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Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce UNLOCKING THE MIND: Nathan Gluck’s Early Surrealist Collages, an exhibition celebrating the centennial anniversary of Surrealism, to be presented in Gallery 3 from September 14 through October 26, 2024. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 21, from 4:00 to 7:00 pm.
UNLOCKING THE MIND: Nathan Gluck’s Early Surrealist Collages brings together a selection of early career artworks by Nathan Gluck (1918-2008) spanning approximately ten years, from the late 1930s through the late 1940s. The works on view reflect the young artists deep appreciation of modern surrealist masters like Max Ernst, Man Ray, and Domenico de Chirico, and include experiments with narrative prose and original poetry. His collages function as markers of his life while growing up in a post-depression household between the First and Second World Wars.
In the 1920s, Surrealism was well established in Europe and in the 1930’s, the American public was able to familiarize itself with the movement as surrealists’ works were being exhibited in New York City museums and galleries like MoMA and Julien Levy Gallery, and articles and texts on the subject were being published and made available in New York bookshops like George Wittenborn & Company, Weyhe Gallery and Bookstore, and Brentano’s — all of which Gluck frequented. During World War II many of the European Surrealist artists would flee to the United States where they would continue to practice. This movement influenced many artists of the time, including Joseph Cornell, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning, Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko, among others.
The earliest of Gluck’s collages are photograms, including a collaged photogram that he created in 1938 while attending the Pratt Institute. A second group, completed in 1941, are influenced by works in Paul Klee’s 1929 book, La Femme 100 têtes (The Hundred Headless Woman), which Gluck acquired while attending the Art Students League. A third group, completed during WWII and shortly thereafter, feature landscape settings influenced by Giorgio de Chirico. One collage combines cut-outs from a steel engraving depicting a Victorian woman with her back to the viewer and a mostly desolate landscape painted in gouache. In the margins Gluck added a personal annotation stating that it was created during the radio broadcast announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Another work created in 1942, from which the title of this exhibition is taken, depicts the venous structure of a male head, superimposed with a collaged lock and key, looking at a 19th century agricultural irrigation machine over which letters of the alphabet are pasted in a manner akin to Joseph Cornel’s book cover design for Julian Levy’s 1936 book, SURREALISM.
After serving in Europe and the Pacific Theater during World War II, Gluck returned to New York City where he went on to become a successful commercial artist and, most notably, Andy Warhol’s studio assistant from 1953 through 1965, covering the pre-Pop and early Pop period. Gluck continued to work privately on his fine art throughout his lifetime and upon retirement in 1995, at the age of 77, embarked on an extraordinary body of work—collages still rooted in Surrealism, which became his focus until his death in 2008. In these late works, Gluck was able to synthesize his many disparate interests and passions into a single voice—from art, literature, music, theater and opera to language, history, anthropology, food and travel. UNLOCKING THE MIND: Nathan Gluck’s Early Surrealist Collages, invites us to reexamine Nathan Gluck’s early collage works and their contexts. Like many young artists at the time, Surrealism would influence their practices and create a foundation for future artworks.
Nathan Gluck was born on June 24, 1918 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. His mother was part of the Margareten-Horowitz clan, famous for their Passover products. His father was a real estate agent and the family enjoyed an upper middle-class lifestyle until the Great Depression hit, at which time they nearly lost everything and resorted to bottling and selling seltzer water out of their basement. In the late 1930s, Gluck attended Cooper Union in Manhattan and the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY; in 1941, he studied under Vaclyv Vytlacil at the Art Students League. Gluck began his career as a designer with the L. Bamberger department store in New Jersey, which included designing a poster that is now in the Museum of Modern Art Poster Collection. Upon his return to New York after World War II he continued his successful career as an illustrator, designer and art director. He was an art director and illustrator at the George N. Kahn Agency, New York, and briefly at the Rockmore Company, an advertising agency where Andy Warhol freelanced, beginning that professional relationship. In 1952, he was selected by the ICA Boston to head a design studio at Cheney Silks designing fabric for men’s neckwear. In 1954, he designed the cover for Fortune Magazine for the visionary art director, former Futurist designer and noted children's author and illustrator, Leo Leonni. He also designed windows for Gene Moore at Bonwit Teller and Tiffany & Co., and created dozens of original Christmas cards for The Museum of Modern Art, Tiffany & Co., Bergdorf Goodman, Georg Jensen, Cartier, Brentano’s, and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, among others.
During his life, Gluck came to know many noted artists and art world luminaries whom he admired, including Joan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, Pierre Matisse, Ray Johnson, George Wittenborn, Paul Rand, Philip Johnson, as well as numerous other greats from the design world. After Warhol died, the Warhol Foundation turned to Gluck, with his first-hand knowledge and expertise, to help authenticate Warhol’s pre-Pop works, which he continued to do until shortly before he passed away. In the last decade of his life Gluck realized several solo exhibitions, including “Ephemeral Musings” (2017) at the Reinhold Brown Gallery in New York; “Nathan Gluck: Collages” (2001) at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg; and, “Limited Time Offer” (2008) at the Athenaeum of Music and Arts Library, in La Jolla, CA. Nathan Gluck died on September 27, 2008. Nathan Gluck’s works are included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Athenaeum of Music & Arts Library, La Jolla, CA; and numerous private collections worldwide.
