Chelsea Gallery Roundup

SW Corner of 21st @ 10th Ave - Text by David Byrne

Thursday night was beautiful and hundreds of galleries opened shows for the new season. The streets were packed. I went to Chelsea Friday, during the day, and it was still bustling. There are a lot of good shows:

LA artists from the sixties and seventies are showing up again. George Herms has a mini retrospective (he's over-due for a major one) at Nyehaus, a gallery that's been exhibiting many of these artists. Herms is in his seventies and seems to be experiencing a great late phase. His new work is very different, and delightful. Here's an example:

GEORGE HERMS, Collagio #01, 2010, Collage, 14 x 11 in, , LOVE pressed
Courtesy, Nyehaus Gallery, New York

On the other hand, two other LA artists from that era have not made much progress. Late works by the late Craig Kauffman at Danese are as beautiful and etherial as ever, and not much different. 

Craig Kauffman, Saging, 2008, acrylic lacquer on vacuum formed plastic, 23.75 x 25.75 x 9.5 inches

John McCracken at Zwirner has made even less progress. I don't know how he can keep doing the same damn thing for fifty years, or why he seems to be so popular, but so it is. 

"50 Years at PACE" is spread out over FOUR venues in Chelsea and one on 57th Street, and that's not enough space for all the great art they have shown over the years. Take that Larry Gagosian! Just to name some of the artists: De Kooning, Rothko, Pollock, Still (what's he doing there? They never showed Still.), Johns, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Elizabeth Murray, Chuck Close, Richard Tuttle, Tom Nozkowski, Tim Hawkinson......

Anton Perich, Andrea Feldman, Max's Kansas City, 1972, printed ca. 1995, 20 x 24 inches (Steven Kasher Gallery).

Two shows about the artists's bar, Max's Kansas City, at Steven Kasher and Loretta Howard, pretty much capture the mixed feelings I have about that era: attracted and repelled. 1965-75 was an intense and exciting time with new ideas tossed around all the time. On the other hand, the drug scene and attitude toward women (well-captured in the videos shown at Kasher) were pretty disgusting. 

JUDY PFAFF, Untitled, 2010, Paper, wood, wire & rod, artificial flowers, 128 x 162 x 48 inches

Another mini-retrospective, and another artist long over-due for a major retrospective, is Judy Pfaff. Her show "Five Decades" can be seen at the Ameringer Gallery. Like Herms, Pfaff's new work is different -- more luxuriously lush and sensual than her past work. Sarah Sze, one of the best of many artists heavily influenced by Pfaff, can be seen at Tanya Bonakdar.

Progress on the Powerhouse - HA!

Photo from the Jersey City Reporter

The Jersey City Reporter has an article on the completion of "Phase One" of the "stabilization" of the Powerhouse:

“After 50 years of neglect, it’s unrealistic that you can turn a building of this size around inexpensively or quickly,” Antonicello said. “That being said, I’m thrilled people are taking notice of the efforts made to restore this magnificent structure.”

The stabilization started in earnest in June of last year when Mayor Jerramiah Healy, Antonicello, officials from the Port Authority, and other city officials were on hand for the kick-off of the stabilization of the historic Hudson and Manhattan Powerhouse, the first step towards reinventing the building as a commercial and entertainment complex. The actual work started in December.

When stabilization is complete, the Powerhouse will become an 180,000 square-foot space across five floors, filled with galleries, restaurants, and offices. The Cordish Companies, a Baltimore-based retail and entertainment developer, is the designated developer for renovating the site.

