Washington — Day Two

By Charles Kessler

FREER/SACKLER Museums of Asian Art
What a classy museum the Freer is! It's the only museum I went to that didn't have hundreds of school kids traipsing through, or tourists doggedly fulfilling their cultural obligation. There were no people making fun of the work either, like I encountered at the Hirshhorn and American Museums. (Why these people bother going to art museums I’ll never understand.) Instead the people at the Freer were knowledgeable lovers of Asian art.

The Freer is quiet and well lit, and the galleries are orderly without being repetitious. There are even comfortable chairs you can rest in under a shady loggia overlooking a beautiful courtyard. Like I said --- classy.

The Courtyard of the Freer Gallery of Art

My only complaint is most of the hanging silk paintings are covered with glass that makes it difficult, sometimes impossible, to see the older, dark Chinese paintings without being distracted by reflections.

But what a collection! They have some of the best Chinese bronzes I’ve ever seen, and they’re in pristine condition — pretty amazing considering they’re thousands of years old. Look at the detail of this owl:

Detail: Ritual Wine Container (You), Shang dynasty, 13th century B.C., bronze (Freer/Sackler Museum)

They also have more than one thousand works by James McNeill Whistler (yes, that Whistler — the Whistler of Arrangement in Grey and Black fame), including The Peacock Room, a lavish London dining room painted by Whistler in 1876–77.

Whistler’s art was heavily influenced by Asian art and he encouraged Charles Lang Freer, founder of the Freer Gallery of Art, to collect it; hence the connection.

James McNeill Whistler, The Peacock Room, 1876-77

The Sackler part of the museum isn’t as genial as the Freer. It’s newer, below ground, claustrophobic and somewhat of a labyrinth. Most of the larger temporary exhibitions are installed there, like:

The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan (until July 31st)    
These caves were one of the great achievements of the 6th century Northern Qi dynasty. They once contained monumental Buddhas, divine attendant figures, and crouching monsters that were carved into the mountains of northern China. Tragically, they were destroyed in the first half of the twentieth century when the sculptures were chiseled away and sold. With the aid of 3D imaging technology and several fragments of the sculptures on view, this exhibition captures some idea of what this awe-inspiring devotional site must have been like.

HIRSHHORN MUSEUM
From one of the best museums, the Freer, to one of the worst. I don’t mean the collection, which isn't great (Hirshhorn was infamous for seeking bargains) but has some good things. It’s the building I have issues with — it’s bad even by the low standards of modern art museums. In addition to my earlier complaints about a boisterous atmosphere, poorly proportioned, odd-shaped rooms, and a distracting and wasteful atrium, the building is doughnut-shaped so it feels like you’re walking down an endless corridor rather than viewing the work in separate rooms. (The de Young Museum in San Francisco has the same problem, but that’s a rectangular space so they have even less of an excuse.)  To make matters worse, the interior wall is all windows (looking out over a dreary courtyard), and as a result, the galleries are so busy and distracting it’s almost impossible to focus on the work.

They have five major Clyfford Still paintings in their permanent collection, several given to them by Still. Thankfully they’re hung in their own, relatively private, room.

Clyfford Still, 1948-C, 1948, oil on canvas, 81 x 69 in. (Hirshhorn)

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977  (Until May 15th)
This is the first retrospective of German abstract artist Peter Schwartze, aka Peter Heisterkamp, probably best known by the name his teacher, Joseph Beuys, gave him: Blinky Palermo.

Installation view, Blinky Palermo Retrospective, 1964-77

Even though this work is conceptual and minimal, there’s a nice, free-wheeling spirit to his exploration of decoration and modernism. It’s sad he died so young (33) — it would have been interesting to see where he’d go with all this.

ColorForms
This show is composed of works from the Hirshhorn's collection and is supposed to “explore the ways in which color has been an essential tool for artists, regardless of medium,” to quote from the catalog. Half the work in the show is black and white (or may as well be) — enough said.

AFRICAN ART MUSEUM
The Freer, Sackler and African Museums are interconnected, and the Sackler and African museums, except for their entrances, are completely underground. It's almost impossible to get your bearings in these spaces. (To make matters even more confusing, the Ripley Center International Gallery, a multi-purpose building including the Discovery Theater, is also under ground and connected to the others.) 

They supposedly have a great collection of African art originally collected by Paul and Ruth Tishman and sold to Disney for its Epcot Center but never installed there. Ultimately Disney gave the collection, all 525 objects, to this museum. I was not able to find it, and I couldn't find anyone to help me either. I really have no idea what this museum is about. The shows I saw were a mishmash of contemporary art and traditional (what we used to call "Primitive") art, jumbled together by some flimsy theme like “Technique and Object” or “Movement and Gesture.” I think Holland Cotter had a good point in his recent Times piece about how contemporary African, Chinese and Indian art is supplanting traditional art. That is certainly the case here.

One interesting installation piece I stumbled on was by Henrique Oliveira, a Brazilian artists of all things. There was no justification for it being at this museum as far as I can tell, but it was an impressive piece.

Henrique Oliveira, Bololo, wood, hardware, pigment, site specific installation (National Museum of African Art)

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
The American Indian Museum is mainly a cultural museum like the American History Museum, and it is another example of Holland Cotter’s argument. If you’re hoping to see some Northwest Coast Indian art, or other American Indian traditional art, you’re better off going to The George Gustav Heye Center in the old Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, One Bowling Green, in New York.


SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
The American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery share a block-long, historic, beautiful building with a large covered courtyard. They’re located a few blocks north of the National Gallery, in the heart of the hip and bustling Downtown.

