Old Posts
November 27, 2005
The Egon Schiele show at the Neue Gallery is a must-see. Schiele’s a master of the expressive capacity of line. His work of nearly all portraits of men and women are direct, emotional, and unglamorized. I’m one to shy away from emotion in art but I think I’m coming around… Take a look at the picture below – a self portrait from 1910. I like the way that Schiele uses the human form as a basis for manipulating its familiarity into an expression of emotionality. That is, the ribs and joints in Schiele’s self-portrait, for example, are anatomically incorrect but the knobby, jutting form conveys to me what is an astute expression of the male body. At least the way I feel about my own: both hideous flesh and a marvel of expressive capacity.
November 21, 2005
Chelsea on Saturday yielded a pausity of things to get really excited about. But Catherine Sullivan was a true highlight. Her films feature outstanding physical performances that appear as if each actor and actress is possessed by devastating psychological illness. Extraordinary stuff – think Jim Carrey’s virtuosic bodily control minus the comedy multiplied by 10.
And Fra Angelico – a childhood interest of mine since I took a course in Renaissance art in high school (circa 1994) – was a knockout success at the Met. The colors in these panels is extraordinary. Lush, rich, and so well preserved. Something I’ve rarely seen in paintings from the 15th century. A must-see and I’ll post some pictures once I get the exhibition catalog I’ve ordered through the mail.
In a related, though non-art topic… I recommend listening Melvyn Bragg’s radio show In Our Time on Blackfriar’s and Greyfriar’s (the Dominican and Franciscan orders respectively) in preparation for the Fra show (he was a Dominican).
November 16, 2005
The Abromovic performances came to an end with her wearing a dress 20 feet high and extending past the stage by many feet in a massive cone. As the evenings have gone on my engagement with the pieces has waned. Nevertheless some thoughts about the whole series:
It was too slick. Security was tight, the lighting was perfect, the stage high above the audience… Performance art had been cleansed, sanitized and packaged in a tasty seven-sectioned candy bar.
Watching the audience was more interesting than watching the performer.
I enjoyed how these performances were treated as information existing without context that could be revived for contemporary audiences. I like art as information and while this usually comes in conceptual visual art or new media, it was surprising to see it come in the performance world.
November 13, 2005
Spent another unseasonably warm November day in the museums instead of out in the sunshine where I should have been. Must work on this pale complexion, though… MoMA had SAFE: Design Takes on Risk, an excellent show of design objects that mitigate threats to humans (from Band-Aids® to refugee shelters). Installed beautifully and was a joy to navigate. The show is large and crammed with things I had never seen before. The highlight was a simple red purse with the outline of a chef’s knife embossed onto its surface. A warning to potential purse snatchers to back off. The curators nicely integrated into the exhibition works of art that, while not design pieces, nevertheless reflected on notions of safety and security in contemporary life. A mighty success fitting well into the big shoes of Cooper-Hewitt’s Extreme Textiles exhibition from the Spring/Summer.
Although discovering artists at MoMA makes me feel delinquent (shouldn’t I have already seen these folks in my gallery rounds by now?), I was nonetheless pleased to see find the work of Robin Rhode. Inspired by media that portray motion through sequences of still images such as comic books and storyboards, Rhode makes series of photographs that tell a story. Taking his pictures outside, he writes on walls, draws on the ground, and integrates human subjects into these backgrounds to tell his story. They are simple: the waving of a flag, children riding on a bike to school, a drunk sliding over on a bench, or a person catching a TV and books falling from the sky (until a car suddenly appears in black paint outline and over the course of three images swiftly buckles and crushes our man). They are simple, humorous, and a nice integration of comic book styling with graffiti/street art sensibilities.
After this heartening MoMA visit I popped up to the Whitney to see Breaking the Grid a micro-show in the strangely-placed rotating drawing gallery. Nothing terribly exciting here – the requisite LeWitt, Bochner, and Martin although a little letter from Carl Andre was a surprise as was the (unpleasant) inclusion of a Joan Mitchell painting. Scribble scribble, Joan. Then again I’m not into aggressive gestural paintings save de Kooning, Twombly, and a few others. A highlight was a Richard Diebenkorn drawing more white than color and a reminder of how a solid retrospective of his simply must come around again soon.
