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Posted by libby

I've always thought that not naming a work of art was either laziness or a cop-out, a way to mystify, a stance against elucidation (left, Salvador Dali's "Still Life--Fast Moving, 1956).
dali, salvador
(I'm just waiting for the angry emails to come my way from all of you who think words get in the way of the image and who never give your paintings anything but numbers to keep track of which is what. You can make a case, but I think it's mumbo-jumbo smokescreen obfuscation.)

So when I read Salvador Dali's fabulous titles at "Dali" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I thought, this guy is an incredible wordsmith, his visual sense of metaphor carried a step further in the playful words by which he names his art.

So here's my poem made of Salvador Dali titles:











Autumnal Cannibalism
Leda Atomica
The Birth of Liquid Desires
Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity
My Wife Nude, Contemplating her own Flesh Becoming Stairs
...with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on her Shoulder
Accommodations of Desire (above, "Accommodations of Desire," 1929)

Sometimes I spit with Pleasure on the Portrait of my Mother (The Sacred Heart)
















The Birth of Liquid Fears
Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate
Man of Sickly Complexion Listening to the Sound of the Sea
The Spectre of Sex Appeal
Daddy Longlegs of the Evening...
Andre Breton. The Great Anteater
The Great Masturbator
(above, "My Wife, Nude, Contemplating her own Flesh Becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture," 1945).
















...Alice Cooper's Brain
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)
Nostalgia of the Cannibal
Honey is Sweeter than Blood
(above, "First Cilindric Crono-hologram. Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain," 1973).

Two Pieces of Bread Expressing the Sentiment of Love
Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned Image
The Chemist of Ampurdan in Search of Absolutely Nothing
Still Life--Fast Moving
Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

Gangsterism and Goofy Visions of New York
Dali ...Gala ...Eternalized by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected in Six Real Mirrors
Goddess Leaning on Her Elbow--Continuum of the Four Buttocks or Five Rhinoceros Horns Making a Virgin or Birth of a Deity
William Tell, Gradiva and the Average Bureaucrat

permanent link   libby 3:54 PM
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Posted by roberta

I've been thinking about Tim Hawkinson's wonderful Whitney exhibit. And while Libby told you all about Hawkinson in her great, comprehensive post I do want to throw these thoughts out there. First, there is a quality of child-like wonderment that sits on just about every object in the show; and second, the materials, the straight-forward object-making and the obsessive dwelling on self in the world reminds me of outsider artists like Eugene Von Bruenchenhein who famously used chicken bones to make small sculptures or Martin Ramirez who drew with an obsessive line quality. (image is detail of Hawkinson's ink drawing, "Bathtub-Generated Contour Lace," 1995 )
hawkinson, tim


When my son Max was in pre-school at a place called PIC (Parent Infant Center) it was the school's custom to take the children on daily walks to the park a few blocks away from the school. In order to keep the children together, the teachers had them hold hands and walk two by two in a line. One day, after playing in the park, several children refused to hold hands for the walk back. The teachers were unable to broker the hand-holding in any way, shape or form. But Max, who I believe was one whose hand nobody wanted to hold, invented a solution. He picked up a stick and said that somebody could hold the other end. It worked of course (what kid doesn't want to hold a stick). And they walked back to school, in pairs, side by side, holding sticks instead of holding hands. (image is Ramirez's "Super Chief," 1954, crayon & pencil on paper)
ramirez, martin


I mention this story because it reminded me somehow of Hawkinson and his inventions, all of which have to do with his body, but really have to do with distancing his body from every other body by means of a stick (or drop of water or tin foil or motor or other gizmo). Little children, who are not able to articulate what's on their minds although there is often much in there, will come up with visual, tactile ways of expressing themselves. Often, as in the case of holding sticks (or carrying a blanket or obsessively wearing the same favorite hat) the expression has to do with defining themselves and separating themselves from the pack.

I guess artists like Hawkinson -- and Tom Friedman for that matter and Michael Grothusen, a Philly sculptor who had a phase of measuring his body weight and translating that into a tower of wodden cubes -- are making place-holders for themselves in the world by transmogrifying their spirits into meta-objects (sticks, balloons, a machine that writes your signature) that allow human interaction without the touch factor. (image is Hawkinson's "Signature" 1993, School desk, paper, wood, and metal; motorized)

All art that can't be touched is doing the same thing, holding a place for the artist. And all artists are outsiders, renegades, children. It's where you sit on the bell curve that's interesting.

