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Saturday, December 13, 2003

"Hip-fu" nostalgia

 
I'll go with what Libby said below (see post of Thursday, Dec. 11) about the awesome "Black Belt" show. Let me add that I found most of the work nostalgic for the source material, something I hadn't expected. That means nostalgia for fighting, of course, and some of it fighting between the races.

Mostly, issues of inter-racial conflict seemed submerged beneath an atmosphere of video arcade karma and kung-fu/hip hop love.

David Hammons, an artist I'm guessing is older than most of the others in the show, stood out with a piece that had a quiet presence and a theme of racial harmony. (image is Hammons' piece, a gong with black and gold and black embedded circles)


If you can't make it to "Black Belt," you can at least catch work by two of the featured artists, Kori Newkirk and Sanford Biggers, here in Philadelphia. Newkirk is at the Fabric Workshop and Museum and Biggers is at the Borowsky Gallery.

permanent link  roberta 3:36 PM
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The deal with Arshile

 

I'm going to tiptoe around John Currin for a moment and ask "What is the big deal with Gorky?" Sad life story...taken from us too soon... But the work -- or at least the 115 drawings in the current Whitney retrospective -- seem middling muddles, messy doodles, and icy and formalist to boot. I kept seeing strains of Miro and echoes of Leger and Picasso in the organic shapes and free-associative line-making. And because of that the works seem derivative.

The press material trumpets the artist as "one of the great draftsmen of the twentieth century" and forgive me but I just don't see it.

Maybe the paintings are better. (image from the show is "untitled," 1946, graphite and crayon on paper)
permanent link  roberta 3:03 PM
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Thursday, December 11, 2003

Up on 125th and Main St.

 
Harlem was where Roberta and I started out yesterday on our trip to the Big Apple. With a mixture of admiration and disappointment, we noted that 125th Street looks like Main Street these days, with H&M and Starbucks, etc. etc.

What brought us to Harlem, was "Black Belt" at the Studio Museum in Harlem, a show about how Asian martial arts and culture, especially via kung fu movies with black combatants, have influenced African-Americans. The 19 artists in the show, many of them familiar names like David Hammons, Ellen Gallagher and Paul Pfeiffer, contributed work that alluded not only to Kung Fu but to anime, video games and Asian decorative motifs.

A couple of pieces honored kung fu movie hero Black Belt Jones, played by Jim Kelly. Sanford Biggers' Black Belt Jones (shown), at the entry to the show, is made of Indonesian black rice and white rice glued to paper, with only the black portions expressing the image, the white areas melting into the white background.

And his "Nanchakus," two braided lucite clubs connected by a gold chain and lit up from inside with a red light, transform the simple Asian fighting sticks into pure bling-bling (I swore I would never use that word, but there it is), showcased in a glass case as is all the finest jewelry.

Not all the cultural merging has been met with open arms. The artists responded to the invasion of Asian martial arts culture into their neighborhoods and into their own African-American culture with resentment as well as pleasure.

Glenn Kaino's video game, "Game of Death," made in collaboration with Mark Bradford, and based on the Bruce Lee-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar kung-fu movie of the same name, was a homage. But Patti Chan's pieces, "Death of Game," were critical, especially of how white Hollywood kept their own hands clean by pitting the two non-whites against one another. (Jabbar lost the fight.) The movie, Bruce Lee's last, inspired a number of pieces in the show (shown, Kaino's sculpture Bruce Leroy).

Of Ellen Gallagher's several 6-minute, 16-millimeter films, made in collaboration with Edgar Cleigne, my favorite was "Murmur: Monster Movie," in which the aliens (wearing scratched-on-the-film, bobbing Andy Warhol fright wigs) threaten to take over the local folks . The silent film, with text from corny sci-fi movies, raises questions about which aliens are threatening which culture. Another by Gallagher, Murmur: Super Boo,(some frames shown), creates a black superhero with the help of old comic book ads for building the he-man look, plus a little Bruce Lee, Muhammed Ali and voila.

Paul Pfeiffer's tiny (maybe 3 inches wide) 20-second video loop, "Live Evil," shows a headless Michael Jackson moonwalking as his upper body morphs into a rorschach-like mandala, making him at once robotic and insect like. I'm not sure of the Asian connection here, but I liked it. Asian video equipment?




My favorite pieces were Iona Rozeal Brown's hip-hopsters gone Japanese(shown, a would-be emperor). The images are elegant, Brown's eye for telling details sharp. She skewers her subjects by their own pretensions.