The Whitney photo gallery presented Sub/Urbia, another boring show curated by the lackluster Sylvia Wolf. Sigh. The title alone is distressing in its thoughtlessness (and reiteration from the famous play). It’s curatorial cheating at its worst. Pick a topic (hm… oh! suburbs!), dash off a one-paragraph essay to smear onto the wall, and throw up some pictures whose subjects are obviously of the exhibition’s title. Sloppy curating. A high school student could do this simply by reading ArtForum for 3 months and going to Chelsea to hobnob with the gallerists to get the loans. A theme as full of potential as the suburbs are warrants serious curating, not show and not-tell. Throwing up pictures that represent the show title but do little to articulate any of the interesting meat on those bones does not warrant a show. But at least I got to see Amir Zaki’s excellent new photograph. Astute readers will recall that Amir Zaki is represented by James Harris Gallery in Seattle where I used to work and who recently had a show at Perry Rubinstein gallery where, co-incidentally (I hope), Robin Rhode (mentioned above) shows.
Next was Richard Tuttle whose best work occurred between 1960 and 1973 and then went completely to pot. I’ve rarely been so excited at the beginning of a retrospective and so completely dismayed three rooms later. The first room of early drawings and fabric wall pieces was outstanding in their post-minimalist whimsy. Iconic yet subtle and achingly bizarre – like an alien language. Then, alarmingly, sculptures being to appear mid-1970 that are awkward assemblages with garish color and light. Stiff and tight, they lose the ethereality and confidence of the early pieces. They seem fussy and overwrought, baroque in their embellishment. Dressed up, overstuffed.
Finally I went to the Gugg to see night 5 of Marina Abromovic. She was performing Joseph Beuys’ How to
Explain Painting to a Dead Hair. I am mystified. But I always have been with Beuys who seemed to tread the line between hack and genius quite well. My skeptic friend Dalia reacted with annoyance that such nonsense could be tolerated in such an advanced civilization as ours. I’m keeping my mind open and will have to see what comes as I give it more thought.
November 12, 2005
The candles burned and Marina Abromovic, on her fourth night, endured (at least until 7pm when I departed after 1.5 hours of watching her). She lay on an iron frame about 8 inches above 15 candles wearing no more protection from the heat than a pair of denim coveralls. After about 45 minutes of squirming recumbency, she raised the arms that were at her side, gathered her hair and rolled off the frame to replace the candles that had burned down to stubs. The chatty crowd instantly hushed and locked their hundreds of pairs of eyes on the stage. Upon encountering difficulty removing one of the melted stumps from its holder, she asked the audience for a knife to remove the offending object. A man near the stage obliged and slid his pocket knife to her whereupon she pried out the wax, replaced the candle, slid the knife back to its owner, and lay back down on her frame to continue paying her penance. This entire process was electric. Each movement otherwise mundane became beautiful and reverent. Indeed, the resonace with religiousity that was latent for the past three nights was fully expressed this evening. With its soaring atrium and flickering candles, the Gugg felt even more like a chapel. Watching her was like participating vicariously in a hallowed rite of passage – but an ambiguous one, for what purpose was there in this act? Both the rite and reason were her own so the anxiety and fascination that I felt from watching someone endure intense pain had to be confronted. This voyeuristic element to her performances troubles me for I am confronted with the rather disconcerting conclusion that watching a person in pain, humiliation, or discomfort can be so compelling.
Abromovic performs Joseph Beuys’ How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare tomorrow.
November 11, 2005
Marina Abromovic’s performances continue at the Guggenheim. The third night finds her in crotchless black jeans seated on a pine chair holding a semi-automatic machine gun. Inspired by VALIE EXPORT’s performance Action Pants: Genital Panic, Abromovic alters the original by not walking around a darkened theater asking the public to look at her exposed genitals but instead replicating EXPORT’s famous photograph that documented the event.
I experienced a bit of genital panic myself as I entered the rotunda, choosing to walk around Abromovic from the back before skittishly approaching her crotch and hastily taking a peek. A jaunt up the spiral staircase led me to a telescope the Gugg had kindly placed on the second floor. Perhaps due to an old-fashioned gentility, I settled my gaze on her face and watched as she slowly and methodically (as if in reverence or paying penance) breathed in and out. Her unblinking expression caused rivulets of tears to course down her face giving the false illusion of emotion.
I liked this piece although I found the gun a little too obvious (“look at me, but don’t desire me or I’ll kill you”). The butch attire (black pants, black biker vest, black workboots) offest by perfectly applied lipstick and makeup seemed like classic late-1960/1970s feminist attitude (“I can be masculine and hard while feminine and soft”). Abromovic is a riveting performer and her command of an audience is compelling. Her very little movement induced not boredom but rapt attention as the audience was compelled to wait for her next action – a shift in the chair, an alteration in gaze.
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