The Barnes Foundation's New Facility

By Charles Kessler

The Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania (photo by Dmadeo)

In 1922 Dr. Albert Barnes, who made a fortune developing and selling Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound used in the prevention of infant blindness, created a foundation to promote the appreciation of art, philosophy and horticulture. As an art collector he was far ahead of his time, and he managed to put together one of the best art collections in the world. Because he hated Philadelphia society, he built his museum and school in Merion Pennsylvania, a suburb about five miles outside of the city. To see his museum you needed to make a reservation months in advance because it was only open to a limited number of people, and only for two days a week. Going there felt like going on a pilgrimage to someplace rare and special.  (The New York Times has a virtual tour of the interior of the original building that gives you some idea of the place.)

Interior of the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania. 

Barnes had a lot of eccentric ideas about art and the teaching of art. He arranged his collection into “ensembles” based on the formal characteristics of the work (space, line, color) rather than chronology, geography or style; and, in keeping with his egalitarian beliefs, he mixed hardware and metal ornaments in with the fine art. After he died in 1951, serious problems arose because Barnes’s trust cast these eccentric ideas in stone in perpetuity. Any changes to the arrangement of the collection or to the facility’s grounds — restrictions very like the Gardner's in Boston — were prohibited. And even worse, he put some unwise financial declarations in his will which, over time, shrank the endowment to the point that the foundation couldn’t maintain the building and collection.

In the face of raging opposition that still persists, the Barnes Foundation got court approval to move the collection from Merion to Philadelphia. In support of the move, local charitable foundations (some of which had been established by the very people Dr. Barnes hated with a passion) pledged millions of dollars to build a new space and create a substantial endowment. Last May the Foundation moved the collection to a new building — a building-within-a-building really. Inside a larger building, they constructed a detailed replica of the interior of the original Barnes museum with the collection installed exactly the same way it was in Merion with a very few changes. Surrounding this replica is a lobby, a large court, a bookstore, library, offices, and plentiful parking.

The new Barnes Foundation building as seen from Benjamin Franklin Parkway and 20th Street.

There are many good reasons why breaking the Barnes trust was a bad idea. An article in Philanthropy Roundtable claims, "These actions erode that sense of trust, to the detriment of future philanthropy;" and articles by Tyler Green and Christopher Knight make some persuasive points. But I find arguments in favor of the move more compelling. Why should a collector be able to control an important art collection or any other important cultural resource FOREVER? And for that matter, I don't see why people should have total control even during their lifetimes — they shouldn’t be allowed to destroy a cultural monument, for example. And while a case can be made that this type of installation is a cultural artifact worth preserving, there are other ways, short of wholesale preservation, to document it.

The bottom line is I LOVED the new Barnes. The lighting is soft and diffused, unlike the inconsistent lighting in Merion (and unlike the harsh, too-bright lighting in most contemporary wings of encyclopedic museums); it's open many more hours; and it's in a much more accessible location. And the new museum, even though it’s wildly popular and more accessible now, is no more crowded than Merion because the daily occupancy is still limited. In fact, for some reason, it feels less crowded than my memory of the old place. And the docents could not have been more helpful, especially Gabrielle Aruta who is eminently qualified (she went through the Barnes course and also taught the philosophy of John Dewey at St. Joseph’s University). I am grateful for all the time she spent talking with me.

For the most part, I found Barnes's eccentric “ensembles” engaging, if sometimes simple-minded (e.g. a group of paintings and metalwork all have a bluish tone, or they are all interlaced). But there certainly are some problems with his arrangements. Many of the smaller galleries upstairs, where there are works on paper and small sculptures, feel way too crowded. It felt disrespectful of the art (ironic given Barnes’s egalitarian views).

George Seurat, Poseuses (Models), 1886-1888, oil on canvas, 78 ¾ x 98 ⅜ inches.

I also think Seurat’s Models is hung way too high. Even though it's a large painting and can be seen from that distance, it needs to be seen up close for a viewer to experience Seurat's pointillist technique, and, equally important, it needs to be seen on our level so the figures in the painting can seem to inhabit the same space we do. And finally, I wonder if even the “ensembles” that I found engaging will eventually wear thin once they're no longer novel. Besides, Barnes himself continually rearranged his collection — why should it be set in stone now?

The new building has exquisitely refined detail and is filled with beautiful light and textures, but it does have some problems. For one thing, the building is shockingly hostile to the street — a potentially lively street at that. To rudely turn your back on it by placing a parking lot along it, and even worse a wall, is inexcusable.

View of the Barnes Foundation from the Whole Foods Market across the street.

(What is it with museums and walls? The Modern did the same thing to 54th Street. Do these architects  still believe that cities are a bad thing and that people want to get away from them? I understand there might be security issues, but come on, they don't have to build a fortress. Hopefully the new Whitney will be street-friendly — right now there’s a veritable moat around it!)

I also feel the entrance lobby is too stark and not all that welcoming; and the Annenberg Court is coldly formal, and uncomfortably tall and long relative to its width.

The Walter and Lenore Annenberg Court looking east. The entrance to the Barnes replica is on the right. (Tom Crane/The Barnes Foundation via Bloomberg).

But the biggest problem for me is I feel there's something ersatz about the whole thing. It's like an agglomeration of period rooms, a Disney version of an eccentric collector's art museum, or, as Tyler Green more strongly puts it: "The stage-managing of the art feels ridiculous, even kitschy."

A view of Room 6 in the new Barnes Foundation — a replica of the original. (Tom Crane/The Barnes Foundation via Bloomberg).

But all of these criticisms come to nothing when confronted with the art — it will make you weep with joy! They have 69 Cézannes—more than in all the museums in Paris —including some of the very best, like his Card Players and Portrait of a Woman (see below).

Paul Cezanne, Les Joueurs de Cartes (The Card Players), 1890 - 1892, oil on canvas, 53 ¼ x 71 ⅝  inches.