I must confess that I had never been to either of these museums. I had an entirely wrong impression of them. I thought they would be filled with dark and dreary 18th and 19th century American portraits, boring landscape paintings, and silly, pompous history painting — but was I ever wrong. There was some of that, of course (see below), but both museums have much more modern and contemporary art than I expected, maybe about a third of the art exhibited. (Cotter’s point again?)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Adams Memorial, modeled 1886-91, cast 1969, bronze

Contemporary highlights of the collection include Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway (reproduced in the last post); impressive large-scale work by Alfred Jensen, Sean Scully, Edward Kienholz, and James Rosenquist; and this unusual room-size work by David Hockney. It changes color when different colored lights are shined on it:

David Hockney, Snails Space with Vari-Lites, Painting as Performance, 1995-1996, oil on two canvases, acrylic on canvas-covered masonite, wood dowels, overall: 84 x 260 x 135 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum

The museum also gives a chance for lesser known but deserving American artists to get shown, artists like Paul Wonner whose work is best illustrated in a close-up detail.

Detail, Paul Wonner, Model Drinking Coffee, 1964, oil on canvas

Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow (until May 8th)   
The American Museum has organized Rockman’s first major survey, and it includes 47 paintings and works on paper from the mid-1980s to the present. I don’t think this survey does him any favors; seeing his work in quantity makes me realize how much like illustration it is. Rockman built his career around environmental issues, and they’re good environmental illustrations, beautifully painted and all — but illustrations nonetheless.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
As one would expect of a portrait museum, art isn’t the major issue here. There’s just as much or more emphasis on the sitter (presidents, famous actors, historic figures, etc.) as there is on the artist. Nevertheless, there is a lot of great art to be seen here. I forgot how many contemporary artists have made portraiture a major part of their oeuvre. Off the top of my head, there’s Chuck Close of course, but also Andy Warhol, Alex Katz, David Hockney, Alice Neel, Lucian Freud, and the way over-rated Elizabeth Peyton. And these are just the painters; there are a lot more photographers.

Alice Neel, Self-Portrait, 1980, oil on canvas, 53 x 40 in (National Portrait Gallery)

Alexander Calder with his portraits of Edgar Varese (c.1930)
 and unknown man (c. 1929), 1963 photo by Ugo Mulas

Calder’s Portraits - A New Language (until August 14th)
This exhibition was the last one I saw, and one of my favorites. Calder's wire portraits are an absolute delight: inventive, playful, masterful caricature. Even the shadows they cast were considered and fun. Calder clearly enjoyed doing these, and he continued to do them even after he moved to abstraction in the 1930s.

Next post: A day trip to the Washington Museums -- tips and details.

Charles Kessler is an artist and writer, and lives in Jersey City.

Washington D. C. -- Day One

By Charles Kessler

There’s not a bit of art to see in New York so I thought I'd go down to Washington for the day and see Gauguin, Maker of Myth at the National Gallery (until June 5th), and Philip Guston, Roma at the Phillips Collection (until May 15th).  I soon realized I'd need at least two days to see all the other shows in Washington now. And of course there are the permanent collections of all those great museums. It was an exhilarating and exhausting two days!  Here are some brief thoughts and a photo diary of some highlights of my tour.

But before I start there's something I'd like to get off my chest — something I find both baffling and exasperating. Why is contemporary art almost always shown in spaces that are noisy, too brightly lit and too big, not just in Washington, but practically everywhere. Some art may be able to handle this, but not most. Walking from the West Wing of the National Gallery, where the Old Masters are, to the modern collection in I. M. Pei's East Wing, is to go from a quiet, genteel, orderly space to an assault of bright lights and noise -- a chaotic cacophony of oddly shaped rooms, arbitrarily arranged and way out of scale. 

National Gallery East Wing Atrium

Could it still be the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim after all these years? That might also explain why museums of modern art are usually surrounded by high blank walls outside, and distracting, wasteful, atriums inside. What are they thinking?

Okay, I feel better now.

NATIONAL GALLERY
I spent almost half of my time here because, in addition to the Gauguin show, there were so many other exhibitions to see: Gabriel Metsu, 1629–1667 (until July 24th); Lewis Baltz: Prototypes/Ronde de Nuit (until July 31st); Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals (Until May 30th); Larger Than Life: Ter Brugghen's Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene (until May 15th); and In the Tower: Nam June Paik (until October 2nd). Plus the National Gallery's permanent collection has some of the best art in the world, including this bit of perfection best seen close up as illustrated in this detail:

Detail, Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra Benci, c.1474-78, oil on panel, 15 x 14 9/16 inches (National Gallery).

Several of the 19th century French galleries in the main part of the museum are being renovated, but don't worry, most of that art is downstairs in an exhibition of the Chester Dale Collection, a major collection of mostly 19th and early 20th century French painting given to the museum in 1962. It’s installed in a lower, more crowded space mainly used for changing exhibitions of prints and drawings, but the work is so great it hardly matters. One of the many treats was seeing two great large group portraits, Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques and Manet's The Old Musician, displayed on opposite walls.

Edouard Manet, The Old Musician, 1862, oil on canvas, 73 3/4 x 97 11/16 in.

Pablo Picasso, Family of Saltimbanques, oil on canvas, 83 3/4 x 90 3/8 in.

Gauguin, Maker of Myth
This is a big show — 120 paintings, drawings, prints and ceramic and wood sculptures. Despite his prominence, Gauguin isn't the easiest artist to like. His colors are acidic and wishy-washy — even his major exception, Vision of the Sermon, is so bold only because it was supposed to be seen in a dark church. In addition, the space in his paintings is disjointed, and his drawing and shapes are graceless.

Paul Gauguin, Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), 1888,
oil on canvas (National Gallery of Scotland).

Even more damning, there's something dry and inauthentic about his work. This whole savage, primitive, Tahiti baloney was just a calculated PR campaign to promote his work. I agree with Philip Kennicott's objection to the post-modern analysis espoused in the catalog:

...but Gauguin still awaits a proper understanding, a reckoning that is both artistic and moral. The worst thing about phrases such as "narrative strategies" is that they reduce biographical data to a post-modern stew of moral relativity: Fraudulent self-promotion becomes "self-mythologizing"; theft becomes playful appropriation; the repeated rape of a child - for what else can you call sex with a girl who wasn't mature enough to consent or economically or socially powerful enough to refuse - becomes something grouped under the theme "fictions of femininity."

