Books and Catalogues

Karen Levitov, Faculty Exhibition 2018, Stony Brook University

Joseph Podlesnik, Observational Drawing, Tempe Digital 2017

Jennifer Samet, Essay from Catalogue, Bruce Lieberman Recent work 2017, Last Bouquet Standing: Paintings by Bruce Lieberman

John Seed, Heightened Perceptions, Poets and Artists issue #65 2015

Bruce Lieberman-Recent Paintings essay by Richard Elman 1999

"Long Island Artist Focus on Materials" Stony Brook University Fine Art Gallery,
Stony Brook University Press, June 1998

Twentieth Century Long Island Landscape Painting, essay by Ron G. Pisano Exhibition Catalog, Museum at Stony Brook, 1990

Ronald G. Pisano, Long Island Landscape Painting in the 20th Century, New York Graphic Society, Little, Brown & Company 1989

Artist Choice Museum Catalog - "Body and Soul," 1983

Articles and Reviews

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:


Jennifer Samet, "The Agency of Things: Still Life at Gallery North,"
essay 2017

Mark Segal, East Hampton Star, April 2017 http://easthamptonstar.com/Arts/2018417/-Equal-Opportunity-Artist

Daena Title, “Destroying the Figure in the 21st Century” Poets Artists Issue #66 2015

Hampton Monthly, Artist Spotlight: Bruce Lieberman, May 20, 2015

John Seed, “Bruce Lieberman: ‘East End’ at Gallery North,” Huffington Post, Arts and Culture Dec. 12, 2014

Franklin Hill Perrell – Bruce Lieberman, Artful Circle October 31, 2014

Bruce Lieberman: East End Exhibition at Gallery North, Gallery North October 7, 2014

Kelli Delane, Bruce Lieberman April 22, 2014

The Sissy Gamache Show, Manhattan Cable Network, interview, April 18, 2014

Franklin Hill Perrell, Painterly Painting, Artful Circle Lecture Series, Chief Curator at the Nassau County Museum of Art, April 11, 2014

Oliver Peterson, Dan’s Paper, “Works on Monday; Early Morning Sunflower for Ron” by Bruce Lieberman,” October 7, 2013

Pat Rogers, A Trio of Strong Shows Open at the Heckscher,
Hamptons Art Hub, September 21, 2013

The Heckscher Museum of Art, Recent Acquisitions, August 17, 2013
http://www.heckscher.org/downloads/ED13_HS_LIBest_ExhiChklst_RecAcquisitions.pdf

Michael Boyajian, Interview WSUB https://archive.org/details/BruceLieberman

Steven Parks, Flower Paintings Bloom at LI Museum, Newsday, March 5, 2012

Guest of Cindy Sherman, Bruce Lieberman (Central America)
guestofcindyshermancredits.blogspot.com/

Hampton.Com, This Week in the Arts, July 20, 2010

Elise D’Haene, East Hampton and Southampton Press 2009

Pat Rogers, East Hampton and Southampton Press 2009

Helen A. Harrison, Paper in Every Guise Imaginable, The New York Times, September 4, 2005 New York Times

Ariella Budick, Long Island Landscape, Sun-Kissed, Traffic- less Newsday Fri, Aug. 31, 2001

Ariella Budick, Witness a Moving Experience, cover Art section, Newsday Sun., Sep. 9, 2001

Carole Paquette, Using Local Artists to Add Color, The New York Times Sunday, Dec. 16, 2001

Ariella Budick, Newsday, Best of 2001- Art: Expressions of Grandeur, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2001

Cover and Poster, Long Island: Morning, Noon & Night- Contemporary Long Island Landscape Painting, The Long Island Museum 2001

Richard Elman, essay, Bruce Lieberman-Recent Paintings catalog1999

Phyllis Braff, Compelling Sculpture and Transitory Doings, The New York Times, Feb.1998

Long Island Artist Focus on Materials, Catalog, Stony Brook University Press June 1998

In The Works, Hampton Magazine/Artists & Writers, June 20, 1997

Helen A. Harrison, Works on View-Local Color, The New York Times Aug. 18, 1996

Phyllis Braff, From Edge of Social Conscience to Jazz, The New York Times Sept. 24, 1995

Marion Wolberg Weiss, Cover and feature article, Dan's Papers August 5, 1994

Eric Gibson, East End Landscape Show, East Hampton Star, June 2 1994

Ommerman, Betty, Artist Finds Style in Own Backyard" Newsday Nov. 21, 1993

William Zimmer, -40+ Landscapes, Poster and essay, Haenah-Kent Gallery, NYC July 9,1991

