The exhibition Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a privilege to behold. It is not only the images, but the retrospective itself that becomes fixed in memory as a lived experience. Celmin's work offers an encounter with nature, the universe, and ultimately the self. It casts the viewer in the role of the figure in Caspar David Friedrich's Monk by the Sea, who is enraptured by the sublime vastness of the cosmos. As my one-time professor, the late, great Robert Rosenblum suggested, Friedrich's painting and evocations of the Sublime were translated into abstract terms by Mark Rothko in large-scale paintings that envelop the viewer in a colored, luminous "nothingness." Celmins returns us … [Read more...]
Ai Weiwei in L.A.
Having had dinner last night with some friends and seeking, but not finding, a single article to send them this morning that succinctly summed up the artist, his career and international stature, his current L.A. exhibitions, and why I am gaga about both the man and his art, I am writing what follows. Ai Weiwei is the son of a famed Chinese poet who was exiled to China's northern provinces during the Cultural Revolution, where he was humiliated and subjected to forced labor. At age 19, after Mao's death, Ai and his family returned to Beijing, where he attended the Beijing Film Academy. He then spent over a decade in the United States, where he studied a bit, took photographs, absorbed the current American art scene, and experienced … [Read more...]
dOGUMENTA LA
If Clover, my 14-year-old Beagle had not eaten a bag of Milano cookies the night before, she and my white Golden Retriever, Breeze, would have come to a curator-led tour of dOGUMENTA, America's first art show for canines, held in Downtown L.A. As it was, Wesley, my Granddog, joined me and a small group from ArtTable in a walk-through led by Mica Scanlin and Jessica Dawson, who also curated its first iteration in New York last year. (Rocky, Dawson's Maltese-Yorkie mix, the third member of the curatorial team, was busy elsewhere). Interactive artwork in a wide range of media by 10 artists, most of them local, were presented. As an art historian, I have long acknowledged that my critical judgement tends to be suspended and is … [Read more...]
Malcolm Morley at MOCA, N. MIAMI, 2006
As a tribute to the British-American painter Malcolm Morley, who died in New York City on June 1, 2018, I have resurrected a review I wrote of Malcolm Morley: The Art of Painting, a retrospective exhibition held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, January 20-April 16, 2006. The review, which until now has remained unpublished, was written for The Wall Street Journal. The images reproduced with this post are akin to, but not necessarily the same works featured in the show. Malcolm Morley at MOCA Malcolm Morley emerged in the late 1960s as a prominent member of the group of artists known as Superrealists who made paintings based upon photographic sources. Then, for the better part of the next 30 years, his art veered off in … [Read more...]
A Short Note on Art Basel 2018
Having attended Art Basel Miami Beach on a number of occasions (I covered the fair for many years for Art in America and other publications) and having traveled to Art Basel Hong Kong 2017, I was eager to finally visit the mother-ship in Basel, which I did in early June. I only spent a total of about 6 hours at the fair, which means I saw a bit less than half, but I was left with many strong impressions. Before sharing a few of my thought and highlights, I must note that although I was in attendance on the preview day of Art Basel 2018 with a "First Choice VIP" pass, the size of the crowd went far beyond anything I had experienced on equivalent days at the previous fairs. That the dealers and other gallery staff working the fair had five … [Read more...]
Mary Heilmann: Work of Casual Genius
About 15 years ago, a cousin who collects contemporary abstract painting sent me an image of a work by Mary Heilmann and asked what I thought. At the time, not having seen her work in person and being unaware of the subtleties of her execution (which, in my defense, are often not visible in reproductions), I replied, "It doesn't knock my socks off." Apologies all round!! A fine opportunity to view her work is found at Hauser + Wirth, Los Angeles, in Mary Heilmann: Memory Remix, the artist's first show in this city in over 20 years (it continues through September 23rd). It consists of paintings and ceramics that span her career as well as a table and chairs dating to the last decade. Heilmann, who was born and raised in … [Read more...]
Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris
Having run late for our set-time appointment at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, we took a taxi and entered through a security checkpoint cubical so that Frank Gehry's spectacular building, made up of 12 huge curving sails of glass, revealed itself to us slowly from the museum's interior, an experience I would expect few people have. As we moved through the space, the building unfolded from the inside to the outside with increasing urgency, yielding to soaring views of its own structure and eventually giving way to a multi-level series of outdoor terraces with views of the surrounding park, the Bois de Boulogne, and Paris beyond. The fabulously complex, intricately designed structure of curving glass panels, wooden breams, and metal … [Read more...]
