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Duane Morris: 100th Anniversary
When Philadelphia-based Duane Morris LLP went about the task of deciding what it was going to send clients as a gift to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The firm created a book on works of art a hard-cover coffee table book featuring 30 pieces from Duane Morris' art collection. 1,500 copies were published by Fleisher/Ollman Gallery of Philadelphia. John Ollman, director and owner of the gallery, chose the art that was featured. Three of his colleagues, Brendan Greaves, William Bones Pym and Jina Valentine, wrote the narratives that accompany photos of each of the pieces. Artists include Bill Traylor, Tony Fitzpatrick, Warren Rohrer and Thomas Chimes. An untitled piece by African-American folk artist Traylor, who was born into slavery in 1854, is used on the cover.
63 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2004
3 people want to read
About the author
Brendan Greaves
5 books2 followersBrendan Greaves is founder and owner of the record label Paradise of Bachelors and has collaborated on numerous projects with Terry Allen, including Pedal Steal + Four Corners, for which he earned a Grammy nomination for Best Album Notes. A folklorist, essayist, and lapsed art worker, he studied at Harvard and UNC, and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife, Samantha, and son, Asa.
https://brendangreaves.com
https://paradiseofbachelors.com
https://brendangreaves.com
https://paradiseofbachelors.com
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 20, 2019
This book is a somewhat unusual artifact. It was published in 2004 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Philadelphia-headquartered law firm Duane Morris. Yet it's a celebration of art, in general, and outsider art in particular.
Looking up Duane Morris, I learn that it employs (as of this writing) eight hundred attorneys in twenty-nine law offices across America. I sometimes find myself glancing over at one of those offices facing Riverfront Park in Harrisburg when I'm photographing the Susquehanna and its discontents. Duane Morris has been in the news very recently because some of the attorney are defending some of the College-Gate (that recent college admissions scandal involving bribes) offenders. But hey, don't judge a book by its cover and don't judge an attorney by her clients.
This is a really nice little collection. At a scant sixty-two pages, and about half of those photographs of art, it's thinner than many auction catalogs. Yet it makes a great addition to any art library, because the selections are so choice and the critical writing is perceant.
There's a backstory here. These are not randomly chosen works of art. These are works held in the corporate collection of Duane Morris. And the driving force behind that collection was Duane Morris' Chairman Sheldon Bonovitz. Sheldon and his wife Jill, herself an artist, spent considerable time sussing out works which they really loved and which spoke to them. The Bonovitzes assembled a masterful collection of art with a special focus on outsider art. They collected cross-culturally and trans-nationally.
Bonovitz is no longer with Duane Morris, but his collection is still gaining attention. It was the subject of a recent show, "Great and Mighty Things" (2013), at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I really rue missing that. https://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitio...
It's interesting how things are connected. Bonovitz's wife Jill is the daughter of Janet Fleisher of the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. That gallery is credited for the text of this book. It's good text: informative, succinct and perspectivally sound.
The artists included in the book are: Bill Traylor, Mel Bochner, Roy DeForest, Ray Yoshida, Mark di Suvero, Cesar Nunez, a nameless textile artisan from the Peruvian Period of Regional States (circa 1100-1438), William Hawkins, Genevieve Seille, Philip Taafe, Robert Indiana, Lee Godie, Donald Baechler, Eddie Arning, Tony Fitzpatrick, John Serl, Jose Bedia, Tim Rollins + Kids of Survival (the KOS Collective), Thomas Chimes, artistic savant Franz Kamlander, a nameless artisan and maker of kanthas in East Bangladesh circa 1920, Karl Wirsum, Howard Finster, Purvis Young, Sam Gilliam, Norinne Betjeman, a nameless Kente cloth weaver of the mid-twentieth century, aboriginal artist Pansy Nakamura Stewart and Pennsylvania Mennonite and minimalist Warren Rohrer.
As you can see, there are some art world sharpies in there with a great deal of naive painters. It makes for an interesting collection. I believe the Bonovitz collection actually numbers more than three hundred works now. Even though Bonovitz is no longer employed by Duane Morris, is an emeritus, some of his collection still hangs in various law offices of the firm. It's become part of the cachet of Duane Morris.
The biographies of some of these outsider artists are pretty amazing. Bill Traylor, whose work adorns the cover of this volume, was born a slave and had a very hard life even after his emancipation. Someone needs to make a biopic about this artist. Of his extreme old age: "He worked in a shoe factory until rheumatism effectively disabled him. Traylor spent nights in the storage room of a funeral parlor and days in a chair on the sidewalk in front of a pool hall or under a shed roof in Montgomery's (Alabama) downtown street market. It was not until 1939, when Traylor was eighty-five, that he began to draw."
Bonovitz owns my absolute favorite Lee Godie work. There was a recent documentary about this remarkable artist. She seems to get more attention for her photographs than her paintings these days, but both bodies of work are strong. Godie was homeless and lived on the streets of Chicago like an exiled queen, playing Hollywood celebrity in photo booth sessions in the night, sometimes appearing to wear makeup in these photos, when it was actually hand coloring using her dime store paint sets. She could probably not afford an extravagance like makeup. She often poses with money in these photo booth shots, which long predate the genre of Instagram rapper cash flash. Was she culturally psychic?
