Giacometti in NC

Made a little Thanksgiving trip to Charlotte, NC to check out the city and to visit some of the art venues.  One of my stops was the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art to see their exhibition "Giacometti: Memory and Presence"on view until February 8.  Comprising the entire fourth floor, the show highlights their considerable collection of his work, as well as loans from Zurich and Paris.  Considering the most Giacometti I have seen in a day has been 3-4 pieces, the 60+ works on display were easily worth the pilgrimage from Pembroke.  I've always enjoyed his work, and reproductions of his paintings were always particularly comforting to me as a student in contextualizing my own process.

Simply, Giacometti was reluctant to finish a painting, often working over the same face for many days. (A excellent account of his process and thoughts on art is described by James Lord in A Giacometti Portrait.) Giacometti's paintings reveal a deeply scarred surface of countless layers that evidence the intensity his of investigation. They evoke a strong presence and are objects as much as image.  We are left with the mystery of what is under the final layers.  In art classes we often stress achieving clarity of communication, but Giacometti reminds us that ambivalence and uncertainty can also be evoked, and remain a powerful aspect of the human condition.  

Savannah: Moss and Global Art

Spent two full days in Savannah this week, checking out the arts scene and admiring the local flora. There's copious amounts of Spanish moss hanging off of pretty much everything about town, even more then I remember from my childhood visits to Louisiana.  The old town is filled with small parks and old trees that are absolutely gorgeous.  I spite of the cool weather and walkability of the streets, I did spend a large amount of time indoors trolling for art.  I hit two of the Telfair museums on the first day, the contemporary Jepson Center for two current exhibits and the Telfair Academy which houses a modest permanent collection. On the second day I made it to SCAD's new museum, an impressive new complex with equally impressive hand dryers. Liza Lou on view with Kehinde Wiley, and Bill Viola, featuring a video that I actually like quite a lot but can't seem to get away from. (I first viewed "The Crossing" in Warsaw, Poland.) Not to disparage any of the artists, but it seems you can travel to any major city across the planet and see the same things over and over.  It's great in some ways to give every towns a chance to host all the big names, but the names of the contemporary art elite also become brands as inescapable as Coca Cola, The Gap, or Mc Donald's.   It leaves me to wonder if museum curators aspiring to global relevance are left with less choice on what to stock than the manager of a Disney Store outlet. Yet, it was the first time I witnessed a Wiley in person, so it was an opportunity to intersect with another New York artist outside a Chelsea venue--effect achieved.   But this too, is hypocrisy, as blogging big names only serves to establish my cred as an educated art viewer.  Time might be better spent giving props to the Jepson Center for a nice show of a local artist, Besty Cain, or reporting that the Telfair Academy had a curious amount of snow paintings like the one by George Bellows.  Digressions aside, it was a great little trip and Savannah is a city I'd love to visit again anytime.

The last picture is from the flight home, which was amazingly clear.  Perhaps why I was having such a removed perspective about Manhattan.....

Sunflowers

Yes, sunflowers. I'm still in the process of sorting and unpacking my new space in Lewiston, but my life of late has not been all work and drudgery.  When summer days get too hot for comfort, it's best to take the day off and find some water.  My new location, though bit further from the coast, places me within a short driving distance of dozens of lakes.  I've made the most of this opportunity by securing a used kayak from a local craigslist seller and getting some paddling in.   So far, I've had some lovely afternoons on Sabbatus Pond and briefly explored Buker and Sandy Ponds.  On my most recent outing, I drove a tad father to Androscoggin Lake.  While on a road near Leeds, Maine, I was awestruck by this amazing field of sunflowers and had to pull off the road to enjoy it and take some pictures. 

There and Back, Again

I've been off the blog for quite some time now.  Last post, I was reporting highlights from New York's November gallery and museum offerings.  Today, I am back in Portland after another five days in Manhattan and have little to offer in way of shows seen as I was spending most of my time in the Hilton at 53rd and 6th Avenue at the 2011 College Art Association conference.  For those of you who might not be teaching art at the college level, this conference, most commonly referred to as "CAA,"  is a yearly  4-day conference packed with discussion panels and formal presentations offered across a wide range of topics in art.  For Art Historians, it is but one of many international venues where the most current research in the field is presented.  For educators, CAA is also the largest annual opportunity for employers and job-seekers to meet. So, concurrent with tens of ballrooms booked in a constant barrage of scholarly topics, you have hundreds of candidates interviewing in rapid succession at tables, in booths, and even in rooms at the hotel.  Although many colleges do not use CAA to screen applicants, enough do to make the trip worthwhile for candidates with prearranged interviews.  I count myself lucky to have been busy this go round.  With not much time to see art, I did make time to visit with friends over some great meals.   Two memorable first experiences: authentic Sichuan in New Jersey and riding on top of the double-decker Megabus from Boston.  Though the view on my ride back on Bolt yesterday was less dramatic, the winter landscapes were incredible and left me hungry for the studio. 

