You might want to bring your reading glasses to The Tiny Picture Show at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, because some of the suckers on view are really tiny. From the smallest piece in the show — a painting by Alfred Leslie (“Untitled,” 1960) coming in at a massive 1 3/8 x 2 inches — to the largest — a Tom Wesselmann (“Judy,” 1959), 7 ¾ x 6 ¼ inches — the gallery is a jewel box full of tiny surprises.
Coney Island has a history as dizzying as any of the roller coasters, carousels, sideshows, and other frenetic attractions that have operated on its piece of Brooklyn shore. Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008, organized and originally staged at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Connecticut and now on view at the Brooklyn Museum, focuses on the artists who have been inspired by Coney Island over the past 150 years. Whether we’re looking at 19th-century Impressionistic vistas by John Henry Twachtman and William Meritt Chase of the seaside landscape, interrupted by a 300-foot tower for a steam elevator; an elephant-shaped hotel; or the anonymously created Cyclops head from the 1950s that once ogled its eye from the Spook-A-Rama, there’s a shared fantasy that’s both tantalizing and trepidatious. From nearly the beginning, Coney Island was a New York City escape of both dreams and nightmares.
Thrills, Fantasy, and Nightmares in 150 Years of Art Inspired by Coney Island
Nighttime darkness compresses space and alters colors, making ordinary places both more terrifying and more freeing, changing the social dynamic of those who walk in them. With its array of artworks capturing these effects or otherwise engaging with the hours of darkness, Night Visions: Nocturnes in American Art, 1860-1960 at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, mines a narrow but persistent vein in art history.
Artists of the Dark: “Night Visions: Nocturnes in American Art, 1860–1960”