Birds of a Feather/Beall Center Exhibition
At this time of political turmoil, It Passes Like a Thought comes as a breath of fresh air. Focused on seven artists who employ avian imagery and themes, the title of the exhibition derives from a John James Audubon quotation that states, "When an individual [bird] is seen gliding through the woods and close to the observer, it passes like a thought..." Presented at the Beall Center for Art + Technology at the University of California, Irvine, and curated by Artistic Director, David Familian, the show offers works in a wide range of media that variously investigate avian flight, language (birdsongs, calls, and the ability to mimic human speech), habitats, and diversity, as well as issues of endangerment and extinction. As a center for art … [Read more...]
Sao Paulo Surprise
During a few days in Sao Paulo, I went to several museums and about a dozen far-flung galleries. Each had something to recommend it, whether the art or exhibition on view or the architecture or physical lay-out of the space, but nothing I saw or experienced surprised or captivated me as much as what I saw at MASP. MASP, the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, is a private, nonprofit museum founded by Brazilian businessman Assis Chateaubriand in 1947. Originally located elsewhere, it moved in 1968 into a Modernist structure designed by Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi on Avenida Paulista, a busy shopping and business thoroughfare. The museum occupies a glass-walled rectangular box that is suspended high above the street … [Read more...]
Inhotim=Paradise*
I wept from joy 3 times during my 2 1/2 days at Inhotim. The first was in the gallery that houses Canadian artist Janet Cardiff's Forty Part Motet (2001). The piece consists of 40 speakers on stands that encircle an otherwise empty, large, white-walled space. A single horizontal window cut into one wall affords views of the abundant foliage outside. From each speaker comes the voice of one of 40 singers performing the sixteenth-century choral piece Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis. Although I have experienced this work before and have always been deeply affected by the tapestry of voices raised in sacred song, the rays of light streaming through the window and the slice of Eden glimpsed just beyond made immersion in the piece even more … [Read more...]
Arshile Gorky: The Man and his Art
Among the recent initiatives of the Arshile Gorky Foundation have been two endeavors that have shed light on Gorky's personal and artistic legacy. One is the exhibition Ardent Nature: Arshile Gorky Landscapes, 1943-47, recently on view at Hauser + Wirth on 69th Street, New York. It offered a breathtaking array of works produced by the artist at the height of his powers, the time when he liberated himself from his earlier sources to create an art--a world--wholly his own. Curated by Saskia Spender, one of the artist's granddaughters and head of the Foundation, it consisted of 30 paintings and drawing drawn from museums and private collections. The other is the 2011 documentary film Without Gorky, written and directed by his other … [Read more...]
SUPERFLEX: Flooded McDonald’s at the Hammer
While the trailblazing exhibition Radical Women is a must see at L.A.'s Hammer Museum (and will be the subject of a later post), concurrently on view and of contemporary relevance is the 2009 film Flooded McDonald's, situated in a small plaza gallery. The 21-minute film was made by the artist collective SUPERFLEX, which was founded in Copenhagen in 1993, but is now based in Denmark, Sweden, and Brazil. The group's mission is to explore systems of power, global capitalism and trade, community relations, and more. I first became aware of the collective through their piece CopyLight/Factory (2008) in the Museum of Modern Art's Print/Out exhibition of 2012. Part of the group's ongoing "Supercopy Series," it consisted of computer and other … [Read more...]
proyectosLA: A Model Fair
Amid the hubbub and bounty of the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative is proyectosLA, a two-month long commercial art fair of remarkable quality, taste, and inspiration, which is housed in a converted downtown warehouse. Near the entry, a collection of small rooms radiating off communal office space serve as booths for 19 galleries from throughout Latin American and the U.S. that present select works by Latin American artists. The remainder of the 20,000 sq. ft. space is occupied by the exhibition Here the border is you, which is comprised of fascinating and distinguished work drawn from the 19 galleries. They are installed so as to elicit dialogues among the established and emerging, multigenerational artists … [Read more...]
Paul McCarthy WS at Hauser + Wirth L.A.
Walt Disney's Snow White bends her head to perform fellatio on... No, wait... It is Dopey's head she has taken in her mouth and this is not Snow White, but White Snow, the lascivious doppelganger of the Disney princess with whom Paul McCarthy has been preoccupied since late 2008. Over the course of the past decade, McCarthy has repeatedly taken the beloved 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as subject, exploiting it in several different series of drawings, sculptures, installations, films, and more. Throughout, he has twisted and perverted the tale, subjecting it to intense psychosexual scrutiny as well as to the abject sensibility that has long characterized his art. Also playing major roles are dark humor, art history, … [Read more...]
Stacey Steers Vital Signs
I was invited to judge Art in Print's Prix de Print, a bimonthly contest, for their July-August issue. From among the more than 30 high quality, anonymous submissions, I selected the print that most intrigued and captivated me. This turned out to be Stacey Steers' Vital Signs, the very first print made by a Boulder-based experimental filmmaker who often incorporates her films into sculptural installations. Click here for my commentary. … [Read more...]