Stop whatever it is you're doing, right now, and run and see the Poussin landscape paintings exhibit at the Met. It is off the hook. I had seen quite a bit of Poussins paintings  the last time there was a show in N.Y., maybe twenty years ago, so I thought I knew what to expect. I was wrong. These paintings are sublime. They have a real feel for light and atmosphere, clearly painted by someone who's worked hard to unlock some of natures secrets. The fact that they are mostly imagined spaces, worked up harmoniously from a variety of sources, makes them that much more amazing. Poussin's work has to be the least reproducable out of any artist I've encountered. Reproductions simply cannot convey what takes place in his paintings. Generally there is a shaded foreground area where the action takes place and the sunlight breaks through in the middle distance or the background. It sounds formulaic, but it is not. He invariably finds a different way to riff on this theme in each painting. If you've ever wondered what can be done with ochres, umbers and siennas, this will be the last word. One painting that struck me dumb before it, shows a building with the sunlight creeping gradually up it's wall until it is cut off by the shadow of a cloud. Awesome!
        Contrary to the dour self portrait that greets you as you enter the exhibit Poussin apparently had a pretty good sense of humor. One painting shows a man hysterically fleeing from a snake and then in the large painting next to it we see a shadowy figure in the foreground completely engulfed by a snake. Who couldn't outrun a snake? In another we see blind Orestes giving a piggyback ride and this Goddess in the clouds giving them the same look you might expect to get from your wife while watching the superbowl. His Adam and Eve made me smile. They reminded me of a scene from "The Planet of the Apes". Unlike the classically inspired figures usually found in his work, these two seem intentionally unidealized; and this while they're still in Eden,. mind you. Then off in the distance you spot a glimpse of this sunny warm summer landscape, Poussin is saying here that man was pretty much lost until the art of the Greeks and maybe getting kicked out of Eden wasn't so bad. Too funny! Only a true Classicist could come up with that slant.
     During my lunch break from cast drawing last week I decided to hike over to 57th street to check out the Steven Assael drawing show.(only twelve blocks away). I stroll eagerly into the Forum gallerys fifth floor space and bam! I am accosted with a show of hideous nut and bolt paintings by Robert Cottingham. Hideous awful stuff. I'm thinking " where the hell are the Assael drawings?". I go back down to the first floor, look at the ledger and see that the Forum gallery has two floors. Whew! I go up to the fourth floor, the door is closed, with a note saying to ask receptionist on fifth floor if you want to see the exhibit. I've just walked twelve blocks in the freezing wind, somebody is letting me in to that exhibit. So I go up and ask the receptionist and with a big smile she graciously lets me in. She seems pleased that I'm so eager to see the drawings and we both rave on about Assaels work as she leads me in. Well worth the hassel. Assael uses a pencil the way that a painters painter might. Polishing up an area here, leaving an area suggested there, a tool for exploring light on form. He has a knack for rendering the intensity of his model's gaze and seems to bring out the best in the people that he gets to pose for him He hits the dark accents just right and uses an interesting trick of scraping out the highlights in the hair. Although not, as far as I know, classically trained, you can see in his drawings a classical approach to form and a truthfulness to the roundness of the structure. In other words, these are not impressionistic renderings of flat values, but truly light carved forms. Theres a little bit of Delacroix and Gericault in them, two of my favorite artists.
   Next weeks lunch break I'm hoping to stroll on over to check out the Michelangel drawing show at the Morgan library. You gotta love studying in N.Y.C.. Theres almost always something to see.