Art e-Walk

Theory and Practice

2012-01-21T07:59:00.015-07:00

The little book by Wassily Kandinsky "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" was written in 1909 and first published in 1912.
Only eight chapters, the essay is dense, bubbling with ideas. The artist who was also a founder of the movement Der Blaue Reiter was the intellectual of the group.

I read the book, written in Russian and German, in French. The style is outmoded with long-winded sentences but the content is revolutionary. Not only about the spiritual in art, it also lays out a theory of abstract art.

The author discusses how the artist becomes the link between the crowd and the spiritual, and his subsequent loneliness on top of the triangle, with the crowd at the bottom.

In the longest chapter, he describes the theory of colors and shapes. Of course, the artist was not alone in his search, he was influenced by other artists and philosophers. He also inspired generations to come. It is a testimony of the intellectual life at the time. Kandinsky develops a grammar for the artists and brings parallels with music. Synesthesia was one of his favorite theory.

He brings back art to a spiritual function. Art creates a spiritual atmosphere and promotes meditation. Art does not only stimulate the senses but also the soul.

The book is full of great quotes. Here are a few:

"The artist must not only train his eye, but also his soul"

"Is beautiful what proceeds from an inner necessity of the soul. Is beautiful what is inwardly beautiful."

"The artist must have something to say, mastery over forms is not his goal but adaptation of form to its inner meaning."

photographs Wikipedia Commons:

Wassily Kandinsky

"Der Blaue Reiter" Wassily Kandinsky, 1903

"On White II" Wassily Kandinsky, 1923

Social minimalism

2012-01-15T19:58:00.012-07:00

Thanks to the Biennale Prospect.2 in New Orleans, the art galleries invite out of town artists, among them Ivan Navarro, a Chilean artist now living in Brooklyn. The last few days of Prospect.2, I visited the UNO Art Gallery on Saint-Claude Avenue to see the site specific work, a reminder of his installation Fence, 2011, at the New York Armory Show. The message is quite clear, fences are frustrating, divisive, usually ugly, represent authority. Fences are also an invitation to jump over and a challenge to the individual. The decorative fence at the gallery encloses a grey dead space, empty, a luxury in this neighborhood.
It makes me think of the rails along cemeteries, maybe jumping this fence with its pale white light would bring me to paradise. I imagine a world of lost souls and phantoms populating the empty space. Minimalism requires the viewer to get involved!

Looking back, the whole event and its location brought up a deep frustration. The building in the tough neighborhood even on a Friday at noon, is enclosed behind a locked iron door and one can see the cameras on both sides to deter intruders. The Art District in Saint-Claude is an island and I cannot find the purpose of art galleries if they are excluding the locals. What is the accomplishment of the art galleries promoting "art for the few" other than exclusion and eventually gentrification of the neighborhood? The artist's message was obviously not directed to the people who feel the impact of the fence in their lives: migrants, prisoners, political activists... A few like me were able to see the work.
The setting is hypocritical and tarnishes the artist's message.

Ivan Navarro was just featured in the January issue of ARTnews in the article Man of Refraction.

photograph by the author

Side shows

2012-01-13T06:33:00.017-07:00

Art Basel Miami Beach Fair is also about all the side shows. A visit of the Wyndwood A rt District is a must.
With limited time, one has to be selective. The oldest fair, Art Mi ami is located in the District, with Red Dot and and Pulse across in temporary tents.

For the occasion, the neighborhood is transformed into a giant parking lot and local artists are creating a festive atmosphere with music and performers. However, the decorations along the streets cannot hide the blight of the neighborhood, a conglomerate of soulless buildings surrounded by overgrown grass. The graffiti which have generated so much publicity for the area can be seen when driving by, they appear rehearsed and lack spontaneity.

The highlight of the day was the visit of the Margulies Collection. Arriving in front of the building, I thought the GPS had gone crazy...but, first surprise, the graceless warehouse with a few wood benches in front, right across a footwear and human hair/beauty supply center, on this abandonned street was it. More was to come going through the door. De Kooning's giant sculpture "Seated Woman" was standing at the entrance, tormented, loud against the white anonymous wall. Being able to measure the sculpture and feel the physical presence of such a work is an experience that no other venue could provide.

The wide space in the main area allowed the display of gigantic sculptures, giving them their full impact, like pieces from Donald Judd, George Segal, Frank Stella, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Tony Smith, which found a volume for their sizes. The second floor, like a mezzanine allowed a skyview of some of the works and more displays like "Home Sweet Home, 2004, from Ronald Moran, "To Be Titled", 2005, from Jacqueline Humphries among others. A sizable area is also reserved for works from local artists, still unknown.

A small fee was collected at the entrance to support a local women shelter.

A great collection which includes 4500 works of art...

photographs by the author:

"Seated Woman" de Kooning, 1969-1981

"Bene Come il Sale" Frank Stella, 1984-85

"Untitled" Donald Judd, 1979

Beads, twigs, glass, etc...

2012-01-07T20:43:00.024-07:00

Like in a museum of anthropology, the tribeless costumes are waiting to dance and sing at the Newcomb Art Gallery on the Tulane campus in New Orleans. The lifeless suits called Soundsuits by the artist become a colorful display and the visitor can imagine the primal scream produced by "Soundsuit", 2006, made of twigs, the joyful Jazz tune from the festive creature made of fabrics or a dark, deep sound from a towering costume which could belong to a secrete society. The display is at home in New Orleans just before Mardi Gras and I am waiting to see the suits dance and hear the music flow. The artist, Nick Cave was trained as a dancer and his background influences his works heavily. The visitor regrets not to be able to see the show and feels frustrated, standing in front of the mute costumes. A video of a performance by the artist would have brought the full dimension to the exhibition.

