Sylvia Sleigh at Deven Golden - Brief Article

Art in America, Sept, 2000 by Gerrit Henry

Sylvia Sleigh has long been concerned with turning real people into mythological or sacral beings. Such has been the

import, over the years, of her self-portraits as Venus as well as the idealized male nudes of The Turkish Bath (1973), art critics all, including her husband, the late Lawrence Alloway.

Perhaps the practice harks back to Sleigh's charmed girlhood in Wales; perhaps it has something to do with a European tendency to allegory and symbol. Whatever the reasons, Sleigh brought the predilection to a high point in the huge, ambitious Invitation to a Voyage: The Hudson River at Fishkifi (1979-99). In these 14 8-by-5-foot panels, hung edge to edge, the landscape is continuous and makes an enclosure around us, yet characters recur and we're never quite sure where we are, or why, or whom we've already met.

But we are sure this is enchanted territory, based on Watteau's fetes galantes as surely as it refers to a musical version Sleigh had heard of Baudelaire's bluntly exquisite poem Invitation to a Voyage. The work is set by a bit of railroad track flanked by the river on one side and woods on the other. Particularly prominent is the ruin of Bannerman's Arsenal, a castlelike fortress built on an island in the early 20th century by eccentric Scottish-American millionaire Frank Bannerman to house part of his military-surplus business.

Sleigh first glimpsed the place from the window of an Amtrak train, and on a mild spring day some time later she organized a riverbank picnic to take advantage of the picturesque scene. This was the takeoff point for her 20-year project, which is strikingly fluid in time. It memorializes her cat, Zelda, and her husband, Lawrence; among the others seen once or even several times in the panorama are the critic John Perreault and his friend Jeff Weinstein, who sit cross-legged on the riverbank; artist Eileen Spikol, who gestures for one and all to come join the revels; and Warren Perkins, one of Sleigh's students at the Art Students League, standing almost in the river, cap in hand. One suspects all the people portrayed were close to Sleigh's heart.

There's a lovely poetic existentialism to the work. The crowning mystery is Bannerman's Arsenal, a staunch building of great beauty, while the characters in the tableau seem as benignly bemused as they are overtly charming. My favorite bit of social poesis is the ever-elegant Alloway lifting a radiant Sleigh to her feet. Sleigh's Invitation reminds us that in our goings to and fro are moments of wonder, wit and even luster.