Nara, Currin, Messerschmidt

Met up with a good friend today and made our first stop Yoshitomo Nara at the Asia Society.  "Nobody's fool"  is a charming three-floor exhibition of installation, sculpture, painting, and drawing.  Though I have a slight distaste for most Neopop, I was struck by the utter sincerity and completeness of Nara's vision as well as the excellent craft of his paintings. After Nara, we made a quick stop by the Frick to see an excellent exhibition of drawings by Goya and Ribera.    The following stop was to see John Currin's latest paintings on the sixth floor of the Gagosian franchise on Madison Avenue.  As always, Currin perplexes by mixing impeccable craft with his snide vision of beauty and ugliness.  The ultimate goal for the day was Messerschmidt show of portrait busts at the Neue Galerie.  (Here I'll defer to the NYT review.) I've chased these heads all over Europe and this was a rare chance to see so many in one place.  The surprise treat of the day was the concurrent display of postcards from the Wiener Werkstatte. Thanks to A. for the great day!

Josef Divéky

Wiener Werkstätte Postcard 494

1911

Herr Hampelmann/Mr. Jumping-Jack
Chromolithograph

Dozier, Anselm, Brice

Yesterday I learned that a good many New Yorkers eat Thanksgiving dinner in Chinatown. (Not a surprise really, since a good many people can be found doing anything in this city at any given moment.)  Today while much of America (NYC included) was hunting for bargains, I spent the better part of the day trolling Chesea for art. (Doorbuster sale: 5 million off your first five installations!) Right away I stumbled across a Maine favorite, Dozier Bell, and her show of show of tiny, gray-- and very romantic--landscape drawings.  Romanticism seemed to a dominant theme with a major exhibition of Anselm Kiefer just down the block   At a previous exhibition at Gagosian, he left the space quite open to see paintings, with enormous, but low-lying sculptures of rolling concrete and steel.  Kiefer's current show seems to be a return to form using his most familiar shattered glass and lead.  The space was quite packed with vertical sculptures, paintings, and people.  Mood and expectation greatly affects the viewing of art and I was in a rare good mood that put me quite of tune with Kiefer's relentless and somber reflection on the Holocaust.  The equally cheerful crowds did not help as one couple posed for snapshots next to the photos of saluting Nazis and offered their own rendition.  I made a pledge to return and went on to something more lyrical in the form of show of recent large works by Brice Marden.  Though his current paintings are almost as gray as Kiefer's, the looping movement of Marden's lines was more in accord with my energy.  The chief distraction here was in the form of the artist himself, who was standing in the center of the gallery inspecting his show at the time.   While I have utmost respect for Marden as a living legend, I really had nothing to pester him about. So I let Brice be and moved on to the next venue. The timing of Kim Dorland's work in Mike Weiss Gallery seems to make it a parody of Kieffer.  It is a smaller carnival of painting and sculpture, featuring dripping landscapes of white aspen and taxidermy wolf covered in purple paint.  I had to chuckle at the bravura incompetence of his technique with off bits of yarn tacked on here and there and 3-inch deck screws used for emphasis, it is gleefully bad . There was lots more to see from photo-installations with cracking Tesla coils, to simple drawings, with only a few galleries on holiday.  Too much to relate and I'll have no doubt more the next day.

 
Kim Dorland
Lavender Wolf, 2010
Oil, acrylic, screws and yarn on taxidermy
44 x 66 x 21 inches

Clemente, Krauss, Grand Central

Arrived in Manhattan late last night. The Fung-Wah bus took forever to get in allowing me enough time to get pretty engrossed in The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. ..so much so that I had a late start on the day reading and then stopping for a haircut to trim off some of the Portland shag.   (Scruffy won't do in NYC.) Galleries seemed to be closing early for the holiday but I did make it to Mary Boone before closing and caught their current exhibition of works on paper by Francesco Clemente.  While I've never been a huge fan of his work, the small works on paper were particularly nice and quite complex, as was some of the larger watercolors.  

After, I took a leisurely walk to Grand Central, reminiscing about my old commute to Madison and 59th and enjoying the holiday lights along the way.