Artist:
NATHAN GLUCK – BIO
Born Nathan Joseph Gluck on June 24, 1918, in Perth Amboy, New Jersey.
Nathan Gluck died on September 27, 2008, in San Diego, CA. He was 90.
His mother was Julia Margaretten, a housewife, then secretary, and member of the prominent Horowitz-Margaretten family, famous for matzohs and other Passover products.
His father was Morris Gluck, a prominent businessman at a real estate company owned by his brother-in-law, who lost the business during the Great Depression.
EDUCATION:
Graduated from Perth Amboy Public [High] School in 1935.
1935-36: Attended Cooper Union, New York, NY.
1936-39: Passed entrance exams and attended Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, taking courses in industrial and textiles design, advertising, and fine art. He met and developed a life-long friendship with Gene Federico* (verify this fact with Helen Federico, otherwise they met at Bamberger’s).
1941: Studied at the Arts Students League, New York, NY, under noted Modernist and educator, Vaclav Vytlacil.
WWII:
During World War II, Nathan Gluck was stationed at Fort Dix, near Trenton, N.J., and then was shipped off to Europe and, later, to the South Pacific, where he served in New Guinea, Australia, The Philippines, and Okinawa, Japan. He returned to New York on Thanksgiving Day 1945.
PROFESSIONAL and RELATED PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
1940-41: Freelance work for L. Bamberger (New Jersey department store), including designing a poster now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art Poster Collection, selected by James Johnson Sweeney.
1946-51: George N. Kahn Agency, New York. Art director and illustrator.
1950: Met Andy Warhol through mutual friends.
1952: Selected among candidates by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, to head a small design studio at Cheney Silks designing fabric for men’s neckwear. Started assisting Andy Warhol with freelance work. He also worked for a brief period at the Rockmore Company, an advertising agency where Andy freelanced and where Nathan encouraged him to try his hand at shoe illustrations, which resulted in extensive work for I. Miller.
During this time Nathan and Andy exhibited their work at the Loft Gallery in Manhattan.
1953: Traveled for six months throughout Europe, visiting France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and England. In France, Nathan visited Miro, who was not at home at the time. Madame Miro gave Nathan a small piece of paper with their telephone number but he was not able to return. Nathan kept this paper and during a book signing event in New York for Miro, he attached the number to a sheet of paper and presented it to Miro, who created a unique drawing (inscribed to Nathan) with color markers that Nathan also provided. Nathan’s passion for Miro and Picasso, whom he considered the greatest artists of the 20th century, made him an amateur authority on both artists. He collected and read nearly every biography and catalog raisonée published on them.
1953-54: Resumed freelance work designing windows for Gene Moore at Bonwit Teller. Also designed greeting cards for Tiffany, Museum of Modern Art, Bergdorf Goodman, Georg Jensen, and Nelson Rockefeller, among others.
1954: Designed the cover for Fortune Magazine for the visionary art director and former Futurist designer Leo Leonni; in the collection of the Denver Museum of Art.
1955: With the increased success and workload, Gluck became the full-time assistant to Andy Warhol in his commercial art studio.
Throughout the 1950s Gluck created small collages and gouache paintings.
Gluck played a key role in the development of some of the techniques Warhol employed in his pre-Pop work. Among the techniques he taught Warhol or facilitated the wide use of: how to marbleize paper (which Warhol employed in works exhibited at the Loft Gallery), painting on glass, and the use of stamps—employed ubiquitously throughout the 1950s in Warhol’s famous ink drawings of flowers, birds, butterflies, and shoes—which allowed Warhol to complete large amounts of work in a short time. This archaic form of reproduction may very well have influenced Warhol’s decision to use silk screen later on in his fine art.
1960-1965: Worked full-time with Warhol until 1962, and on and off again until 1965. Gluck helped Warhol produce the Brillo Boxes as part of a group of replicas of commonplace supermarket packaging. Nathan was in charge of selecting the carton prototypes, but Warhol rejected his campier choices in favor of the most banal examples. In Patrick S. Smith’s interview Nathan recalled that Warhol chose "very nice boxes. You know, for grapefruit with maybe palm trees or crazy flamingos or some kind of oranges—maybe they would be called Blue Orchid Oranges, and the box would have a blue orchid on them."
1965: Left Warhol and returned to advertising as art director at the Peter Mehlich Agency, New York.
1977-95: The American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York. Served under Caroline Hightower as Competitions Coordinator for AIGA’s annual Communication Graphics exhibition and other thematic competitions.
Throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s Gluck continued to create his own art work, focusing primarily on gouache, watercolor and Dr. Martin’s dyes, along with drawing and the occasional collage.
1990: Became AIGA’s archivist, helping to document and order the Institute’s decades-old collection of design books and ephemera.
