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Saturday, March 27, 2004

Restless beast

 

Leon Golub's got some small--that's right, I said small--works on paper up at Seraphin Gallery, along with some small canvases. I guess the two typical, large canvases came along for protection, but it was the small works that packed a punch.

The name of the show is "Live and Die Like a Lion," and a couple of the small lion and dog images were macho alter-egos for the artist, now in his 80s and still making art. (Shown above, "Alarmed Dog Encountering Pink," which amused me no end). The dogs were my favorite--restless beasts thwarted by patches of color.

Part of the charm of the drawings was their freshness, a kind of play and loosening up for the bigger pieces. The themes included art issues as well as subjects relevant to his larger, cultural/political pieces, but less belabored (shown, "Gunman Caught in Red Abstraction").



Amongst the drawings, I particularly liked "Payback Time" and "Mr. Kinky" (shown), street characters whom we all know, yet don't know at all, delivering an aura menace and victimhood in one fell swoop.




The small canvases kept to the typical Golub themes of social injustice (shown, "Bite Your Tongue #2," which says Bite your tongue, Save your ass, certainly a bitter bit of commentary from someone who feels powerless). In them Golub's hallmark method of scraping and painting and scraping some more has been either toned down or not used altogether. The work looked great.

Look for a couple of publications--a Golub catalog and a boxed set of prints--coming out of the gallery in the spring.

permanent link  libby 3:35 PM
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Rosalyn Drexler: "You couldn't have known my work. How could you?"

 

[Note -- I spoke by phone with Rosalyn Drexler on Mar 17, 2004. Drexler's work is on view at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery. (for more pictures and a critique see my earlier post.)

RF Walking among your works I felt like they had a lot to say to a contemporary art audience. Themes of gender, television and the media, violence, surveillance. So why is it I don't know your work? (top image is "This is My Wedding" 1963)

RD Laughs. You couldn't have known my work. How could you?

RF But I read you're in the Hirshhorn collection...the Whitney. Don't they have your paintings out?

RD No, I think they're in deep sleep

RF Have you seen the show at Rosenwald-Wolf?

RD The gallery itself is not as big as it looks. I had to show smaller works. Sid [Sachs, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery Director] has two things in storage. They were too big. "Rub out" Also "Maui Wowie" It's a picture of Basquiat and Warhol in a car going to Hawaii. I just liked the title. I didn't know it was the name of a kind of marijuana. Also there's a little cigar box [a sculpture]. He has one of those in the back [in storage] also. (image is "Nuclear Bomb Amusement Park" (1998))

RF I love the hot colors, the voids of space in the backgrounds. You've taken iconic imagery (movie stars, movie posters, news shots of criminals) and made it even hotter. You?re like the opposite of Alex Katz, you have a point of view and it's political.

RD I love yellow. I don't know why

Technique
RF Tell me a little about your technique -- something that also seems fresh--the collaging, the photo-based and tv based imagery. How did you scale up your imagery in a pre-xerox, pre-Kinkos world?
.

RD I thought I had better get these blown up so I can see them. I was interested in posters, newspapers, magazines...they were very interesting to me. Some were very large. I found a place that would do it. You're right there was no Kinkos. I told them don't make it too clear or strong because I want to paint over it.

RF Why didn't you trace the outline or project it...why did you go right over the image? (image is from the "Love" series in the 1960s. This painting has the Bob Thompson on the back.)
RD The reason I didn't project the image is that I loved to feel the brush against the edge of the image. The most wonderful thing would be to encompass it...like it's captured in paint.

RF Had you seen this before? Was anybody else doing this?

RD Nobody else was doing this. Tom Hess, a critic at the time somewhere, he wrote I was the first person to use photos - cut them out and put them on canvas.

Also I was hiding the image and giving it another face...like bringing the dead back to life in a strange way. I was very guilty about it - achieving something not out of your head. Little did I know it would become so hot.

RF Did you worry about copyrights?

RD It never occurred to me to worry about copyright. Who the hell knew my work?

Some people said 'hey why don't you just use it?' What I enjoyed was changing it. I don't think anybody steals from anyone. It's all out there.

Boxing
RF I loved the fighters and lovers themes. Fighters as lovers and lovers as fighters. I know you did some lady wresting. Were you interested in boxing or just boxing as a visual-metaphorical motif?