Broken Umbrellas, Illuminated Manuscripts

"Broken umbrellas like dead birds."  This Waits line was on my tongue last week on my brief trip to New York.  I left rain for more rain and on Saturday's walk back from Chelsea I passed at least twenty black umbrellas scattered about Seventh Avenue in under three blocks.   Memorable, but lead to relapse of the nasty cold I caught in February's monsoon which bloomed nicely into Bronchitis. That, combined, with leaving my computer behind is to blame for this retro-post.

The main goal of the trip was to see the display of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, a 15th century illuminated manuscript that is on display at the Morgan Library.  Normally rare books are on display two pages at a time, if at all, but a rare showing of many of the pages is currently on view.  At the end of the show, the book will be rebound and probably stashed away in the vault.   Included in the show is a touchable complete reproduction of the entire book, which will continue to be for sale in the gift shop, untouchable, for a the low low price of $15,000.  Though I object that only the truly rich have that sort of pocket change for a glorified Kinkos (well, it did have gold leaf, and was probably made by hand...) I perhaps learned the most by having the simulated experience of flipping through the entire book of hours, page by page.

I also caught a completing show at the Met, "The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry."  Not to be outdone, the Met's show was larger in scope, spread out across an area roughly four times the size of the Morgan show, with many pages displayed front and back in vertical glass cases.   The shows were equally incredible opportunities to see two equally rare and famous books.  The effect of looking at all of those miniatures was exhausting.   I can normally stay all day in a museum, but after two hours in the Met, I had literally absorbed a hundred incredibly rich paintings.   

Both the Met and the Morgan museums also had concurrent drawing exhibits.    I'm a big fan of Bronzino, so the show of his drawings was a draw at the Met.   It's always fantastic to see drawings in person; reproductions rarely come close, and of course I always think of that docent at the Albertina who assured me otherwise.  Though it's great to live in the immediacy of the hand of the master, Bronzino's drawings were clearly never intended to be shown and do not begin to compare to the complexity of his finished paintings.   There were scraps, sketches, and many drawings were covered by grids used by assistants as to enlarge for his murals. The show was small, three rooms, and really was more of an interesting curiosity.   It was the Morgan this time that trumped the Met with its drawing show, "Rome after Raphael." Though less cohesive in theme, the Morgan's show was of simply better drawings, even by lesser known artists.  

Of course, I did my fair share of galleries.   I try to always stop at the Forum, and was surprised by the crustiness of Bernardo Siciliano's paintings.  Also, the grid he must use to transfer his images from photographs was very evident at times, which I wonder if he views as a conceptual part of his paintings.  Ross Bleckner at Mary Boone was nearly sold out, with each painting at 125-150K each.  Some of the paintings had a really nice presence through scale and the blur. In Chelsea, I mostly got very, very, wet so I did not see a lot but I'm usually not impressed by shows with two-three sculptures in the big white box.  There were a few more at Gagosian, but the space was pretty cold.  Last, I confess I skipped the Whitney Biennial again.   The trip was just too short, and I used the time to linger near the Courbet paintings in the Met. 

Cheers to the fast Fung-Wah, and here's a link to a great online resource of the Morgan Library, Corsair. Photo dedicated to Stefan and Ella.

Paris

After a week studying in the museums and churches of Paris, I'm back in Warsaw before heading to Kracow for a few days. Too much to absorb, I spent over thirteen hours in the Louvre alone over three different days, mainly concentrating on particular paintings and sculpture in the less crowded areas. I was not greatly impressed with the amount of work exhibited in the Pompidou, but I can say that the collections in the Cluny, Orsay,and the Musee del la Mode et du Textile are excellent. The Monet rooms are rightfully the focus of the Orangerie, but I was surprised by a large concentration of Soutine as well as a large contemporary exhibit. Of course, I enjoyed the city itself, walking most everywhere, visiting countless churches. Missed a lot as a result, including the Effiel, but my regret extends mainly to the countless little museums still left to see.

Albertina Museum Review

If you are traveling to Vienna, save your Euros by skipping the Albertina Museum. If you like to travel and attempt to compulsively visit every Art Museum in a city, you will occasionally be suckered by a lame museum with little to show and a high price of admission. Vienna, with its abundance of large state-funded museums, seems to be a museum-goers paradise. It's tourism board spends a lot on advertising their museums' various virtues, which apparently infiltrates guidebooks in the form of mindless spam:

My guidebook states "the Albertina houses a collection of one million prints, over 65,000 watercolors and drawings, and some 70,000 photographs," as do most Vienna guidebooks and a section of the Albertina's website. Advertisements plaster Vienna with images of Durer's hare, one of the world's most famous drawings. All of this really leads you to think that you will actually see this and other famous drawings, under dim light, or maybe under bulletproof glass like the Mona Lisa. If you love drawing, or works on paper, you will be drawn to this museum like a fly to honey, so I feel compelled to point out that all of this advertising is misleading. Not outright lies, but misleading.

