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...]
Alex Prager La Grande Sortie
Upon entering the Lehmann Maupin Gallery on Chrystie Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side, you are greeted by applause. On a small video screen inserted into a large white wall, a seated audience faces you and claps. Most audience members are enthusiastic, while some appear distracted or bored. Nevertheless, you may well feel pleased, gratified, appreciated. It occurred to me that seeing this would be a lovely way to start each day. The video provides an introduction to Alex Prager's La Grande Sortie, an installation consisting of work related to the production of the Los Angeles-based artist's ten-minute film of the same title commissioned by the Paris Opera Ballet. (It may be recalled in this context that Prager's debut as a … [Read more...]
Eric Fischl Rift Raft at Skarstedt: The Naked and the Nude
After viewing the exhibition Eric Fischl: Rift Raft at the Skarstedt Gallery in New York a few months ago, I pondered the artist's extensive use of the female nude in this, his most recent series of works. While nudes have been ubiquitous in Fischl's paintings from the early psycho-sexual suburban narratives of the early 1980s to the less overtly allegorical, more formally oriented beach scenes produced in recent years, the new works offer a twist on his exploitation of the female nude as content. These paintings represent a continuation of his Art Fair Series begun in 2013. Having been invited to an art fair to give a talk, he was appalled and fascinated by the attendees and their responses (or lack thereof) to the art on view. He then … [Read more...]
David Hammons at Mnuchin: Institutional Critique
The exhibition David Hammons: Five Decades at the Mnuchin Gallery left me feeling cold and disquieted. Not that this artist's work, which I've long admired, is not brilliant, passionate and deeply moving. It's that there is a terrible, chilling disconnect between the work and the venue. This disconnect is something sought by Hammons, which he exploits to politically and racially pointed ends. The exhibition critiques the gallery, the art market and the historically, predominantly white art world as a whole, systems that financially support his work and hold it in high esteem. David Hammons is an African-American artist, now 72-years-old. He emerged on the L.A. art scene in the late sixties in the context of the Watts Riots and the ensuing … [Read more...]
Sarah Sze on My Mind
While Sarah Sze's last show at Tanya Bonakdar consisted of several dazzling, sensorial and thought-provoking installations, one modest, barely there assemblage lingers in my mind's eye. Entitled Lavender Landscape Standing (2015), it consisted of a small (perhaps 3 x 2 inch) rock that had been split down the middle, two torn sheets of paper, one all black, the other in shades of lavender, apparently fragments of images printed out from the Internet, and tiny blobs and thread-like strings of blue paint supported by (or otherwise set in relation to) a tall, thin stainless steel armature.This was just one of a myriad of freestanding pieces that made up the environmental installation occupying the main downstairs space in Sze's exhibition, … [Read more...]
Gego at Dominique Lévy Gallery
Works of Gego's Reticulárea Series (1969-82)--sculptures in which slender lengths of wire are used to create space-enclosing networks of lines in undefined shapes--have increasingly appeared in museum collections and art fairs over the course of the past decade. Yet this German-born, Venezuelan artist, who died in 1994, remains underknown by North American audiences. A small survey of her work at the Drawing Center in 2007 attracted some attention, while a show at the Americas Society in 2012 was all but ignored. The tightly-curated, museum quality exhibition Gego: Autobiography of a Line, currently on view at the Dominique Lévy Gallery in New York, may finally do the trick in establishing her reputation. The show is timely, coming at a … [Read more...]
Picasso Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art
All hail the genius of Picasso! When visiting Picasso Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, it is impossible not to stand in awe before the work of an artist who, although primarily a painter, revolutionized for all time what a sculpture can be. At the same time, as this survey exhibition well demonstrates, he produced a host of the 20th Century's most iconic sculptures using an inconceivably wide range of materials, processes and forms. While Picasso's achievements in his work in three dimensions are of high seriousness and continue to be of formidable influence (more on this later), it is clear that his attitude in making sculpture was often remarkably casual--at times, he appears to have been just fooling around.I confess that I had the … [Read more...]