Max, by the way, is now 21, studying philosophy, and working obsessively on his online comic which chronicles quasi-autobiographical characters in a post-death environment.

Read more about Hawkinson at the Whitney's website.

permanent link   roberta 6:00 AM
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Posted by libby

Surrounded by the allure of advertised stuff, we're all in a state of constant yearning for the Lamborghini or plasma screen tv or some other gold charm for our life bracelets.
sachs, tom
Artist Tom Sachs, who yearns for stuff with an intensity that requires him to make art about the problem, spoke last week as part of PAFA's visiting artist series (see post for the rest of the series). In his mid '30s, he had a curly mop of hair and was neatly dressed in a white shirt and tie, with a zippered hoodie and jeans.

Sachs is one of those guys who makes models. His models, however, have brand names--a Chanel guillotine, a Tiffany Glock, a Hermes-wrapped McDonald's value meal. And no matter how slick the object of his desire, the model he makes is not slick. It shows the glue, the hand-drawn logo, the crinkles and wrinkles. "My practice is a little anachronistic," he said. "The cornerstone of my work is repair and reuse."

You gotta love a guy who right off the bat shows you his biggest mistake as an artist, his "Sony Outsider." Anyway, the reason it was a mistake? The glue didn't show. It didn't look handmade or wrinkled. It looked like it came straight from the Jaguar factory, and it really did cost a ridiculous amount to make--$50,000 (right, "Sony Outsider").

The full-sized model of the bomb dropped over Nagasaki, has a perfect white Fiberglas body which opens up to a perfect air-conditioned white leather upholstered interior (sort of an all-white seduction chamber/hotel room/listening booth, including a toilet that really flushes), was all wrong. To question the value of the perfect objects of our desire and become one with them is what's all wrong (left, the interior; this piece made me think of Lee Bul's pods that showed at the Fabric Workshop, but Sachs' interior isn't an isolation chamber but a place to share and luxuriate in).

Sachs is happier leaving his drips and edges.

In contrast to his big Sony mistake, Sachs hit the trifecta--French brand, French tool, French venue--with the Chanel guillotine breakfast table, now showing at the Pompidou Center. Discreetly charming. Who says the French can't laugh at themselves--with a little help from Sachs (right, "Chanel Guillotine Breakfast Table")?

Like all of Sachs' models, the guillotine works. So does his full-scale model of an airplane lavatory (left, rear view), right down to the soap dispenser and the seat covers. The plumbing works and the little light activated by the door works. The main material--foam core.

While everything works, it doesn't work optimally. "The space shuttle has to work every time," he said. "Of all the guns I made, we never had a mechanical failure. They're just super slow to load." He later talked about his theory that the farther something is from bed when it gets used, the better it needs to be constructed. "There's a hierarchy of quality and expense" So a blender in the house can be not so great. But if a blender on the space shuttle fails, "everyone dies."

Things are pieced together in a do-it-yourself anti-assembly line. His sense of humor is sharper than the guillotine--there's the Tiffany Glock, the Prada death camp (left) and his Uncle Tom's kitchen set (bottom), featuring racist packaging (Aunt Jemimah, Uncle Ben, etc) coating tools common to domestic violence.



Sometimes he makes models just to have the object of his desire. He couldn't afford a Mondrian, so he made a model with gaffer's tape (right). He made his "Hello Kitty Collection" to understand the phenomenon of collecting--something he felt he needed to know as an artist.






His "Hello Kitty Nativity Scene" got removed from a store window after the Catholic League protested his portrayal of the Madonna dressed as Madonna, the singer (left, Madonna detail).






My favorite tidbit from the "How I Grew up to Become This Kind of Artist" school, was that at age 8, his father desperately wanted a Nikon FM2, so Sachs made a him one in school. He showed the slide (right).

Like all cynics, he used to be a true believer, who thought "having all this expensive stuff was going to make my life better." Now that he has made for himself every gun he ever wanted, he knows better.

Aside: He used to work for Frank Gehry and saw how sloppy the architect's models were, yet they were beautiful. "That was influential to me," he said.