Some points:

1. Sealing the windows "with brightly colored boards using colors from the Redevelopment Agency’s logo" isn't much to brag about. Phase two includes the real work: relocating the electrical transformers located in the Powerhouse that power the PATH, installing a temporary roof, structural work, masonry repairs and the removal of 340 tons of polluted soil and 50 tons of non-toxic soil. So please, cut the bull.
2. Even if the Powerhouse is completely restored (as we all hope), it will never be the "centerpiece for the long-discussed Powerhouse Arts District" because THERE IS NO POWERHOUSE ARTS DISTRICT, and there never will be because Healy is allowing the owners of the historic warehouses to demolish them.  He actually ENCOURAGED the demolition of 111 First Street by changing the zoning to allow a 60-story building -- and we can expect further demolition when the economy improves. 
3. The Powerhouse cannot be the center of anything because, even if it's beautifully restored and all the hopes for 180,000 SF of galleries, restaurants, entertainment venues, etc. are fulfilled, IT WILL BE SURROUNDED - BURIED - BY HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS.
4. Cities would do anything to have a large, vital art and entertainment district in an historic warehouse district. Jersey City could have had it -- the Powerhouse Arts District Redevelopment Plan was working. Several historic building were restored and other, infill buildings, were built. But Healy gave it all away. 

Greetings from the contemporary No-Man's-Land

*Note: This post is terribly late, but lack of a keyboard and "quiet time" have led to a travel backlog.  I'll do my best to play catch up in the next few days.... but right now I've got to hop the night train to Budapest. 

I'm in Krakow on week three of my Eastern European art quest and, a Polish beer and a keyboard (finally) later I'm sitting down to give you an out-of-date-update.  Surprised?  In New York it's so easy to be surrounded by contemporary art, collectives, galleries, and, as an arts consumer, it's easy to get caught up in the idea that New York really is the center of the art universe--and that there's nothing happening between Berlin and Istanbul.  But there's a whole 'nother world out there (who must be making art, right?) so several un-answered emails, unsatisfactory responses, and a cheap flight later I had decided to try and find (at least some) of it.  Armed with artist contacts and a backpack, I set off.

The dilemma: Why don't we hear much about Eastern-European Art in the international press?  Ah-hem. Communism. "Contemporary art" has been put on hold for a dew decades. You'll most likely see exhibitions of work from the 60's, 70's, 80's, and even 90's in major museums/art centers- if only because the huge backlog of art censored by the state is just being made available.  This explains in part why the art press has been so slow to feature new work from these areas; the insitutional vetting process just isn't there.  That being said, there are artists living and producing now in Eastern Europe, and if you look a little deeper, you'll find a host of independent galleries and artists engaging in really facinating work.

Prague: Contemporary art in a historic Disney World?  Yes!  Like most places, you have to head slightly outsided the city to see where artists are working; the city center does play host to several contemporary venues, but they're intermingled with schmotzy traps.  Prague has several cutting-edge collectives and contemporary art centers providing much-needed venues for art now, though they're unfortunately not on the interntational radar.  I started with Futura, a center that hosts international exchanges, local work, performance and video screenings in its space west of the city center and downriver from the tourist-ridden New Town.  Their gallery space, located inside a rennovated factory masquerading as a townhouse, was hosting the work of... *first snag* artists from New York, but their gallery sitter assured me this wasn't the norm.

Really....?  Will Prague prove to be disasterous?  Will Irene survive another night train?  Should Irene go and have another beer before continuing this retrospective?  More to come.

More on the Jersey City Museum

Liberace Museum Addition and Renovation, Leo Daly Architects

Liberace Museum Addition and Renovation, Leo Daly Architects

The Jersey City Independent has an excellent detailed report here, and the Jersey Journal's report, here, has a rare interview with a Museum trustee.

What happened to the Jersey City Museum is typical for non-profits in general. It's a lot easier to raise money for showy, more permanent things like new buildings than it is for on-going, relatively transient things like actual operations. Here's yet another example in today's Times:

Liberace Museum Is Closing Its Doors - NYTimes.com: "The museum’s founding endowment has shrunk from $10 million five years ago to $1 million, a result of money-losing investments and a decision to take out an expensive mortgage to finance a renovation of the building that in hindsight, Mr. Koep said, does not seem like a wise decision."