Nevertheless, or maybe as a result, this is powerful and disturbing work — a dark and troubling lost paradise, hauntingly evoked.

In the Tower: Nam June Paik
I would have thought video pioneer Nam June Paik might be one of the few artists that could handle the East Wing ruckus, and that it would be a waste to put his work in the tower, a more intimate and secluded space, but the show, 20 videos and a few works on paper borrowed mainly from Paik's estate, worked beautifully there. I guess video is a private (as opposed to public) medium.

Paik is very well represented in Washington. In addition to this show, there are several major works on display in the Hirshhorn and American Art museums, including this popular favorite:

Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway, 1995, 49-channel closed circuit video installation, neon, steel and electronic components, approx. 15 x 40 x 4 ft., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist

THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION
The Phillips Collection is open until 8:30 on Thursdays so I was able to go there after the National Gallery closed. (I’ve developed sturdy gallery legs over the years.) Maybe it's because they don't show much contemporary art, but the Phillips is very much an exception to the obnoxious MOMAs I was complaining about. Even their new additions maintain the intimacy of the original Phillips' home, and it's a pleasure to look at art there. (That’s why I so despair for the Barnes.)

Philip Guston, Roma
In 1970 Guston received a lot of negative criticism for an exhibition of his new work at New York’s Marlborough Gallery. The work was painted in a clumsy, cartoony style and dealt with political satire and allegorical narratives.  It was a radical departure from his popular Abstract Expressionist paintings, and stunned the art world.

Philip Guston, Residue, 1971. Oil on paper. (Estate of Philip Guston; image courtesy McKee Gallery, New York, NY.)

Rome was a good escape for Guston, and inspiring. During the six months he spent as artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1970–71, he was able to study the old masters and explore new possibilities for his art away from the art world. This show brings together for the first time 39 paintings from this period. All the work is small, no more than studies really, but exciting to see because they are precursors of the themes and images he would pursue later in his larger paintings.

David Smith Invents
This show was a real surprise to me. I thought I knew Smith’s work well, but this is work that wasn’t shown, or hardly ever shown. The work is a transition from the anthropomorphic, figurative works in the early 1950s to his famous large-scale steel abstractions. It is the most painterly work of his I've ever seen, not only because he literally painted these sculptures, but because they are as frontal as paintings. Greenberg must be turning over in his grave.

David Smith, Black Concaves, 1960, painted steel

There were also many of his paintings and drawings in the show. Typical of sculptors, Davis stayed away from the edge, usually centering his shapes or lines. 

David Smith, White Egg with Pink, 1958,
oil and metallic paint on canvas (Hirshhorn Museum)

Some favorites from the permanent collection:

Albert Pinkham Ryder, Dead Bird, 1890's, oil on wood, 4 3/8 x 10 in

Dead birds seems to be a Phillips specialty. They have some by Braque, Soutine, and several by a contemporary artist I can’t remember.

A very late Cezanne landscape that's more like one of his watercolors:

Paul Cezanne, The Garden at Les Lauves, c.1906, oil on canvas, 26 x 32 in (Phillips Collection)

Check out this close-up of it I was allowed to take:

Detail: Paul Cezanne, The Garden at Les Lauves, c.1906

After the Phillips closed I had a late dinner and walked around the Dupont Circle area where the Phillips is located. The weather was glorious and the outside cafes were packed. I don't know if it's Obama or the same urban gentrification that occurred in New York, but Washington has become very young, prosperous and hip, at least around Dupont Circle and Downtown near Chinatown where the Portrait and American museums are, and where I spent part of the next day. More on that next post.

25th Street Painting

By Charles Kessler

If you love painting, 25th Street in Chelsea is the place to go. In one block between 10th and 11th there are four shows of sensual, masterful paintings. No Post Modern irony here — these are real painters' paintings.

Joan Mitchell, Lennon Weinberg Gallery, 514 W. 25th Street (until April 18th). 

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, c. 1959-1960, oil on canvas, 69 x 65 inches

It’s fitting that Mitchell is the first show on the block because she and her fellow Abstract Expressionists in many ways advanced this type of painting.  The paintings in this show are from the fifties, her first mature work, and they demonstrate what a true master of the gestural brush and lush color she was from the beginning. It’s hard to believe that this work, a visual delight today (to the degree that some even consider it suspiciously decorative), looked so raw and ugly when they were made.

Elizabeth Murray, Painting in the Seventies, Pace Galley, 534 W. 25th Street (until April 30th).

Elizabeth Murray, Parting and Together, 1978, oil on canvas, 111 x 39 in.

Murray achieves a nice balance between formal innovation and painterly sensuality in this period (the 1970s). Bulbous shapes push against and twist the edges of the paintings -- the elements in the paintings are so compressed that they fly apart. Lines playfully pass through shapes and in and out of space. Figure and ground are confounded.  The green in Parting and Together, for example, especially at the corners of the painting, can be seen sometimes as foreground and sometimes background, somewhat reminiscent of the way Clyfford Still played with figure and ground. This is joyous, funny, sometimes silly painting, with a lot of fun surprises.

Juan Usle, Cheim & Read, 547 W. 25th (until May 7th). 

Juan Usle, SOLARIS (VACIO), 2010, Vinyl, dispersion and dry pigment on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

Usle’s forte is brightly colored, open, airy and translucent paintings. His work avoids the decorative because there’s always some discordant element -- an unexpected quirky image or configuration that’s a visual contradiction.

John Lees, Betty Cuningham Gallery, 541 W. 25th Street (until May 14th).

 John Lees, COURTYARD (OVAL), 1989-2010, Oil on canvas, 32 x 40 inches

Like Charles Garabedian, John is a friend, but I honestly believe that has little to do with why I love his paintings. Perhaps I've paid more attention to his work over the years than I would ordinarily have done, and that may have predisposed me somewhat. But I've known an awful lot of artists in my 67 years, and I don’t feel this way about very many of them.