Modest to the end, he said, "I'm just someone who works very hard. There are very few geniuses. ...I had dinner with Bruce Nauman. Genius is really overrated."

permanent link   libby 9:03 PM
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Posted by roberta

Post by Anna Conti
[Ed. note: Conti is referring to my posts here and here on Sherman Alexie's talk in Philadelphia.]
alexie, sherman

Thanks for your report on Sherman Alexie (I was hoping the second part was coming soon.) I've been a big fan of his for many years - he drops into SF on a fairly regular basis for various events. I first heard about him from poetry anthologies, and had read most of his published poetry before picking up his short stories. He writes about the same characters over and over in all of his work (poetry, fiction, movies) so as you read more if his stuff, you keep encountering these same folks... it creates an incredible richness. For instance, in a story about two women driving in a car that only goes in reverse, they may pass a guy waiting on the side of road for who knows what. That's the only time in that particular story (or poem) that you'll see this guy, so he's just a bit player, of no account, right? Wrong. If you've been paying attention you know who this guy is, and you know his huge back story. Some other day, you're watching a movie about that guy, and who comes barreling down the road, but the women in reverse. In a flash, they're gone, and you don't see them again, but you know all these things about them. It must be something like living in a small town, or on a reservation. (image is Conti's acrylic painting "No Pedestrians" 2003)
conti, anna
--Anna Conti is a San Francisco artist and blogger. See more images and read her lively and photo-rich blog.

permanent link   roberta 5:11 PM
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Posted by roberta

I didn't dream it up. We covered Dali before, in 2003, when ICA Curator Ingrid Schaffner spoke at Swarthmore about her then-new book, "Dali's Dream of Venus." Schaffner's book chronicled the Surrealist's lobster- and weirdness-infused pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair. Imagine that! See post in which contributor Ann Northrup reports on Schaffner's talk, comparing Dali's P.T. Barnum-esque personality with contemporary artists like Matthew Barney, Damien Hirst and more. What reminded me of this is that the ICA curator will give a talk about her book next week Wednesday, Feb. 23, at 5 pm at Penn as part of the Penn Humanities Council. Sign up at the Penn website if you want to go. The talk's in Logan Hall and seating is limited.
dali, salvador

permanent link   roberta 12:56 PM
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Posted by roberta

Post by Martin Bromirski


Hi, just read the Sherman Alexie thing. (here and here)
alexie, sherman
Philly connection. The star of his movie "Smoke Signals," Irene Bedard (pictured), went to University of the Arts. We graduated a year apart (She was in theatre).

--Martin Bromirski is a Richmond, Virginia artist and blogger. His art blog, anaba, is a nice, newsy and opinionated addition to blogdom.

permanent link   roberta 6:24 AM
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Posted by roberta

Before too much time passes I want to complete my Sherman Alexie report. (see post for Part 1.)
alexie, sherman
Alexie spoke in Philadelphia in an event jointly hosted by the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Galleries at Moore, both of which have Lewis and Clark bicentennial-related programming at the moment.

The author began by saying that while he'd gotten 500 offers to talk about Lewis and Clark in this bicentennial year, "nobody wants to pay the Indian." But his Philly hosts compensated him well -- as he mentioned more than once.


The talk was laced with comments about the various worlds he lives in. For example, the literary world:

"I have this huge literary career. Know how many books I sell? 50,000. There's about 150,000 serious readers in this country and I've got about a third of them. In the literary world I'm Brad Pitt. And in the rest of the world I'm Ernest Borgnine."

He's part of the Indian world. At one time they thought his wife was related to Sacajawea and they were very proud. "Then we found out she was descended from the tribe that kidnapped Sacajewea," and that was even cooler, he said. (image is video by Bentley Spang at Moore Galleries.)
spang, bently
He's a Catholic.



And his looks are ambiguously ethnic (he's been mistaken for Latino, Italian, Spanish, and lately, especially by airport TSA screeners, Mid-Eastern.

"I'm big, I'm 6'2" and 220 lbs. I understand why I'm stopped," he said.
haukaas, thomas
Finally, just in case you're wondering, he wove Lewis and Clark into the talk, saying that he's glad they came to the West. "They braved the wilderness...that was our house," he said. (image is beaded shirt by Thomas Haukaas at Moore Galleries.)

