Parrish Gears Up For Fall

While the rest of the East End is winding down after the summer, the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, which has just announced its fall program, seems to be doing just the opposite.

"Our exhibitions and programs are flourishing this fall," said Trudy Kramer, the director of the museum, "proving yet again that the Parrish is truly a year-round cultural resource."

Taiwanese art, contemporary photography, a series of talks with authors and talks about artists, a film series, and an exhibit of the paintings of Fairfield Porter are on the agenda.

Artistic Symbiosis

If there is an overall theme, it is the symbiosis between writer and artist: writers who are influenced by art in their work or artists whose paintings draw upon literary references, painters who are also poets, writers who write about art, or writers who also work in the arts.

In the next event in this fall program, tomorrow at 12:30 p.m., Robert Long, a writer and poet, will talk about collaborating with Alfonso Ossorio on a work that appeared in the Guild Hall Museum's 1982 "Poets and Artists" show. The exhibit featured collaborative efforts between many of the East End's leading poets and painters.

Mr. Long, who recently joined The Star's editorial staff, has contributed poetry to The New Yorker, The Nation, and American Scholar and has published a book of his poems, "What Happens." The museum's exhibit of Ossorio's "Congregations" can be seen through Sept. 28.

Rare Opportunity

The Parrish will open an exhibit of works on paper by contemporary Taiwanese artists on Oct. 5. "Tracing Taiwan: Contemporary Works on Paper" was organized by Alice Yang, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in February shortly after becoming the museum's curator of collections and exhibits.

The show offers a rare chance in this country to see Taiwanese contemporary art, much of which contains innate political commentary on the state of the country and its relationship to the Chinese mainland.

"The show gives us a sense of what current work is like in places where there is an active political climate," said Ms. Kramer.

Porter Show

Concurrently with this show, which runs through Nov. 16, there will be an exhibit of paintings by Fairfield Porter from the museum's collection. The artist, an influential realist who died in 1975, spent much of his time on the East End during the most important working years of his life.

"Fairfield Porter was so catholic and broad minded in his interests," said Ms. Kramer, "he would have loved his work being placed in this international context."

"There is a lively cross-cultural exchange going on now between American and international artists, and the pairing of Porter with the Taiwanese artists amplifies this issue."

Major Photographers

Contemporary photography, speci fically photographs of hands, will be the subject of an exhibit set to open in November.

"Collection in Context" will have 67 works, dating from 1947, by such master photographers as Richard Avedon, Judy Dater, William Eggleston, Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Barbara Kruger, Annie Liebovitz, Sally Mann, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Gilles Peress, Sebastiao Salgado, Cindy Sherman, and Alfred Stieglitz.

Films made by photographers will be the subject of a two-part discussion series with Marion Wolberg Weiss in December. A session on Dec. 7 will feature short films by the Lumiere Brothers, Robert Frank, and Danny Lyon. The subject on Dec. 14 will be Larry Clark's controversial "Kids."

Porter and Tuten

Focusing more precisely on the artist-writer symbiosis, three writers who live on the East End for much of the year will be interviewed by Ellen Keiser over the coming months, starting with the poet Anne Porter. She won't be reading her own poetry on this occasion, however, but that of her husband, Fairfield Porter, in conjunction with the opening of the show of his paintings.

Frederic Tuten, professor emeritus of the City College of New York, will read from his latest novel, "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," which includes artwork by Eric Fischl.

The author will discuss how painting has influenced the subject matter and style of his novels, which include "Tintin in the New World," "Tallien: A Brief Romance," and the much-acclaimed "The Adventures of Mao on the Long March."

Gruen and Schapiro

John Gruen, senior editor of Dance magazine and a noted photographer, will show slides and discuss his work. His books include "The Artist Observed," "Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography," and "Flowers and Fables."

Meanwhile, Miriam Schapiro, a leader in the feminist and pattern and decoration movements, will teach an intensive four-day master class at the end of October to explore the connections between autobiography and art.

Ms. Schapiro, whose work could be described as autobiography made visual, most recently exhibited at the National Museum of American Art in Washington.

There will be a full supporting roster of lectures to accompany the major exhibits at the Parrish, plus plenty of programs for children.