Jersey City officials say art museum is behind on mortgage

Jersey City officials say art museum is behind on mortgage, bills | NJ.com: "City Business Administrator John “Jack” Kelly said Wednesday he was recommending the city not fund the museum, in part because of the city’s own $80 million deficit but also because of the museum’s financial problems. Kelly said the museum is behind on its mortgage and utility bills. “It’s difficult for the city to fund the museum when the museum has been closed since February, even though the city funded the museum for a 12 month period,” he said.

While the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency donated the building at 350 Montgomery Street in 1993, the museum poured $11 million into the location to transform it from a municipal garage to an art museum. While some of the funding was raised through a capital campaign, there is a mortgage on the property."

Study Says Painters 30% More Likely to Develop Bladder Cancer

Via Hyperallergic.com:
Here are a few thoughts and links: Oil painters especially - Wear surgical gloves. Avoid coming in contact with paint and turps. Ventilate your workspace using exhaust fans with motors which are sealed to prevent explosions. Wash hands prior to eating or drinking. • Pastel painters wear respirator. Use a vacuum system to capture loose powders. • Airbrush painters, Spray Painters - use a respirator. Coating your lungs with Acrylic and or oil mediums will turn them to stone! Remain flexible in your endeavors. Avoid the age old practice of pointing fine brushes with your mouth. 

• http://www.unh.edu/ehs/pdf/EU-Art-Safety-Brochure.pdf 
• http://www.artsupply.com/headerpages/safety_sheet.htm

Brooklyn Rail Interview with John Elderfield

The Brooklyn Rail: Rail publisher, Phong Bui, interviews John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture, the Museum of Modern Art, about MoMA's exhibition, Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913 - 1917.  Here's a taste:

...This was essentially Matisse’s invention: a process of observing his own intuitive reactions to what he had done, then often reworking the whole painting at the next stage. This amendatory process became, of course, the very method of making modern paintings—including, of course, paintings that look nothing like Matisse’s—although we see less of it now.

Miscellaneous Thoughts About “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913 - 1917”

The Italian Woman, 1916, oil on canvas (about 46 x 35") Guggenheim Museum, New York

• During this period, Matisse made space tangible. This is most obvious in The Italian Woman, where he draped the space around the right shoulder of the model as if the surrounding space became a semi-opaque shawl. This merging of figure and ground goes back at least as far as the Impressionists and Cezanne. 
• The painfully thin arms, fidgeting, nervous hands, tight mouth (not at all like Laurette - a favorite model of Matisse’s), together with the sickly yellow-green tonality, makes this one of Matisse’s most anxious paintings. 
• The black shadow under Laurette’s chin is something Matisse did a lot and may relate to the black choker that Marguerite, Matisse’s daughter, wore around her neck and which appears in all of Matisse’s many portraits of her. When Marguerite was only six years old she contracted diphtheria and had to have an emergency tracheotomy (without anesthetic!) in order to breathe. She always wore a choker to cover the large scar. 

Back I, Second State, Fall 1909 and Back IV, c.1931. Both plaster cast in bronze c. 1950 (about 74 x 44 x  6”) MoMA

• The way the light reflects off of the background of Back I (somewhat exaggerated in the left photo) creates a horizon line (beginning at her buttocks) and an illusion of space that the figure inhabits. The background of Back IV, on the other hand, is very much a wall that the figure stands in front of. This is reinforced by the way the head and forearm of the the figure in Back IV extend above the wall, and the way the figure stands on the ledge rather than in front of it as in Back I.
• Matisse had as physical a relationship with his painting as he did with his sculpture. He vigorously worked his paintings: he scraped, scored, wiped down, scumbled, incised, and sometimes painted with a stiff brush. 
• The space in Matisse’s painting was informed by his sculptures. Just as the figure in Back IV is in front of a wall, the figures in many of these paintings (especially Bathers By A River - see below), visually begin at the surface of the canvas, as if it were a wall, and come out toward the viewer. 
• In my opinion, Back IV is a more interesting sculpture in the original plaster, set on the floor the way Matisse kept it until he died, compared to cast in bronze and hung on the wall.  (See the photo below.) The light reflecting off the plaster sculpture is softer and more etherial, and the surface is more tactile and sensual; yet because it’s physically on the floor, it’s very much in our (i.e. real) space.