"I'm glad they came because they brought Shakespeare. Without Lewis and Clark there's no Miles Davis; there's no Cesar Chavez."

"You should be happy with us Indians. We have 10,000 times more reasons to terrorize your asses but we don't. There's a Lewis and Clark exhibit because Indians didn't shoot them in the ass. There's never going to be Native American suicide bombers because we can't be on time."

Alexie said he's against traditional. Indians are traditional and Lewis and Clark is new. New is good.



Somebody asked him what was the best thing they could do for the Indian. He looked exasperated and told a metaphorical story about always thinking seven steps ahead and remembering who would be affected by the seventh step. Then he said "The best thing an Indian can do is get off the res. I've been trying since I was two." (image is drawing by Thomas Haukaas at Moore Galleries.)

And he finished up on this downbeat note:

"Indians are slutty. That's about colonialism. We Indians love you white people. You went from covered wagons to the Space Shuttle in one century! Indians are the nerdy girl in the corner...Indians are in a really bad marriage to white people. We're battered spouses who say they won't do it again."

All in all, the talk with sweet and sour, funny and sad, angry, political and more than a little whimsical. What I most wanted to do after the talk was run out and buy one of Alexie's books and up his literary Brad Pitt-ness quotient.

(image at top is Alexie, from his official website. What it doesn't show is that the guy wears horn-rimmed glasses.)

permanent link   roberta 9:31 AM
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Posted by roberta

Just a quickie to let you know my review of Matt Bollinger's paintings (at Rodger Lapelle) is in PW today. Read...as is a preview of Vienna Actionist Hermann Nitsch's retrospective at Slought. The first-generation Vienna Actionist, (Valie Export is second-gen, in case you're wondering) whose pageants shock by use of animal blood, animal entrails and crucifixes, was expiating guilt and the psychic wounds of World War II according to Slought Curator Oswaldo Romberg with whom I had a nice sit down about the work. Read.bollinger, matt

Libby told you about Bollinger here.

(image is Bollinger's "Self-Portrait with Masks," which has an R. Crumb vibe.)

permanent link   roberta 6:20 AM
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Posted by libby

While Christo and Jeanne-Claude were imprinting their own brand of wonders on Central Park, over at the Whitney, California artist Tim Hawkinson had created a big top of his own, an entire floor of trompe l'oeil 2- and 3-D wonders and Rube Goldberg gizmos (here's a picture of him with "Emoter," a self-portrait that moves).hawkinson, tim

By time we got to the Whitney Saturday, we were pretty tired, but Hawkinson pepped us right up. His work has a step-right-up whizz-bang tinkerer quality that comes straight out of garage and kitchen science, model-making, and do-it-yourself with some nails, sticks, string and chewing gum.

He is one of those artists who measures the world by his own body and who measures his own place by how his body fits in the world. He takes a photo of himself and his hands and then attaches smaller and smaller hands to the tips of his hands until he has built a tree-like network (left, untitled).


He lies in a tub and photographs what part of himself remains uncovered as every few minutes as black paint fills the tub, thus creating a topographical map of himself for "Bathtub-Generated Contour Lace." He creates a rubbing of his bones for "Alter." And he coats himself with latex, and then uses the latex skin like a balloon, vulnerable and somewhat self-mocking (right, "Balloon Self-Portrait").

I'm reminded in some ways of Antony Gormley (read post on his talk here in November), whose body casts have become his signature production, a constant self-measuring, a constant exploration of the space within, the space without, and the space within the space (left, Gormley's "Word Made Fresh," cast from his own body).gormley, antony

But Gormley's materials are the traditional materials of sculpture, the cast metal, the static figure. Hawkinson may begin with his body, but then he's off and running in a thousand different directions, with materials you can find in Home Depot and the Acme. He's got the disgusting factor and mechanics of Bruce Nauman, but with a lighter touch. Hawkinson's cares about how things work and whether things are what they seem. He also wants you to see his process.

Macrocosms and microcosms enchant him. He takes plugs out of a chair and with them builds a mini-version in "Shrink;" he grinds his fingernails, hair and superglue to construct a 1 1/2" long egg, "Egg" (right, "Shrink").








