Breakfast with Art Critic Burton Wasserman

Press Release, for immediate release
From: Barbara J. Beitel
Telephone: (609) 465-3963

Breakfast With Art Critic Burton Wasserman will be served up at the Gilt Complex Gallery on April 29th at 9 a.m. featuring, former professor of Art at Rowan University whose works are in European and American Collections, will honor Sam Maitin on April 29th at the Gilt Complex, 2st St. and Dune Drive, Avalon at 9 a.m.

Avalon. Access to Art will present Dr. Burton Wasserman, Art Critic, from Art Matters, who will open the the first of two days of a Conversation series honoring internationally known Philadelphia artist, Sam Maitin whose works are in the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery, London, the Smithsonian. On April 29th at 9 a.m. at the Gilt Complex, 2lst St. & Dune Drive, Avalon, the series will begin with Maitin’s works in residence. Wasserman taught art at Rowan University for 43 years, and his works are in major collections in Europe and the U.S. He writes for Art Matters which he has done for many years. In the early days of the magazine, they chose an artist of the year, and Maitin received the award right after George Nakashima, the furniture maker in about the magazine’s 3rd year of existence.

A continental breakfast will be served from 9 a.m. to 9:30, during which time, guests may peruse Maitin’s work in the gallery and following that at 9:30 a.m., Wasserman will present a half hour talk. Wasserman covered Maitin for 20 years for Art Matters, a magazine founded by Doris Brandes, now deceased. He reviewed the 40 year retrospective for Maitin at the Woodmere in l994, commenting that Maitin was then the most original artist working in the Delaware Valley today, and he also compared him to Miro, Matisse and Calder, saying that Maitin’s work was a unique take on theirs, but all his own. Maitin was definitely in the modern internationalist mainstream of art as the essayist English Critic Duncan Scott indicated in the accompanying essay with the book designed by Maitin himself that was part of the show. The show was commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Duncan Scott, a member of an the International Association of Art Critics, placed Maitin squarely in the mainstream of Modern Art, along with Miro, and the Atelier 17 a group led by Jack Hayter with whom Maitin studied in Philadelphia once a month. Of Maitin, Scott said:

“What then, are the beliefs that inform Sam Maitin’s practice as an artist? He holds views which some may find surprising, even controversial. Foregoing the chic constrictions of choice between heroic introspection, mannerist quotation or studied alienation, it is clear that Maitin conceives art as “actually part of life.” It is above all a means of communication for and with people, inspired by what he calls: “the old Samuel Fleisher philosophy of putting nothing between the people and art.”

“Emotions of anger, pity, protest and grief are very much part of the artist’s response to living in our troubled century, yet these tensions, he insists, must be balanced by his unshakable belief in the value of the individual, of community, democracy and of working together to counter physical or man-made adversity. In his case, they are confronted and transformed into a philosophy and an art of insistent optimism, humor and affirmation.
An art of celebration.” Duncan Scott, March 1994.

Duncan Scott, British art historian and exhibition curator, has written extensively about twentieth century art, curating exhibitions in England and France such as “Surrealism in England: l936-1986”, Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury, Twentieth Century Master Prints, Bankside Gallery, London, and “Autour de Hayter et L’Atelier 17” for theMusee de Gravelines in France. He was formerly head of School of Art History and Cultural Studies at the Kent Institute of Art and Design.

Conversations will continue throughout the day with friends and colleagues of Maitin.
Conversations are $20. and benefit Access to Art, Inc. A film will also be presented about Maitin created by Craig Rinkerman, of Lower Township, and now of Brooklyn, N.Y. Rinkerman is working in New York City editing film.  He graduated from Lower Cape May Regional, attended Drexel, majoring in film and philosophy, and went on to create a film on Gerald Lynch, sculptor, which was entered in the Cape May Film Festival last year, and is currently being shown at a film festival in New York. Susannah Newman, choreographer, and former head of SUNY NY dance department, has created a six minute dance film featuring two local dancers, Jennifer McDonough Collins and Tara Pasquerello, and two Philadelphia dancers. It is a preview of a next year’s work and it features the art of Maitin in the film. The dancers appear to be dancing in his works. The accompanying music is a Mozart sonata, Maitin’s favorite classical composer.

For reservations, or tickets are available at the door, call Access to Art, Inc. at (609) 465-3963.