There are two primary drivers when a collector selects art. On one side we want to understand how the work fits into the evolving images and symbols of contemporary art. On the other, whether the work has stand alone aesthetic power and resonance. It’s only when work has both timely symbolic meaning and visual power that art establishes lasting value. David Yager, the retiring President of the University of the Arts, is a collector who has knowingly selected for both. You can see what this ‘collector’s eye’ has acquired at The Art Alliance until June 16th.
This Kara Walkerpop-up book has a 1997 production date… the year she won a MacArthur grant. A small work…usurping the pop-up child’s book medium, with black paper, retelling the a story of struggle that’s personal, racial and universal. It’s all there. Jim Dine burst forth here with an intensely colored sample from his bathrobe series. It’s the clothes we wear in private rather than public, the clothes without the self, the presence of the artist…invisible in the work but present as the creator. This Michael Glier drypoint is a slyly humorous, masterful drawing. There’s a touch of Beckmann brought up to date, with Hawaiian shirts and margaritas in the blender. What a fineArbusprint! The strangeness of the triplets, on their three closely-set beds, with identical clothes and hair, the aggressively polka-dotted wallpaper. They contemplate us as we contemplate them. A modern soullessness fighting the ultimately soulful humanity of the three sisters.
The Current 
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