BARRY FELDMAN

   In the 19th and early 20th century when Paris was the center of the art world, the annual Salon was virtually the only venue where artists could show their work. Usually it was the largest paintings, the giant “machines” made to demonstrate technical expertise as well as to pander to official tastes and expectations, that would attract the greatest attention and garner the prizes that would in turn open the door to lucrative careers. Fast forward to New York City and the second half of the 20th Century, with the French Impressionist and Expressionist revolutions having  substantially changed the course of modern art.  NYC is the new art world capital. Individual personal expression is the new avant-garde and has taken already established abstract art into ever newer fields of endeavor. The canvas is no longer merely  the surface for demonstrated aesthetic structure, it is the field of action in which the artist is the performer.  For diverse reasons, this “action field” of the canvas kept expanding so that it was not unusual for paintings to be as large, if not larger, than the “machines” of 19th century Paris.  And like the earlier paintings bound for the Louvre or other museums and palaces throughout  France, the works in New York, once they were appreciated, touted and valued, spread across the land and around the world to museums and to the collections housed in the “palaces” of  the ultra wealthy.