Helen A. Harrison, The Flowery Touch of Spring, The New York Times April 21, 1991

Ron G. Pisano, Twentieth Century Long Island Landscape Painting, Exhibition Catalog, Museum at Stony Brook 1990

Alicia Ramirez, Lieberman tomaria Montanas de Monterrey Para Cuadros, El Diario 7/26/90

Bruce Lieberman- Painting "La Huasteca, Video produced by the Universidad De Monterrey, Mexico, UDEM/DACME, July 1990

Alicia Ramirez. "Lieberman Tomaria Montanas de Monterrey Para Cuadros" El Diario June 26,1990

Alicia Ramirez. "Satisfacen a regiomontanos las pintoras de' Dos Nueva York" El Diario June 27, 1990

Alicia Arozola. "Inauguran Exposicion, Dos De New York" ABC June 19,1990

"La Naturaleza de New York en Monterrey" (repro)
Gerado Gonzalez Leija. "Pintores Neoyorquinos Se Inspiran En Banquetas y Mitos" Tribuna de Monterrey June 19,1990

Gerado Gonzalez Leila, - Pintores Neoyorquinos Se Inspiran En Banquetas y Mitos, Tribuna de Monterrey June 19,1990

Ronald G. Pisano, Long Island Landscape Painting in the 20th Century, New York Graphic Society, Little, Brown & Company 1989 (repro)

Margaret Moorman, Representations of Life, One Natural, One Askew, Newsday December 16, 1988, page 21

Margaret Moorman, Moody View, Newsday - December 9,1988, page 30

Shirley E. Pearlman, Newsday - "Their Artwork is Hot, But Glory is Stolen," February 17,1988

Artist Choice Museum Catalog - "Body and Soul," 1983





Selected Website Listings


Michelle Trauring, "Lieberman Finds His Balance, In Surfing And In Art." East Hampton and Southampton Press, Aug 5, 2019

Mark Segal, East Hampton Star, April 2017 http://easthamptonstar.com/Arts/2018417/-Equal-Opportunity-Artist

Hampton Monthly, Artist Spotlight: Bruce Lieberman, May 20, 2015
https://hamptonsmonthly.com/article/artist-spotlight-bruce-lieberman/

www.huffingtonpost.com/.../bruce-lieberman-east-end_b_5972758.html‎ Oct 12, 2014

http://www.kdhamptons.com/new-kdhamptons-featured-artist-bruce-lieberman/

Pat Rogers, Hampton Art Hub, September 21, 2013 A Trio of Strong Shows Open at the Heckscher
http://hamptonsarthub.com/2013/09/21/a-trio-of-strong-shows-opens-at-the-heckscher/


The Heckscher Museum of Art, Recent Acquisitions, August 17, 2013
http://www.heckscher.org/downloads/ED13_HS_LIBest_ExhiChklst_RecAcquisitions.pdf

Listen to Michael Boyajian, Interview WSUB https://archive.org/details/BruceLieberman

http://gallerynorth.org/event/bruce-lieberman/

Read the review http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/bruce-lieberman-east-end_b_5972758.html


http://gallerynorth.org/artist/bruce-lieberman/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw6JM8HyDy4

Read the review New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/08/nyregion/art-review-compelling-sculpture-and-transitory-doings.html

Last Bouquet Standing: Paintings by Bruce Lieberman


by Jennifer Samet


 


Bruce Lieberman doesn’t shy away from “no-nos” imposed by the contemporary art world. He paints flowers, butts, and leftover Chinese food. He has a sense of humor that rings loudly in his painting, like when he punctuates a scene of blooming zinnias with a “birdy” rather than a real bird (a slightly askew garden stake), or a lumpy, awkward piggy bank in the middle of a breakfast table still life. He knows the rules and he also knows that life is short. His is a land of plenty — not shallow materialism — but of the sensual pleasures of tamed nature, sun, sea, and flesh. 


 


Lieberman almost never paints one tree - he paints the thicket. These repeating vertical forms, (relatively) bare in his winter paintings, become a kind of drumbeat for this recent body of work. The insistence on serial, repeated forms make it hard not to think of Minimalism, even though Lieberman’s work couldn’t be more antithetical to this aesthetic movement. While the Minimalist artists used seriality to articulate space, commercial manufacture, and an impersonal objecthood, Lieberman is determined to show the artist’s hand, the painterly gesture, and the effects of natural phenomenon — sunlight and air — on these forms.


