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Saturday, May 24, 2003

Money makes the art world go round

 


Being math phobic, I hesitate to bring up anything about the business of art (image of Degas' "Cotton Exchange" painting, a marriage of business and art). But even I know we’re in a bad recession and that things are getting worse instead of better. So on my gallery rounds, I’ve been asking “how’s business.”

I have few numbers to report, but my eyes and ears tell me moribund sales and gallerists in need of mood stabilizers are a bad sign long-term for Philadelphia.

Pentimenti has a great show of Isabel Bigelow’s encaustic paintings. They’re not selling, although gallerist Christine Pfister says she recently sold some of Bigelow’s older pieces --smaller, minimalist works that are kind of 60’s-retro (read, safe, designy).

Gallery Joe’s current exhibit of drawings (grid drawing by Mark Sheinkman. For more see Libby’s blog of May 3) is fabulous. The work is very reasonably-priced-- and is not moving. Worse yet, indefatiguable Becky Kerlin is showing signs of gallerist burn-out. Oy!

Rodger LaPelle, 3rd St. philosopher and scene observer, who’s survived several economic ups and downs in his decades of running his Rodger Lapelle Gallery summed it up as the war, the recession, the fact that Philadelphians are “cheapskates,” (see that recent Inquirer article comparing consumer spending here with that in other cities)....that and the fact that 3rd St. has been a construction zone for months now -- muddy, puddly and impassable. LaPelle says his sales this quarter are down over last year’s but he’s here to stay, a dedicated enthusiastic player.

Schmidt-Dean gallery this month may be the exception. William Smith’s landscapes (image) are selling, a profusion of red dots covering the price list. (Smith’s tres Philadelphia landscapes --it might be Fairmount Park, you never know -- are beautiful and hardly controversial making them a safe bet...is that the key?)

I’ve become an art collector over the last couple of years. I can’t afford much but I know I’ve got to buy. It’s soul satisfying to have a piece of art around that you decided on and purchased with your own hard-earned dough. I know many artists --who can least afford it --who are the best purchasers of art.

If artists can buy in these times of economic downturn, surely those with deeper pockets can, too. Come out, come out where ever you are. The market needs you. Philadelphia needs you.
permanent link  roberta 8:20 AM
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Friday, May 23, 2003

A happening place

 
The happening place in Philadelphia, these days, is the Borowsky Gallery's display of 1960s Pop Art. Pieces by artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Christo, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol had been displayed there in a series of groundbreaking exhibitions in the 1960s, and now many of those pieces, or similar ones, are back in the show "A Happening Place," looking as sassy as ever. The work is a barrel of fun--like Robert Watts' checkers played by fish in a square tank over a checkerboard, a Wayne Thiebaud pastel sandwich, Lucas Samaras' mirror box (left), Robert Arneson's "Six Pack." The show is worth way more than its $5 cost of admission (free to students with current ID). Go.
permanent link  libby 6:52 PM
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Getting the skinny on Dia

 
Calvin Tomkins' piece, "The Mission," in last week's New Yorker, was a juicy look into the personalities behind the Dia Foundation. It was a soap opera of wild ambitions, quirks, marriages and divorces (figurative and literal). And it was a lesson about the austere, conceptual art that Dia has been collecting.

The piece was part of the onslought of press about Dia related to the opening early this week of Dia:Beacon, Dia's new (additional) space a bit up the Hudson in Beacon, N.Y., for the long-term display of the Dia Foundation's artwork, which includes pieces from names like Donald Judd, Joseph Beuys and Dan Flavin (he of the neon to the right).

Then I read Michael Kimmelman's piece in the New York Times. It was a pedestrian listing of the successes or failures of the installations at Dia:Beacon. Where's the beef? I wondered. Then I went to sleep.
permanent link  libby 6:12 PM
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Wednesday, May 21, 2003

New director of exhibitions at Moore College

 
Well, he's not all that new, given he's been here for two months, but Brian Wallace, the new director of exhibitions at Moore College, has a while yet before his influence will be clear on what's showing at the Goldie Paley Gallery and the Levy Gallery at Moore College.

Wallace said that besides continuing Moore's international-art tradition, he's interested in encouraging local emerging artists and underrecognized artists and he has an interest in art made by and influenced by new technologies.