The main gallery is occupied by the works from Joyce Scott made of beads, wood, porcelain, glass. The medium gives a folk artsy flavor, but the message is deep and even violent. The artist travelled extensively to acquire her techniques, Central America, American Southwest, South America...
Her "Decapitated Tanzania Boy Head", 2009-2011, representing the head of an albino-African boy with white beads, her black-blond females sculpted in wood with their yellow beaded wigs make the point: being different is deadly. The artist also knows how to use irony with her porcelains, disturbing the gentle scenes of countesses and their well-behaved companions, with small sculptures of wooden African goddesses calling these works Still Funny Series. Using ancestral techniques, Joyce Scott has developed her own language keeping the viewer between smile and repulsion.

Off the Beaten Path: Women, Violence & Art is a side show with several works dedicated to the subject. Among them, Susan Plum's Luz y Solidaridad resumes the condition of females in too many countries with these giant brooms designed like long ponytails.

From beads, sequins, glass and more... to very serious subjects.

photographs by the author, from top to bottom:

Nick Cave's display at the Newcomb gallery

"Cobalt Rain", Joyce Scott, 2011

"Luz y Solidaridad" Susan Plum , 2006

Color is the subject

2011-12-15T20:17:00.007-07:00

When every brushstroke matters, creates dynamic, rhythm and flows, when the color impregnates the canvas, color becomes the subject. Anastasia Pelias latest show "Washed (to the sea and other waters) at the Heriard-Cimino Gallery in New Orleans brings us along the muddy, fertile waters of the Nile river to the shores of her ancestors place in Greece with Poseidon (delft blue, violet deep). She masters the technique of dripping with a subtle play of the brush in Louisiana (Chrome yellow, oriental blue) creating a moss-like world in blue, yellow and green.

Oshun, goddess of fresh water is healing with warm yellow to orange colors, Bayou Sauvage is a drip of violet and golden-green and Mississippi, a neon red, angry. The pigments on the canvas are so concentrated, the colors reflect the light, create depth and vibrate.

The works from Anastasia Pelias are a great study about her preferred subject, from the sea to other waters, in the tradition of the Color Field painting. Looking at Pelias works, a quote from Henri Matisse, a master of colors, came to my mind: "Cutting into colors reminds me of the sculptor's direct carvings".

photograph courtesy of the artist

"Louisiana" (chrome yellow, oriental blue), 72x72 inches, 2011

Bigger Is Better

2011-12-03T14:18:00.034-07:00

Sophie Calle, Christian Boltanski, Claude Viallat, Bernard Venet... all the artists are French for this exhibition "Tour de France/Florida: Contemporary Artists from France in Florida's Private Collections" at the Frost Art Museum on the Florida International University campus in Miami. Two large rooms are filled with art, bought by collectors.
A little piece of Boltanski, a little piece of Sophie Calle... It made me reflect about the impact of the size of installations.

Last Summer, I visited the Galerie Rudolphinum in Prague. The exhibition "Undeniably me" featured, among other works, a room in the palace filled with 547 photographs, in black and white, covering the four walls of one room from floor to ceiling. The portraits of the dead were looking at me in the dark room and my eyes, when accustomed to the darkness, could only see the photographs. Physically immersed in Christian Boltanski's work, I got the full impact of his message.

At the FIAC, his installation lining a wall was moving with the anonymous portraits surrounded by small starry lights. But the lonely photograph with one light, on top of boxes at the Frost was lost in a corner. The single portrait makes the person become family, a crowd is overwhelming and evokes destiny, cultures, history.

I also recently visited the installation of Sophie Calle in New Orleans , part of Prospect.2 in one of the Pontalba buildings on Jackson Square. The visit involved the construction of the artist's story and avidly, I followed the path along the exhibition and became a participant. At the Frost, the photograph with accompanying text was just another framed art work.
Idem for Bernard Venet's works, a small sculpture becomes an object to decorate an office or a living-room.

If Christo, whose latest project is to wrap forty miles of the Arkansas river (scheduled in 2014), wraps the rosebush of a collector, it would tarnish his legacy.
The dimension of the work brings its significance.
Size does matter.

photographs by the author:
"Chases High School 8" Christian Boltanski, 1986-1987

"Monument", Christian Boltanski, 1996
http://issuu.com/frostart/docs/tourdefrance

Can art be intoxicating?

2011-12-02T06:36:00.026-07:00

About halfway through the visit at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair this year, I felt like intoxicated, it was not by alcohol, but art...and maybe lack of sleep to catch the airplane: more than 200 galleries, 2000 artists. Art fairs are taking a toll on the visitor. The American version of the well-established Swiss Art Basel is celebrating its 10Th anniversary. This year, the galleries have ample space and an area is available for the visitors to rest and even lay on artificial grass for a snooze.

Why visit Art Basel Miami Beach? Rub elbows with the rich and famous? Feel the thrill of power and money? Take a glance at million dollar works? One can come close to a painting from Jean-Michel Basquiat worth 2.8 millions, but it is not one of his iconic graffiti. Farther, a piece from Ai Weiwei is a reminder of the artist and his absence.

Visitors are wandering , groups following guides, taking pictures... no milliardaire in sight. Gatherings happen in front of catchy galleries like L&M with its wallpaper of blue and yellow cows heads or Tony Shafrazi decorated with an installation of stuffed animals (seen above). Some, like The Pace Gallery, stay subdued with a conservative content (as opposed to the display at the recent FIAC in Paris).

This year Kusama's dots are peppered around the fair. Is this sudden fad related to her ongoing exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris?

Chamberlains' small and big sculptures, Tom Wesselmann, Nikki de Saint-Phalle, Fernando Botero, risque works from Linda Benglis, few Joan Mitchell, a small de Kooning, very few Kandinski ... the list goes on. I relish the occasion to be emotionally overloaded by all these works displayed in close proximity. It is exhilarating.

The Beyeler Foundation has an entire booth dedicated to one work from Louise Bourgeois, the sculpture, about communication between individuals or lack of it, entices the visitor to interact with its mirrors and benches, but few take the leap into the sculpture.