Paul Cezanne, Portrait de Femme (Portrait of a Woman), c. 1898, oil on canvas,  36 ¾ x 28 ⅞  inches.

They have 60 Matisse paintings including his best mural.

Henri Matisse, The Dance, 1932 - 1933, oil on canvas, as seen from a balcony.

And they have Matisse's Joy of Life which, along with Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon, is one of the landmarks of twentieth-century art. And now Joy of Life is in its own alcove instead of hanging in a stairway as in the old Barnes — and it looks fantastic! Much bigger than I remembered it in Merion. And it absolutely glows. The alcove is kept relatively dark in order to protect the fragile painting, but because of the low light, the colors aren't washed out. And for the first time I really experienced it as an idealized, even hallucinogenic, pastoral paradise, rather than a decorative design.

Henri Matisse, Le Bonheur de Vivre (The Joy of Life), 1906, oil on canvas, 69 ½ x 94 ¾ inches. 

Here's a detail of the right side that just blows me away:

Detail: Henri Matisse, Le Bonheur de Vivre. Click to enlarge.

And there's a lot of great African art, which Barnes was one of the first to collect for aesthetic rather than ethnographic reasons.

Edo peoples, Nigeria, Standing Male Figure, copper alloy, 22 x 9 x 9 inches.

Altogether, there are 2,500 items in the collection including 44 Picassos, an astonishing 181 Renoirs (say what you will about how sickly sweet his work is, the guy could paint), and major works by Rousseau, Modigliani, Degas, van Gogh and many others. There are also Asian paintings; medieval manuscripts; and Old Master paintings including works by El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens and a lyrical, long (10 ⅞  x 50 ¼ inches) early Titian. And a lot of decorative metalwork.

My own "ensemble" of Gustave Courbet's Woman with White Stockings, 1864, flanked by Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Caryatids, c. 1910.

And finally, this time I noticed that eroticism is a major leitmotif at the Barnes, not only the Renoirs, as you'd expect, but Gustave Courbet's Woman with White Stockings and many other works — even Matisse's Joy of Life seems erotic in this context. It shouldn't be surprising; Barnes was famous for being a handsome lady’s man (to use the old-fashion expression) so that may be a factor; but mainly it was consistent with his philosophy — eroticism being something the common person can relate to.

Visiting the Barnes Foundation
General admission is a steep $18, but it’s $15 for seniors, only $10 for students, and it's free for children under 5. The first Sunday of every month is free, and all Friday night concerts and other events in the Annenberg Court are free and open to the public.

Hours: Daily, 9:30 - 6:00 except Friday when they're open until 10:00. They are closed on Tuesdays.
Since admission is limited and timed (although you can stay as long as you want once you're in), it's wise to get tickets in advance here, or by calling (866) 849-7056.

Getting there:
For just $10 - $15, a little more than the Chinatown bus would cost (and a lot safer and more comfortable), and about ¼ of what the cheapest Amtrak fare would be, you can take a New Jersey Transit train from either Penn Station New York or Penn Station Newark to Trenton, and easily transfer (usually within a few minutes, and on the same track) to SEPTA, the Philadelphia rail system, which will bring you to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. The trip takes about two hours (as compared to one hour via Amtrak).

From the 30th Street Station it's an easy and pleasant walk to the Barnes.

The 29th Street bridge over the Schuylkill River.

Leave the station through the 29th Street exit, cross the somewhat challenging street in front of the station, continue walking straight along a bridge over the beautiful Schuylkill river, and walk one long, tree-lined block until you get to 20th Street (about 5 minutes); turn left on 20th Street and walk past a beautiful historic block, past some ugly modern buildings and finally walk past the very grand Logan Square on your right and the Beaux Arts-style Science Museum on the left. When you cross Benjamin Franklin Parkway, another challenging intersection, the Barnes will be on the left. Altogether about a ten minute enjoyable walk.

And the ride back was enjoyable too. Here's what I saw on the train ride home:

Art News

By Charles Kessler

Jersey City Art News

Installation view, Material Tak; paintings by Jsun Laliberté on the left, and Anne Sherwood Pundyk on the right.

Material Tak, Panepinto Galleries, 371 Warren Street, Jersey City (Until July 15th)
Almost everything that’s now happening with abstract painting is represented in this handsome exhibition located in what used to be the Warehouse District of Jersey City. The exhibition was curated and sensitively installed by Kara Rooney, who has brought some life into the moribund art scene here. The artists in the exhibition, Mark Dagley, Anne Sherwood Pundyk, Kati Vilim, Jsun Laliberté, and Peter Fox, are from Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City; and all their work is accomplished and complex (in a good way).

Anne Sherwood Pundyk, Levels, 2012, acrylic and oil on panel, 14 x 11 inches (not including the painted background).

I was particularly interested in Anne Sherwood Pundyk’s installation. By creating a wallpaper-like background for her paintings, Pundyk transformed this large, Chelsea-style space into a congenial environment — a more private, almost residential, space that allows you to slowly savor this rich work.

Two of my favorite Jersey City artists currently have exhibitions on view.
Nancy Cohen, whom I wrote about here, is in two shows: Accola Griefen Gallery, 547 W. 27th St  #634 in Chelsea (until June 23rd), and Precarious Exchange at The Hunterdon Art Museum, 7 Lower Center Street, Clinton, NJ (until September 9th).

Nancy Cohen, Spill, 2011, glass, metal, wire, resin, handmade paper, wool, 77" x 16" x 9" -- and detail on the right (Accola Griefen Gallery).

And Edward Fausty will be showing photographs at the Mayson Gallery, 254 Broome Street on the Lower East Side, from June 13th until July 18th.