As you enter the museum, you can head directly to the current temporary exhibition, or wander the back halls of the palace where a number of drawings are prominently displayed. It's suspiciously quiet, as the best parts of museums often are. Museum veterans can testify that often excellent parts of a permanent collection go unviewed while the crowds shuffle like headphone-wearing cattle through the current blockbuster temporary attraction. As I wandered back through the halls, I stared in smug satisfaction at Michalangelo drawings next to Egon Schille, then Klimt, then at last-Durer's hare. I don't think I worked myself up to bliss before my native suspicion took hold: It was quiet, but too quiet. Peering further at the delicately colored lines of the famous rabbit, I searched for the master's hand. It was there, along with a small label stating "facsimile." I quickly retraced my steps, scanning the previous drawings, and they were all--- fakes.

In a furor, I marched back down the halls to the information desk, and patiently waited. "Where is Durer's hare?" I demanded. The docent smiled, and patiently explained to me that If I knew the first thing about works on paper, I would know that they are sensitive to light and cannot be displayed at risk of degrading the drawings. At this point, I may have been rendered clinically insane. I playfully mused that if this was so, how was it that I saw Leonardo drawings in Florence, Michalangelo drawings under dim light in Ohio, and Klimt drawings this very morning across town at the Secession museum labeled under "permission of the Albertina?" Ah yes, well the museum occasionally loans work to other institutions. So, I summarized, to see a work from the Albertina's permanent collection, I have to wait for it to travel to another museum and see it there? Or, he offered, wait for it to be displayed in one of the temporary exhibitions. He assured me that the reproductions were very good, and many experts have been unable to tell them apart from the originals. I wondered how the art pilgrim could be so abused of the object of pilgrimage, and then I wondered if all those bones on display in cathedrals were real or maybe some sort of advanced plastic.

As the docent blinked pleasantly, I was forced to retreat to the gift shop. There was obviously no refund either. As I searched the postcards, I looked for Durer's hare. I could at least take with me own cheap facsimile. It wasn't there. There were larger, more advanced reproductions for sale in various sizes, a husk of hares staring down from shelves from every corner. The lowest priced one I could find fetched sixty dollars, so I contented myself with two postcards of Durer's less-famous, but equally good, watercolor of an owl for three dollars. I went on to the two temporary exhibits, one of prints, the other of some French paintings, feeling hollow and cheated. That summer was extremely hot so at least there was air-conditioning. So my final advice for the Vienna-bound: go by the Albertina and stop at the gift shop if you want to see Durer's hare. They sell reproductions as excellent as the ones you see in the museuem. It's free and air-conditioned. Look at the catalog of the current temporary exhibition while you are there; if you like what you see you can pay the admission. Otherwise, save the fifteen dollars for a cup of coffee.

So traveler beware, if you read that a museum "houses" this or that, you may be paying respects to a tombstone in a tomb that charges admission. Again for museum veterans, this is nothing new. Big museums all have collections much larger than their floors allow for display. My students are always surprised to hear this, and listen in awe as I describe rolling file walls of stacked paintings in humidity-controlled rooms. And when a museum renovates, you can kiss your favorite local Rembrandt goodbye. It will get shipped off to another museum as part of a blockbuster show; good for the people of Podunk, but woe to the pilgrim. Speaking of which, I am so excited to go see the Venetian painting exhibit next weekend in Boston.

(I traveled to Vienna in the summer of 2007. It recently occurred to me that this Blog might be the perfect place for this art-related rant, or museum review of this sort. Guidebooks are all too bland and should be a little snarky, so I think I'll continue to drop a review here or there.)

Retro 02: Slovakia

Somewhat lost in Slovakia.

Retro 03: Child's Day

International Children's Day in Arcadia Mall, Warsaw, Poland.

R8: Black Friday

It's hard to beat Christmas time in New York City.

R7: Angels and Demons

A rainy day well-spent in the Vatican Museums: Rome, Italy.

Retro 06: Prague

A full day in Prague, Czech Republic: June 07, 2004.
I didn't go to the McDonalds, or the Museum of Medieval Torture; Prague is full of sculpture and strange juxtapositions.