I was surprised to see so few South American artists or galleries represent them as opposed to the recent Houston Fine Art Fair, very much in its infancy but inviting galleries from Cuba among others. It seems that the galleries were not taking any risk this year. Overall, the show was big by its size but deceiving by its content.
It feels like Art Basel Miami Beach is about making money, not about promoting artists. Could galleries do both?

photographs by the author:

installation Mike Kelly

"Mr. Kipper" Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1983

Ai Weiwei, 2011

gallery

Jonathan Messe

German Expressionists in Paris

2011-11-13T10:04:00.020-07:00

Expressionism opposed to Impressionism? Painting visual appearances or the emotions they provoke? The question gets deeper with the exhibition at the Pinacotheque in Paris "Expresssionismus & Expressionismi, Berlin-Munich 1905-1920 Der Blaue Reiter vs Brucke" which opposes the two German Expressionist movements.

The paintings, one hundred and seventy in all, illustrate the difference between the two movements. Grouped by subjects (portraits, landscapes, travels, nudes...) with paintings from artists seldom shown like Gabriel Munter, Gontcharova, Von Jawlensky, Marc, Macke, Verefkin, Larionov, Pechstein and more.
Small dots next to the paintings, blue or red, identify which group the painter belonged too, Northerners from Dresden or Blue Reiders from Munich.

As I progress through this very didactic exhibition, I recognize the artists: Nolde with his heavy pasty, aggressive colors with the subject in the foreground taking over the canvas, Kirchner with his yellowish skin tones filling sharp black drawings, Werefkin with her poetic and dreamy paintings. Kandinsky is well represented with paintings assembled from far away places like "Arabes III" 1911, already abstract with the hazy figures melting in the background, on loan from the National Gallery of Armenia or "Improvisation 34" 1913, aquatic composition from the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Kazan, Tatarstan Republic (I had to look on a map to find Kazan). A productive artistic time in Germany is unfolding room after room in front of the visitor who can visualize the difference between the two movements: aggressive, primitive, fauvist, rebellious with Die Brucke, opposed to Der Blaue Reiter more intellectual, spiritual, with softer colors and lines, more thoughtful, appeased and also rebellious .
The exhibition has reached its goal and I am leaving with an understanding of these two German movements which lost too many of their members during WWI and then were banned by Hitler.

photographs were not allowed

public domain from top to bottom:

"Three Bathers" Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1913

"Sturmwind" Marianne Von Werefkin, 1915-17

"Schokko with Red Hat" Alexej von Jawlensky, 1909

"Der Traum" Franz Marc

A day at Prospect.2

2011-11-11T09:37:00.022-07:00

The day started with a visit at the Longue Vue House and Gardens to look at Brandon Ballengee's installation titled Audubon's Absence. The eco-artist's statement did upset me "Responding to species loss, I cut the birds from historic John James Audubon prints". I had to verify, it is true! The artist did cut out the birds from original prints! The extinct species are now annihilated. The sound from Pasco is also supposed to bring silence instead of the calls from these extinct species. Due to some malfunction, it was not available the day of the visit.

To follow-up this disastrous start, I visited the Old US Mint. The display is sparse compared to Prospect.1, "The Night Club Portraits", 1973, black and white portraits from William Eggleston (1938), a photographer made famous by his color photographs occupy a whole room. A lengthy Gothic video about Mississippi's nightlife from the same artist can be viewed next also photographs from An-My Le shot in New Orleans and Vietnam.

Next (not included in Prospect.2), The Front featured Stephanie Patton's exhibition General Hospital. In her statement, the artist explains how she uses humor to overcome adversity, pain, disease and she succeeds in this endeavor with her soothing soft cushions, pillow-pills. Her one and a half hour video shows how to transform lemons into lemonade. It can be painful to watch and reminds us that life can be arduous. Due to its length, I was not able to watch the whole video, but I assume the lemonade was worth the effort.

At the CAC and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Prospect.2 and temporary exhibitions intermingle. NOLA Now Part I brings artists from New Orleans who are back (or never left) the city. I noticed the work from Dawn Dedeaux with her preserved but deformed portraits, time can deform memories. On the first floor, Alexis Rockman's large wall canvas depicts the species of the Southern swamps in a dark future. He is well -known for his vision of the world since his exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington DC last year. Ogden was bathing in Surrealism with the works of two local artists Ersy and Josephine Sacabo, respectively sculptor and photographer.

The afternoon started with one of the highlights of Prospect.2, Sophie Calle 's installation at the Pontalba's house on Jackson Square, a story of her (fabricated) life told with self-deprecating humor. Her possessions are spread around the eighteen century house, left over from her presence, but she is absent. The narratives accompanying the installation could be drawn from cheap airport novels. The Duchess of Pontalba was a strong character who made head ways for females two centuries ago. The artist's vision fails to reach her dimension.

After dark, Dawn Dedeaux's installation brings mystery to the courtyard on Royal in the French Quarter. Goddess Fortuna and Her Dunces In An Effort To Make Sense Of It All brings to life the book from John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces. One can look at the shadows behind the windows on the second floor like a show with ghosts in the courtyard for this very New Orleanian story. It is like plunging in the decor for a movie.
I read the book previously and recognized the crumpled bed of Reilly, the hot dog cart, the novel's characters, but the show can be enjoyed just as a visual pleasure.

Fortuna, a goddess from New Orleans

photographs by the author:

"The Night Club Portraits" William Eggleston, 1973

"Test Tubes. Family Legacy", Dawn Dedeaux, 2011

"Battle Royale", Alexis Rockman, 2011

Here and There

2011-10-27T18:06:00.011-06:00

A random walk brought me to the Academy of Fine Arts uptown the day of Art for Art's Sake in New Orleans, the traditional first Saturday in October. The works from Brent Barnidge were displayed in one room and made me think of Raymond Mason, another sculptor of crowds. Two weeks later at the Tuileries Garden in Paris, I thought about the exhibition I just had seen at the Academy.

photographs by the author:

"All On A Mardi Gras Day" Brent Barnidge

"La Foule" Raymond Mason, 1963-1965

"Off" FIAC

2011-10-24T01:55:00.014-06:00

The side shows during the FIAC were a great surprise, I visited Slick and also Paris Elysees...there are many more exhibits in Paris during the four frenetic days.