RD I published what I felt about boxing -- that it was not good. There were other things for a black person to go into...

I think I did the first painting from television. ["Death of Benny "Kid" Paret" 1963] I may have even taken pictures of that and worked from that. I did a whole bunch of boxers...for a show. I probably just liked the way they looked spatially.

History
RF Sid Sachs told me that you made assemblage art to begin with. He pointed out your first painting ("God Shaves" 1961-2 above). Are your paintings an outgrowth of the assemblages or did you make a radical shift in your practice when you moved to paint?

RD My earlier work was found object sculptures. I used to find stuff in empty lots and on the beach. I had a show at OK Harris in Provincetown. It wasn't driftwood, tho! They were bas relief and standing [pieces].

Rubin Gallery was my first show. A lot of people were there. George Segal, Lucas Samaras. Oldenburg. Rubin Gallery lasted one to two seasons. You know why? The woman [who owned the gallery] showed her sister's work. We [other artists] just came in. And nothing happened with her sister and then it closed. (image is the Bob Thompson painting on back of Drexler's painting)

Women were not bankable at that time. Every other male artist...other galleries came along. I received no offers. In my naivete I thought it was because I was not a painter so I must make paintings.

A lot of those males [artists] were not taken up with family life. It invades everything...making sure there's food. You do the laundry. I had to fit in to the interstices. Luckily I had energy for it all.


RF Where did you learn to paint?

RD I'm self taught. I went to the high school of music and art [in New York]. I was a voice major. I was a singer. I had a voice and was musical. I went to Hunter College for one semester and then I got married. (image is "Is it true what they say about Dixie" 1966)

RF Sid showed me the Bob Thompson painting on the back of your big, red "Lovers" painting. [Thompson was an African American musician and artist active in the 1960s] How did you get the Thompson canvas and did it influence what you put on the reverse of it? Did you know him?


RD I didn't know him. I lived on East Broadway. A lot of artists did. Bellamy lived there too [a gallery owner] Everyone was close by. There was this stretched canvas that was not used. Thompson either left or died. He was a musician and he went to Paris. He was a heroin user. I paid absolutely no attention to the back. It was kind of like a gift. It was just an empty canvas. I was glad to have it. I don't think he [Thompson] liked the painting.

RF Tell me about "Is it true what they say about Dixie?" a 1966 painting that reminds me of the advertisements for Reservoir Dogs, the Tarrantino movie (image left). The piece, which shows a gang of white men walking towards you, one wearing a red tie, is full of menace.

RD There was a song. You know the song? [Sings a couple verses of "Is it true what they say about Dixie?" -- [It's a saccharine song with Gone with the Wind type sentiments about the beauty of the south]

RF Did you think of yourself as a pop artist?

RD We were all working. We didn't call ourselves that - like we were under one umbrella. We were all different. I suppose I am a pop artist...popular.

Ana Mendieta
RF Tell me about Ana Mendieta. Your painting "Art History: Ana falling" is about her. Did you know her?

RD I met her. In Iowa. She was living with a guy teaching art there. It was at a party. I was friendly and she showed her work. They were scary - dirt and things. I didn't know why she'd do it. I didn't know her. Next I heard, she fell or was pushed...what a thing.

She was very ambitious, eager for understanding. She had all her work out for me and she was so happy to show me.

My painting is not her image. It's a reminder of her falling. The picture is from a news story of a lady and child who fell down from a fire escape. The lady fell first. the child was saved because she fell on top of the lady.

Andy Warhol
RF You were friends with Andy Warhol...and you painted him and Basquiat in the 1988 "Hello and Goodbye." (image)

RD I had an artists' series - Ana and Andy. The purple spots on Michel is AIDS. I think Andy felt he needed a young person to work with.

The reason I didn't hang around Andy. There were a number of them. He wanted me to be in a play - "Kitchen." I was supposed to murder someone or be murdered. and I was not into drugs. Everyone was doing drugs. And I didn't want ot be in a big group of people.