Art House Productions, one of the most active and vital cultural organizations in Jersey City, is presenting the original play Something to Remember Me By from June 14 - 23. It should be a real treat; their publicity states: ... Please join us at the Morris estate where your hostess, Ms Abigail Morris, will welcome her closest family and friends for an evening of celebration and forgiveness. ON THE MENU: An assortment of sweet memories, bitter grudges, and dark secrets. The audience will be sitting at the dining room table with the cast. Tickets are only $15 to $25 and you can buy them online here.

After their Saturday, June 23rd show, Art House will have their annual Summer Blowout, with live music, food, raffles and all kinds of silly fun. Tickets are $10.

If you took my advice and went to the Nimbus Dance Works Spring Season Dance Concert, you saw an enthralling performance that included new pieces by Artistic Director and Founder Samuel Pott, and by the Turkish choreographer Korhan Basaran. Hopefully next year Nimbus will install steeper risers so everyone will be able to see better. You can find photos of the concert here, on their Facebook page.

Museum news:
The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC may sell its landmark building. Art blogger Tyler Green has been on this potentially scandalous story. The good Corcoran news is, beginning June 30th they will be presenting a retrospective of Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series of paintings. It is a major show consisting of more than 80 paintings, drawings and mixed-media works that Diebenkorn made from 1967 to 1988. The Corcoran is the only place this travelling exhibition is going to on the East Coast. It will be there until September 23rd.

The Whitney Museum sent out an email updating the progress on its new museum near the High Line. Here's a video about it.

The New Whitney - Image courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson and Partners.

They are saying the new 200,000+ square foot facility will have three times the space as the old museum devoted to exhibiting their permanent collection; a 170-seat theater with double-height views of the Hudson River; a 13,000+ square foot space on a stepped roof facing the High Line for outdoor sculptures, installations, new media, and performance presentations; and an 18,000+ square foot special exhibition gallery— the largest column-free art museum gallery in NYC. Sounds good.

The New York Times reports on Dia: Chelsea's plans for a new building in Chelsea.

Other News:
Also from the Times is this: How the Art Market Thrives on Inequality.

Because each piece of fine art is unique and can’t be owned by anybody else, it does a more powerful and subtle job of signaling wealth than virtually any other luxury good. High prices are, quite literally, central to the signal — you don’t spend $120 million to show that you’re a savvy investor who’s hoping to flip a Munch for $130 million. You’re spending $120 million, in part, to show that you can blow $120 million on something that can’t possibly be worth that much in any marketplace.

Pacific Standard Time (PST) is a series of more than 60 exhibitions about the art history of Southern California that the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute instigated. Once again they have shown leadership by putting their entire PST archives online. Not only that, but the Los Angeles Times reports the Getty Research Institute, partnering with several other major art institutions, has created The Getty Research Portal, an art history version of Google Books with about 20,000 titles already online and much more to come. What a resource!

Two Chelsea exhibitions I recommend:
Brice Marden's new paintings at Matthew Marks, 526 West 22nd Street, are small and tactile. Delicious work.

Brice Marden, Years 2, 2011, oil and graphite on marble, 21 ¼ x 11 ¼ inches.

And yet another sign of the positive influence of Richard Tuttle that I wrote about here is the work of  Michelle Segre, Derek Eller gallery, 615 West 27th Street.

Michelle Segre, Let Me Love Your Brain, 1997-2011, mixed media, 83 x 69 x 41 inches.

And finally, From Dance Magazine, is a discussion with six choreographers about making work for film.

Bushwick Open Studios - BOS 2012

By Charles Kessler

BOS 2012 — Bogart Street.

BOS 2012 was a BIG studio tour — more than 500 artists, plus dozens of events including dance concerts, performances, plays, rock concerts and parties, all of it spread out over three square miles from east Williamsburg to Ridgewood Queens. And there was a lot of good art, some very good indeed. That plus great weather (it seems the few times there was a brief rain shower I was inside!) and plenty of pleasant places to stop along the way to have a beer or coffee and rest up, made this one of the best studio tours I've ever gone to.

But the main reason I loved this tour, and I’ve written about this before, has to do with the spirit of collegiality in Bushwick. There’s a welcoming camaraderie that pervades the area — and it’s not the affected peace-and-love phoniness of the sixties. Rather it’s unpretentious and sincere — very different from the ironic cynicism that has been so prominent in the big-money art scene of the last decade or so.

With a tour this big, deciding where to go is a major problem — you can’t possibly do it all. The free guide was attractively designed, but at 88 pages and 14 ½  x 10 ½ inches, it was necessarily overwhelming. The website was a little more useful in that you could search for the type of art or event you might be interested in; nevertheless, narrowing things down was impossible. Most useful was a nifty free iPhone app (unfortunately no longer available — too bad, it would be a good resource). Not only could you search for types of events, but it could locate where you were and display what studios and venues were nearby. (Next year I wish they would add the ability to save favorites and note them on the map so you could plan your tour more easily.)

But even the iPhone app wasn't enough for an event this massive. According to people I talked to that were part of the tour, and my own observations, most people only went to the larger studio buildings like 56 Bogart and 1717 Troutman. It's too bad because they missed some good venues like 250 Moore Street where the Centotto gallery and the artist Tim Kent are located. I'm sure I missed plenty of good stuff.

Tim Kent at 250 Moore Street

On Friday night, kick-off night, there were several gallery openings and parties, most of which went on until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning -- I  pooped out by 11:00. That night I did go to the Bushwick Starr's fifth annual performance showcase — The Bushwhack Series.

The Bushwick Starr executive director Sue Kessler (no relation), and Noel Allain, artistic director (Photo - Jared Klein, Time Out). 

The Bushwick Starr, 207 Starr Street, is a professional theater group that produces cutting-edge original theater in a small (about 50-60 seats), well-equipped black box theater. They did a series of short, well-acted plays. Unfortunately there were only about 20 people in the audience when I went, maybe because of all the other competing events, but, according to Jason Andrew who has produced many events, this is par for the course. That's the one disappointment I have with the Bushwick art scene -- there is little or no interaction with, or even much support for, the other arts. I long for the way it used to be in the sixties and seventies in New York. I hope it will change. Maybe something is happening even now.

