By Kim Velsey 8/17/12 7:38pm

Manhattan Transfers

7 Photos

An Artist's Apartment

The Surreal Estate of Dorothea Tanning: Late Painter’s Pad Sells For $5.5 M.

The two-bedroom co-op apartment at 40 Fifth Avenue has many winning features: a wood burning fireplace, a 23-foot entrance gallery, an eat-in kitchen, high ceilings and herringbone floors.

Unfortunately, the most exceptional features of the home—the Surrealist paintings of former occupant Dorothea Tanning—were not included in the $5.1 million sale to  Philip Munger, a New School professor and big-time Democratic donor. Read More

By Mario Naves 11/14/05 12:00am

With Chance and a Quick Brush, Artist Invents Nocturnal Dramas

Was it Plato who remarked that seeing an image in the clouds signified nothing so much as the lowest form of the imagination? You wonder how the old contrarian would appraise Roland Flexner’s recent works-on-paper on display at Caren Golden Fine Art. Mr. Flexner divines images within smears and stains of ink.

Employing a traditional Read More

By Hilton Kramer 4/18/05 12:00am

Painter Max Ernst Brought Dark Grasp To European Terror

Some artists are destined to endure the hazards of “interesting times,” and Max Ernst (1891-1976) was one of them. In a period when France and Germany were bitter enemies, Ernst was a German national serving in the ranks of the French Surrealists-which in itself sounds more like the script of an absurdist comedy than the Read More

By Hilton Kramer 9/09/02 12:00am

62 Cornell Collages Are Remembrances Of Imaginary Past

What do art critics mean when they speak of an artist’s work as having an essentially “poetic” quality? The late Fairfield Porter, who was himself a minor poet as well as a first-rate painter and critic, gave us the best answer I know in something he wrote about the pictorial shadowbox constructions of the American Read More