. His new suite, "Booger Stew," is a series of triptychs that he projects will take fifteen years to complete. These woodcuts will be bigger than anything he has carved, the subject of his satire much broader: religion, reality TV, the culture of beauty. Huck owns St. Louis. America's next.

Apocalyptic View

Sunday, September 23, 2007

By David Bonetti The figurative tradition of the Chicago Imagists is alive in the work of Chicagoan Don Colley, who is showing drawings and unusual glazed porcelain "paintings" at the Philip Slein Gallery. Colley exhibits an apocalyptic view of the world in his series "Coulrotopia," a neologism meaning "clown's utopia." Colley's clowns are mean and violent, killing zebras and each other and wreaking havoc on the circus back lot. One of the most disturbing, "Backlit," shows a yellow-haired man wearing a tutu and wielding a rifle with which he has just shot a man in the head. In the background, a brightly lighted carousel looms. In "Western Light," a clown with "deviant" tattooed to the back of his neck is silhouetted against a lurid sunset. You are meant to see it as allegory: The sun is setting on Western civilization. Slein also is showing Michael Krueger and Lisa Bulawsky, who also use the figure for allegorical purposes. Krueger creates dreamlike images that seem to come from slightly demented children's books — his color-pencil drawings show the influence of outsider artist Henry Darger. His best piece here, "WSB, Ten Years After," shows William Burroughs standing in a red field of mushrooms and lilies of the valley. On his back are not a monkey, but a giant grasshopper and butterfly. Bulawsky, who teaches in the printmaking department at Washington University, also seems to be in an apocalyptic mode. Her mixed-media imagery includes marching soldiers and 19th century wigs. Is she suggesting a parallel between the revolution that those hairpieces are associated with and our political situation today?

Philip Slein Gallery Voted Best Gallery

Friday, June 22, 2007

St. Louis Magzine's A List 2007 July 2007 Edition Though there's a unifying aesthetic to the art shown at PHILIP SLEIN GALLERY, we must pronounce it a je ne sais quoi. Slein's artists range in age from their 20s to their mid-90s; they include punk art guy Gary Panter, gig-poster genius Art Chantry, locals on gone to glory like Larry Krone and still-locals who need more glory like Brandon Anschultz. Some of the work is classic Expressionist, some of it's hard-edged inky printmaking. Who cares? As the cliché goes - true in this case - 'it's all good.'"

Get the Picture

Friday, June 15, 2007

Deb Peterson St. Louis Post-Dispatch Mark Buckheit, the Lou's premier picture framer whose customer list reads like a who's who of the local art scene —the St. Louis Art Museum, Washington University's Kemper Museum, the Pulitzer Museum, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery and William Shearburn Gallery, to name a few — will join forces with the Philip Slein Gallery on Washington Avenue. Buckheit will have his shop set up in the gallery in time for the July 6 opening of the "In Memoriam" exhibition for the late artists Arthur Osver and Ernestine Betsberg.

Most Influential St. Louisans

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Saint Louis Business Journal Within the world of commercial art, Philip Slein is the co-owner fo The Philip Slein Gallery, one of the region's hippest and most successful commercial art galleries. Located in the also hip Washington Avenue loft district, the gallery opened in 2003. It shows work by edgy local, regional and national artists. The gallery has become a sort of mecca for area artists, so openings are the place to see everyone who is anyone.

Osver Painting Makes Cover	Thursday, May 24, 2007
St. Louis At Home Magazine cover features Arthur Osver painting in the home of Bill Donius in the March/April issue.

Arthur Osver Sells For Personal Record At Auction	Thursday, May 3, 2007
Chicago, ILL. Leslie Hindman Auctioneers sold Arthur Osver's Cloud Nine 1988, oil on canvas, 48 x 54 inches, for a record setting $24,000.00 on April 29th 2007.

Anschultz Sizzles at White Flag

Friday, March 23, 2007

By David Bonetti Visual Arts Critic, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Upstairs, in the Library, Brandon Anschultz is showing five wood sculptures that promise an interesting new direction for the local painter. Translating his familiar midcenturyish neo-geo abstractions into three-dimensional form creates a whole new ballgame. A fine woodworker, Anschultz has created strange free-standing and table-top works that relate to both surrealism and old-fashioned children's toys. Fortunately, he has not given up his sassy sense of color, and the juxtaposition of acid green spheres and shocking pink cylinders to sensuously shaped blocks of luxurious hard wood is provocative and fun, as always a winning combination.