Saturday was my busiest, most exhausting day. I wanted to cover a lot but didn't know how long it would take so I was really pushing it at first until I realized I could do everything I wanted to do without killing myself (and being disrespectful to the artists). I tried to concentrate more on studios than galleries which I'd be able to see another time. Nevertheless I saw a lot of gallery shows and they were terrific, possibly because they showed their best work; and several new galleries opened up for the event. (I'll be updating the Bushwick Gallery Guide soon. The old guide can still be found in the right sidebar under “Gallery and Museum Guides.”)

Lisa Levy, Rockin' Mommy Love

The tour started off promising. In front of 56 Bogart, Lisa Levy, costumed in a gray wig, house dress and large eyeglasses, sat in a rocking chair and offered to comfort people. After reassuring me that I wouldn’t crush her if I sat in her lap, Levy rocked and hugged me. ... It was wonderful. I loved it!  I could have used it again at the end of the day, but she was gone by then.

Oliver Warden, Untitled Box, 2010 Photos by Jo Jo Phong.

Inside the lobby at the entrance to the always interesting Agape Gallery was a very different kind of performance: Oliver Warden’s Untitled Box 2.0, 2010. Warden, in an amazing feat of endurance, stayed in a two-way mirrored box for two seven-hour days (correction - see comments). When someone flicked the switch, a light would turn on in the box, revealing Warden standing there unsmiling in a suit and tie. He immediately shut the light off again so that just the mirror was visible. The effect was creepy, and every once in a while, as you wandered the floor, you'd hear someone to shriek and laugh.

Charles Schultz and Charles Kessler at Cynthia Sparrenberger's studio, 56 Bogart (photo: Anne Sherwood Pundyk).

Yet a third kind of performance took place at The Bogart Salon, 56 Bogart. It was the filming of ISHA: A Tell All Tale, a wild and colorful Bollywood-style soap opera. Viewers were invited to participate if they wanted to.

Kesting/Ray opened a small space (bigger than their current space in Soho, however) only a couple of blocks west of 56 Bogart, but since everything else is east of 56 Bogart, I fear they might still be off the beaten track. I hope not because it's a beautifully proportioned space with lots of natural light, and they're showing good work.

1717 Troutman is a huge loft building that had 32 studios and two galleries, Regina Rex and Parallel, on the tour.

At 1717 Troutman for some reason -- maybe I was overwhelmed by it all -- only the two gallery exhibitions Regina Rex and Parallel stood out for me.

There were many other strong gallery exhibitions in other venues including Microscope, a serious, almost scholarly gallery when it comes to film and video (they curated a couple of film and video exhibitions for BOS), and Airplane where I saw this imposing and disconcerting sculpture:

Jennie Shanker, Brick Shithouse, 2011, denim, sand and red shale, 36 x 36 x 36 inches (Airplane Gallery).

One of the better and bigger group shows was Holy BOS, a two-day, three-night music, film, video, performance and visual art festival in a former church. The space was large enough to hold large, almost environmental sculptures.

Holy BOS at the Bobby Redd Project Space, 626 Bushwick Ave.

This isn't an art installation, it's a hallway at 56 Bogart at the end of day one.

Sunday I was the designated guide for several friends, and while that slowed things down to the slowest person at any one time, an event like this is a social occasion too - it’s not all business even for a compulsive art blogger. And the pleasure my friends had, their delight and enthusiasm, was more than enough to make up for missing a few spaces.

One would think that by the second day, especially in the more heavily trafficked spaces, the artists wouldn't be all that friendly. They were definitely exhausted, but they were still gracious, and happy that people came by, and pleased to talk about their work. We had some lively and enthusiastic discussions.

A new gallery, Ethan Pettit Contemporary, moved to a very small space in a building with many art studios, 199 Ingraham Street.  They promise to keep regular hours (noon - 7:00, Thursday thru Saturday). I saw a lot of sculpture in that building, and I particularly liked the work by studio-mates Jeanne Tremel and Eliot Markell because of the way they manage to incorporate color without making the sculptures seem to be weightless or hollow.

Jeanne Tremel, Not Listenin' (front view), 2008, crochet thread 11 x 4 x 3 inches.

The Loom (their address is 1087 Flushing, but it's better to enter from Thames Street) had a painting contest between two graffiti-style painters. It took place in their pleasant oasis of a back yard situated in the middle of an industrial area. We went inside to rest up (I had the best cortado I ever had), and we would occasionally hear cheers from the contest. They also presented Seeking Space, a group show of  30 artists “who do not have the opportunity to exhibit in a studio space.”

117 Grattan Street is yet another large loft building, and this had a lot of art I liked. Sharon Butler of the excellent blog Two Coats of Paint just moved there and organized a small group show that included a few nice small paintings by Larry Greenberg of the Studio10 gallery. And Patricia Satterlee's paintings, in another studio in 117 Grattan, were rich, complicated semi-abstractions that kept me off-balance with unexpected and quirky images. I asked her what she thought of Tom Nozkowski's work since I saw a relationship there. Rather than becoming defensive, she said she loved Nozkowski's work and was delighted I thought there was a connection. This mature and sophisticated reaction was typical of the many other Bushwick artists I talked to about their work and is indicative of what I see as a favorable change in the ethos of the art world.

Patricia Satterlee's Studio, 117 Grattan - “Gloria” series of paintings.

One of the last things I saw, the Bushwick Basel art fair, encapsulated a lot of my feelings about Bushwick.

Bushwick Basel at Starr Space (Photo Alissa Guzman via Hyperallergic).