He draws a 420-inch scroll that looks like a map of intestines all in shades of red, calling it the "Wall Chart of World History from Earliest Times to the Present" (detail, left). Then he encases all the red pens and pencils he used into a giant polyester resin finger tip, the red leads poking out looking like a cross section of bloody veins packed into place.

Hawkinson is fascinated by trees. He creates "Rootball," a tree-root look-alike from cardboard and string. The photo of the hands leading to smaller and smaller ones is a tree, too (second picture from the top).

The spectacular "Pentecost" (right) is a treelike structure made of sonotubes, covered with what looks like contact paper with a wood pattern on it. The 12 playful figures, based on the body topography generated in the bathtub piece, are made of stacked slices of polyurethane foam. They look like a cross between humans and apes. Arrayed on the branches, maybe a toe, maybe a finger, maybe a heart or a penis hits the structure, generating a muted plunking sound, the program based on a music-box roller and "found" software, whatever that may mean. I took it as proof of the arbitrariness of the musical score, which was pretty pleasant to listen to.

Hawkinson includes music everywhere. Another music box roller, looking pretty much like an African nail fetish, plays a bar or two of "My Favorite Things" in super slo-mo. His "Uberorgan" (left), too large for the Whitney, is installed in the Sculpture Garden at 590 Madison Ave, between 56th and 57th Streets.

"Uberorgan," which combines sexy, floating bladders and spectacular horns straight from Gabriel's mouth, plays music, using an analog of an enormous player-piano roll to program the notes (image right, and for an online video about this, go here). Water dripping on pie pans is the music of his tree of twisted polyethylene, "Drip"--the sequence also roller-controlled and apparently somewhat arbitrary.

That arbitrariness is part of what makes this work so interesting. Does it rain on Roberta's street at the same time it's raining on mine? Not last week, and not in "Drip." In "Emoter" (right), a self-portrait of the artist is cut up into pieces that move. What determines the sequence is light impulses on a monitor influenced by people in the gallery. A nostril grows. An eyelid droops, a mouth gets larger and smaller. The affect is not that different from the animated Tom Hanks in the "Polar Express."

Part of the fun of this work is seeing how Hawkinson made it. He leaves all the mechanics in view encased in Plexiglas or right out in the open. And they are irresistably crude and charming.

But I think there's way more going on here, a mind trying to discern his place in the universe as well as trying to make things run. "Pentecost," as its religious name implies, reaches straight to the ceiling of the gallery, a conduit for talking in tongues and communicating with the divine. The galleries are strung with extension cords from room to room, suggesting that everything is connected and networked and that it all makes sense, if only we had the larger plan.

We were looking at Hawkinson with FOAB (Friend of Art Blog) Knox Cummin, who is no stranger to workshop practices, and who said that the doilies and weavings made to take up the slack in long extension cords is a workshop tradition. He did not claim that "Shorts," however, were a common approach.

Some of the things Hawkinson made--the elephant skin, made of foil on top of urethane foam, or "Shatter" which was a trompe l'oeil shattered glass made of a web of twisted, bent and woven mirrored plastic film sandwiched by two sheets of plastic, "Armor Ooze" the aluminum foil knight oozing urethane foam --were just fun to look at. If there was a big meaning, I don't care if I get it or not. I loved looking, I loved the illusion, I loved the tactile confrontation between ordinary materials and fine-art handling.

This is a show to which you could take your kid or your spouse who barely tolerates your interest in art--or you could take your friend who knows more about art than you do. Now that's an endorsement.

permanent link   libby 5:41 PM
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Posted by roberta

Like Libby said in her post, the Dali blockbuster exhibit at the PMA is a great old show. It brings together works by the Surrealist from collections all over the world and sets them out to tell a big story -- of an ambitious artist who at his core was an iconoclast and is more influential today than we know. Early, late and in-between, Salvador Dali was breaking tabus, showing religious imagery in a context of sex and death -- and, in fact, everything in a context of sex and death. (The guy famously was fixated on Millet's "The Angelus" and imagined the imagery of peasants praying in the field as a scene of sexual submission and dominance. (Think wheelbarrow....) And while he's not winking, he is a consumate Freudian thinker and having fun with his many subtexts. (top image is one of Dali's best-known works about the Spanish Civil War, "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War" (1936))



Dali is known for his shenanigans in the public eye (a handsome, photogenic guy, he loved to pose for photographers and was Time magazine's cover boy, Dec. 14, 1936). In his time, he was known for marching to his own drum beat on politics as well. While the Surrealists, with whom he was allied, were stridently anti-clerical, he hewed to a softer position, not rejecting religion but studying it and making use of it in his works. (Late in life, he came back to Catholicism and even met with the Pope.)