The more you look at one of his paintings, the more detail you see. Things become more three-dimensional and rounded; colors glow and become brighter. And because he works on a painting for years (Bathtub is dated 1972-2010!), the surface is built up so thick that strange things happen with space. The built-up paint sometimes acts like bas relief reinforcing the spacial illusion; other times it plays against the illusion (see detail of Courtyard, for example).

 Detail, upper left, COURTYARD (OVAL)

 You need to downshift to get into Lee’s world -- these are slow, intimate paintings you can savor.


James Siena in Pace's other 25th Street space, 510 W  25th Street, doesn't quite fit here because, IMO, his work is more conceptual and minimal than what I understand to be painterly painting. Some will disagree. Decide for yourselves — it’s on the same block.


Charles Kessler is an artist and writer, and lives in Jersey City.

SPRING!

Williamsburg

Saturday, April 9, 2011

New York Art Notes

By Charles Kessler

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill, 1639, Etching State I of II (Fondation Custodia)

Rembrandt and His School, The Frick Collection (through May 15th). 
There’s so much going on in New York now that it’s actually possible to miss this — a show that would be a blockbuster anywhere else. Don’t miss it.

I was lucky enough to see a similar exhibition at the Getty Museum last summer called Rembrandt and his Pupils (it ended Feb 28th). That exhibition was more didactic than this. It had lots of educational videos and slides and explanatory labels that compared drawings done by Rembrandt with drawings of the same subject done by his pupils. I wrote about here.

The Frick's show is more straightforward: 30 works on paper by Rembrandt, and 36 more by his most prominent pupils including Ferdinand Bol, Jan Lievens, Nicolaes Maes, and some rare drawings by Carel Fabritius.  Most delightful were several self-portraits in melodramatic poses that Rembrandt must have had a lot of fun doing. The show works well in the  Frick's relatively low and small basement space because it adds to the intimacy of the experience.

Cezanne’s Card Players, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (through May 8th).
We blogged about this show already here and here, but I want to make one more general point about how I perceive Cezanne’s paintings and watercolors.

Maybe it's just me, but I've never experienced Cezanne's paintings as massive, rounded, solid forms. Instead I perceive them as elusive, evanescent, unstable forms of glowing color so gaseous I feel I can put my finger into them.

Take Seated Peasant, c. 1892-96, for example. The grays of his pants and jacket, while boldly drawn, appear to be swelling with glowing gray light, and the reflections on his face and hands seem to shimmer and flicker. Things shift in space (to me anyway). His eyes  blink, his mustache and mouth shift, his chest expands as if he’s breathing. 

Paul Cézanne, Seated Peasant, ca. 1892–96, Oil on canvas; 21 1/2 x 17 3/4 in. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The mind seeks symmetry and balance, and when it’s not there we put it there -- even if it means making things appear to move or glow or change color. With Cezanne, some changes are from simultaneous color effects; others are the result of tensions described by Erle Loran as early as the 1920’s. And there’s a lot of movement because everything is both set in space and pushed forward — the figure of course, especially his hands, but also the book and box on the lower left; the chair is tilted up as is his hat; even the wall in the background attaches itself to his hair and clothes. Forms in space are flattened because they’re placed side by side and fitted together like a puzzle; likewise, even the brushwork is frontal, and strokes are placed side by side like a mosaic.  

***

Chelsea
Unlike other neighborhoods where there are a lot of art galleries, there isn't much else besides galleries in Chelsea, so if the art stinks it can be a long, depressing day.  Unfortunately, this month there aren't many shows in Chelsea I'd recommend. There are some though.

DAVID ALTMEJD, The Swarm, 201, mixed media, 102 1/2 x 244 x 84 1/2 inches (Andrea Rosen Gallery)

David Altmejd at Andrea Rosen (through April 23rd).
I remember seeing his work in the last Whitney Biennial; it stood out even in that environment, reminding me of the excitement I felt the first time I saw Matthew Barney’s sculptural installations. Altmejd's work is fresh, ambitious, intense, bizarre and sometimes hauntingly beautiful.  They’re sort of like a Judy Pfaff or Sarah Sze installation in a room-sized plexiglass box — but that plexiglass box is significant. Diaphanous colored threads, gauzy sheets of cloth, and transparent shapes are painstakingly attached, one thread at a time, to holes drilled in the plexiglas. Placement, as a result, is very deliberate. Then he mixes in representational solid plaster images of angels, wings, and other weird stuff, some made of plaster molds of hands.  Very disconcerting, but it keeps the work from being purely decorative, unlike...

Tara Donovan at Pace (until April 9th). (The Pace website is so bad I can’t give you a direct link to the exhibition — search for it here if you’re interested.)  
This is NOT a show I liked, but it’s getting so much favorable attention I feel it’s important to state my objections. Basically, I believe, she takes no chances but goes directly for empty beauty. I feel about her work the same way I feel about the revered ( not by me, obviously) Robert Smithson — the work is just humble materials made into very large decorations.

Tara Donovan, Untitled, 2011, Mylar (Pace Gallery)

Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks (through April 16th).
I was frankly getting bored with Kelly, who seems to have been making the same basic painting for 40 years or so, at least the same basic idea. And that hasn’t changed in this show. But the new work the 87-year old Kelly has shown here is so refined, so simple and elegant, that it completely won me over.

Maybe part of the reason is all the work is black and white. Kelly never really used color as color anyway, but like Stella (and Picasso for that matter) he used color mainly to distinguish one shape from another. I’m exaggerating, but their colors rarely breathe, resonate or glow like Matisse or Morris Lewis for example. Kelly, like the others, is mostly interested in drawing, and nothing is more clear than black and white when it comes to drawing.