His track record as curator at the Bellevue Museum of Art near Seattle shows that he commissioned Seattle-area artist Mary Henry to paint a temporary two-story high mural in the museum's new building. Another example from exhibition history is work by photographer Takihito Sato, whose image here, "Minato-Ku Daiba," 1996, a photo transparency lightbox, 39" x 48 1/4", was a recent acquisition of the Microsoft Collection.

permanent link  libby 3:33 PM
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Tuesday, May 20, 2003

Old fashioned Digital Technology

 


Digital technology is as elastic as taffy. In the hands of Jeremy Blake or local video honcho Peter Rose, the digital ride summersaults into the future. Then there's photographer Alida Fish, whose digitally-altered photographs transport you back to a time of lace, doilies and Queen Victoria. Fish, showing new work at Schmidt-Dean, has long used layering techniques to merge disparate subject matter and force metaphorical connections. Past work combining humans and rock or statues was particularly powerful. "Plant Series" entwines fading flowers with ominous, wasted landscapes. Eco-message aside, the black and white toned prints have technological "wow" and a forlorn beauty. Better are Fish's "Andante Series," 12 small tintypes with nude models, some of them non-standard body types (read, large) posed against a deep, black void. The models pose, dance and spin in the vacuum of space, seemingly gravity-free. Like a new breed of fairies, the odd, wee humans are magic.
permanent link  roberta 9:23 AM
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Sunday, May 18, 2003

Africa-China-Jamaica-America links

 
Many of Albert Chong's emotionally rich photographs are conversations with his ancestors, some literal, some not. But his personal history is an archetypical story of migration and immigration, intermarriage and cultural roots. A native of Jamaica, his photos of old black-and-white or sepia-toned portraits arranged with hot-colored flowers plus assorted memorabilia are framed with copper mats stamped with stories and poems. Among my favorites was a photo called "Jesus, Mary, and the Perfect White Man," in which the 3-D Jesus and the 3-D Perfect White Man (the latter a blond-haired, square-jawed head, probably from a store mannequin) can't compete with the old photos showing the beauty of dark-skinned Mary and the two little dark girls.
Chong, who now teaches in Colorado and won a 1998 Guggenheim fellowship in photography and a 1998 Pollock/Krasner grant, as well as regional and national NEA grants, appropriates Jamaican history as his own history, as in "Self-Portrait With Marcus Garvey Prison Docket" (left). The show is at the African American Museum in Philadelphia until Aug. 13.

Chong's work, especially the pieces about African-derived rituals, spoke directly to the show two floors up. If you haven't seen "4 Artists of Distinction," which has been up since Sept. 24 and was due to come down April 20, lucky for you that it's still showing--until Aug. 15. You owe it to yourself to get over to AAMP in a hurry.
The works by the four Philadelphia artists--Barbara Bullock, Charles Burwell, James Dupree and Martina Johnson-Allen--practically jump off the wall and talk to each other, with their Africa-inspired jumpy use of vivid color and pattern, and their references to African talismans. Among the highlights were Dupree's installation, "Mask Broom Totem Series," a commentary on African American labor history and so much more, and Burwell's wall of sketches and stencils that explained a lot about his paintings, with their intense layers of pattern (right).
permanent link  libby 10:20 PM
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Art of the people, by the people, for the people

 
Well, I do think the Mural Arts Program can be tagged with the non-controversial label. After all, we are talking about art that is planned with input from the community.
Yet a surprising number of the murals rise above the social-work approach. I think quantity and government support help. Just think about how theater flourished in ancient Greece, thanks to government support. And thanks to great playwrights.

But what interests me is how the murals succeed, where other public art projects have failed, in creating a heroic image of ordinary people.This is not an age of beyond-human greatness appropriate for Founding Fathers and saints. Our era is far more likely to buy into abstract, mandala-like trance art projecting a non-denominational or maybe vaguely Eastern spirituality (think Agnes Martin, here, or Bruce Pollock) than it is likely to buy into Saint Sebastian ecstatic with arrow piercings.
Public art that tries to reconcile greatness with our warts-and-all culture often fails. An example of that failure is the statue of former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo. Sculptor Zenos Frudakis aimed at the human level by siting Rizzo on steps used by the public. At the same time he aimed at heroism by making Rizzo larger than life. Yet the end product fails as a hero and fails as a commoner. Similarly, the figurative Vietnam sculpture [above], seems less than heroic and mostly just politically correct with its multiracial trio.
The figures in the good murals, however, succeed in making just folks into heroes (see above right Peter Pagast's "Ballfield," 4th and Dauphin) and making public figures into inspirations.
And the landscapes that work best bring a whacky, personal vision of nature to the concrete jungle. They override their consensual origins with originality.
permanent link  libby 5:16 PM
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