By Kim Velsey 8/14/12 5:05pm

Manhattan Transfers

Looking for a change of scene: Mr. Pearlstein and Ms. Cantor have sold their house. (Patrick McMullen)

Realist Painter Philip Pearlstein Leaving Longtime UWS Townhouse for $3.4 M.

When painter Philip Pearlstein moved to Manhattan in 1949, he and his college pal Andy Warhol subletted an dingy eighth-floor walk-up on St. Marks Place and Avenue A.

“The bathtub was in the kitchen and it was usually full of roaches, incredible roaches,” Mr. Pearlstein once said of the apartment. Nor did their lot improve when they relocated to a West 23rd Street loft a few months later. Andy Warhol was said to have sent out address-change cards in glitter-filled envelopes announcing, “I’ve moved from one roach-ridden apartment to another.” Read More

By Mario Naves 10/03/05 12:00am

Philip Pearlstein: A Drab Hand Flaunts a Keen Eccentric Streak

The more Philip Pearlstein keeps on doing what he does—painting dispassionate, starkly cropped studio set-ups pairing folk art with naked, usually female models—the more the usual complaints apply. It’s equally true, though, that the more he keeps on keeping on, the more unguarded and eccentric he becomes.

His recent efforts at the Betty Cuningham Gallery Read More

By Mario Naves 2/02/04 12:00am

Currently Hanging

Edging Toward Abstraction:

The Figure Depicted and Denied

The last thing I want to do, in writing about the paintings of Philip Pearlstein, is to reinforce the canard that there’s no difference between representation and abstraction. There are people who believe it, you know, and the belief has some basis in truth. Painters of Read More

By Mario Naves 4/23/01 12:00am

Courtier to King Charles VIII Takes a Crack at Christ

A display label included in Jean Poyet: Artist to the Court of Renaissance France, an exhibition currently at the Morgan Library, informs us that Poyet’s Four Seasons (late 1480′s), an illumination about the size of a baseball card, was “quickly and broadly painted for a young king [Charles VIII] who was not known as a Read More