Matisse's studio at the Hotel Regina, Nice, c. 1953

The Moroccans has about an inch border of white-primed canvas or rabbit skin glue. This has the effect of flattening the painting and making it self-contained -- a thing (paint) existing in our world, not an imaginary picture behind (and beyond) the frame. (See my post on Monet’s Waterlilies.)

Detail, Henri Matisse, The Moroccans, 1912-16, the Museum of Modern Art. 

Composition No. II, c. 1909. Watercolor on paper. The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Matisse sent this watercolor (above) to his Russian patron Sergei Shchukin to share his initial idea for a painting. Shchukin apologetically replied (P.89 in the catalog):

I cannot at present put a nude in my staircase. After the death of a relative, I took three little girls (8, 9, and 10 years old) into my household, and here in Russia...one simply cannot display nudes to little girls. Do the same ronde but with the young women in dresses. The same with composition no. 2.

Matisse responded with a drawing with the two figures on either end dressed in loose drapery and the other figures repositioned in more modest poses.

Eugene Druet’s November 1913 photograph of Bathers by a River, digitally re-colorized to represent the appearance of the painting at the time.

• I believe the vestiges of clothing can be seen in the final painting.  It looks to me like the figures are partly covered by a filmy gray drapery or negligee.
• The rectangle above the seated figure is very difficult to interpret. Clearly, the bottom part continues her breasts and shoulders but is lighter as if in the sun, but Matisse radically abstracted what was a hood and some leaves and trees (see illustration above) to the point that it’s unrecognizable.  He did a similar radical abstraction with the figures in the windows and arches of The Moroccans. 

Not exactly about the show:

• From a 1951 interview by  E. Teriade, reprinted under the title “Matisse Speaks” in the 1952 Art News Annual: "Despite pressure from certain conventional quarters, the war [World War I] did not influence the subject matter of painting, for we were no longer merely painting subjects." 
• Matisse with his cat from a Matisse website:

• And finally, what does MoMA have against apples?

The Best Way to See "Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917"

Weegee (Arthur Fellig), American, born Austria. 1899–1968, Coney Island. c. 1939, Gelatin silver print, 10 5/16 x 13 11/16″  The Museum of Modern Art.

Wednesdays–Mondays, until October 11, from 9:30–10:30 a.m., MoMA members and guests of members (with $5 guest-admission tickets) can see the show before the Museum opens to the public.

If you're as compulsive as I am, get there just before 9:30, wait at the eastern-most door on the 54th Street entrance (it's the first to open) and make a beeline to the elevator to the sixth floor. You'll have the exhibition pretty much to yourself for about 20 minutes, and if you stay a gallery ahead of the crowd, you can have it pretty much to yourself for the whole hour.

If you're not a member, or don't know a member to go with, your choices are pretty limited. Your best bet is to purchase timed tickets ($20!) online here. Admission is free Friday nights from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m., and a limited number of timed tickets to the Matisse exhibition are available on a first-come, first-served basis. But whether you paid $20 online or are lucky enough to score a free ticket on a Friday night, the show will be very crowded.