Slein Time

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

The gallery where Gary Panter, rock ‘n’ roll kids, card-carrying surrealists and arts dowagers converge By Steve Pick St. Louis Magazine Some of the paintings are hung on walls in places fit for viewing; others sit on the floor, awaiting their moments in the spotlight. A new show is being installed, and gallery owners Philip Slein and Tom Bussmann are handling the nuts and bolts themselves. Slein is the public face, but he and Bussmann are equal partners in what has quickly become one of the hippest art galleries in St. Louis. “I was a painter myself,” says Slein, easing into one of the fat, comfortable lounge chairs near the front of the gallery, “and I’d had a bad experience with my big show at a local gallery. It was 2002; the stock market was crashing; it was right after 9/11, so, not surprisingly, the show didn’t go well. In an angry knee-jerk reaction, I announced I was going to open up my own gallery.” Bussmann, a fixture on the St. Louis art scene for 30 years, talked Slein into a business model that would actually work. “I was naïve about the gallery business in St. Louis,” says Slein, “and I thought I could fix up a huge loft space, have a studio, show my own work and show the work of buddies I thought were good. Tom said we really had to do it right and open up a real gallery.” The year, 2003, was a good one to get into the gallery business: The long-running and popular Elliot Smith Contemporary Art was soon to leave St. Louis entirely. Slein, who had managed nonprofit galleries for St. Louis Community College–Forest Park and Washington University—he still runs Wash. U.’s Des Lee Gallery, just a couple of blocks down Washington Avenue from his own—knew plenty of emerging young artists looking to show their work. “We opened up with a big group show of local artists, and the place was packed,” he says. “We thought, ‘This is gonna be great.’ I really had no idea how hard the business was going to be, in St. Louis especially.” Don’t get him wrong: Slein loves St. Louis. Born and raised in Ladue, he now has a loft downtown. “There are great opportunities for artists in St. Louis, especially emerging artists,” he says. “I’ve traveled around, and I couldn’t do what I’m doing anywhere else.” As the gallery has grown, it’s attracted artists from around the country, and Chicago up-and-comers such as Fred Stonehouse mingle with local heroes Tom Huck and Tom Reed. “We show a lot of the edgier stuff,” says Slein. “We are getting a reputation for a comic book–influenced, edgy aesthetic. At the same time, we have to service the conservative, decorative crowd. Just by being approachable, nice guys, we try to break down the thing of being a snobby gallery ... we’re known for having big openings where there is a really diverse group. “Art is supposed to be about being excited, and about looking at stuff,” Slein concludes. “We’re not that out of touch from our student days. We want the kids to come down here. We know they’re not going to buy anything, but if they learn who Fred Stonehouse is, or Michael Byron, that’s great. We want to sell stuff, but to have a scene, to have the kids down here, the rock ’n’ rollers—that’s really important. The scene is diverse ... from the kids to the super-rich people.”

Philip Slein Gallery wins Best Show for 2006!	Sunday, December 31, 2006
BEST SHOW OF A LOCAL ARTIST By David Bonetti Visual Arts Critic, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch Print maker Tom Huck's "Bloody Bucket" at the Philip Slein Gallery was a scabrous tour through the underbelly of rural Missouri, which proved satire is alive and kicking!

Merry XXXmas from the Philip Slein Gallery	Wednesday, December 20, 2006
For our first annual Xmas card, we commissioned our friend Tom Huck to create a drawing that would capture the true spirit of the holiday and Tom delivered --Huck style!

Philip Slein Gallery Recieves 3rd Review in Art in America	Sunday, November 12, 2006
We are pleased to announce that Slein gallery artists, Arthur Osver and Ernestine Betsberg recieved a glowing review in the November 2006 issue of Art in America. Read full review under past exihibition: Osver/Betsberg: Selected Work

Michael Kimmelman NY Times Gushes On Panter

Friday, October 13, 2006

See You In the Funny Papers Michael Kimmelman The New York Times Art Critic Excerpts from the review: ...the show shouldn't be missed. It spotlights artists like Chris Ware and Gary Panter, amazing state-of-the-art talents and endearing in the tradition of all those shy, gifted kids who drew endlessly in their rooms when other kids wouldn't play with them, dreaming about someday telling the world, "I told you so." Mr. Panter, also a virtuoso, but rooted in punk, riffs on Goya and Picasso and Ukiyo-e prints and medieval illuminated manuscripts along with Dick Tracy and the Fantastic Four. His "Jimbo" comics turn Mr. Panter's evangelical past (raised in Texas, a missionary in Belfast), with an evangelist's stress on storytelling, into wild postapocalyptic fantasies. Forget Batman and Robin fantasy. Think Bosch and Blake...