Here's an Andy story. The first time I received a Rockefeller grant to travel, Andy came over with his entourage and started packing and repacking my suitcases. Andy called and said "I really have got to help you." He insisted I take these two heavy gowns. It was odd. Believe me they [the gowns] were heavy. I had no idea. I'd never been to England and France. I tried to see theatre but every one was gone. In Paris they go away in the summer. You know, he painted me in a wresting picture.

RF Did you ever get to wear the gowns in Europe?

RD No.

Wrestling
RF Tell me about being a lady wrestler

RD Rosa Carlo the Mexican Spitfire, that was my [wrestling] name. (image of Drexler as Rosa Carlo) When I came on everybody said things in Spanish that I didn't understand. Probably it was "Kill 'em" or "Go get 'em." It was a strange thing for a young woman to do. I was married, had a daughter, four years old. I stayed home with my husband.

I went to the gym on 42nd St. I used to work out. The carney people used to work out there (acrobats ) and wrestlers

RF Wasn't that ahead of the times? How many women worked out at a gym back then?

RD These were show business people. I was learning Judo. I thought it'd be interesting to learn some Judo. I heard about a guy who was organizing a women's wrestling team. It consisted of walking around in a bathing suit. They asked "Will your husband let you?" So they called and they needed someone in Florida so I went. "To Smithereens" is a book about it. Now people are interested in wrestling and I can't get the book re-published. The book was reviewed in the New York Review of Books. They said "There's hope for literature yet." It was a rave.

There was a big book opening. the guy for the publisher was jealous of the publicity so they killed the book.

I did wrestling for about three months then I had to come back and take care of my family.

RF Tell me more about writing. You didn't go to college. You're self taught as an artist. Somewhere along the way you picked up writing skills. You have an Emmy, Obies...novels...

RD Through reading. Reading was an education.

RD My first play, "Home Movies," won an Obie. It was the first play to go from off off Broadway to off Broadway. Orson Bean loved it. I married in 1946. I have a daughter and a son.

Alex Katz
RF Did you know Alex Katz?

RD I knew him. Not intimately, It's hard to know him intimately. I appreciate him and he appreciates me. He's done fabulously well. A lot of the men were very political and were aware of how to promote themselves. I on the other hand said I really like doing this. I had no clue as to a career. What can I say? It's different now, thank God. Women know how to promote themselves. (image is Drexler's 1996 novel, "Art does (Not) Exist.")


I had an interview with Elaine deKooning [for the magazine piece "why are there no good women artists"?] Elaine thought there were no problems but she knew how to promote herself.
RF I understand Uarts students performed two of your plays on Mar. 3. Did you see the performances?

RD To me it was like - to tell you the truth - it was lovely. The stamping, cheering, laughter. These people got it. I was so happy. It was a new beginning. They liked the humor, the whole ridiculousness of it.

RF Sid says you did some rewriting of the plays for the occasion?

RD One of the plays I worked with Jean Turoso. He's the head of the theatre department. He asked me questions and I rewrote it. It was a terrific collaboration. I hope I get to feel that again.

RF Sid told me they're going to do the plays for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

RD I hope so.

RF You?re coming to town to do a reading on April 14. What are you going to read?

RD I was thinking of a novel. "Starburn" [1979 Simon and Schuster] about a girl group that is like the great mother goddess group. There's word play and song lyrics. A version was done as a play. John Vacarro directed it in 1983. (image is "Manny and Dick" 1997-98)

RF Have you ever done any teaching?

RD I've done a lot of teaching. I love teaching. I love the interplay between teacher and students.

Emmy
RF tell me about that Emmy

RD I worked with Richard Pryor and Lily Tomlin. All these people were in this special. A Lily Tomlin special. I was one of the writers. It was wonderful to work with her. Every day she'd come in and read aloud what you wrote.

When the Emmy was announced about 30 people jumped up [to receive it at the award ceremony]. I never saw them when I was working. I didn?t know who they were. They weren't the heavy workers. Lorne Michals was one of the writers. He hadn't even begun Saturday Night Live.

George Segal
RF Sid says you posed for one of the figures in George Segal's laundromat sculpture.

RD George is a friend of ours. He asked me to pose for it. I went up to the old chicken farm - his mother's farm was close. He had coops but they were empty -- there were no more chickens.