Slick A rt Fair, located between the Palais de Tokyo and the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris included 44 galleries this year, young galleries presenting emerging artists. Among the artists, I noticed Xavier Deshoulieres represented by the gallery Virgil de Voldere in NYC, oil on canvas, representing shadows of landscapes and Jean Denant with his "Mappemonde", a sculpted mural.

For the first time, I decided to visit Art Elysees, located along the Champs-Elysees in temporary tents. Sixty galleries and I found it more fun to visit than the FIAC. I discovered a serie of drawings from Jean Cocteau, works from Kupka, Gutfreund, Soulages, Cesar, Hans Hartung, Tom Wesselman, Picabia, Murakami and more, with the provenance clearly stated. The gallerists were available and ready to discuss the works with the visitors. It was a mix of real treasures mingled with tacky works like these presented by the Stephane Jacobs Gallery in Paris under the title "Arts d'Australie" inspired by aboriginal techniques.

I had a great time going through the tents.

Many red dots on the walls, I felt like buying...a small... also add... maybe...

Maybe next year!

photographs by the author:

oil on canvas, Xavier Deshoulieres, 2011

"Composition aux papillons", Picabia, 1924-26

"Sleeping 2000", Takashi Murakami

"Smoker Study", Tom Wesselman, 1977

Is the FIAC shrinking?

2011-10-21T22:15:00.022-06:00

As usual, the FIAC is located at the Grand Palais this year, but it has lost its other venue at the Cour Carree du Louvre, traditionally reserved for the "young galleries": 194 galleries in 2010, only 168 this year, with a decrease in size of 1020 square meters according to Le Monde.

The visit reflects these numbers. The booths are smaller and difficult to navigate due to the lack of space and the galleries have less works on display. Of course, all the big names are here, including White Cube, Marian G oodman Gallery, Gagosian Gallery, Gladstone Gallery... some are trying to stand out like The Pace Ga llery with its end of the world atmosphere or the Gmurzynska Gallery with a booth designed by Karl Lagerfeld. But these are the exceptions rather than the rule and most are minimalist with white walls trying to use the space at its best.

What about the works? Jean-Luc Moulene was well represented with several galleries showing his photographs of everyday objects presented under a new light. He has been compared to Jeff Wall but I could not find the simplicity and depth of Wall's works. I noticed one piece from Sophie Calle who is also at Prospect.2 in New Orleans. Most of the works with red dots were small to medium sized, from well-known artists, like Pierre Soulages, Dubuffet, Nicolas de Stael. David Zwirner Gallery offered a great display of Dan Flavin's work red, white and blue dedicated to the citizens of the Republic of France on the 200th anniversary of their revolution (1989). Anish Kapoor was also omnipresent with small sculptures.

A special area, was dedicated to the young galleries but again the limited space had a direct impact on the number of works and artists. Cyprien Gaillard, the winner of last year's Marcel Duchamp prize was represented with a few works, small framed compositions related to the works displayed currently at the centre Pompidou for his exhibition titled "UR". One work from Pae White was playing with reflections and colors... decorative.
The three contenders for the Marcel Duchamp prize 2011 were on display in a special area and I favored Samuel Rousseau for his sci-fi composition, technically very interesting, ready to take off. It helps rekindle the dream of other planets, other worlds...but Mircea Cantor won this year with is installation "Fishing Flies".

This year I spent six hours to visit the FIAC, the previous years, my visit lasted two days.
It felt like they were two FIACs, one for the "grand public" like myself and another for the "in crowd" before and after hours. The gallerists were not trying to do business. It was already done.
Next year, we are told, the space will be bigger. Of course, everybody hopes that the economic outlook will be brighter. Still, art is a great investment... to be enjoyed even if it looses its value. With stocks, you are left with bare walls.

photographs by the author, from top to bottom:

"Complex Forms, Structure VI, Sol Lewitt, 1990-91

display, The Pace Gallery

The Nightgown", Frank Stella, 1991

"Brave Old New World", Samuel Rousseau, 2011

View of the FIAC

Outdoor FIAC

2011-10-19T12:54:00.027-06:00

This year, the FIAC has chosen several sites to exhibit the outdoor sculptures. The day before the FIAC's opening, I visited the Tuileries Garden and left the visit at the Jardin des Plantes to the Parisians.
At the entrance, rue de Rivoli, I was greeted by three nudes from Anthony Gormley. Tourists were making pictures of their wives next to the sculptures, accompanied by a few salacious remarks. The sculptures, isolated, are loosing their significance in this setting. The installation in New York City was powerful, giving a new dimension to the site.

Methodically, I started from the bottom of the Tuileries, and was immediately surprised by the few works on display compared to the past years. "La Somme des Hypotheses", a work from Vincent Mauger, ecological, is pleasing to look at but brings little controversy. The biggest talk should be about the sculpture from Adrian Villar Rojas, an Argentinian sculptor well-received in Paris. A long round, plastery piece, ending in the artificial pond interrupts my walk. It represents the ruins left from a future civilization and brings a reflection about the end of humanity. The work is short lived and will be destroyed at the end of the exhibition. Not too cheery.
Farther down the path, a sculpture made of copper is shining in the sun, abandoned, flat, rendered lifeless by the clouds ("We The People, Dan Vo, 2011).
A work from Navid Nuur is a distant cousin from Robert Tannen's, well-known artist in New Orleans: a stone brought by the gallery from Amsterdam. The only gesture from the artist is spraying metal dust on the top of it... another story about time and decay. A sculpture from Urs Fisher, Swiss artist now living in the United States is defying the laws of gravity, between abstract and figurative.
A shiny metal sculpture crafted by the automobile constructor Renault for Jean-Luc Moulene. "Body" is hardly a new idea, already explored and developed by Californian artists. Tomorrow, indoor FIAC.

