Local Self-Portraits

June 12 through August 14, 2010

HOH presents a show of self-portrait paintings, photographs and sculpture curated by Richard Roth. The artists' styles run the gamut, from primitive to photo realist, documentary to minimalist to abstract expressionist. What they have in common is geography: They all live and work, exhibit work, or spend their leisure time in Hudson or Columbia County.

A limited edition, full-color catalogue for the exhibition is available for purchase, sponsored by Stair Galleries of Hudson. Click below to purchase.

Artists include Marina Abramovic, Richard Artschwager, Donald Baechler, R. O. Blechman, McWillie Chambers, Mihail Chemiakin, Lynn Davis, Judy Glantzman, Musho Rodney Alan Greenblat, Nancy Hagin, Phyllis Hjorth, Ellsworth Kelly, Dylan Kraus, Annie Leibovitz, Barbara Lehman, Reggie Madison, Gerard Malanga, Maria Manhattan, Richard Minsky, Sedat Pakay, Ken Polinskie, Lucio Pozzi, Eric Rhein, Dan Rupe, Edwina Sandys, Barbara Slate, Tim Slowinski, Ed Smith, Bill Sullivan, Earl Swanigan, Benjamin Swett, Franklin Tartaglione, Tony Thompson, and Arthur Yanoff. Opening Reception with the artists will be on Saturday, June 12, from 6 - 8 p.m.

Local Self Portraits brings together the work of 34 painters, photographers and sculptors from Hudson and the surrounding area, demonstrating that the 19th-century birthplace of the Hudson River School continues to attracts some of the world's most accomplished artists.

Two of the artists, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Artschwager, have been awarded the Smithsonian's prestigious Archives of American Art Medal. Artschwager, whose career began in the early 1950s, shows the lithograph he created for the Archives in 2009. Kelly is known for stunningly simple lines and compositions, but the artist has also made dozens of self portraits in a wide range styles since the 1940s; the two-color lithograph in Local Self Portraits was made in 1988.

While Kelly, Artschwager and several other artists in the exhibition have been in the area for years, there's also new talent in town. One of the more recent arrivals is Marina Abramovic, the world-famous performance artists who has been sitting quietly opposite random visitors to her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art every day for the past several weeks. Abramovic intends to establish a foundation for performance art in what was once the 1,500-seat Community Theater in Hudson; her self portrait, executed with the help of a studio assistant in a helicopter, is from The Lovers, a 1988 performance piece which required her to walk through 1,500 miles of spectacular scenery on the Great Wall of China.

Abramovic's emotions are not immediately evident, but the opposite is true of Judy Glantzman's Kiss My Faces, a panel of four small oil paintings depicting faces in dire and touching need of being kissed. While Glantzman is very much a painter, some artists seem able live on line alone: R.O. Blechman, for example. The creator of 19 covers for The New Yorker and the winner of an Emmy for his animated Soldier's Tale on PBS, Blechman shows his many parts with characteristic good humor: pencil over one ear, halo, trophy, dunce cap, fiddler. Musho Rodney Alan Greenblat adds color to sunny, good-natured line and depicts himself as a mild-mannered Buddhist saint with hindrances and temptations coming from all directions. Donald Baechler, who once lived next door to Greenblat, distills himself down to a black flower and the cosmic matrix using tea and gouache.

The show takes in many other points of view as well. Hudson's most collected artist may be Earl Swanigan, who sells his paintings on the sidewalk along Warren Street, has been painting for 30 years. The dozens of portraits of President Obama Swanigan produced around the time of the last election exude idealism; his self portrait is more guarded, with a grave expression and piercing eyes. Dylan Kraus, the youngest artist in the show, paints himself with eyes closed completely, but he knows where he's going: he begins a four-year program at Cooper Union this fall.

Annie Leibovitz who has been called the world's most famous photographer, has a country place nearby and a piece in the show, as do three of her male contemporaries: Benjamin Swett, Gerard Malanga, and Sedat Pakay. Pakay, a student of Walker Evans at Yale and creator of a PBS documentary on his former teacher, has a vast archive of portraits from his years at Holiday and other magazines. In his self portrait, made in Istanbul he was 18, he peeks out from behind flashy Jean Shrimpton sunglasses and a bunch of grapes. Malanga, chief assistant to Andy Warhol and an actor in many of the Pop artist's early films, shows a miniature construction based on a photograph he took of himself in 1973.

Hudson Opera House History

On Display in the West Room

This exhibition includes photographs, drawings, reproductions, and objects that relate to the extraordinary history of the Hudson Opera House. Community members with related material are invited to bring work to the Opera House for inclusion in the exhibition. Any old photos or items related to the history of the building will be greatly appreciated.