There's much more of worth to see in this nifty little sampling of the Bonovitz collection. I often see knock-offs of these various outsider artists on EBAY and other seller sites. Some artists are easier to imitate than others and some outsider artists were apparently just born to be faked. I remember there used to be a lot of fake Godies floating around online, but that seems to have settled down some. Maybe there were some collarings. I still see fake Purvis Youngs out there, fake Bill Traylors. I don't even want to get into the endless discussion of what constitutes a "fake Basquiat," since that's more a philosophical quandary (when you consider how many Basquiats were never Basquiat). I remember back in the nineties you could still find Howard Finster's work selling in small galleries and other venues for twenty bucks or even cheaper. Because he was so ridiculously prolific. Now his prices have started to climb and it's hard to find any of his works going cheap anywhere. Prints not originals are the affordable Finster now. Some of that explosiveness in pricing can probably be traced back to both Talking Heads and R.E.M. using Finsters as cover art for seminal albums. Some other Finster family members (Howard's granddaughter Heather, for one) are producing art that strongly resembles his. So the outsider beat goes on.
Looking up Duane Morris, I learn that it employs (as of this writing) eight hundred attorneys in twenty-nine law offices across America. I sometimes find myself glancing over at one of those offices facing Riverfront Park in Harrisburg when I'm photographing the Susquehanna and its discontents. Duane Morris has been in the news very recently because some of the attorney are defending some of the College-Gate (that recent college admissions scandal involving bribes) offenders. But hey, don't judge a book by its cover and don't judge an attorney by her clients.
This is a really nice little collection. At a scant sixty-two pages, and about half of those photographs of art, it's thinner than many auction catalogs. Yet it makes a great addition to any art library, because the selections are so choice and the critical writing is perceant.
There's a backstory here. These are not randomly chosen works of art. These are works held in the corporate collection of Duane Morris. And the driving force behind that collection was Duane Morris' Chairman Sheldon Bonovitz. Sheldon and his wife Jill, herself an artist, spent considerable time sussing out works which they really loved and which spoke to them. The Bonovitzes assembled a masterful collection of art with a special focus on outsider art. They collected cross-culturally and trans-nationally.
Bonovitz is no longer with Duane Morris, but his collection is still gaining attention. It was the subject of a recent show, "Great and Mighty Things" (2013), at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I really rue missing that. https://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitio...
It's interesting how things are connected. Bonovitz's wife Jill is the daughter of Janet Fleisher of the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. That gallery is credited for the text of this book. It's good text: informative, succinct and perspectivally sound.
The artists included in the book are: Bill Traylor, Mel Bochner, Roy DeForest, Ray Yoshida, Mark di Suvero, Cesar Nunez, a nameless textile artisan from the Peruvian Period of Regional States (circa 1100-1438), William Hawkins, Genevieve Seille, Philip Taafe, Robert Indiana, Lee Godie, Donald Baechler, Eddie Arning, Tony Fitzpatrick, John Serl, Jose Bedia, Tim Rollins + Kids of Survival (the KOS Collective), Thomas Chimes, artistic savant Franz Kamlander, a nameless artisan and maker of kanthas in East Bangladesh circa 1920, Karl Wirsum, Howard Finster, Purvis Young, Sam Gilliam, Norinne Betjeman, a nameless Kente cloth weaver of the mid-twentieth century, aboriginal artist Pansy Nakamura Stewart and Pennsylvania Mennonite and minimalist Warren Rohrer.
As you can see, there are some art world sharpies in there with a great deal of naive painters. It makes for an interesting collection. I believe the Bonovitz collection actually numbers more than three hundred works now. Even though Bonovitz is no longer employed by Duane Morris, is an emeritus, some of his collection still hangs in various law offices of the firm. It's become part of the cachet of Duane Morris.
The biographies of some of these outsider artists are pretty amazing. Bill Traylor, whose work adorns the cover of this volume, was born a slave and had a very hard life even after his emancipation. Someone needs to make a biopic about this artist. Of his extreme old age: "He worked in a shoe factory until rheumatism effectively disabled him. Traylor spent nights in the storage room of a funeral parlor and days in a chair on the sidewalk in front of a pool hall or under a shed roof in Montgomery's (Alabama) downtown street market. It was not until 1939, when Traylor was eighty-five, that he began to draw."
Bonovitz owns my absolute favorite Lee Godie work. There was a recent documentary about this remarkable artist. She seems to get more attention for her photographs than her paintings these days, but both bodies of work are strong. Godie was homeless and lived on the streets of Chicago like an exiled queen, playing Hollywood celebrity in photo booth sessions in the night, sometimes appearing to wear makeup in these photos, when it was actually hand coloring using her dime store paint sets. She could probably not afford an extravagance like makeup. She often poses with money in these photo booth shots, which long predate the genre of Instagram rapper cash flash. Was she culturally psychic?
There's much more of worth to see in this nifty little sampling of the Bonovitz collection. I often see knock-offs of these various outsider artists on EBAY and other seller sites. Some artists are easier to imitate than others and some outsider artists were apparently just born to be faked. I remember there used to be a lot of fake Godies floating around online, but that seems to have settled down some. Maybe there were some collarings. I still see fake Purvis Youngs out there, fake Bill Traylors. I don't even want to get into the endless discussion of what constitutes a "fake Basquiat," since that's more a philosophical quandary (when you consider how many Basquiats were never Basquiat). I remember back in the nineties you could still find Howard Finster's work selling in small galleries and other venues for twenty bucks or even cheaper. Because he was so ridiculously prolific. Now his prices have started to climb and it's hard to find any of his works going cheap anywhere. Prints not originals are the affordable Finster now. Some of that explosiveness in pricing can probably be traced back to both Talking Heads and R.E.M. using Finsters as cover art for seminal albums. Some other Finster family members (Howard's granddaughter Heather, for one) are producing art that strongly resembles his. So the outsider beat goes on.
Displaying 1 of 1 review