photographs by the author
"Another Time II", Anthony Gormley, 2006
"La Somme des Hypotheses", Vincent Mauger, 2011"Poems for Earthlings", Adrian Villar Rojas, 2011"Body", Jean-Luc moulene, 2011
"Rivieres", Vincent Ganivet, 2005

Another side of Pop art

2011-10-16T07:41:00.018-06:00

La Halle Saint Pierre in Paris specializes in representing Art Brut, Popular Art and Art Singulier and in collaboration with the magazine HEY! presents the exhibition "HEY! Modern Art & Pop Culture", a group exhibition with sixty-five artists and 170 works.
On the first floor, the dark space creates a mysterious, cult-like atmosphere and each artists works are displayed in a small area to avoid confusion.

The works of two artists meet the definition of Raw Art due to the material used. Pierre Bettencourt with burlap and stones composes primitive wall frescoes depicting naked females in languid poses and Philippe Dereux (1913-2001), friend of Dubuffet, is using bark and other dry organic material to compose decorative pieces. The works from Murielle Belin who lives in Nancy retained my attention. Her oil on wood have the darkness of Bosch works, depicting females with a white glowing skin, exanguinated, beheaded, mutilated, hanging. The only color is a streak of red blood. The black frame is as important as the painting with a black silky background and a name written under the painting, like a Saint in a church. She also reinvents her own bestiary creating birds like her Guinea fowl but with a small human head. Christ on the cross in a small composition is a dessicated frog. Are these inspired by visits in the churches of Eastern France?

The works can have an ecological undertone like this installation of fur coats attached to a ventilator and breathing slowly like revived animals (Neozoon). They can be bizarre with an installation of found objects from Stephane Blanquet or sickening like the work from Henry Darger found in his apartement after his death. His watercolors depict children in a Walt Dysney world but the story is a Grimm tale where the monters are adults abusing them.

Tatoo art is well represented with a whole room dedicated to the works of Titine K-Leu and several other artists.

The top floor represents several comic strips artists producing studies in psychology like Ludovic Debeurre, Gilbert Shelton Mezzo and also graffiti works. I should put "comic" because the subjects are anything but funny, dark humor sometimes.
It could seem ambitious to present so many artists from different backgrounds and different cultures (few Americans like Kris Mars from Minneapolis, South Koreans with Yu Jiinyoung) but the exhibit flows well due the concentric space which allows a walk through the building.

As a final thought, the exhibition represents artists without formal training (most of them), listening to their fantasms, fears, angsts. We discover that they are universel.

top photograph by the author

no photographs allowed in the building
photographs from the site La Halle Saint Pierre

From Rotterdam to America

2011-10-10T19:01:00.012-06:00

The book about Willem de Kooning, "de Kooning, An American Master" by Mark Stevent and Annalyn Swan is thick with approximately 700 pages , including forty chapters, notes, old photographs in black and white, documentation, index and 21 color reproductions of his works from 1921 to 1987 to illustrate the different periods of his production.The life of de Kooning is so filled during its 94 years, the authors had to divide it in periods. Starting with "Holland" narrating his youth followed by "The Immigrant" with the arrival and establishment of the artist in his new country. This leads to "Recognitions" and ultimately his dream becoming true "An American Master". He then moves to the "Springs" starting a new chapter of his life ending with "Twilight".

The book is enthralling with everyday stories about de Kooning and other artists which enlighten the bigger story, the birth of abstract expressionism in New York. I can visualize the artists, understand their interactions like it happened yesterday. I can walk Downtown in NYC and find the places where it happened, the bars, galleries, hanging around artists studios. The reporting is a direct account and the sources are well recorded at the end of the book. De Kooning, rootless, trying to establish himself in America, the evolving friendships with Gorky, Franz Kline, Soutine and in the process, the history of American art told through a captivating story.

It takes an Olympian flavor, with the artist climbing to fame, his struggles, his apogee and then, the slow downfall, unavoidable from alcoholism and dementia. It brings the full dimension of the artist whose legacy takes a historical significance.
De Koooning who travelled to America as a stowaway on a British freighter would love the title "An American Master". The book won a Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Critics Award.

Till January, the MoMA presents de Kooning: a Retrospective .

photograph Wikipedia

"Joy-Art"

2011-10-02T19:04:00.016-06:00

Ladislav Sutnar (1897-1976), a Czech-American artist coined the term "Joy-Art" to describe a series of nudes he called "Venuses". In the late sixties, the 65 years old artist, well-known graphic designer, returned to painting (he studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague and was a painter). This Summer, the exhibition at the Rudolfinum in Prague displayed his nudes for the first time.

Sutnar fled the Nazis who had invaded his country and stayed in New York City at the occasion of the World's Fair in 1939. By the time these works were produced, he had assimilated the American culture and condensed its spirit (the artist's vision of it) in these paintings. His commercial designs were influenced by the Bauhaus, De Stijl and Russian Constructivism and he applied minimalism to technology, freeing space to maximize the process of information. The deconstruction of his paintings shows simple shapes juxtaposed to build the subject. They influenced Tom Wesselman's nude paintings.

Lining the walls of four palatial rooms, the giant canvasses are awakening the dark walls. The voluptuous, round curves of the subjects, the pink, lime, red white and blue Americana colors, the exuberant sexuality of the nudes represent another side of Sutnar with his concept of new art for the 21st century: punchy, aggressive, joyous, carefree, vibrant.
The exhibition is pleasant to go through and does not require great intellectual insight or emotional input. The Venuses are flashy, superficial, decorative and represent an advertisement for the Western culture Sutnar embraced. They are in stark contrast with the works from his peers who stayed in East Europe which can be seen at the Kampa Museum across the river.
Colors, shapes, Pop art, "Joy-Art".