From there, Roberta and I headed downtown to the Whitney for John Currin's own brand of social skewering. But that's another post.
permanent link  libby 8:26 PM
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Let's try Jackson Pollack on for size

 
So Roberta and I have continued talking about abstract and bodies, and where abstraction lost the popular vote and forgot about the power of flesh, pheromones, biology and nature (shown, Fernand Leger's Le Mecanicien, painted when abstraction still contained a little real world).

When abstract abstracted itself from the body and our world of reality and started to talk to itself about painting and art issues instead, it fell off the radar of the majority of people in this world.

I'm thinking here about Jackson Pollack and his drips (shown, Pollack's Autumn Rhythm). No matter how I stare at those things, I read paint. So this paint is drippy and gestural instead of brushed and gestural. But Pollack's subject in my view is how to apply paint. (I hear hollow laughing out there, so my advice, if you're laughing, is send us a post showing how wrong I am.)

But I'm not going to buy the argument that Pollack's drips are about the body because they're about piss and semen. Piss and semen as mere fluids, excreted and then dried up, raise not a lot of interest. And frankly, how paint is applied raises not a lot of interest, unless how it is applied is part and parcel of something bigger and better.

And by bigger and better, I ain't talking about the size of the canvas. Nor am I talking about the size of Jackson's body parts, which are no where to be seen.

permanent link  libby 10:40 AM
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Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Pop and the clash of cultures

 

So Libby and I were talking more about abstract painting the other day. (It’s such a big subject and there’s so much to say.) Here’s one thought I’d like to add.

Human visual culture has always been body-oriented. Especially now it seems that way. As humans who have bodies we are attracted to others like ourselves. We’re people-watchers. Even in our art.

Pop culture -- which sniffs around art’s butt (and vice versa) has begun to dominate visual culture. And let’s face it, pop culture (I’m thinking of Brittany Spears writhing like a pole dancer on tv trying to sell music to 12-year-olds and their dads, for example) sets the bar low --on everything, but especially on bodies.


In my opinion, art’s challenge in the 21st Century is to somehow throttle pop culture and seize back the momentum, seize back the discussion about the human condition.

If abstract painting can do that -- with some combination of body-referencing or human-condition-referencing then bring it on. Otherwise, and here I’m going to be self-contradictory again, but really I’m as confused as the next person about these guys, maybe John Currin and Matthew Barney and (I hate to say it) Lisa Yuskavage are on the right track. (also on track are Cindy Sherman, see "Untitled Film Still #10," 1978, left; and Jenny Saville, see top, "Propped," 1992)

By the way, read Peter Schjeldahl’s current Currin thinking in the New Yorker. This critic is confused, too. He basically loves the guy's paintings and then ends up saying the only way to "counter" Currin is for newer, better paintings to be made. Yes!
permanent link  roberta 8:13 AM
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Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Big chance

 
As luck would have it, the same photograph is on display at two different places in two different sizes at the same time.

Larry Fink's photo of the beautiful people at Elaine's is 48" x 48" at the Woodmere Art Museum's terrific First Woodmere Triennial of Contemporary Photography.

The same photo, "George Plimpton, Jared Paul Stern and Cameron Richardson, Fashion Shoot, Elaine's, NYC," is brought down to normal photo-on-the-wall scale at Schmidt/Dean.

The blowup at Woodmere is incredibly physical, making you feel that the woman whose head is tipped back to receive the kiss is right near you, and the beauty of the people and their skin is palpable. The depth feels like a depth you are about to enter.

The smaller version's depth cannot be stepped in to, just peered into. And the people no longer seem to be peers who share your own space. The kiss loses some of its gaity, the woman's stretch backward more contained.

I'm not saying I didn't like the small versions. They have a space that draws you in and leads your eye around to people and details you didn't pick up on at first glance.

But the lesson in scale is a wow. Don't miss this chance. See them both.

permanent link  libby 5:24 PM
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Zen and the self-revelator

 

Our mutual friend, painter Marjorie Grigonis, called me recently all a-twitter. She had just seen our (also) mutual friend Leo Robinson's "Zen Portraits" at Moore College (in the connector hall).

"They're quirky and offbeat," she said. "I haven't seen anything like them." she said.

"[Leo] said that they are the moments when people understand...not that life's insane or that the gods are insane but...a moment of recognition." she said.



OK, I'm in.

