NEW YORK, NY.- Hirschl & Adler Galleries presents Home Is Where The Art Is, an exhibition of approximately fifty paintings, drawings, and prints from the 18th century to the present that provide a glimpse into the intimacy of home life. Captured through portraiture, still life, and genre scenes, the show explores the various roles of the home—as refuge, as social gathering place, and most especially as a state of mind. With the passing of time, the depiction of the home in art changes. What remains constant is the uniquely human belief that there really is “no place like home.”
Home Is Where The Art Is features work by artists such as Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837–1908), William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Edward Deeds (1908–1987), John Koch (1909–1978), and Fairfield Porter (1907–1975); as well as artists from Hirschl & Adler’s contemporary program, including Randall Exon (1956–), John Moore (1941–), and Stone Roberts (1951–), among others.
Alfred Thompson Bricher sets the scene for domestic tranquility with In My Neighbor’s Garden (1883). The artist observes his neighbors, the Howell family, enjoying a brilliant summer’s afternoon in the sun-dappled garden of their Southampton home. Mrs. Howell pauses from her reading to gaze upon the two children who play before her. Captured is the ideal 19th century American home, a place where an attractive young family in their well-tended garden, take pleasure in summer’s gentle pursuits.
John Koch invites us into his Upper West Side apartment in The Party (1971), a major multi-figure interior scene depicting a colorful gathering of artists, musicians, patrons, critics, models, curators, and art dealers, all members of Koch’s social milieu. Amidst the crowd of luminaries is the artist himself in conversation with his art dealer, Antoinette Kraushaar, and his wife, Dora Koch, who converses with guests before an easel, presumably displaying her husband’s newest work. Others are scattered about the room, engaged in lively conversation, at ease in one another’s company. It is a convivial scene, and in many ways a self-portrait of the artist, who, in the company of friends, seems very much at home.
A more complicated vision of home is suggested in the work of outsider artist, Edward Deeds. The artist’s body of work comprise of a single, hand-sewn album containing 140 double-sided drawings executed on the ledger paper of the mental institution that was his home. Simultaneously child-like and meticulously rendered, Deeds’ wide-ranging subjects exude a sense of light-hearted whimsy that is at odds with his environment. Portrayals of happy homes are, thus, more idealized remembrances than observation. Several of Deed’s drawings will be included in the show, but perhaps most compelling is Home Sweet Home [261], a peaceful depiction of two houses, one stacked atop the other. Inscribed across the top is the familiar emblem, “HOME SWEET HOME,” a bittersweet allusion to the warmth and security that home ought to provide, but for Deeds, was sadly out of reach.