Photographs by the author:

"Venus/ All the Way to USA" Ladislav Sutnar, 1968

"Venus/In a Petite Boutique" Ladislav Sutnar, 1968

"Venus/ In Orbit/ On the Top of the World" Ladislav Sutnar, 1967

First in Houston, TX

2011-09-18T20:09:00.014-06:00

The first art fair in Houston took place from the 16th till the 18th of September at the George R. Brown Convention Center with eighty-three galleries participating.

Greeted by a giant sculpture from Dubuffet, the visitor had no difficulty finding the galleries with each booth labelled with names and numbers and plenty of space in the aisles.

Twelve galleries from Houston, eleven from Miami, ten from New York City, South America and Europe were also represented.

Each gallery brought plenty of works in the mid-range prices (most a few thousand dollars, a few above 20 000) from not so well-known artists. The exhibitors were conservative and there was no "star" stealing the show.
New Orleans was represented by the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery with a booth filled by Dan Tague's works.
The works from known artists were not of great quality like the only painting from Joan Mitchell or a few from Rauschenberg.

Warhol's works could be acquired at several galleries. Unsigned, they were authenticated by the "Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board". The Brillo fiasco would make me cautious when buying a Warhol (anyway his works are not on my virtual shopping list).
Overall, the fair was well organized, very pleasant. A catalogue with the list of the galleries made it easy to navigate. I found it somewhat dull without surprises from young artists. The Saturday crowd was well-behaved, the gallerists were wearing dark suits and black dresses and did not celebrate sales loudly with champagne like at the FIAC!

But art fairs are about business and the Houston fine art fair reports 6 millions sales and 10 500 visitors, a success for a young fair. It is also about educating the viewers and ultimately transform them into collectors.

photographs by the author

"Incarnation Incantation", James Rosenquist, 1989

"Sally with Skull", Milton Avery, 1946

"Untitled", Harold Shapinsky, 1984

Gordi, local artist and beyond

2011-09-11T19:23:00.018-06:00

The Contemporary Art Center presents an interesting exhibition: "Patterns and Prototypes: Tina Girouard and Robert Gordy" curated by Dan Cameron.
Displayed across each other on the whole top floor, the two artists are from Louisiana. I had seen a few works from Gordy in the past, but never a whole exhibition composed by twenty-three paintings.

He exemplifies the Pattern and Decoration movement started in the mid-seventies. His paintings are a repetitive pattern of shapes, like stencils underlined by black lines in an attempt to add a third dimension. Human subjects with a Fernand Leger's flavor are scattered in these busy landscapes. The colors are sometimes bright, sky blues and white but mainly black and dark colors, with vibrant oranges, purples, greens. The paintings overall lack rhythm and could be repeated indefinitely, producing a wallpaper or fabric like feeling.

The pattern and Decoration movement was a weak response to Minimalism and did not produce memorable works. The paintings engender boredom and I did not find this technique inspiring.

Still, Robert Gordy, a local artist, reached a bigger audience due to his style which at the time was in favor.

photographs by the author

Sampling Warhol

2011-09-01T21:15:00.018-06:00

Coincidence? It is a Warhol week: 30 Polaroid photographs, one silkscreen, a book of interviews and a movie.
The Newcomb Art Gallery on the Tulane campus presents Pop Shots: Polaroid Portraits by Andy Warhol. The exhibition consists of 30 Polaroid photographs of famous and/or rich models. The framed portraits are lining the walls of one room. Warhol would make fifty to one hundred of these photographs at a sitting and select one shot for the next step, a giant silkscreen portrait of the sitter. A local figure of New Orleans is featured with several Polaroids and the resulting silkscreen work. Warhol became so popular that the subjects were not hiring the artist, they were begging the artist to have a portrait made.

The same week, I found a book about Andy Warhol: "I'll be Your Mirror, The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews", consisting of Thirty-Seven Conversations with the Pop Master, edited by Kenneth Goldsmith, and spanning 30 years, from the 60's till the 80's. I learned a lot about how to interview a reluctant interviewee. Warhol was a man of few words. "What is Pop Art"? answer "Yes", etc... The artist was known to be shy, but his technique during the interviews becomes affectation. After all, he was eager to be in the spotlight. Warhol became more loquacious over the years and even volunteered some information about his lifestyle in his latest interviews including his thoughts about deeper subjects like art.

Finally, I watched a movie on Netflix "13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests", a succession of approximately five minutes movies lasting for a total of 59 minutes. Each clip is one actor filling the screen, just the face. The subjects are exercising their facial muscles in front of the camera and girls, boys, girls, good actors, manage to stay expressionless with an occasional show of emotion, like a fake tear. The last piece is a girl brushing her teeth for five minutes. The movies are in black and white and play with light and shadows. Considering that they were made in the 60's, they have some historical interest. Andy Warhol preferred to leave the movies unedited for fear of spoiling the subject. I have to confess, I fast forwarded the movie to last twenty minutes. The songs are worth buying the soundtrack.

What is Pop Art? The artist wants the viewer to define the art. We are used to the artist filling his/her work with meanings, symbols and the viewer looking superficially at the art. Andy Warhol braggs that he made the work in an hour for consumption and the viewers are giving value to the piece of art by spending time and money.

This is the art of Warhol, the viewer is filling the cans of soup with symbols, the interviewer is answering the questions, the reader is reading between the lines, the moviegoer is making up his own plot.
His works are a commercial success and he has given a flavor to Pop Art: superficial and empty.

Andy Warhol has become an icon, by picturing famous persons he has become famous. He claims to be the ultimate artist: money and fame. His philosophy? Pop. Business acumen or art? "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is best art".
One can be impressed by the amount of material produced at the Factory and some of the movies are still sitting at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, unseen. Warhol liked to document his life with movies or tape recordings. Anxiety? Precursor of reality TV shows? Performance art?

Warhol succeeded in making the viewer create not only the art, but also the artist.