Gary Hill at Barbara Gladstone (through April 23rd).
I liked this eccentric show, and I’ve liked Hill's work in general, but I don’t have anything interesting to say about it. The gallery press release, however, is a masterpiece of art world jargon. Here's a taste. Enjoy:

...Hill has continuously offered multilayered investigations into the phenomenological nature of how we perceive the world through a network of visual, aural and linguistic signals. Exploring the cognitive and sensorial conditions that underlie our discursive modes of communication, Hill experiments with the material and sonic properties of language to offer provocative meditations upon the production of meaning within our everyday contexts. Since the early 1970s, Hill’s use of video has occupied a central role in his artistic practice, using the medium as a formal site and structure to both examine and deconstruct the power of the image. Concerned with an increasingly homogenized visual culture, Hill disarticulates the primary communicative function of electronic media by playing with sound, speed, and sequence, to produce not only radical ruptures within our normative processes of perception, but also new ways of encountering meaning.

I particularly like "disarticulates."

BTW, Hill has one of the best artist websites I’ve ever seen. It really helps you get a feeling for his work.

***

In addition to art galleries, I also attended a couple of talks. One was John Elderfield on de Kooning at The New York Studio School this past Wednesday, March 30th. Elderfield is one of my favorite art historians and curators. He’s working on a major de Kooning retrospective scheduled for 2011 at The Museum of Modern Art.

Willem de Kooning, Untitled XII, 1985, Oil on canvas, 80 x 70 inches

I feel vindicated that Elderfield likes de Kooning's late work from the 1980’s. I've always felt that period was his strongest, but people would say he was drunk and gaga when he did them, if he did them at all. Some claim his assistants really did them. Elderfield says de Kooning got no more assistance than other artists and that essentially he did the work; and even if he suffered from dementia during this phase, all it means is he was able to focus more intently on the thing he knew best -- painting. An examination of these paintings should be proof enough. The way a line becomes a ribbon, becomes a shape, becomes a field, becomes a contour, all the while twisting in space and changing colors, is painterly brilliance. Simple, elegant, efficient — a great example of an artist's late phase.


“Split of Light: Experimental Media,” a panel discussion at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) about creating, distributing and presenting experimental film and video. Panels are usually boring because the panelists tend to wander all over the place, but this one was efficiently moderated by Rebecca Cleman, EAI's Director of Distribution, who got them to stick to the topics. One thing I was particularly interested in was a discussion of the difference between experiencing a film or video in a theater vs. a gallery. I had just seen the documentary “Bill Cunningham” at Film Forum (great film, BTW) and was thinking how different seeing it on Netflix would have been. There’s something about watching a movie with other people that makes it funnier, more dramatic, more moving, sadder, etc.

***

Finally, here are some links of note:

From the Times's ArtsBeat Blog: As part of the Festival of Ideas for The New City, a series of arts and civic events that the New Museum and several other downtown cultural institutions will conduct from May 4 through May 8, well-known artists have been recruited to create paintings that will soon start appearing on roll-down gates along the Bowery, from Houston Street to Canal Street. 

Randy Kennedy of the Times writes about Eric Fischl bringing Terry Allen's 1979 song "Truckload of Art" to reality. Here's the song courtesy of YouTube:

And it took the Wall Street Journal to get access to Larry Gagosian for this revealing article.

Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914

Pablo Picasso, Guitar and Cup of Coffee, spring 1913, Cut and pasted wallpaper and colored paper, charcoal and chalk on colored paper, 25” x 14 ½ “ (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)

By Kyle Gallup

“Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914,” currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, is a bridge into the past. Walk into the exhibition and be immersed in Picasso’s creative process. Here, Picasso is thinking and working like an inventor. 

I’ve always been most drawn to Picasso when he approached his work through his extraordinary skill and originality as a draughtsman. During this period, I see him thinking and drawing his way through a new kind of space and his relationship to it, making it his own. The fluidity of his collage-drawings with their variety of shapes, lines, materials and subject matter, tells me that Picasso was having a very good time. Guillaume Apolinaire sums it up best in “Modern Painting,” from Der Sturm on February 20, 1913: At times Picasso has renounced ordinary paints to compose relief pictures made of cardboard, or papiers collé’s; he was guided by a plastic inspiration, and these strange, coarse, and mismatched materials were ennobled because the artist endowed them with his own delicate and strong personality.

Pablo Picasso, installation in the artist’s studio, Paris, December 9, 1912 or later, 

Gelatin silver print, 3 ⅜ “ x 4 ½ “ (Private Collection).

The exhibition should be a special treat to all working artists who consider experimentation and exploration in our studios to be highly important in making the best art that we can. Picasso does it with gusto and freedom, unafraid of the new territory he is staking out. I enjoyed seeing all the work but what I especially relished were the photographs that Picasso took of his works-in-progress. In one large photograph of his studio, paper scraps and glue pot are left sitting on a bed as he takes the photo. There is also a huge roll of canvas leaning against the back wall, three charcoal drawings, four collage drawings incorporating Le Journal scraps, and other papers and his constructed cardboard guitar. This photo shows he was looking for many different ways to spatially represent the guitar that he had just constructed out of paper.  He was trying to make his process as real as possible and photographing his work helped him distance himself from what he was creating. 

Pablo Picasso, Photographic composition with Construction with Guitar Player and Violin. Paris, on or after January 25 and before March 10, 1913. gelatin silver print, 4 ¼ “ x 3 ¼ “ (Collection Clark Winter)

Photography was integral to Picasso’s process. He used photography as a tool to gain perspective and as a way to manipulate his images. In the exhibition there are four small photographs of a composition that Picasso set up in the corner of a room—a sort of installation. In the first snapshot, he set up a small round-topped table with a wine bottle and teacup. A wall poster with large letters partially revealing his name hangs on the wall near some stretched canvases. On the back wall hang a guitar, collage drawing and paper scraps partially covering it, integrating the real and the constructed. In each of the four photos, Picasso alters the picture. 

Pablo Picasso, Photographic composition with Construction with Guitar Player and Violin. Paris, on or after January 25 and before March 10, 1913. Cropped gelatin silver print with ink, 3 1/16 x 2 5/16" Private collection. Photo: Objectif 31 © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Two of the four images are very surprising and if you aren’t paying close attention, you might miss their significance. In one, Picasso uses his photograph of the still-life he set up and cuts it into a shape and re-photographs it on a white background. There is also a small sepia-colored snapshot [above], tiny at 3 1/16” x 2 5/16,” and titled “Photographic Composition with Construction with Guitar Player and Violin.” Again, it is the still-life composition that he has been working with, only this time Picasso uses ink to make a drawing on top of the photo that responds to the composition he has created in real life. It may seem like a minor thing, but to me it shows that Picasso was trying in every way he could imagine, to expand his sense of what this new space could be. Though it would be decades before it became common practice to draw or paint on top of a photograph, here is Picasso, determinedly stretching his creative possibilities almost one hundred years ago.