Arthur Osver (1912-2006): Noted painter taught art at Washington University

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

David Bonetti St. Louis Post Dispatch Art Critic Arthur Osver, a popular painter who taught for many years at Washington University, died Monday (July 24, 2006) a day before his 94th birthday at Barnes Jewish Extended Care in Clayton. He was a longtime resident of Webster Groves. Mr. Osver moved to St. Louis in 1960 with his wife, painter Ernestine Betsberg, who survives him. They shared a joint exhibition of their paintings at the Philip Slein Gallery in February. "Arthur left a tremendous legacy because he worked with hundreds of students who have gone on to successful careers," said Jeff Pike, dean of the college and graduate school of art at Washington University. "They remember him with great affection and respect. All of them tell of his and Ernestine's great kindness, even after they left the program." Mr. Osver was lured from New York City by another dean, Kenneth Hudson. He was Hudson's third high-profile hire, following painters Philip Guston and Max Beckmann. Guston, a New York friend who admired Osver's painting, encouraged Mr. Osver to give St. Louis a try. Mr. Osver and Betsberg, who met in 1935 while they were students at the Art Institute of Chicago, had lived in an 1851 farmhouse in Webster Groves since 1962. "They are one of the great love stories of our time," said Philip Slein, their art dealer. Betsberg attributed their staying together for more than 70 years to the fact that they both made paintings. Their work was different. Mr. Osver was an abstractionist. Betsberg never relinquished the figure. But they shared a love for color that they joyously explored in their work. "They offered a good example of a life well-lived," said Paul Shank, a former student and close friend of both Mr. Osver and Betsberg. "The two of them showed students how to live a life in art. They were an enormous inspiration to those who wanted to be artists." Arthur Osver was born in Chicago in 1912. He was educated at Northwestern University and the Art Institute of Chicago, where he won a fellowship that took him to Paris. In 1940, he and Betsberg moved to New York City, settling in Greenwich Village. He taught at both the Brooklyn Museum and Columbia University. In 1948 and 1949, he was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships, and in 1952, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome. Mr. Osver and Betsberg spent much of the 1950s in Rome, a city he claimed to love as a second home. Mr. Osver's paintings are owned by major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York City, plus the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Art Institute of Chicago and the St. Louis Art Museum. In 2000, the St. Louis Art Museum mounted a retrospective of his painting. No memorial service has yet been scheduled. In addition to his wife, among the survivors are a brother, Sam Osver of California.

Tom Huck Voted Hottest Artist in the Lou by Alive Magazine	Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Tom Huck. The huckster from Potosi is a satirist who in his masterful woodcuts skewers the corrupt, hypocritical, stupid, venal, greedy and cruel actions that make human beings human. And considering the current behavior of church and state — a traditional target of satirists from Hogarth to R. Crumb — he has a lot of free material to appropriate for his subject.

Ernestine Betsberg Wins Best Artist 2006 St. Louis Magazine

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Now 96, Ernestine Betsberg has lived and worked in St. Louis for almost half a century. She's not as well known as her husband, painter Arthur Osver, but she's just as talented and accomplished. Under Betsberg's brush, the world is rendered in florid purples, greens, pinks and yellows, and the most ordinary objects-flowers in pots, meat hanging in a butcher shop-turn numinous. She does what an artist should do: She teaches us to really see.

World Famous Designer Creates Logo for Slein	Thursday, June 8, 2006
World famous graphic designer Art Chantry has designed a new logo for the Philip Slein Gallery.