1995: Retired from AIGA in 1995 at the age of 76; returned to creating collages full-time.
1997: “Ephemeral Musings”, solo exhibition (85 collages), Reinhold Brown Gallery, New York, NY. Reviewed by Roberta Smith, The New York Times, April 1, 1997.
2001: “Nathan Gluck: Collages”, solo exhibition, The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA. Reviewed by Graham Shearling, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
2008: “Limited Time Offer”, solo exhibition (49 collages), Athenaeum of Music and Arts Library, Rotunda Gallery, La Jolla, CA. Reviewed by Robert L. Pincus, The San Diego Union-Tribune.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2018 SOMETHING ELSE: The Collages of Nathan Gluck, solo exhibition, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles,
Los Angeles, CA
2015 UNTITLED Miami Beach, presented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
2010 Nathan Gluck, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Santa Monica, CA.
2009 Twenty Years of Collecting: Athenaeum Inspired Art, 1989-2009, Athenaeum of Music and Arts Library, La Jolla, CA.
Synthesis: Contemporary Collage, group exhibition, Hemphill Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.
2008 Nathan Gluck: Limited Time Offer, solo exhibition, Athenaeum of Music and Arts Library—Rotunda Gallery, La Jolla, CA; exhibition reviewed by Robert L. Pincus, The San Deigo Union-Tribune.
Nathan Gluck: Collages, Luis De Jesus Seminal Projects, San Diego, CA.
2006 Nathan Gluck: Selected Works, Boomerang for Modern, San Diego, CA.
2001 Nathan Gluck: Collages, solo exhibition, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg, PA.
1997 Ephemeral Musings, solo exhibition, Reinhold Brown Gallery, New York, NY (exhibition reviewed by Robert Smith, The New York Times.
1984 Nathan Gluck: Selected Works, Hiram Halle Library, Pound Ridge, NY
1954 The Loft Gallery, New York, NY; exhibition reviewed by Fairfield Porter.
1950s Serendipity, New York, NY (exhibited numerous times throughout the 1950s)
1947 Nathan Gluck: Collages and Photograms, Abbott Kimball Co., New York, NY
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Nathan Gluck is mentioned in the following books detailing the career of Andy Warhol:
Museum of Modern Art, Andy Warhol, exhibition catalog, pp. 63, 65, 68, 405, 406, 425.
Patrick Smith, Andy Warhol’s Art and Film, see Index 603 (28 pages of interview).
Patrick Smith, Conversations About the Artist, pp. 54-82.
Fred Lawrence Giles, Loner at the Ball: The Life of Andy Warhol, Index 408.
The Andy Warhol Museum, pg. 106, 172.
Jesse Kornbluth, PrePop Warhol (throughout).
David Bourdon, Warhol, Index 426 (portion of interview in Warhol auction catalog.
Pat Hackett, The Andy Warhol Diaries, pg. 317.
Bob Colacello, Holy Terror, pgs. 22, 23, 503.
Calvin Tomkins, The Scene, pg. 39.
Rainer Crone, A Picture Show by the Artist, pp. 18, 19 (a reminiscence).
Nathan Gluck appeared in television interviews and programs for E! Entertainment Television, BBC, and French television, and he also presented numerous talks on design, his work and Andy Warhol.
QUOTES:
“Composed of a staggering variety of printed ephemera collected by the artist and his friends, and combining a range of printed detritus—matchbook covers, wine and shipping labels, ticket stubs, fruit stickers, club flyers, photos and newspaper ads, to name just a few—from around the world and the past several decades, these works play on words, forms, colors and, above all, on styles. Their vintage is sometimes Belle Èpoque, sometimes the swinging 60s and sometimes the dubious fin de siècle, as well as the very playful and satirical use of more recent imagery from the age of cell phones and the Internet. …Yet these works are no more inconsistent than they are redundant. Each is in its own distinctive way both a personal statement and homage to the graphic designer's craft, turned into art.”
– Roberta Smith, chief art critic, The New York Times
“Everything in these small compositions reveals a sharp eye for design, coupled with an easygoing and persuasive artistic vision.”
– Robert L. Pincus, art critic, The San Digeo Union-Tribune
“Nostalgia is a risk in collage, but Gluck’s ironic sense of humor prevents them from ever becoming cloying. Camp they indeed are. The verbal humor of the printed word (check out the titles) constantly comes into play. Above all, Gluck’s work is fastidious. The scraps of paper are meticulously arranged on the sheet—his color is fearless.”
– Graham Shearling, art critic, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
“Nathan Gluck’s work may be considered as being synonymous with [Warhol’s] commercial art. In fact, it is almost impossible to separate Nathan Gluck’s “Warhols” from Warhol’s “Warhols”.
– Patrick S. Smith, Warhol: Conversations about the Artist
“In certain ways, Nathan [Gluck] was to the 1950s what Gerard Malanga became in the 60s.”
– John Smith, former chief archivist of the Andy Warhol Museum
1110 Mateo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021
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