Robert Frank made a movie up there, "The sin of Jesus." Julie Bavasso, the actress, she refused to kill a chicken hanging upside down, so he asked me to do it. With a rusty knife. If you see a hand and a knife, [in the film] that's me.


He [Segal] wanted to give me something, a pastel or a bas relief of me. I chose the George Segal bas relief of myself. It reminds me of a death mask...it's very beautiful. (image is Segal's "Girl Resting")

I remember how wonderful it was when the plaster was cold and then warm and then cold. Some people don't like it but I loved it.

RF do you think people are born artists?

RD I do. I have the same involved subconsious feeling - of belonging of being there - in the art... That's really where I want to be. I feel like an expatriot - an interloper - as a wife, shopper, mother. I love being in my head. I amuse myself.

Louise Nevelson once was asked when did she decide to be an artist. She said "I was born an artist. I've always been an artist."

I think so. It's a different mindset. It's a definite way of being.

RF What are you working on now?

RD Small things that I can make bigger in my printer. With stories. Also I'm writing "Bellagio, a faux journal."

RF Have you been there, to Bellagio?

RD No. ... I'm writing something really funny.
permanent link  roberta 1:58 PM
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Thursday, March 25, 2004

Bartlett and the Sea

 


Jennifer Bartlett, painter of cool, grid-based paintings, made a series of enormous works about the sea in the late 1970’s and 1980s. It takes a big space to show them, and right now you can see several in Locks’s cavernous upstairs gallery.

Bartlett’s approach -- deconstructionist, quizzical -- is so different than the straight-ahead sea-love depicted in Manet and the Sea and I’m still trying to digest what I saw. If Manet gives you unselfconscious picture-making about the sea. Bartlett gives you self-conscious art-making that seems to be about looking. (top two images, details of "Sea Wall" 1985)

If some of the Manet paintings are spectacular, Bartlett’s paintings are spectacle.

Let me be clear. I’ve always liked Bartlett’s paintings and I like these, too. Bartlett's a painterly painter-- in a drippy, layered, dot-and-dash kind of way. And her subject seems to be looking through the veil (grid) at life. I’m ok with that.

“Sea Wall” from 1985, the big night-time scene with little rowboats in the painting and on the floor in front of it is quite beautiful and if the boats are stand ins for people, you can read it as poignant -- dark night of the soul and storm-tossed boats.

But there’s something about the self-consciousness of the spectacle in this work that makes me want to run back to the unself-conscious sea-love expressed by the previous century’s painters.

It’s not that the sea is deconstructed that I find so difficult, it’s that, at base, the work seems to be referring to itself more than it is to any thing outside itself. And that’s ultimately less reverberant than a descriptive picture. (middle two images, details of "Atlantic Ocean," 1984, which used to be housed in the Phillip Johnson ATT (now Sony) building in New York)

I understand we're now at a time where concept drives the art.

I also understand the scale thing. These works were made at a time when big was a requirement. But here, the enormity kind of deflates the sea. Go figure.

Bartlett’s paintings make the sea mundane and not sublime. And while these paintings are so big they must be experienced with your whole body, walking before them in a gallery they convey more about the installation of art in a gallery than about anything else. (image left is a new work, "Footnotes" 2003, note how abstract)

I think back to Arcadia’s “The Sea and the Sky” show a while back. Many of the artists in that show (e.g. Vija Celmins) were imposing a contemporary, distanced point of view on the sea. And yet, somehow the work embodied the sea in all its sublime beauty and scariness. Most of that work was small (gallery size might have been a factor). But it seemed to get to the nub of the sea without losing the sea. I'm not sure Bartlett's done that.

I want to compare these particular works of Bartlett’s to work by Chuck Close, also a grid painter, and work by Alex Katz, not a grid painter but a people and scene painter. (image is Close's "Paul" --Cadmus, that is, from the PMA)

Bartlett’s work is really nothing like that of either painter and yet the three together capture something of the coolness, the bigness, and the abstraction of thought in 20th century art-making.

In a way, all three seem to embody the era's self-conscious mirroring the mirror.