Photograph by the author:
"Tina Freeman", Andy Warhol, 1975

Ten

2011-08-16T18:18:00.018-06:00

"Lives of the Artists" from Calvin Tomkins gives a view of ten artists personal lives. With the material gathered during interviews, casual visits, the art critic who sometimes shadows the artists during their daily activities let the reader "meet the artist".

We learn that Damien Hirst's mind is clearer after a night of drinking, Cindy Sherman is nice, Richard Serra is irascible and ruthless. These artists have nothing in common other than "their works and lifestyles embody the future of contemporary art" Each chapter is the length of an article from the New Yorker, they were initially published in the magazine.

The author's friendly relationship with the artists does not preclude him from making critical remarks about their works.

A glimpse into their lives feeds our thirst for celebrities. What made these ten artists famous? Circumstances, talent, tenacity, pure luck...

Peaking into the lives of Julian Schnabel, Richard Serra, Matthew Barney, make them accessible and also vulnerable. These articles are not biographies, they focus on the "petite histoire".

The ten artists include: Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman,Julian Schnable, Richard Serra, James Turrell, Matthew Barney, Maurizio Cattelan, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, John Currin.

After reading this book, we understand their world better and ultimately their creations.

photographs by the author

Old Palace, Young Artists

2011-08-12T20:40:00.029-06:00

Artbanka Museum of Young Art is presenting a temporary exhibition during the Summer months in the empty Colloredo-Mansfeld palace built in the 18th Century, just off Charles Bridge on the Vltava River in Prague.

The crowd is thick in this area full of tourists. Everyone is taking a peek at "Guns", the installation from David Cerny in the courtyard and the cameras are clicking. Sculptures of nudes peaking out of the windows greet the visitors and give a human presence to the facade. It is a great introduction. Most of the crowd walks by and retreats to the streets. I decide to pursue the visit which is organized in three parts for each wing surrounding the courtyard: renowned artists, fine art schools, and the third dedicated to groups and contemporary young artists.

It is an adventure, climbing stairs, getting lost in living rooms with faded mirrors, giant fireplaces and painted ceilings, backrooms, corridors, more stairs... and a flurry of Czech and Slovac young artists works: a flavor of decadence in sink with the art pieces. Works from known artists like Jiri Cernicky, Jiri Davis, Ugo Rondinone and more are side by side with works from less known young artists. The visit is full of surprises like on the top floor, lost , forgotten, a sculpture "Merda d'Artista", provocative, so unexpected, hidden so it can be discovered. The second wing holds works from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Ostrava, Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Arts, Technical University in Kosice and at the upper level, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. I cannot remember all the works, so I took a lot of pictures."Superstar" from the group Kamera Skura occupies the stairwell of the third wing and a whole floor is dedicated to graffiti also works from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and solo shows. To top this off, in an adjacent building, the installation from David Cerny, "Shark", a sculpture of Saddam Hussein handcuffed in a glass tank, a parody of Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living".

The number of works is such that it is overwhelming. All major art schools from the Czech and Slovac Republic are represented in a dilapidated palace which is in itself another side of the visit. The result is eclectic, in some areas the works are labelled, in others the name of the artist is missing, most likely due to hasty preparations. The overall impression is an exhibition full of energy, surprises, bursting with ideas, stimulating and fun. It is rare to see the works from art professors, well known artists, students, unknown young artists, group works displayed at the same event.

The combination of location, timing, size and content are predicting a huge success for this exhibition.

Let's not forget Artbanka's goal to promote young artists. This exhibition gives them an opportunity to display their works mostly related to eternal themes of love, death, war but treated with originality, humor, passion, in an historical setting.

The art world in the Czech Republic is alive and well with this new generation of artists.

photographs by the author:

"Guns" David Cerny

"Pegasus Semtex", Jiri Cernicky, 1997

"Superstar", Kamera Skura art group

"Live Your Life", Vladimir Skrepl, 2011

"Fucking 15 Minutes" Reality art group

"All My Bad Thoughts", Kristof Kintera

Tears of Mud... or Gold

2011-07-24T14:38:00.027-06:00

Water is falling from the sky and the streets in the city are becoming torrents by the minute. Yesterday, I was flying over Holland...then, coming home, over the Louisiana swamps: same feeling of endless waters surrounding the land as far as the horizon.

The artists at The Front in New Orleans, are talking about one of the essential element of life and its interaction with humans.
The first room looks like the cavern from "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" with containers filled with swampy water. The installation from Brandon Ballengee and Andrew Pasco, 2011, called "Tears of Oshun", refers to a benevolent, generous and kind goddess of the Yoruba religion... with a temper. Isn't it the definition of water, essential to life but also creating havoc and death? The installation makes us feel like water is a new commodity, stored in barrels, so scarce. Could it become the new gold? Too much? Not enough? Potable?Polluted? "Tears of Oshun" is a stark reminder of a worsening problem, the imbalance between the resource and the population.

Walking through a labyrinth of barrels, the visitor reaches the second room, where John Kleinschmidt and Andy Sternad redesigned the floor of the gallery with stone-like decorations. I feel like jumping from one to another...which I do. The flooring is a decoy created with plastic containers filled with water. The result is a squishy, uneven ground and I am sinking. It becomes very realistic with each step producing a watery noise. This is a reminder, what we see from the sky is very deceptive. The land with the shrubs, the trees, is...wetlands and keeps being erroded to a critical point.

Good water, bad water, tears of mud or gold?

Photographs by the author

"Tears of Oshun" Ballengee, Pasco, 2011

Installation, Andy Sternard and John Kleinsmidt

Steiner and Visual Arts

2011-07-19T09:26:00.042-06:00

Who is Rudolph Steiner? A giant photograph of the "philosopher, architect, sociologist, humanist and visionary" greets the visitor, along a description of his life and his accomplishments at the DOX, Centre for Contemporary Art, located in a northern neighborhood of Prague.