First of all, the art was first-rate, and it was presented in an intimate and sociable environment. In a generous gesture to the community, Jules de Balincourt, one of Bushwick's most successful artists, organized the fair and donated his space. He told Paddy Johnson, “You know, I’ve been lucky and some of my friends haven’t been. I want to do something good.” That speaks to the supportiveness and camaraderie I've noticed in Bushwick, but there was something else. When Balincourt first announced the fair, he indicated that it was a kind of spoof or parody on art fairs, and he got some good-natured push-back for that remark. Clearly people were uneasy with irony, almost embarrassed; in Bushwick now, they are more comfortable with straightforward sincerity.

Art News

By Charles Kessler

Screen shot of L.A.MoCA’s Land Art exhibition website showing Robert Smithson's Spirial Jetty, 1970.  

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 (until September 3, 2012) has a website that uses Google Maps to display the most well-known sites including Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, the Christos’ Wrapped Coast and Claes Oldenberg’s The Hole.

How to Make It in the Art World is a list of 18 “rules” written by Jerry Saltz and other critics and contributors to New York Magazine. Some are fun and interesting; others will test the tolerance of any "ilunga" (see below).

This has nothing to do with art, but it’s a nice break — 25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist In English. Some of my favorites:
Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude.
Gigil (pronounced Gheegle; Filipino): The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute.
Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.
Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish): The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.

Finally, this weekend is the biggest art event of the year in Bushwick — Bushwick Open Studios. This year there will be more than 500 studios (this is not a typo!) as well as many concerts, dances, performances and other events. Best bet: begin at 56 Bogart Street (across from the Morgan Street L train) where most of the galleries are located, and work your way south and east.

San Fransisco Art Fairs

By Patter Hellstrom

What makes San Francisco unique in the ever-growing world of international fairs? This viewer suggests that along with the standard fare, a new Bay Area aesthetic is developing through a mixture of collaborative technology, innovation and accessible art with a handmade quality.  Tech innovation is a given in San Francisco with biotech in Mission Bay, tech start-ups in South Park, the rising power of the Twitter-verse in the Mid-Market and venture capitalists encamped in Silicon Valley. Technology may appear to be the inverse of handcrafted art, one step removed from the artists’ hand. In the Bay Area these disparate impulses of technology and handcraft often emerge simultaneously and on rare occasion merge as well.

Sleek and sophisticated, Art MRKT offered over 70 modern and contemporary galleries with a mix of art from giants in the art making tradition like DeStaebler, Hockney, and Butterfield, to international works from Asia seen at Frey Norris Gallery, to a handmade soulful style emerging in San Francisco with the Bierboff's postcards at Eli Ridgeway, Laky’s language-based relief sculpture at Cain Schulte and Preds’ confiscated creations at  Jack Fischer galleries.

Elisheva Biernoff, Encounter, 2012, oil on plywood and acrylic on plywood, 2.5 x 2.5 inches and 2.75 x 2 inches (Eli Ridgeway Gallery).

Michele Pred, Travelers, 2011, 42 x 36 inches, airport confiscated scissors, wood and polyester, edition variete (Jack Fisher Gallery).

These standouts present ongoing excellent work that reaches the viewers on a personal level in scale, material and concept. With work so open and thoughtful, the viewer is drawn in with its’ authenticity.

Art MRKT also took a bold innovative step in programming in this their second year, offering private tours of collections. To say those collections were a treat is an understatement. The private collection visits complete the story. Galleries provide an array of art choices, the collectors shared their vision, telling their stories of a passionate trajectory in finding, curating and living with art.

Mary Daniel Hobson, Nocturne, 1999, kodalith and mixed media, 13" x 11" framed (private collection).

John Slepia, Stamen, 2009, mixed media, estimated size 14" x 10" x 10" (private collection).

ArtPad SF was the energetic, emerging and innovative center of the three fairs. ArtPad, a hotel fair with a motel edge, offered about 40 galleries surrounding a 1950’s vintage swimming pool, creating an oasis in the middle of the city. Johansson Projects offered a standout among those galleries with hybrid animal forms by Misako Inaoka.

Misako Inaoka, Flowers, 2012, mixed media 24 x 18 x 10 inches (Johansson Projects).

Inventive programming was offered like The Urban Canvas: Art and Technology Take Over, panel discussion.  ZERO 1 network of collaboration, offered focus to that discussion with its’ upcoming plans for their biennial Sept - Dec 2012, growing to cover the Bay Area with over 100 artists and 42 organizational partners that are regional, national and international. ZERO 1 designs platforms for artists to create innovative work exploring the role of art and technology as is seen at SFMOMA with Jim Campbell’s Exploded Views; a commissioned work installed in the atrium.  Upcoming The Bay Lights by Leo Villareal will light up a mile of the Bay Bridge with 25,000 LED lights in a spectacular marriage of art and tech. ArtPad also debuted Mark Pauline’s Spine Robot, designed for a theatrical urban event.

 SF Fine Art Fair offered 70 galleries and programming included a discussion with legendary artist William T. Wiley, Lifetime Achievement award for patron Mrs. Roselyn C. Swig, and the everyday revolution of art accessibility – the Mobile Photography exhibition.

Emily Rose, Conflict, limited edition print, 10 x 13 inches (The Mobile Photography Exhibition)

Here tech adds a layer of accessibility. ArtHaus Gallery presented this gem of a show that invited more than 2200 submissions from 114 countries making the quote, “the best camera is the one you have with you” relevant.  A ubiquitous camera phone in hand has become common to fair viewing, snapping a picture, a label and that amazing moment when we are filled with visual joy. Here those moments of reverie become an attentive exhibition.


Patter Hellstrom is an artist who lives and works in San Francisco.

Dance Parade 2012

By Charles Kessler

One of the most joyous New York City events is the annual Dance Parade. This year thousands of participants danced down lower Manhattan beginning at Broadway and 20th Street and eventually making their way to Tompkins Square Park where there was a free festival with dance performances, workshops, lessons and lots of merry-making. Seventy-five different dance styles were represented from African to Zumba, and from Ballet to Modern. Here are some photos:

Bolivian dancers resting in Tompkins Square Park.