Robinson's portraits (up through Dec.) are tiny works (some as small as 4" x 6"). They number 12 and basically seem to portray the same person (himself, perhaps) caught posing as if onstage in a moment of self-revelation. The works, water media on paper, are supple and convey, with great economy of means, the unsteadiness of self, the masks we slip into so easily. (image top and above right are two from the series)

Robinson, who teaches in the Illustration Dept. at Moore College, takes liberties with the body -- growing shoulders to mountainous proportions, painting lips an unreal, ruby red, and all that works on a metaphorical level, creating a character whose questions about himself are reflected in questions about his body.

The nicest thing about this suite of work is the earnest, confused, bemused, befuddled, embarrassed and highly un-ironic faces. Vulnerable and wise, the faces like those in all good portraits, let you glimpse yourself.

Psychic portraiture like this, so unlike that of the ponderous Eric Fischl, say, who beats you over the head with his points, is a breath of fresh air.


A contemporary counterpart-- I'm thinking of her watercolor drawings -- is Kara Walker, whose impulse to caricature in ways that can be savage or not, seems descended from earlier practitioners like Honore Daumier. (image above left is Walker's "Negress Notes" 1996; image right is Daumier's "Trois avocats causant")

By the way, Marjorie G is an abstract painter and member of Third St. Gallery. You can see some of her work in the gallery's current holiday show.
permanent link  roberta 10:47 AM
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Monday, December 08, 2003

First Friday, paintbrush and all

 

While Libby was at Locks, I made it to 2nd St. where more folks than I expected were looking at art and enjoying the wine and cookies.

Barry Goldberg's eight encaustic paintings at Larry Becker Gallery seemed a modest crew. In fact, they sit back like wallflowers, a thought that snuck up on me as I realized all the track lighting was pointed straight down at the floor and not at the walls or on the work.

Heidi Nivling, who, with husband Larry, always hangs an elegant show, said they wanted to calm the space, and actually the ambient lighting -- cool and unobtrusive -- worked very well, turning the paintings into real world objects and not just paintings on the wall. Goldberg's always been a great color man. His surface-y, encaustic paintings, dense with pigment and smooth, skin-like surfaces, are abstract works whose colors evoke the world and whose subject -- to me at least -- is the stable relationships between objects (people included) that share some similarities and basically get along.

I talked with Goldberg who gave me an exclusive tour spilling all the beans behind the work -- all the while saying, half-jokingly, "I can't believe I'm telling you all this," like the information was some kind of hush, hush, secret stuff. It was funny but it also said much about the back story of abstract art and the titling of it and how sometimes the key to understanding and thus enjoying lies in the verbal-visual interplay. Hmmm, there's a thought.

So, Goldberg said he had been looking at the night sky alot and that Mars and other celestial bodies were the references. (image, "Phobos and Deimos", top left, sorry about the flash, and "Asaph Hall," right)The rich, brick-red color (you gotta see it in person, folks, these pictures don't do it justice) refers to the red planet and the Celadon green is like the planet's two moons, Phobos and Deimos, named by astronomer, Asaph Hall. Goldberg's knock-out Celadon appears in two more works, set off by rectangular outlines of creamy, lemondrop yellow. Yum. "Yanaihara" the smaller and thinner of the two is a kind of homage to Giacometti. And "Stonecrop and Saxifrage," the larger piece, refers to the plants that butterflies eat. Eat, I asked? Well, whatever. They're butterfly plants.

In the back room, Goldberg was dealing with the cosmos of dying suns and black and white dwarfs.

You can find human stories in the work. I kept thinking of people, side-by-side in bed, dreaming in color and co-existing in some happy twilight time.

Muse and the paintbrush

Meanwhile, across the street at Muse Gallery Linda Fanning-Lefevre welcomed a smaller crowd into her solo show. The Harrisburg artist, who said she joined Muse a year ago in order to get closer to a metropolitan area, had work that seemed rooted in the Chagallian past. Fanning-Lefevre said she didn't look at the old masters alot but there was clearly something of Chagall's spirit that had seeped in to the work. (image, above)

And at Third St. Gallery the small works holiday show was hopping. This large coop gallery, whose members range from representational painters to abstract sculptors and painters, had lots of work on the walls and a few things sold. I was very happy to see a Tony Rocco photograph in the mix. (image, right. Click the link for more.) What a great (head-less) urban image! I hope Kate Ware (who put together the upcoming "Faceless Figures" exhibit at the PMA (see post of Dec. 2, below) gets around to see it. I've seen Rocco's work before and the young photographer has a way with portraits, too. He's an up-and-comer.