Philip Slein Voted Best Gallery Alive Magazine

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Whether you’re looking for pieces by up-and-coming talent or nationally recognized names, you’ll find inspiration at this gallery owned by Washington University Des Lee Art Gallery director Philip Slein. This fantastic space opened on Wash Ave in 2003 and has since become the premier spot to see fresh, unconventional talent. With Slein’s exceptional taste and personality, it’s no surprise this jewel outshines the rest. 1319 Washington Ave., Downtown, 314.621.4634. 1st Runner Up: Shearburn Gallery

Rock Poster Artist Pulls Out of Lou, Keeps Gallery

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Deb Peterson St. Louis Post-Dispatch Unorthodox by design: South St. Louis' Art Chantry - known as one of the greatest album cover and rock poster designers in the country - is outta here. Chantry, a native of Tacoma, Wash., is credited with having created the grunge style in art. His work is so avidly collected that Microsoft's Paul Allen reportedly has bought one of every poster Chantry has made. Chantry's been in the Lou the last five years becuase his wife, Jamie Sheehan, has a job here. Now the couple have decided to call it quits, and Chantry is headed back to java heaven, aka, Seattle. His No. 1 gallery is the Phillip Slein Gallery at 1319 Washington Avenue. Chantry plans to stay with the gallery despite his move.

Lo-Fi Saint Louis says "Blog You"

Friday, February 10, 2006

FIRST OF IT’S KIND VIDEO BLOG SCREENING FOR ‘LO-FI SAINT LOUIS’ HOSTED BY PHILIP SLEIN GALLERY (ST. LOUIS, MO) Bill Streeter will be screening select videos from St. Louis’s premier video blog, LO-FI SAINT LOUIS (www.lofistl.com) in honor of its one-year anniversary. The screening is hosted by the Philip Slein Gallery at 1319 Washington in St. Louis, Saturday February 25, 2006 from 7PM to 10PM. Bill has also invited 28 other video bloggers from 8 countries around the world to record introductions to the videos. Select introductions will be screened the night of the 25th, but all of them can be seen on LO-FI SAINT LOUIS as they are posted during the month of February as 28 videos (one a day for the month) from the past year will be rerun on the video blog. “I wanted to prove that this is truly personal media with a global reach, and to let St. Louis know that the world is watching them.” Streeter says. LO-FI SAINT LOUIS, is the first video blog in the area and features video of live performances of Rock and Roll bands and short documentaries about off-beat local culture and artists. The video blog was launched in February of 2005 Months before the introduction of Apples video capable iPod that has helped to make podcasting a promising new way to distribute media. LO-FI SAINT LOUIS was one of the first video podcasts to be included in Apples iTunes podcast directory when it appeared in June 2005. “I knew last year that it was just a matter of time before Apple released an iPod that could play video, so I wanted to be ready for it when they” Streeter said. The video blog has over 400 subscribers to its video podcast feed to date and boasts nearly 30,000 worldwide video downloads a month. Podcasts are audio or video programs automatically delivered via an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed and an “always-on” Internet connection like DSL and cable modems. Users can subscribe to these feeds through popular software like Apples iTunes and the popular video blog watching software Fireant, usually for free. Podcasts can be downloaded and viewed or listened to on a variety of devices including computers, hand-helds (like Palm Pilots) and other portable media players. Set-top boxes, similar to cable boxes, capable of receiving this content have already been introduced to market, and TIVO has already made some feeds available on its popular device. Streeter, a graphic artist, studied film at Columbia College in Chicago. He been an Internet consultant, worked for Internet firms in Chicago and is currently employed by AT&T Yellow Pages. He lives in St. Louis with is wife and son. The Philip Slein Gallery is located at 1319 Washington Ave (314-621-4634). A meet and greet cocktail hour will precede the screening. An acoustic performance by St. Louis musician, Casey Reid will follow. Cover is $5.00

Philip Slein Gallery wins Business of the Year Award	Saturday, November 12, 2005
The Philip Slein Gallery was awarded business of the year by Mayor Francis Slay at an awards ceremony on November 4, 2005.

The Spirit of Saint Louis/ ARTNET.COM	Saturday, November 12, 2005
The Philip Slein Gallery was reviewed on Artnet.com in November 2005.

Philip Slein Gallery Reviewed Art in America	Saturday, October 15, 2005
The Philip Slein Gallery was reviewed in Art in America issue October 2005 for its show "Michael Byron, A Decade of Work on Paper." (see review in Previous Exhibitions) We at the Gallery are very proud of Michael Byron.

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