KAREN WILKIN
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terms, for their glorious touch, their subtle color, their ravishing
refinement of drawing, and their compelling images.
An ambitious survey of Mir6 as a graphic artist was installed in
MaMA's print galleries, but a more intimate, personal supplement to the
retrospective was to be found at Galeria Joan Prats, in its new SoHo loca–
tion. "Joan Prats," contrary to local legend, is not the charming
Englishwoman who runs the New York branch of this long-established
Barcelona gallery, but rather a lifelong friend and patron of his compa–
triot, Joan Mir6 . Prats, the heir to a thriving hat-manufacturing business
(commemorated in a delightful found-object collage of 1934, in the
MaMA retrospective), hoped to become an artist, but believed so strongly
in Mir6's remarkable (and superior) gifts that he became a supporter in–
stead, working with his friend on a long series of print and publishing
projects, among other things, and exhibiting the results. The show at Prats
included letters, photographs and other memorabilia of this important
friendship, all of which helped to illuminate a marvelous selection of
drawings, prints, paintings, books, and studies for projects, many rarely or
never before exhibited. The sheer quality of individual works was justifi–
cation enough for the show, but the cumulative effect was to enhance our
perception ofMir6 and broaden our sense of his activity and his reach.
In addition to these "old master" exhibitions, we had the now-usual
assortment of efforts in alternative or quasi-alternative spaces that allow
younger (and sometimes not so much younger) artists to have their work
seen at a time when many dealers are reluctant to show anything without
a guaranteed audience. You never know where the next good show will
turn up. This summer, for example, three young artists, Sholto Ainslie,
Randy Bloom, and Jon Isherwood (two painters and a sculptor, respec–
tively), installed recent work at 101 Wooster Street, an elegant gallery
space run not by a dealer but by an art-loving law firm. Ainslie's robust
paintings, with their dense, articulated surfaces and saturated color, were
his best yet. Their slightly battered quality, as though cobbled together
from unnameable found elements, subverts the lushness of his paint–
handling and his color and gives the pictures a welcome toughness and
edginess. Bloom's cool, restrained canvases were accomplished, their pale
hues and economical compositions refined and handsome, but I've seen
recent work in her studio that impressed me more. The studio pictures
are more aggressive, depending as they do on deliberately assonant color
and erratic placement, but their rowdy energy is enormously appealing
and their large-scale, idiosyncratic drawing suggestive and exciting. I've
been a fan of Isherwood's concrete and steel sculptures for some time, so I
was doubly happy to see them not only at 101 Wooster but in a subse–
quent show at David Beitzel Gallery. Isherwood has been flirting with
architectural references in a subtle way, making vertical sculptures, both
