A Review of ‘Red Grooms - Larger Than Life,’ at Yale University Art Gallery - NYTimes.com

Saw this recently at the Art Gallery.  Very cool.

Yale University Art Gallery/Red Grooms/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery 

“Cedar Bar,” a 1986 work of colored pencil and crayon on five sheets in a wood frame, now on display at the Yale University Art Gallery.
By SYLVIANE GOLD 

There’s a wild, wild party going on at the Yale University Art Gallery these days. And I don’t mean the happy celebration of painting that can be ascribed to most any art museum. This particular bash — calling it wild is probably understating things — rounds up Rembrandt and Leonardo, Picasso and Stravinsky, cancan girls and the New York Knicks and lets them all loose in a big room with plenty of booze, cigarettes and a large, extremely entertaining bowl of grapes.

“Motherwell,” a study for “Cedar Bar” in black crayon and black ink on artificial vellum.
In fact, just about everything in “Red Grooms: Larger Than Life” is big, rowdy and lots of fun. Of course, Mr. Grooms’s raucous style — the louche draftsmanship married to vibrant color — could make a funeral look like fun. And that’s close to what he achieves in “Picasso Goes to Heaven” and “Studio at the Rue des Grands-Augustins,” two of the three mural-size extravaganzas at the heart of this installation. 

The first, in which a heavenly host of past geniuses awaits Picasso’s arrival, was inspired by the artist’s death, in 1973. The second, spurred by the carnage of the early 1990s in Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq, depicts Picasso in his Paris studio at work on his antiwar masterpiece “Guernica.” Along with “Cedar Bar,” Mr. Grooms’s fanciful 1986 group portrait of the artists and camp followers of the Abstract Expressionist movement, these outsize tours de force manage to combine high seriousness with low humor in an immensely satisfying way.
As utterly contemporary as these pictures feel, they have their roots in classical art. With all the bad behavior on display, “Cedar Bar” could be a panorama of the Seven Deadly Sins — especially if you add smoking and drinking to the list. Wrath? Almost at dead center, Willem de Kooning has Jackson Pollock by the throat while Pollock grabs de Kooning’s face. Another brawl is taking place on the floor — envy, perhaps. Pride? Everywhere, as well as walking, talking exemplars of vanity, excess and betrayal. And they’re all having the most marvelous time. 

Alas, there’s no gluttony to be seen. That large bowl of grapes is in “Picasso Goes to Heaven,” perched between the splayed legs of a hilariously lascivious nude. She’s probably too much of a cartoon to allude to the art of the past. But the painting, which emerges from charcoal outlines on a scarlet ground, is clearly derived from ascension and apotheosis scenes, in which assembled deities welcome a newcomer to paradise while events from his or her earthly days play out below. 

In Picasso’s case, patrons, friends and art dealers are clustered together in rough sketches to his left while colleagues from the dance world, Nijinsky, Diaghilev and Olga Picasso, are painted in full regalia to his right. Above him float Stravinsky, Cocteau, Apollinaire, Rembrandt, Michelangelo and many others, as well as the grape lady. As for the guest of honor, he’s looking positively jolly in sandals and checkered bathing trunks, all set for a day at the beach except for the halo and the little clown hat atop his head. 

Things are only slightly less giddy in “Studio at the Rue des Grands-Augustins” — Picasso leans into Mr. Grooms’s rearranged version of the chaos of “Guernica,” oblivious to the clamor in the room. Models, mistresses, friends, helpers and pets turn it into a typically Groomsian jumble. But the image is also clearly descended from a long line of classic pictures of painters painting.
In addition to the three major works, the show includes 16 finely drawn preparatory studies for “Cedar Bar.” And although “Red Grooms: Larger Than Life” consists of two-dimensional work rather than Mr. Grooms’s trademark walk-through environments, the show acquires a sculptural dimension through the decorative elements the artist has added at the show’s entrances. Framing a doorway are a pair of painted curtains — on one, a New York melee of traffic, people and commerce at the intersection of Canal Street and Broadway; on the other, Vincent van Gogh in his straw hat with the Provence countryside behind him. By the elevator stands an archway emblazoned on one side with images evoking Paris in the 1890s and on the other with symbols of New York in the 1950s, in homage to the show’s Franco-American mood. 

Mr. Grooms makes a cameo appearance — two, actually — among all the art-world celebrities. The young redhead wielding a cocktail shaker behind the counter in “Cedar Bar” is a self-portrait of the artist as a young man; the other bartender — balding, a bit older and thicker — is Mr. Grooms as well. You can’t tell how good a mixologist he is, but he certainly 

knows how to throw a wild party.
“Red Grooms: Larger Than Life,” Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven, through March 9. Information: (203) 432-0600 or artgallery.yale.edu.

A Review of ‘Red Grooms - Larger Than Life,’ at Yale University Art Gallery - NYTimes.com