Ileana Sonnabend, champion of American art

Associated media

Stephen Bury reports on a New York show dedicated to the late art dealer who was among the first to promote US Pop art in Europe

The centre-piece and motivation for the exhibition ‘Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New’ is Robert Rauschenberg’s Canyon (1959), a ‘Combine’ painting inspired by Rembrandt’s The Rape of Ganymede (1635), where Rembrandt painted an eagle carrying off the boy Ganymede to serve as Zeus’ cupbearer. Rauschenberg  substitutes a stuffed bald eagle given to him by Sari Dienes, and Ganymede becomes a pillow suspended with thick string. And this is where the problems begin. The bald eagle, although no longer an endangered species after the banning of the pesticide DDT, is still protected by the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the US Fish and Wildlife Service prohibits its sale, living or dead, or its export. Notwithstanding this, another branch of the executive government, the Internal Revenue Service, still valued Canyon at US$65million (meaning a tax bill of USD 29.2 million) in Ileana Sonnabend’s estate. Its donation to the Museum of Modern Art seems to be a work-around.

Canyonhad its own role in the reception of American post-war art. First exhibited in Rauschenberg’s solo exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York in 1960, in 1964 it was part of the United States entry in the Venice Biennale, where Rauschenberg won the Golden Lion. It signalled the end of the dominance of the School of Paris, and French critics were vituperative in their criticism, alleging American ‘cultural colonization’ and even hinting at jury tampering.  By this point, the painting was already in the private collection of Ileana Sonnabend, who had helped ‘discover’ Rauschenberg.

There have been other important women dealers in modern art – in New York Edith Halpert (Downtown Gallery), Eleanor Ward (Stable Gallery) and Betty Parsons; in Paris, Iris Clert (who had shown Rauschenberg in a group show in 1961) and Denise René, whose interest was primarily in Op and Kinetic art. But this exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art celebrates Sonnabend’s extraordinary role as the interlocutor between Europe and America, introducing Jasper Johns,   Roy Lichtenstein,   Andy Warhol,   Claes Oldenburg,  James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, John McCracken, Larry Bell and Bruce Nauman to her Paris galleries (first at 37, quai des Grands Augustins and then at 12, rue Mazarine); and Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Giovanni Anselmo, Jannis Kounellis, Gilberto Zorio, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gilbert & George,    A. R. Penck and Fischli & Weiss at her New York galleries (first at 924 Madison Avenue, and then 420 West Broadway). Pop art,   Minimalism   and conceptual art in one direction, arte povera in the other.  The museum has been coy about this exhibition: there has been no press preview and not even a press kit, as if, understandably, it did not want to seem to be favouring a currently operating gallery.

But it is a wonderful show, almost a retrospective of the last 50 years modern art. All the works passed through Ileana Sonnabend’s hands and many are now in other major collections. I am not known to be a great fan of Tom Wesselmann’s work but here is a brilliant back-lit vacuum-formed plastic Great American Nude #75(1965), inspired by the ‘beautiful intensity of gas station signs’ and using design elements and colours of the American flag, perhaps alluding to Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830).

John McCraken’s Green Plank (1968) is another revelation. Made from polyester resin, fibreglass and plywood plank, it alludes to the surfboard, but seems to use green as a material. McCracken, a believer in extraterrestrial life, ‘liked imaging that these cool, advanced beings might zip here in their time-space vehicles and leave objects for us to look at’.

Also on show are videotapes and film from the collaboration with Leo Castelli, Castelli-Sonnabend Tapes and Films, which began distribution in 1973, and was run up to 1978 by Joyce Nereaux. This channel was crucial in promoting the careers of performance artists. Films on show here include Vito Acconci’s notorious Seedbed, where, at his first solo exhibition at Sonnabend Gallery in January 1972, Acconci masturbated underneath a wooden ramp in the gallery, fantasizing about gallery visitors, Transference and Supply Room (all 1972). There are also films by William Wegman, Simone Forti, David Haxton, and Charlemagne Palestine, who recently had a solo show at Sonnabend Gallery.

A catalogue documents the 40 artists in the show and their connections with Sonnabend. Anne Temkin, who curated the show, provides an introductory text, which should be supplemented by Annie Cohen-Solal’s 2010 biography of Sonnabend’s first husband, gallerist Leo Castelli.

Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New  by Ann Temkin and Claire Lehmann is published by Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2013; distributed outside the USA and Canada by Thames & Hudson. 172 pp., 56 colour illus, £19.95 US$ 29.95  ISBN 978 0870708961 (hbk)