Art and Design

Lot Essay

Born in Bucks County in 1958, Michael P. Shanoski always retained strong ties with the Keystone state, and the city of Philadelphia specifically. A graduate from Bloomsburg University, Shanoski joined Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, where he learned music and took voice lessons before enrolling at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he graduated in 1986.

Working in a variety of media over the years, Shanoski had a predilection for pastel, and became known for his 1980s series called Waiting, which includes many abstract figure drawings of waiters inspired from his bartending time at The Garden, a country French restaurant in Philadelphia. Asked about the series during an interview with Maryellen Kennedy in January 1986, Shanoski explained: "I started drawing waiters to satisfy my desire to draw Nijinsky." He continues: "My initial inspiration was the performance of the ballet dancer Vaslov Nijinsky in Jeux, in which three tennis players dance in tennis whites. When I started serving, I saw a close relationship between the image, energy, and motion of the dancers and that of the waiters." Rather than immortalizing specific moments, Shanoski focused on the flow, the dance of the servers as they floated between tables, pouncing from one customer to the other. As illustrated in Freeman’s September 15 auction, some of the works depict waiters (either alone or in rows) wearing the traditional garçon costume - a waist-length best, a long black apron and the two triangles that form the bow tie - while others tend to be more abstract and only depict an angle of a table, the flow of the waiters’ dance etc. Shanoski was so prolific that a dedicated show at his alma mater in Burlington, PA was organized for this series.

Shanoski’s work garnered multiple awards, exhibitions (national and international as the artist had a following in Japan) as well as countless solo and group shows. His work is currently included in several permanent collections such the Library of Congress, Rutgers University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as PAFA. Shanoski was also the owner of the Mulligan-Shanoski Gallery in San Francisco until his passing in 2001 of AIDS. Freeman’s offering of a curated selection of Shanoski’s works (all to be sold without reserve) highlights an artist that has a deep connection and appreciation for the city of Philadelphia. At present, Shanoski’s work is also presented in "Among Us: Four Decades of Art & AIDS," an exhibition aimed at raising awareness, combating stigma, protesting inaction and hateful rhetoric, and memorializing those lost to the AIDS pandemic, most of whom -like Shanoski- found solace in art.