(image is Dali posing with nudes in "In Voluptus Mors" (1951), photo by Phillipe Halsman)

He also distanced himself from the loud anti-Hitler manifestoes of the Surrealists. He was certainly not a fascist or pro-Hitler but like with the church, he was interested in studying the phenomenon.

This adherence to his own political and religious positions coupled with his public persona made him anathema to the Surrealist movement which ultimately kicked him out. But really, Dali's Barnum-esque showmanship was ahead of its time, paving the way for artists like Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons even Matthew Barney and saving them from having to explain themselves.



Marcel Duchamp, not a Surrealist but a Dadaist and himself a radical free-thinker, was fascinated by Dali according to PMA Curator of Modern Art, Michael Taylor, who gave the press walk-through accompanied by Dawn Ades, British professor of art history at Essex and a Dali specialist. (Taylor, left, whispering, and Ades, to his right, co-curated the exhibit with help from Montse Aguer.) While the Surrealists rejected Dali, Duchamp did not. Apparently Duchamp organized an exhibition of Surrealist art in New York and included works by Dali. When some of the Surrealists complained, Taylor said, Duchamp told them to "Piss off." The show went on, and Dali's work was a great public success.

(Here an aside about the PMA and this show. PMA has a fondness for all things Duchamp, being the repository of perhaps the best collection of Duchamp's works anywhere, including the "Large Glass," "Nude Descending a Staircase" and "Etante Donne." Some of the Duchamp pieces came to the PMA from the collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg. Duchamp assisted the Arensberg's in collecting art and presumably helped steer the collectors to their purchase of one of Dali's premier works, "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War" (1936) (top image), which is now in the PMA's collection and a highlight of this exhibit.)


Dali felt kinship with all extreme artistic types and outsiders. He was a friend of wild man, Harpo Marx, for example, and the show includes a small drawing Dali did of the comic. In addition, the artist was a bold experimenter with techniques -- and the exhibiton includes amazing pre-Pop paintings (think Lichtenstein's Ben Day dots) and, the first-ever art hologram, Dali's bare-chested Alice Cooper whose ghostly image spins in a plastic box towards the end of the installation.



Anyway, that's enough wind out of me about the great show. (I'll save some hot air for my PW coverage.) But I will say that the large exhibit (more than 200 works!!!) is housed beautifully at the PMA, with dusky, grey-green and plum-colored walls, nice groupings and single floating walls to show a singular blockbuster work (image). The galleries are not large and the works are plentiful and some are quite small, so beware of crowds. And know that you must check your coat and any large bags (bigger than 10" by 12"!) and will not be allowed to sketch or photograph anything. Also, the audio tour, which is free with the ticket, may result in clogged arteries around some of the works.

This centennial exhibition of Dali's works was organized by two institutions: the PMA and the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, in collaboration with the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation in Figueres, Spain. Philadelphia is the show's only US stop. It was previously shown in Venice. For a nice preview of the show, check the PMA link at the top of this post for a great curator's walk-through by Michael Taylor -- click explore the exhibition at bottom of the list of options.dali, salvador

permanent link   roberta 9:42 AM
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Posted by libby

If you read to the end of my post on Alaska in June, you might want to get the true story--my sweetheart Murray's funnier version of our trip--here in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer cruise section (you can try using artblog's ids--name, lrrf; email, libby@rosof.org; password,lrrfartblog). Besides Murray's words and wit, the story has a couple of my photos.

(Image, my photo of the Marjorie Glacier in Glacier Bay.)

permanent link   libby 5:30 PM
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Posted by roberta

Photographs by Cate Fallon


I loved The Gates. Without reservations and with my whole heart. It's a great gift to the city of New York and a great statement about the importance of community.



Harping about the "Home Depot" quality of the posts and the cloth as Inquirer reviewer Ed Sozanski did yesterday is a kind of grumping about details that misses the larger point.