 


In fact, Lieberman came of age as a painter in the 1970s and positioned himself within a group of painters who were responding to the orthodoxy of Minimalism and formalist abstraction. He studied at Stony Brook University with Lawrence Alloway, Donald Kuspit, Melvin Pekarsky and Robert White. White introduced Lieberman to Paul Georges, a colorfully vocal rebel of the contemporary art establishment, who insisted on the aesthetic autonomy to paint what he wanted: nudes, overdone tulips, the landscape of eastern Long Island and the south of France. 


 


Lieberman studied with Georges at Brandeis and hung out with him on Long Island. Encouraged by White and Georges, Lieberman also began attending the Friday night weekly meetings of the Figurative Artists Alliance in lower Manhattan. It was a space for figurative artists to find common ground against the more establishment-approved movements of Pop and Minimalism. The Alliance and the after-party at a local dive bar were known for an atmosphere of fierce and frequent arguments – intense, macho, boozy debates on painting. The tone set by those early experience still rings through Lieberman’s work; almost like he is saying to us: “This is painting.”


 


Lieberman doesn’t erase himself from the work and neither does he detach from subject matter. The painterly marks signify he lives here - in that garden, that house, that surf.  This may be why, after a serious accident a few years ago left him with head trauma, Lieberman was able to turn to still life. It was about proximity: he could set up objects close to him. As his health improved, he turned, in his words, to “the still lives out the studio window”– the trees in winter. 


 


We might wonder how Lieberman contends with the traditional symbolic function of still life painting: to be a “memento mori” - a reminder of the transience of life. Although Lieberman chooses to paint a land of plenty, we know he is not naive. The East End of Long Island, once a rural heartland of potato fields and local fishermen, is now a playground for celebrities and the 1%. 


 


Lieberman has painted “The Last Tree” - a tree on Scuttlehole Road, now presumably cut down to make space for another private home. And these days he is forced to paint the (last-remaining) farms from behind new fences. The “memento mori” element in Lieberman’s work may be his insistent depictions of winter – a counterpart to the wild blooms and green of his summer paintings.


 


In addition, there is a sense, in these paintings, of turning away - of hiding from the real spectacle, that of consumer culture. Lieberman turns from all that to focus on what’s at hand: literally the bounty of his own backyard. He doesn’t just do this with his depictions; he does it with paint. Every element, even the damp, foggy atmosphere, is pushed up to the front of the picture plane with viscous paint. We notice it especially in paintings like “Bush Cherry” (2014-17), where the clouds seem to jostle for attention with the house and blooms. “Corn” (2008-17) has the same mood: with stalks crowding every edge of the painting, cumulus clouds pushing in – and the artist’s hand talking, along with it all.


 


I think about another unabashed sensualist, the artist Julian Schnabel, who has said:




I want my life to be embedded in my work, crushed into my painting like a pressed car. If it’s not, my work is just some stuff. When I’m away from it, I’m crippled. Without my relationship to what may seem like these inanimate objects, I am just an indulgent misfit...I am not making some things. I am making a synonym for the truth with all its falsehoods, oblique as it is…A bouquet of mistakes. 


 


Lieberman embodies a similar sentiment in his work. These things are his things. It is life, as Lieberman puts it, as a “symphony of chaos” – his to orchestrate with paint.


 


 


 

Karen Levitov, Faculty Exhibition 2018, Stony Brook University

Joseph Podlesnik, Observational Drawing, Tempe Digital 2017

Jennifer Samet, Essay from Catalogue, Bruce Lieberman Recent work 2017, Last Bouquet Standing: Paintings by Bruce Lieberman

John Seed, Heightened Perceptions, Poets and Artists issue #65 2015

Bruce Lieberman-Recent Paintings essay by Richard Elman 1999

"Long Island Artist Focus on Materials" Stony Brook University Fine Art Gallery,
Stony Brook University Press, June 1998

Twentieth Century Long Island Landscape Painting, essay by Ron G. Pisano Exhibition Catalog, Museum at Stony Brook, 1990

Ronald G. Pisano, Long Island Landscape Painting in the 20th Century, New York Graphic Society, Little, Brown & Company 1989

Artist Choice Museum Catalog - "Body and Soul," 1983