Finally, I present the Artist's Equity paint brush, a freebie I picked up from from the table set up at Third St. by the AE Philadelphia/Tri State chapter (or as they call themselves P3AE). The membership organization was recruiting. Here's what they provide for a $30 membership fee: members exhibits, lectures, a newsletter, an artist-run "Health hazards Hotline" and a website.



permanent link  roberta 7:34 AM
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Sunday, December 07, 2003

First Friday--new gallery and flip book festival

 
After leaving Locks, I ran to Old City to meet Roberta, and on my way got waylaid by a young man calling attention to a new gallery to anyone who’d listen.

The place is called Spartaco Gallery, and the address on the gallery notes is 52 N. 2nd St., but the entrance is on a side street, through a windowless door that leads to a stairway to the second floor.

The gallery has no street presence (other than my friend, the carnival barker), so I don’t know how people are going to find it in the future, but snow and all, the small space was packed with people chatting, munching, and looking at the five-artist show. The work is representational, including lots of still lifes, and I was late, so I didn’t give it a fair look. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you go.

Eventually I wound up at Space 1026, which had a flip-book exhibit and an auction of works from affiliates and friends.

Compared with last year’s flip-book exhibit, this one was small, with just a few of the books giving the requisite flip-book impression of motion.

My fave was Angel Esquivel’s “Hi,” a pack of index cards bound with hair ties, plastic balls and all (shown), the moving image an earnest cartoon man raising his hand in greeting.

Another sweet book, K. Chau’s “Empress Monkey Girl” showed a print image of a girl releasing from her hands fish, clouds, turtles, a star. But the book scored low on the flippability scale.



Familiar names whose books were noteworthy included Andrew Jeffrey Wright. His “Chest Hair Dance” (shown right) got a laugh out of me, and his psychedelic skulls books were, well, psychedelic. “Drum Solo,” a group project by Adam W.[allacavage], Rachel, Thom L.[essner] and Rose used postcards [leftovers advertising a Wright show] bound together with rubberbands. The face was transformed, the blank white eyes moving as the book flipped. Pretty funny.

Other adventurous materials worth mentioning—nuts and bolts for bindings and decks of playing cards, the hands on the cards doing something like dealing.

On the walls for the auction were mostly prints. Standout pieces (there were just a few) included Rebecca Westcott's drawing (shown), and Jim Houser's skateboard (shown at top of post).

Snow notwithstanding, the place was packed with young people dressed in dour colors (the bright spots for color--the occasional head of hair, and one guy in a red union suit).

A word about the walls--black with some colored drawings. I suppose the idea was to be anti-white box, but it was a little depressing, and not a good foil for the artwork, or even for the crowd and their sober colors.

permanent link  libby 5:18 PM
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First Friday prints in the snow

 
Snow inspired me to stay at Locks Gallery for as long as possible, so after admiring Neysa Grassi’s gouaches (see Dec. 6 post), I wandered upstairs to see the multiples show--mostly of prints--from an assortment of big-name artists, including international presences like Claes Oldenburg, Howard Hodgkin and Roy Lichtenstein and locals Diane Burko and Edna Andrade.

I enjoyed the show more than I had expected. Several of the Joseph Beuys prints (shown above, one of four from portfolio, "L'arte et une zanzara dalle mille ali," or Art is a Mosquito on a Thousand Wings) for example, brought to mind Mark Lombardi’s obsessed flow charts of evil-doing and corruption.

Burko’s fire-and-ice iris prints of a volcano, wreathed in voluptuous smoke, and a chilly Iceland iceberg (shown above left, "Over Vatnajokull in July #2"), both taken from above, brought the snow into perspective as a mere annoyance from nature. A longtime painter of nature’s grandeur based on aerial photos, Burko, over the past two years has been mining the photos for prints, made in collaboration with Silicon Gallery. They have a sobering elegance.

Andrade’s “Silver Turn” screenprint (shown above right) performs a nice op-art trick of appearing soft, despite the precise, hard edges.

And while I’m talking about the women in the show, I’ll add Elizabeth Murray’s labor-intensive “Shack,” (shown left) a sort of 3-D collaged lithograph that crackles with cartoony humor. You would need to clear out a large wall in your house to hold this one, the show’s largest piece, at 63 x 51 inches.

But now I get to my very favorite, for which I could not get a decent image. It was Jasper Johns’ “Light Bulb,” a light-sucking low relief in lead. Flat out funny. In my photo it looked like a plain slab of black.

permanent link  libby 5:00 PM
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