CrossCurrents - Walter Anderson Museum of Art

Luise Ross, Juror

Luise Ross

Luise Ross is the owner of the prestigious Luise Ross Gallery in New York City. Ross’s career as an art dealer stems from her early personal interest in art and from her formal education and training as a painter. She received her undergraduate degree in painting and art history from the University of Colorado and did postgraduate study with Clyfford Still. She attended the Accademia dei Belli Arte in Florence, Italy, and the Internationalen Sommer-Academie fur bildende Kunst at Salzburg in Austria under the tutelage of Oskar Kokoschka. Ms. Ross’s years at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, French & Company, and as director of the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York provided the preparation and determination to venture out on her own, first as a private dealer, and then to open the Luise Ross Gallery in 1983. From its beginning, the gallery has represented Walter Anderson in New York and its exhibitions over the years have introduced the artist’s work to an increasingly wider audience outside his native south. Ms. Ross’s pairings of Walter Anderson with other American greats such as Arthur Dove and Charles Burchfield in two-man shows have won acclaim from New York critics.

“Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists. . .” Marcel Proust, Maxims
Forgive these few tedious paragraphs on the process of jurying this exhibition at this wonderful museum. As an art dealer, I have the opportunity and obligation of reviewing portfolios of artists, young and old, established and beginning, trained and self taught, literally from all over the world. Reviewing portfolios for my gallery is not unlike the process of jurying a show. The difficulty is that describing the process leaves out the pleasure, excitement, and joy from looking at original work for the first time. To all of the artists who submitted work for this exhibition, my heartfelt gratitude and respect for letting me see your work.
First, I run through all the submissions two or three times as a way of familiarizing myself with them in a very general way. As much as possible, I attempt to avoid judgments at this point, but in the interest of discipline I begin to make notes even at this stage, sometimes giving my own titles to individual works. Subject matter, if identifiable, is ignored.
Formal elements are the focus as I go through the submissions the fourth time. Composition, line, form, color, the handling of the medium, all these basics enter into this critical phase of the process. I say critical, because by the end of this phase I will have eliminated more than fifty percent of the submissions from further consideration.
The final stage of selecting candidates for exhibition is the most difficult and most likely to be influenced by personal judgment, not to say prejudice. What I like, what appeals to me, alas, are filters I cannot discount. I temper this caveat by unabashedly declaring that there is one preeminent quality I attempt to identify in an artist –– is there something unique, original, idiosyncratic in the work that makes it the product of the artist’s personal vision. For if the artist allows us to see what he sees, he is truly making art.

-- Luise Ross

Arch S.P. Janet M. Akers	Chair Richard S. Buswell	Untitled (Fallen Angel) Phillip Chan
Tide Pool Jean Cassels	Hooked Corrie Hogg	Aline Kessler Street Circles
Extinction Elizabeth G. Kuhn	Heart and Kisses Shawne Major	Guggenheim South Bill Myers
Bloodlines Carol Prusa	Moon Doggie VI Susie Ranager	Baton Rouge Ed Smith