Marni Halasa's Blading Belly Dancing

Jersey City was well represented. Here is our own Donald Gallagher groovin' along with Jamaican DanceHall Aerobics.

And Jersey City's Nimbus Dance Works performed an excerpt from choreographer Pedro Ruiz's Danzon. The the wires overhead were a surprise they dealt with admirably.

The company's 6th annual Jersey City Spring Season will be at Grace Church in Jersey City, June 7-9, 2012. You can purchase tickets here. Try not to miss it.

Probably because I was the only person at the entire festival wearing a sport coat, they allowed me behind the stage to watch the dancers warm up.

On the left: Nimbus Dance Works. On the right: Zouk Nation - a company from Brazil.

And the finale, an absolute delight, was the The Isadore Duncan Dance Company. Note the little girls in front imitating the dancers. 

In celebration of Isadore Duncan's 135th birthday, the company will be performing May 22 - 26 at the Judson Memorial Church in the Village. You can buy tickets here.

Wherefore the Figure, Wherefore the Self

By Carl Belz

Of all the subjects available to painting, subjects ranging from stripes and squares to fields of color, from landscape vistas and city streets to ordinary objects close at hand, none is brought to the task of expression with more baggage than the human figure. Understandably so, for even while modernism has stripped narrative from painting, the figure projects a story simply by being there before us, being our other, being our mirror. Understandably, too, despite what the figure’s been put through in order for painting to accommodate it, the fragmentations and distortions and attenuations, the flattening and reshaping of it into images we may not recognize in the mirror but in which we are nonetheless compelled to acknowledge our reflection. Whatever its story, then, and however it appears, the figure verifies our being in the world and substantiates our claim to possessing identity as an individualized self.

Yet there’s no easy-to-follow recipe for meeting the challenges to expression that attend figure painting. Some of those are internal, others come with the territory—like the challenge of competition. Half a century ago Pop and Minimalism gave us a new art that was fast and immediate, that delivered its message in a single and unequivocal flash, that could grab and momentarily hold attention in the media-saturated culture with which it suddenly found itself in competition. That competition continues with a vengeance today. Think of the visual culture we each day everywhere encounter, think of its irresistible formal allure, think of its insistent and instantly gratifying punch, and think, too, about the vehicle bearing all that meaning—think about the human figure, how over-the-top appealing it is, how shaped to perfection, how sexy and engaging, then think about competing with that! Just remember in the process never to underestimate your opponent.

Of course it’s the internal challenges that remain after the dust stirred by the battle for media attention has settled—the challenge to be good instead of merely interesting, for instance, or the challenge to be original, or the challenge to plumb the inarticulate speech of the heart. Risk attends those challenges, for the ever-elusive and evolving self that elects to confront them may in the process be laid bare, its vulnerabilities, along with its strengths, exposed. A will to meaning via the human figure—the figure first and foremost as a source of meaning—is in turn required: meaning as it is felt to be embodied in painting’s history, at once acknowledging its achievement and also seeking continuity with it; and meaning as it is shaped anew within the limits of modern secular experience by the expressive free-agent self. Freedom within limits, which is to say freedom bound to and by responsibility. More directly, perhaps, than modern paintings based on other subjects—it’s a matter of degree, not kind—modern paintings based on the figure nudge us in the direction of moral propositions.

Kyle Staver’s is an ample world, generous in accommodating couples and individuals who are self-contained without being self-absorbed, figures comfortable with themselves and equally comfortable with one another. As couples, they’re pleasurably involved in life’s daily routines—feeding the pet, tasting the morning tea, reading the paper—or sharing a leisurely outing—riding bicycles, ice skating. Along with them, though not in their immediate company, individual female figures occasionally appear: Danae, Europa, Lady Godiva, subjects drawn from myth and legend, subjects famously imaged by Old Masters, subjects identified with the sensuous delights of the human body—subjects here brought freshly forth and ingenuously re-presented as engaging whimsical fantasies. At ease in their surroundings, they signal the ease with which Staver navigates between art’s past and present. For past and present are in her world continuous, history representing not a burden but an inspiration, not a source of irony but of sustenance, as if in that world the making of new art constantly rewrites art’s past and revitalizes it in the present, as if that process not only shapes and defines that world but is entirely natural to it—as natural for those who inhabit it as breathing the salubrious air within it. A recent picture of Adam and Eve notwithstanding, Staver’s pictorial world is overall more Arcadian than Edenic.

Kyle Staver, Danae and the Parakeet, 2009, oil on linen, 63 x 53 inches.

Kyle Staver, Godiva, 2009, oil on linen, 58 x 68 inches.

Kyle Staver, Adam and Eve with Goats, 2011, oil on linen, 56 x 64 inches.

Staver herself seems to breathe art. She’s an art maven who regularly posts albums on Facebook, images clustered around a theme or subject plucked for sheer delectation from what appears to be a vast storehouse of pictorial memories. Not surprisingly, their inspiration echoes in her own images, though more faintly now than even a few years ago. Writing about the work in 2008, Karen Wilkin accurately associated Staver’s intimate domestic settings with Pierre Bonnard and her broadly brushed figures with David Park. In newer pictures, the intimacy continues, but with fewer incidental details, and the breadth, previously concentrated in the figures, increasingly spreads across the entire surface and more effectively integrates them with the natural or domestic spaces they occupy. The resulting pictures seem more whole, more clearly and fully meant, more her own. One of them audaciously shows two nude boys playing with turtles by a stream, an unmistakable iconographic homage to Matisse, but thereby also a statement about paintings intended not for momentary satisfaction but to stay the course.

Kyle Staver, Feeding the Cockatoo, 2009, oil on linen, 56 x 48 inches.

Kyle Staver, Releasing the Catfish, 2011, oil on canvas, 64 x 54 inches.