When I consider all that Picasso accomplished in his lifetime—the tremendous breadth of his undertakings—I feel dizzy, like I’m standing on shifting ground. When I viewed this exhibition, it prompted me to pause and imagine him sailing through time clutching a fine, silver-meshed net in his fist, combing the starry sky. This exhibition shines a spotlight on Picasso’s innate abilities, intelligence, and the exceptional creative spirit that propelled art forward into a new and expanded universe.

Kyle Gallup is an artist who works in collage and watercolor.

Pranks in the History of Art

To acknowledge April Fool's Day, ARTINFO gathered eight funny practical jokes played by artists over the years. One of my favorites (even if the post is an April Fool's joke) is this:

Illustration by Jaclyn LoRaso

POLLOCK'S "WOMAN"
Among the greatest art pranks of the 20th century was the once infamous but now forgotten incident of Jackson Pollock's "Woman" painting. In the early fifties, spurred on by their respective critical champions, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, Pollock and Willem de Kooning became embroiled in a legendary, acrimonious rivalry. There were drunken insults at the Cedar Tavern and near fights on the beach in East Hampton. The enmity reached its apex in 1952, shortly after de Kooning began showing his seminal "Woman" paintings. At the time, Pollock was the reigning Abstract Expressionist (or action painter, depending on whose camp you were in), but the "Woman" series catapulted de Kooning to the forefront of avant-garde art. Although not remembered for his sense of humor, Pollock set out to puncture the Dutchman's ego.

Visitor's to a fall group show at the Sydney Janis Gallery were surprised to find included a remarkable painting called "Woman V (My Mama)." The work was attributed to de Kooning — but which had been in fact been cooked up by a drunk Pollock the night before. The canvas depicted, in de Kooning's typically brutal style, a gap-toothed hag with long, pendulous breasts, strawlike hair, a black eye, and a hideous deformity of the genitals. Word got around town that de Kooning had finally gone too far. Eventually, of course, the august artist made his way to the gallery — during a cocktail party, where, it so happened, Pollock was also in attendance. The diminutive Dutchman stalked over to his bald colleague and jabbed a finger toward the painting.

A partial transcript of the ensuing exchange survives:

"This, this excrement is not my mama," de Kooning thundered at Pollock in his heavy accent. "I know, it's yo mama."

"What did you say about my mama, partner?" Pollock muttered.

"She is hideous, yo mama."

"Yo mama. That ain't my painting. It ain't American type."

De Kooning, red with rage, sweating up at the balding man: "That turd is yo mama."

"Don't be talkin shit about my mama, Bill, or I'll knock that cap off you."

Witnesses described de Kooning attempting to kick Pollock in the shins, and being subsequently shoved by Pollock so that he fell into a coatroom. It has been theorized that this incident led de Kooning to begin an affair with Ruth Kligman, Pollock's paramour until his death.

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And, unless this is another prank, there's this, also from ARTINFO -- if I'm understanding it right, the Guggenheim and the Brooklyn Museum are selling artists' prints. Isn't there something wrong with that???

The Art World as a Subculture

Detail: Jan Vermeer, The Art of Painting, c.1666-73, oil on canvas (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

By Charles Kessler

Since reading Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton and Paper Monument’s droll pamphlet on how to behave in the art world, I Like Your Work: Art and Etiquette, I’ve been thinking about how the art world, at least the art world I’m familiar with, is a subculture.

Although Sarah Thornton spent five years researching her book, the conceit is that she spends one day in each of seven different art venues: Christie’s auction house, Michael Asher’s class at CalArts, Basel art fair, Turner Prize jury, Artforum, Takashi Murakami’s studio and the Venice Biennale. (Significantly, she skips art museums as a venue, probably because her emphasis is on the art market.) She takes an anthropological approach to the subject. Here are some excerpts:

p. 58: Although the art world is frequently characterized as a classless scene where artists from lower-middle-class backgrounds drink champagne with high-priced hedge-fund managers, scholarly curators, fashion designers, and other “creatives,” you’d be mistaken if you thought this world was egalitarian or democratic. Art is about experimenting and ideas, but it’s also about excellence and exclusion. In a society where everyone is looking for a little distinction, it’s an intoxicating combination.

P. 88: Unlike other industries, where buyers are anonymous and interchangeable, here artists’ reputations are enhanced or contaminated by the people who own their art.

P.118: Artists are meant to find their own paths, make their own rules, and compete with themselves. If they develop a habit of looking over their shoulders, they risk being derivative. But if they are completely ignorant of the hierarchical world in which they operate, then they are in danger of being outsider artists, caught in the bog of their own consciousness, too preciously idiosyncratic to be taken seriously.

And the Paper Monument pamphlet, although tongue in cheek, has some astute and funny insights such as this on introductions at art openings: Within the art world, this form [an introduction] is made even more complex by the ambivalence with which the art community views professionalization. In less rarefied social contexts, simple devices, such as the name-tag, are used to ease the difficulty of introductions. And this on proper dress:  Artists are not only permitted but are in fact required to be underdressed at formal institutional functions. But egregious slovenliness without regard to context is a childish ploy, easily seen through.

I’ve come up with some other miscellaneous observations about the art world, at least the New York fine art subculture. Please keep in mind, I’m not saying these things are good or bad; I’m just having some fun pointing them out.

Continuing with dress: that artists dress more casually than dealers or collectors might explain why Jeff Koons's suits are so disconcerting. And do you remember in the mid eighties when it was fashionable for dealers to wear a suit and shirt without a tie, but with the top buttoned? There was something creepy about that. And finally, it’s no longer considered appropriate to go to openings disheveled and in paint-spattered clothes. Good looking has become fashionable (go figure) -- just check out Williamsburg on a nice Saturday afternoon.