Curatorial Flashbacks: Old Pros Playoff Roster (Call it a Guy Thing)

Norman Rockwell, Game Called Because of Rain, Post Cover 4/23/49

By Carl Belz

September’s nearly here, and that means preparing for the stretch run, the playoffs, and, hopefully, a shot at another World Series championship ring for the Old Pros. You think putting together an exhibition is challenging? Well, try putting together a winning baseball team, year-in and year-out, in this day and age. It used to be the Old Pros were, like, the only game in town, a sure bet for October glory, but not anymore. Not with expansion and free agency, mixed media, globalism, a luxury tax, installations, photography, you name it. And not with the Sculptors Guild, Women Only, the Asian Bloc, and Contemporary Whiz Kids, to name just a few of the new contenders, breathing down the Old Pros’ necks and siphoning off emerging and/or previously overlooked talent.

But we’re not here to wax nostalgic about the old days or sing the blues about gentler, simpler times now lost to us, we’re here to present a starting lineup that we believe can compete with any current pretenders to the ancient and still-revered throne of baseball supremacy. To wit:

Catcher: Rembrandt. No question about it. There he is, front and center, looking right at us, his weathered gaze determined and stoical, his expansive barrel chest signaling nothing gets by him, reminding us he’s the physical and spiritual place where the buck stops. He’s got leadership written all over him, he’s our anchor.

1st Base: Roger van der Weyden. Lean, poised, and self-contained, but bristling with competitive energy, what we call wired. Currently a league leader in triples, suggesting what it means to take it to the limit, to squeeze an extra base from a rope to the gap in right-center that puts renewed pressure on the opposition when they least expected it.

2nd Base: Goya. Feisty, testy Goya, always on the alert for a chance to get an edge, always ready to go toe-to-toe with an opponent on behalf of a teammate; he’s a sparkplug, his uniform’s always dirty, he’s an inspirational kind of guy.

Shortstop: Velasquez. Tell me, who could be better? No one! Velasquez was born to this position. Stylish and elegant beyond words, he makes the phenomenal look natural, as though there’s nothing to it, but don’t be deceived by that, not for a minute. And don’t forget, he’s no slouch when it comes to the stick either—he can go deep with the best of them.

3rd Base: Caravaggio. Swarthy, defiant, a guy with an attitude—“Wanna hit one past the hot corner? Give it a try. Wanna throw one up and in? You’ll pay the price.” The kind of player you want on your side, not your opponent’s.

Left Field: Rubens. Who could argue with Rubens? Painter supreme, diplomat, entrepreneur, darling of royalty, plus a trophy wife on his arm. A bit of a showman at times, but he goes out and puts up big power numbers year after year. Always on the short list for MVP, he’s baseball’s reigning good will ambassador to the world at large.

Center Field: Michelangelo. I know, I know, the Big M occasionally gets distracted by his hassles with the owners, but he’s always there when it counts. Besides, we really, really want a big-time guy who goes both ways, who’s got the painting thing going and also the sculpture thing, a guy with the kind of presence at the plate that makes opposing hurlers want to pitch around him—in a word, a force, and M’s nothing if not that.

Right Field: Breughel, the Elder. The people’s choice, and rightly so. You feel he’s one of the guys you hang around with, have a few pops with, share stories about life’s ups and downs with—and he can sure tell those stories like nobody else! He affects the clubhouse chemistry in the same way, he’s as valuable off the field as he is on it.

Pitchers: I’m going with two, Matisse and Picasso, both relative newcomers to the roster, but both ready, in my mind, to accept the challenges linked to the Old Pros’ long and distinguished tradition. Picasso’s the power guy, going after every hitter, mano a mano, always ready to pit his best against the best the batter brings to the plate. And Matisse? Matisse embodies the old saying about how 90% of pitching takes place from the neck up. He throws up a mixture of what appear to be sweet softies, but the helpless batters can only guess what the next one will actually be—how much pace it’ll have, how much spin, which way it’ll go at the last moment, and then score another out for the guy known around the league as Bad Henry.

So there you have it, a lineup that’s got everything: speed, quickness, defense, power. I like our chances, and I look forward to October, but we’ll just have to see how it all plays out on the field. For now, here’s one you can take to the bank: the Old Pros won’t be put away easily.