Kyle Staver, Skaters, 2009, oil on linen, 50 x 50 inches.

About a century ago, in Paris, Ranier Maria Rilke memorably became aware of how many faces there are and decided, “There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.” Anne Harris knows what Rilke was talking about. She paints faces, bodies too, but even her bodies resemble faces in the way they tell stories, each one different, each compelling in its own way, each face and body reflecting a facet of the self within, the modern self ever questing on its own to know its ever-evolving identity. Some of her faces belong to adolescent girls, some to other women, but all of them, at the beginning and in the end, are essentially self-portraits—self-portraits not in any conventional sense, for they’re not likenesses, rather self-portraits ontologically, in the way they function within our experience of them, in the way that that experience can be said to yield knowledge of them, of ourselves, of our world.

Anne Harris, Angel,  2007, oil on linen, 44 x 30 inches.

Anne Harris, Portrait (Beaded Dress), 2000, oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches.

Anne Harris, Portrait (Blonde), 2003, 12 x 12 inches.

Anne Harris, Portrait (Pearls), 2001, oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches.

Anne Harris, Portrait (Pink Eyelid), 2010, oil on linen over panel, 11 x 8 inches.

Anne Harris, Portrait (Red Robe) - in progress, 2010, oil on linen, 52 x 33 inches. 

The identity quest we track in Anne Harris’s pictures is a challenge comprising conflicts and contradictions. Each figure is isolated, presented to us front and center, facing us but without seeing us, looking through us or past us, trance-like, as if in a world of her own, a world that is not a place but a vaporous and abstract pictorial substance, emptied of things, out of which she magically emerges, becomes momentarily focused, and into which she just as magically then dissolves. She may wear a brocade or satin dress, she may be draped in pearls or a velvet robe, her skin may glow through delicate layers of thinned oil pigment, and she may be rendered with the patiently exquisite touch of the Northern Old Masters the artist so deeply and abidingly admires, but she is otherwise a spectral nightmare, grotesque, misshapen, hideous to behold—her image sears our vision yet leaves us enthralled, unable to take our eyes from her.

Harris’s challenge to painting reminds me of Faulkner’s challenge to literature, which was, “The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.” As to her pictures being self-portraits, I think of them sometimes when I look in the mirror and wonder if I’m seeing my better self or my own worst enemy—which is when I realize her pictures know me the way I know myself.



Carl Belz is Director Emeritus of the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University.

Clyfford Still - Part 2, The Art

By Charles Kessler

“Still makes the rest of us look academic.”
— Jackson Pollock, 1955 (quoted in Sam Hunter, Masters of the Fifties).

Clyfford Still, 1944-N No.1 (PH-235), 1944, oil on canvas, 105 x 92 ½ inches (Clyfford Still Museum, photo: Harholdt).

Let’s get this out of the way: Clyfford Still was first! Several months ago I compared what the other Abstract Expressionists were doing in 1944 with what Still was doing.

Left: Barnett Newman, The Blessing, 1944, oil crayon and wax crayon on paper, 25 ½  x 19 ⅜ inches (MoMA).
Right: Mark Rothko, Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea, 1944, oil on canvas, 75 ⅜  x 84 ¾ inches (MoMA).

About the only artist in Still’s league was Jackson Pollock, and a case can be made that Pollock’s work, great as it was then, was not yet his mature work. The others didn't catch up until 1949-50.

Left: Jackson Pollock, Gothic, 1944, oil on canvas, 84 ⅝  x 56 inches (MoMA).
Right: Willem de Kooning, Woman, 1944, oil on canvas, 46 x 32 inches (Metropolitan Museum).

Still was the first of the Abstract Expressionists to go completely abstract. For that we not only have the evidence of his mid-1940's exhibitions, but also the testimony of Robert Motherwell, one of the first-generation Abstract Expressionists:  “His was the show, of all those early shows [referring to Still’s 1946 and 1947 New York exhibitions] that was the most original. A bolt out of the blue.” And: “Most of us were still working through images toward what ultimately became Abstract Expressionism. Baziotes, Pollock and I all had some degree of figuration in our work, abstract as our work was; whereas Still had none.” (Summer 1967 interview with Sidney Simon in Art International.)

Still was the first to make large-scale paintings. This is a somewhat complicated issue because many artists made an occasional large painting: Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, etc. But Art Historian Meyer Schapiro, a brilliant scholar and a friend of the Abstract Expressionists, identified the relevant issue when he told me in a 1972 interview that Still was the first because he was the first to have an exhibition composed solely of large paintings [at the Art of this Century Gallery in New York in February 12 - March 2, 1946] and thereby was the first to make large scale a characteristic of his art. [My emphasis.]

Actually, while researching my MA thesis on Clyfford Still, I came across evidence of an earlier exhibition of his, at the Richmond Professional Institute in 1944, in which all the work was large. (A letter to me from someone who witnessed this exhibition is re-printed in Still's Metropolitan Museum 1979-80 exhibition catalog, p.182.) Admittedly Richmond is out of the way, but by 1945 Still moved to New York and was friends with most of the first-generation Abstract Expressionists. It's certain they would have seen this work in his studio.

And finally, after a talk he gave at UCLA in the early seventies, I asked Motherwell who was the first to do large-scale paintings, he said it was definitely Still.

Perhaps more significant, Still was the first to do away with figure/ground distinctions. Even Monet kept the distinction between figure and ground in his water lilies, however subtle; and Picasso never went all the way with it. But by 1944, certainly 1945, shapes and forms in Still's paintings were simultaneously figure (object, shape, form, etc.) and ground (background) and neither.

I never wanted color to be color, I never wanted texture to be texture, or images to become shapes. I wanted them all to fuse into a living spirit. (Clyfford Still in an interview with Katharine Kuh and reported in her book, My Love Affair With Modern Art.)