Unconventionality in general is more acceptable in the art world. For artists, it’s more or less expected, less so for dealers, curators and other people in the art world, and even less for collectors. Tolerance for a wide variety of lifestyle choices and living arrangements is much greater in the art world, although it seems drugs and alcohol, especially if consumed in immoderate amounts, is becoming less acceptable. Racism, sexism, homophobia and conservative politics in general, are unusual in the art world, if not totally taboo.

Jargon can seem ridiculous, but it also serves a purpose. It can be a useful short-hand for talking about ideas common to a group. For example, in the art world the word “ironic” has unique and multiple implications related to Post Modern Art. The language specific to a subculture can also serve as a clue revealing whether or not a person is part of the subculture — an auditory secret handshake, so to speak. For example, if someone uses "arty" to mean "artful" or "artwork" instead of either "art" or "work," or "showing" for a show or exhibition, it sends off warning bells that this person isn't really part of the art- world subculture. There may be better examples than these, but the general point is true. (I’ll leave a discussion of snobbery, elitism and arrogance for another post.)

Ironic

For amusing samples of art world jargon, check out Concepttshirts, a British website that randomly generates art jargon (which they charmingly call "art bollocks").  

The art world has an idiosyncratic approach to money: it isn’t everything — it’s not even the main thing. For artists, the respect of other artists and other people who care about art, and the feeling that they are contributing to a fine art tradition that goes back thousands of years, is more important. Collectors can't buy their way into the art-world subculture, and those who try become a butt of ridicule. And there is an acknowledged ladder of success that doesn’t necessarily involve more money, climbing from the first group show in an alternative space, to a solo show in a gallery, to a retrospective in a museum, etc., with many steps in between. And finally, there are some ways of making money that are more acceptable than others. Earning a living as a designer or carpenter or an art teacher, even if they’re full-time jobs, is okay, but it’s not considered legitimate for artists to support themselves as a doctor or a lawyer. Writing art criticism used to be frowned on (Barnett Newman was considered suspect by his colleagues because he wrote about art), but thanks to Don Judd and others, it’s become acceptable. Likewise, it’s okay for an artist to be an art dealer now.

There are rules to the art market game. The Financial Times had a well-researched article on Annie Leibovitz and the repercussions of her not complying with accepted art-world business practices. Leibovitz is at least as good as other fashion and society photographers such as Richard Avedon or Irving Penn but can only get a fraction of what they get for their photos. According to the article: The problem is that, as Jeffrey Boloten, a managing director of the ArtInsight consultancy in London, puts it: “You do have to play by the art market rules.” That means working closely with auction houses and galleries and doing what they tell you, from making small limited editions of your prints to signing and marketing them adeptly.

Some miscellaneous observations on what’s uncool for galleries:

• hanging art salon style or in any way that’s too busy;
• selling tchotchkes or other things besides art;
• pasting very large red dots near art that sold;
• presenting contemporary art in elaborate frames;
• lighting paintings using picture lights that hang directly over a painting or are attached to the frame;
• being unduly friendly — a friend jokingly observed that there’s an inverse correlation between how good a gallery is and how friendly they are.

Some miscellaneous observations on what’s uncool for artists:

• showing paintings outside, but showing sculpture is okay;
• passing out announcements for your show at someone else's opening, but distributing business cards seems to have become more acceptable;
• sleeping with students used to be considered a teaching perk, now it’s taboo;
• paying to be in an exhibition, but co-op galleries are all right;
• promoting your work aggressively;
• not having an art studio — in fact it seems the more living space devoted art the better.

In addition, the art world has its own systems for production (art supply stores, print and ceramic studios); systems for promotion and sales (art galleries, studio sales, museums, alternative spaces); information and communication sources (art magazines, websites and blogs, artists' bars and other hangouts; studio visits, art fairs, openings); and ways to educate (colleges, art schools and informal mentoring -- too bad apprenticeships don't exist anymore).

Again, I’m not judging these things -- I’m just pointing them out. If you have any observations to add, please comment.

Some Worthwhile Reading

By Charles Kessler

It's good to know that I'm not the only writer to go over the top for an artist I love. Jonathan Jones of the Guardian, one of my favorite art writers, waxes eloquent here about Douglas Gordon:

Douglas Gordon is as profound, serious, imaginative and stylistically bold as anyone could wish an artist to be. He has matured in richer, more surprising ways than any of his contemporaries. He is the best British artist of my generation and I am glad his sublime exhibition now on at London's Gagosian Gallery gives me an opportunity to say so.

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 Art organizations are putting more of their archives and publications on the web. Rhizome, the main organization that presents and preserves technology-oriented art, especially web-art, has at last created an invaluable online archive. And The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has so far put 28 of its past exhibition catalogs online and intends to publish more. Included are famous ones like: Art and Technology, 1971, by Maurice Tuchman; The New York School, 1965, by Maurice Tuchman; Billy Al Bengston, 1968, by James Monte (the one with the sandpaper cover); Ed Keinholz, 1966, by Maurice Tuchman; German Expressionist Sculpture, 1989, by Stephanie Barron; and Chaim Soutine, 1968, by Maurice Tuchman. I hope other organizations will follow their example.

Edward Keinholz, Back Seat Dodge '38, 1964 (LACMA)

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Will Brand, guest blogging on Art Fag City, has posted on "Terrible" and "Great" gallery websites. He makes several good points that apply equally to artists' websites. Criticizing Pace Gallery's website, which I have also complained about, Brand says:

...the problem here isn’t a lack of information but its absolute uselessness.
...Having a creative site structure doesn’t do you any good in most businesses: if I’ve been looking at gallery after gallery arranged around the same Artists/Exhibitions/News/Publications/About menu, I start to categorize my desires according to that menu; any other structure becomes disorienting and takes longer to navigate. There’s a reason why grocery stores all have the sugar next to the tea, and the butter next to the milk – these systems help people get things done faster.