Catharine Opie’s photographs of tiny surfers and the big, grey sea, featured in the Whitney Biennial, bring us back to picture-making about the sea. Manet’s not the reference here. Celmins may be. (bottom image is Opie's c-print "Untitled 3 (Surfers)" 2003)

permanent link  roberta 8:26 AM
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004

The power of the telly

 

I thought I ought to clarify what I meant in crediting television for the installation of a sculpture of an limbless woman on a plinth in Trafalgar Square (see Roberta's post).

Normally, people are uncomfortable with imagery they feel doesn't represent themselves. But the sculpture's subject, Allison Lapper, had been featured on a Brit take on reality TV as someone who overcame her physical limits to raise a son and be an artist. The telly redefined her as a person to admired and brought her into every home as a part of people's personal lives.

The public sometimes rejects sculptures erected in public spaces. I'm thinking here about the John Ahearn sculptures of neighborhood characters (shown, Raymond and Toby) that got booted out of the neighborhood and into the backyard at P.S. 1. This was a case of sculpture picturing people differently from how they would like to picture themselves and how they would like to be remembered.

Lapper would never have made the cut of public opinion in such a prominent space without the telly turning her from someone scary into someone the public identified as not very different from themselves.
permanent link  libby 4:20 PM
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Judith Schaechter's sublime clarification

 

Contributor Judith Schaechter responded to our desperate call for help in interpreting Shamim M. Momin's artspeak in the Whitney Biennial catalog (see our post below).

(Momin's artspeak: "Violette suggests the possibility of active participation in the majestic decay of the Burke-ian sublime, where imminent death [literally, or of that fugitive mement] imbues one with that consuming "astonishment...of the soul.")

Schaechter's explanation: Violette suggests the rush of a near death experience--like being on a roller coaster made by someone named Burke.

Judith Schaechter is an artist and 1992 Pew Fellow

permanent link  libby 5:59 PM
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Guardian angels

 
I want to recommend two articles at the Guardian. The first, by Adrian Searle is about the show of new acquisitions at the Saatchi Gallery, "New Blood." Searle kind of smacks down the collection and its lead-footed curating then uses the opportunity to ruminate about idiosyncratic art collections and collectors in general (substitute Barnes and see how it works). He also gets in a shot about art as tourist destination (if I read him right, he's ambivalent on the issue) and why after all is said and done collectors are doing us all some kind of service.


Second story is "Why shouldn't my body be art," about a carved marble figure sculpture of disabled artist Allison Lapper (top image) which will be sited on a plinth in Trafalgar Square soon as part of a fill up the fourth plinth project (apparently the plinth has been empty for 150 years and now they're going to fill it up with a series of sculptures, each sited there temporarily).


Lapper, who was born severly disabled due to phocomelia, a condition similar to that caused by thalidomide, is a single mom who was featured in a BBC television series a while back. While the BBC filmed her, she was pregnant with her son, Parys, and working with sculptor Marc Quinn who was making a cast of her body for the statue. Read more about Lapper in Vanessa Thorpe's backgrounder.

What I find interesting in the public art/Lapper story is how English it all is. The art seems to come out of the Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Jenny Savile warts and all tradition, which if we had it here (Alice Neel) was short lived. In England, it's a true tradition whose non-Hollywood take on the body is refreshing. (middle left image is Freud's "Naked man on a bed" 1987 and right image is Saville's "Hyphen," 1999)


Libby likes the public television aspect of this story. Here's Libby on Lapper as art: "The thing that interests me is that the reason it may be viable as a public sculpture is the [BBC] tv show, which has made Lapper a part of the public memory." (bottom image is Neel's "Andy Warhol," 1970)
permanent link  roberta 8:22 AM
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Monday, March 22, 2004

Say what?

 

Impenetrable "art speak" struck again, this time in the Whitney Biennial catalog essay from one of the curators, Shamim M. Momin. Here it is:

"Violette suggests the possibility of active participation in the majestic decay of the Burke-ian sublime, where imminent death [literally, or of that fugitive mement] imbues one with that consuming "astonishment...of the soul."

If someone sends me a really funny interpretation of what this might mean, I'll post it.

(The brackets are Momin's; the image is a detail from Violette's installation at the biennial.)
permanent link  libby 4:11 PM
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Sunday, March 21, 2004

Clouds from both sides

 


A panel discussion on public art organized by Penn's Department of Design drew me into Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, which was a lucky thing, because one of the speakers, sculptor Mei-Ling Hom, whose work I have often admired, had a show up in the gallery.