The piece has theatre at its core. Suspend your disbelief a little and become part of it. Unlike Christo and Jeanne-Claude's more existential wrappings (Pont Neuf or the Reichstag) this piece is not about conveying angst, expiating guilt or the mystery of what lies behind the veil.



This project is a celebration of life, community, the park and the city by the pair, who have lived in New York since 1964. Check out their website for more on them.



This is Christo and Jeanne-Claude's first piece since 1999 and while the piece has no direct relationship to the events of 9-11, the fact of walking on a circumscribed pathway in New York with thousands of others in what felt like a dignified ceremonial walk, reminded me of walking around the footprint of the WTC towers in late 2001, paying respects, along with everybody else. (here's the artists in their motorcade, circling the park. You can't really make them out in the shadows but Jeanne-Claude's red hair was noticeable even through the tinted glass.)



Like Libby said, this is a feel-good piece. People smiled and talked with each other. The dogs and dog walkers were out in numbers, including this 7-year old Weimeraner, "Fog" whose owner, Gail Gondek, a pattern designer for Chado Co. in the garment district, had decked him out with a hand-made mini-gate in solidarity.



By pre-arrangement, we were supposed to meet our blogger friend and artblog and ionarts contributor, Mark Barry, at the boat house near 72nd St. While sipping our hopelessly non-Starbucks coffee from the concession stand we swapped stories of our experience of the piece. Mark, who had been in the park several hours longer than us had seen Jeanne-Claude and Christo leap out of their car at one point. He had some great pictures. We had our little 2" square pieces of the Gates cloth to show him, souvenirs we got from the project's volunteers who were handing them out.



Mark said he took a ton of pictures but that he thought he'd taken the same shot again and again. When I got home and looked at my photos, darned if I hadn't done the same. Cate's photographs, however, give you the wonderful poetry of the piece -- the trees against the poles, the march of the fabric around a ridge, the shadow of a branch through the cloth.



The day was by turns cloudy and sunny. So we saw The Gates under both conditions. And in our stroll from 59th St. to the boathouse at 72nd St. we got a pretty good taste of the project's sweep.



Because the posts are footed on the sidewalks instead of in the grass along side, the pathways are narrowed by three or four feet. When there's a lot of people on a narrow path, you feel the density. Cate, who lives in New York, compared the flow of the piece and its people moving aspects to the subway. Call it the Orange Line.



I'd say that The Gates is best experienced when a great crowd is out walking (weekends). That's when you feel the energy of the city -- its variety of people, old, young, rich, poor, all races and ethnicities. The piece is a leveler and for that reason alone it's an exercise in democracy to walk its pathways.



Someone said orange is the new pink. Consider this the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Valentine. Here's the official NY City website with more pictures and information. The piece is up through Feb. 27.

permanent link   roberta 7:07 AM
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Posted by libby

Christo and Jeanne- Claude's ambitions exceeded their grasp this time, which is not to say "The Gates" are an unmitigated failure. They're an 8 out of 10.

The color is divine in the wintery Central Park. The banner-like curtains catch the sun, creating a festival or circus ambiance. They brought people out of their homes and out of their shells--it was a moment when people let their urban guards down and talked to complete strangers at the drop of a hat.

The highlight to me was the opening of each curtain--the drama of unVelcro-ing the plastic sheath, hearing the thunk of the heavy cardboard tube released by the unrolling curtain kept me fascinated as a tribe of "paid volunteers" repeated the task over and over again. I loved the system. I loved the noise. I loved the moment of release. I loved the threat of the falling object.

Ultimately, the battle between the park and art got won by the park. The naked tree branches against the sky and Fredrick Law Olmstead's landscape were merely punctuated, not transformed by the orange. Nonetheless, the arcade of giant orange electrical staples draped with blowing top-tier cafe curtains brought warm bodies out to fill the chilly winter landscape with action.

We all kept searching for the perfect shot, taking one photo after another, but none seemed to satisfy. That's because "The Gates" were discrete gestures that never added up to a vision.

I'm glad I went. But it was the scene (I bet Roberta's gonna write about this), not the art (I believe Roberta has a different point of view), that made the trip so satisfying (plus the people and the work at the Whitney--more later--back to the kitchen packing).

permanent link   libby 2:06 PM
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