Features he likes:

Lots of exhibition archives go way back – Gagosian begins at 1989, and Luhring Augustine offers invitation cards dating to 1985 – but how much useful information is made available? Matthew Marks does an excellent job – in particular, artist CVs link to past exhibitions outside Matthew Marks.
... Friedrich Petzel‘s website is clean and functional, but the highlight is the PDF press packages the gallery makes for artists which includes otherwise hard-to-find stuff from journals like Parkett.
...Photographs: Big ones, please, and ones I can use without taking a screenshot and mucking about in Photoshop – which means less Flash.

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Bushwick artist Jon Rafman has compiled an impressive collection of surreal, bizarre or just plain beautiful images from Google Street View.

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To celebrate their 15th anniversary, artnet, one of the first internet sites to cover art business, news and reviews, has posted a selection of articles from their archives. Included are articles by Lee Rosenbaum (CultureGrrl blog); Eleanor Heartney (art critic and author); and John Good (now director of the Gagosian Gallery). The articles give a sense of the scene in those years, but they're still relevant today.

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Finally, the cocky young hotshot Peter Plagens, now approaching 70 (WHAT??), looks back at how the art world has changed. In his typically funny, cynical, insightful, infuriating, brilliant and glib manner, he nails it. Here's a taste:

...There’s no such thing as a “vanguardist” because there’s no such thing as an avant-garde. True, some artists still push the envelope of what’s permissible in sexual and political content, or what’s legal in terms of doing things on public property, or what’s doable in terms of technological sophistication and complexity, or what galleries and museums will put up with in the way of physical risk, inconvenience and insurance liability. But artists doing those sorts of things is so expected it’s almost academic.

LOWER EAST SIDE GALLERY UPDATE

By Charles Kessler

Once again, despite the bad economy, more galleries have opened on the Lower East Side than closed. The one major fatality I know about is Collette Blanchard, formerly at 26 Clinton Street. Rumor has it she's curating shows somewhere in Asia. 

Reena Spaulings Fine Art doesn't answer their door bell or phone, and they have nothing on their website for after March 13th; but Reena Spaulings is a fictional artist/art dealer spawned by an art collective, so you never know what's up with them. Hell, they list 221 E. Broadway as the address of the gallery when they're on Rutgers Street, 1/2 block below E. Broadway. I must admit I'm getting tired of their shtick.

Moves:

Three galleries moved from other spaces on the Lower East Side. Ramiken Crucible's original space has been closed for the winter and may reopen in the spring, but in the meantime they opened another space (just called Ramiken), at 389 Grand Street, conveniently close to Kosars and Doughnut Plant, and down a short path between a liquor store and a park. As you can tell from the photos below (taken from their website), it's a vast improvement. The old space was hard to find, dark, low and creepy; the new space is light (almost bucolic!) and nicely proportioned. A provocative show is there until May 1st -- see it if you like snakes.

Number 35 Gallery also moved to a much nicer space, and a bigger one. It's too bad for them that a neighbor, Collette Blanchard, closed, but there's still a critical mass of good galleries nearby.  Sloan Fine Art, for example, has a high-spirited group show (through March 26th) of about a thousand+  works on used MetroCards. In any case, Number 35 consistently has good shows, and Cindy Rucker, the gallery director, is amiably informative about the work, so it's well worth the extra few blocks.

A potentially major contributor to this area is the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center (CSV), 107 Suffolk Street near Rivington). It's been around since the early nineties, but the five-story former school has been blighted by ugly scaffolding and graffiti for at least six years, and I'm told the building won't be finished until 2019. Too bad. That scaffolding is a depressing eyesore. Maybe they could hire artists and/or architects to come up with something more cheerful, or at least more interesting.

Google Street View of Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center

But even now CSV provides subsidies for forty-three artist studios, stages plays in four theaters (Art House Productions did a terrific play there a few years ago), provides several rehearsal spaces, and mounts art exhibitions in two spaces: the LES Gallery downstairs (which is also a bar/cafe), and a more felicitous "clean white space," the Abrazo Interno Gallery on the second floor. Who knows, maybe the Lower East Side will someday have another PS1 (the vital PS1 of old, that is, not the conventional establishment it's become). Please note, CSV's hours differ from usual gallery hours -- they're open 3:30 - 7 PM every day.

DCKT moved from a bright, long space on Bowery near the New Museum to a small, somewhat cluttered (at least during this over-crowded show) storefront on 237 Eldridge Street below Houston where the Horton (a.k.a., Sunday) gallery used to be.

Additions:

Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery used to be in Williamsburg, and off the beaten track even for there, then they moved to Chelsea for a month or so. Now they've settled into a small, relatively high space, but a nicely proportioned one at 54 Ludlow (just below Grand). It's on the ground floor, but you need to walk down a short corridor to get to it. They've shown good work in the past and are worth checking regularly. The Munch Gallery, 245 Broome Street (just west of Ludlow) is new. They have a small, narrow storefront in a great location near a lot of other galleries and the Ten Bells Bar. Mark Miller Gallery (not to be confused with Marc Miller of the 98Bowery website) has a small (750 SF), rather busy storefront space with a 950 SF basement on 92 Orchard Street, around the corner from the Munch Gallery. Miller is president of the Lower East Side Business Improvement District and is an enthusiastic promoter of the galleries. Among other things he's involved with is LES Third Thursdays -- when many galleries stay open from 6 PM to 9 PM.

Finally, I should mention CultureFix, 9 Clinton Street (below Houston -- get to the gallery through the bar/cafe on the ground floor, or through digitalfix, a store upstairs). CultureFix is another of the bar/cafe/art galleries now common on the LES. They took over the Greene Gallery's space, across from where Collette Blanchard was. I single them out because they are open during normal gallery hours, show work on a regular basis, and have a separate space devoted to the gallery -- unfortunately things the other bar/cafe/art galleries don't do.

Charles Kessler is an artist and writer, and lives in Jersey City.