Hom, who has a long history of creating work about identity, and especially her own as a Chinese-American woman, was showing clouds--clouds made of chicken wire (left), clouds of stone (right), clouds of rubber, and clouds of felt.

The wows of the show are the clouds of chicken wire, a medium Hom has used to great effect in the past, making rather architectural, controlled shapes. (I don't know if you've ever worked with chicken wire, but it's kinda snarly, and her level of control and craftsmanship is extraordinary.)

These clouds retain the control but lose the architecture. They are puffy, erratic cloud shapes.

And I can't help but think that they must also reflect something of Hom's identity.

The clouds also brought me back to some work I saw last year at Max Protetch in New York by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle of fiberglass and titanium alloy foil. This force of nature, (shown, "Cloud Prototype #1") is a scale model of a 30 km.-long cumulonimbus thundercloud based on actual storm database.

The Manglano-Ovalle's huge piece (132 x 176 x 96 inches), a literal translation of nature, was a reminder of the size and power of atmospheric forces.

Hom's clouds are not literal, and they are a reminder of human nature.

As for the cloud imagery in general, I suppose it reflects our need to get beyond war and contention and destruction, which have taken over nature and may well be destroying it. The clouds, at least, seem unruffled by the affairs of man.

As for the stone clouds, Hom said, she wanted to see if she could imply the airiness of a cloud in a material that is utterly concrete. The little two-ton puffs made me think of dollops of whipped cream rather than clouds--still filled with air by not quite vaporous. The reductive modernism of these pieces, a la Brancusi, was surprisingly classical.

But classicism is not my personal taste. What interested me, besides the chicken wire were the black knotty pieces Hom twisted into cloudlike forms. The felt ones (above right) looked like wigs as well as storm clouds that had contracted in on themselves until the vapor turned solid. The black rubber (left) reminded me of playground equipment, something to bounce on and climb over--not a cloud but still something with an inner bouyancy.

permanent link  libby 6:28 PM
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The Great Integrater

 
Post by Shelley Spector
 
[Ed. Note – When artist and gallery owner Shelley Spector was in art school in the 1980s, performance artist Laurie Anderson came to one of her classes and performed. I asked Spector to tell us about it. Here's her report. (Anderson, by the way, will talk about her work at the ICA this Wednesday at 6 p.m.)]

It was 1980 or 1981 and I was a sophomore. Laurie Anderson (image at top) came into my classroom and I’d never heard of her. It was before she was well-known – before she had her show at the old ICA (1983) and before she had that hit "O Superman." I don't know who invited her or how she got there.

She basically did a performance. With a projector and a special violin that she had invented, she told stories by writing, speaking and drawing diagrams on the blackboard. It was very theatrical. Nothing was spontaneous. It was very tight -- choreographed, a smaller version of the performances she eventually moved onto. (image left is Anderson's 1981 album "Big Science" on which "O Superman" appeared.)

I was coming from a dance background and I was doing sculpture. I was trying to make it come together but I was frustrated and school wasn't helping me integrate things.

And here was this woman who was incorporating sculpture and music and performance. She took her diverse talents and interests and put them together. It was really, really exciting for me. Thinking back on it Laurie Anderson's method of integrating music, art and performance demonstrated to me the division between fine and performing arts could be dissolved and that's something that has always stayed with me. (image below is from eight-hour, multi-media performance, "United States, I-IV," 1983)

A lot of young artists who show at my gallery [SPECTOR] try to integrate things – especially music and art. They make music along with their art and sometimes they make mixes – or their own music -- which I play in the gallery while their shows are up. Some of the artists play live at their openings.

I don't know if the younger generation of artists know Anderson's works but I think they might find her just as relevant as I did when I was in school. [Note: for more on Anderson, check out the PBS website for the series Art 21, in which Anderson was featured. ]

--Shelley Spector’s next solo show at the Painted Bride in the fall of '05 will include motorized sculpture, interactive components and an original musical sound track. Spector curated the upcoming USED at the Painted Bride, opening April 2. SPECTOR Gallery has "Thumbs Up Immediately," a solo show by Thom Lessner, opening April 16.
permanent link  roberta 10:43 AM
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