Exhibits

Mid-January, before the new semester begins, is always my chance to catch the exhibitions I missed in the fall, just before they close. This time I saw the big David LaChapelle retrospective "Make Believe" at the New York branch of international photography museum Fotografiska 

(here are "The earth laughs in flowers: Early fall" [2008-11], "Transfusion" [2014] and "1 Samuel 18:1: ... the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul do David and Jonathan loved him of his own soul" [2021]) 

and the rediscovery of the work of Morris Hirshfield at the American Folk Art Museum. LaChapelle's works are easily recognizable, though the exhibition helped me see that they carry a spiritual intention I hadn't guessed. Hirshfield's untrained works, celebrated by the surrealists and enjoying a brief moment of fame in a solo show at MoMA, is harder of approach.

The sublime "Stage girls with angels" (1945) boasts what may be the only row of angels I've ever seen from behind, but when Hirshfield's 

definitely not-from-life women pose in front of mirrors, as in Peggy Guggenheim's favorite, "Two women in front of a mirror" (1943) and "Inseparable Friends" (1941), back and front go out the window entirely! 

I give the last word to the patterned world of "Zebra family" (1941).