Still managed to have it all ways by maintaining an ambiguity as to whether or not something is a unique, self-contained irregular shape or a fissure in a field of color revealing part of another field of color underneath. As a result, there is even ambiguity as to how big a shape is or where its edge leaves off.

Clyfford Still, 1947-R-No.1, 1947, oil on canvas, 69 x 65  inches. (This painting recently sold at auction for more than $21 million.)

This is important because it allowed shapes and forms to float in space rather than pile up, flatten out and clog up the surface. In fact, space in a Still painting can be so palpable that many people report the vertiginous feeling of falling into a deep, breathtaking cavern, then being thrown back to the painting surface, only to see it dissipate again. (A lot of people hate Still’s art, and I suspect it's because they don’t see the spatial illusions; they only see the work as thick paint on canvas.)

Detail: Clyfford Still, untitled  (PH - 1049), 1977, oil on canvas.

Related to this merging of figure and ground, Still was the first to employ large fields of color — color unattached to shape or form. Weightless fields of airy color (or unpainted canvas functioning as another field of color) become transparent, expand and glow. And color itself becomes ambiguous — is it the local color (the color of the shape or form) or is it a color showing through from behind?

Another innovation is what I think of as the narrative quality of Still's work. Like Minimal Art (Stella's Black Paintings, for example), Still paintings can be taken in all at once; but, like calligraphy or Chinese landscape painting or scrolls, they can also be experienced over time, bit by bit. As you scan the surface of the painting, the strokes of paint float in space, move rhythmically, and coalesce into a flowing dance.  See video below for an example of what I mean.

VIDEO: Clyfford Still, untitled  (PH - 1049), 1977, oil on canvas, 114 x 172 inches (The Clyfford Still Museum).

Not only did Still innovate, but he could execute. Still studied art from an early age, and he was a skilled draftsman. (I haven't been able to find a good photo of his early work, but take my word for it, his Self Portrait, which he did at age 18, currently on display at the Clyfford Still Museum, is surprisingly masterful.) In his mature work, Still's drawing ability allowed him to keep the space in his paintings activated — it never feels empty, even the unpainted parts. In fact, I think drawing was his main gift, more even than color, as important as color was to him. (Still's early work, shown for the first time in Denver, should dispel the foolish notion that Still's inventions were due somehow to a lack of technical facility.)

Still's art also has a wide expressive range — it's not all dark and dour, the way many people think it is. He used different amounts of oil to vary the shininess of the paint surface and employed unexpected colors: pink, lavender, aqua. Some of his later work is even playful, loose and light. He might even have had a classic late style — I hope some day the museum will have a show of his late work, and we'll find out.

Clyfford Still, untitled, 1971, oil on canvas, 93 ¾ x 155 inches (SFMOMA).

Of course, Still's innovations and technical facility mean nothing if that’s all there is. But the innovations aren’t spurious, and, along with his skills as a painter, they serve an expressive end, allowing him to express profoundly deep meaning and feelings. I believe Still was a hero in the existentialist sense, and his work, in a direct, immediate, right-to-the-gut way, embodies the existential ideal.

This obviously needs some explaining and context:

A representational painting looks the way it does because that’s what the thing it represents looks like. But how does one make an abstract painting look right and not just arbitrary? The Abstract Expressionist offered two very different possibilities: one was to make it look as if it were done by chance, typified by Pollock; and the other was to make it look pre-determined, typified by Newman (i.e., to fit into a grid or because of the given shape and size of the canvas, etc.).

Of course, neither was made in a random or pre-determined manner. Newman freely chose the size and shape of his canvases, and chose to put his stripes where they are; and Pollock’s drips and de Kooning’s brushwork were in fact controlled (aside from their skill, they could always choose to keep an accident or change it) — it’s just that we don’t experience them that way, nor are we meant to. (In 1970, Clement Greenberg told a group of us from UCLA that when he visited Pollock’s studio one time, Pollock kicked a turkey baster under a chair to hide it from him.)

According to existentialist philosophy, all decisions are free — but Still's paintings embody this in a visceral way. They aren't experienced as restrained by a pre-conceived structural organization, be it the need to create a representational image or the necessity to fit into a cubist grid or some other pre-determined, a priori organization.

To be stopped by a frame's edge is intolerable, a Euclidian prison, it had to be annihilated, its authoritarian implications repudiated without dissolving one’s individual integrity and idea in material and mannerism. (Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, 1963.)

Still overcame the “Euclidean prison” — the power of the shape, size and limits of the painting surface to determine the structure of the painting — because his configurations appear to continue beyond the edge. And figure-ground distinctions are ambiguous so contours aren’t defined and therefore don't need to be aligned with the edge of the canvas or with each other. As a result, Still was free to place his shapes wherever he willed them.

Nor do we feel as if Still painted according to his whims or caprice. On the contrary, to the viewer a pallet knife is experienced as more controlled than poured paint or a loaded brush, and the work, as a result, is felt to be considered and deliberate.

Submitting to chance or a priori necessity means relinquishing responsibility for decisions. It is a denial of freedom because it implies the artist had no free will. (The existentialist term for this is  “inauthentic” or “in bad faith.”) This has nothing to do with how good or bad the art is — it has to do with the experience and meaning of the work. We may no longer believe in the subject matter of most religious or royal art from past centuries, but it can nevertheless be great art that we love.

I love Still's art for the power of the willfulness, the free willfulness, I experience in his work. The fact is, Still’s bombastic posturing isn’t empty boasting and hyperbole — what he said is precisely true:

By 1941, space and figure in my canvases had been resolved into a total psychic entity, freeing me from the limitations of each, yet fusing into an instrument bounded only by the limits of my energy and intuition. My feeling of freedom was now absolute and infinitely exhilarating. (Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 1963.)
 

This is part 2 of three posts on Clyfford Still. Part 1 was about the person, and the next will be about the Clyfford Still Museum.