Steiner (1861-1925) is the founder of Anthroposophy, an esoteric philosophy with links to Theosophy. Its goal is to develop inner spiritual knowledge, independently of sensory experiences. Steiner applied his theories to various fields, including agriculture, medicine, pedagogy, architecture, dance, music (he developed eurythmy) and more. He designed the Goetheanum in Switzerland and several other buildings and his pedagogical movement is still widely followed with over 1000 Waldorf schools worldwide. He never claimed to be an artist, he was a philosopher.
What is the impact of Anthroposophy on the art? Artistic expression becomes a path, a medium to create a bridge between spiritual and material worlds. The art inspired by Anthroposophy is aimed at the awakening of inner spiritual energy.

The Dox presents two exhibitions: "Thinking without Limits: Inspired by Rudolph Steiner" and " Rudolph Steiner and Contemporary Art". The first is didactic and starts with writings from Steiner displayed in glass cases, followed by photographs and the paintings from artists who lived in Prague and Vienna at the start of the 20th century. Occultism, Theosophy and other esoteric philosophies influence the subjects of the works. The artists, among them Alois Bilek, Joseph Vachal, Karel Novak, Frantisek Drtikol, are unknown to the me and I found most the paintings mediocre. To my surprise, Kandinsky who was exposed to the theories of Steiner during his stay in Vienna, was not mentioned. The symbols found in his works evoke some similarities with Steiner's blackboards circles, arrows and lines representing the universe and also our inner self. Kandinsky went beyond the theory and built a spiritual world through his creations.

The exhibit flows without transition and the visitor is exposed to works from international artists, in search of spirituality, not necessarily related to anthroposophy. Among them, I discovered Joseph Beuys who was deeply inspired by the theories of Steiner and also used blackboards as a media. I found new dimensions to the works from Anish Kapoor and Olafur Eliasson. "When I Am Pregnant" (1992), a sculpture from Kapoor, is glowing from inside and creates a surrounding halo on the wall. It reaches perfection in smoothness, roundness, whiteness and ultimately purity. An area is dedicated to Olafur Eliafsson with "Before the Star Lamp" (2010) and "Power Tower" (2005). Plays with lights, reflections, shadows, create an ever changing world from the source with a whole universe of satellites. I noticed the sculptures from Karel Malich who was deeply inspired by Steiner's philosophy. He transforms a common material into ethereal creations floating in space. Steiner's works are represented by several of his famous blackboards, drawn spontaneously during his lectures to illustrate his theories. These were teaching tools and without the comments of the lecturer, are staying silent and hermetic. The exhibition with more than 70 displays, includes works from Giuseppe Penone, Mario Merz, Helmut Federle, Tony Cragg and to consider their philosophical dimension give them their full impact.

Thought provoking, it renews the interest for a philosophy which has still a strong impact on today's art and most likely centuries to come...
a reminder that Rudolph Steiner's legacy lives on.

photographs by the author:

"Atlantis" Richard Pollack Karlin, 1914-191

"Power Tower" Olafur Eliasson, 2005

"When I Am Pregnant" Anish Kapoor, 1992

sculpture, Karel Malich, 1976-1980

From nowhere

2011-07-14T09:53:00.028-06:00

An urge to paint, draw, express the inner soul, automatism... Art Brut or Raw Art has no definition. It encompasses artists without a formal education. The term, coined by Jean Dubuffet, applies to three of them presently featured at the Muzeum Montanelli or MuMo in Prague with the exhibition ART BRUT: ANATOMIA METAMORPHOSIS.

With her drawings, pastels and collages, Anna Zemankova (1908-1986) creates a vegetal and animal world, populated by sea anemones, giant worms, birds, monster-fishes, snakes, strange fruits and spiderwebs. The work is a painstaking accumulation of small ink motives, like a lace, drawn with an obsessional likeness till they delineate a whole subject from afar. Colors are added to these and create a lyrical world inhabited by dream-like creatures.
Her work is purely automatic and driven by her subconscious.

Lubos Plny (1961), another self-taught Czech artist, is displayed along Zemankova's works. His subject is the human body which he describes through an orgy of drawings with acrylic on paper. The artist, who worked for a time as an assistant in a morgue, represents detailed descriptions of organs like he had been visiting them and tells the story of trips to his entrails with his drawings in red colors, like a Piranesi of the human body.

The third artist, Frantisek Dymacek (1929-2003), whose works have been recognized recently, accumulates colored bodies, body parts, demons in endless black labyrinths, drawn with felt-tip and ballpoint pens. Oniric, dynamic, his drawings give us a rendition of a kaleidoscopic view of his world.

The three artists with their banal stories could be your neighbours. The first, a house wife, dedicated to her three children, who lost her status when they became adults, let her inner energy flow. The second transfers his nightmarish dreams and Dymacek represents the monsters he is inhabited with.
Could it be you, or me?
Their creative energy is almost frightening. The title of the exhibition sums up the works of these three artists, preoccupied by their bodies and translating their anxieties on paper.

The New Museum chose Zemankova to represent the Czech artists during Communism and post-Communism for the current exhibition "Ostalgia" (with Jiri Kovanda). I am questioning this choice. The press release states " the exhibition traces a psychological landscape in which individuals and entire societies must negotiate new relationships to history, geography and ideology". Zemankova's works are timeless and represent her personal history.

no photographs were allowed
follow the links to view works from the artists

On the road, Prague

2011-07-14T09:12:00.006-06:00

This Summer, the 5th Biennale is in full swing in Prague.

With 160 artists from around the world (India, Italy, Romania, Poland, Slovakia...), it is also a great occasion to discover Czech artists, young and old. Three macrosections are subdivided into smaller individually curated sections.

Of course, the galleries and museums are plentiful from Artbanka which displays and supports young artists near the Charles Bridge, to farther venues like the DOX Center for Contemporary Art or the MeetFactory. Prague is bustling with visual art and of course music.

Along the way, the sculptures in the gardens and the streets are sometimes whimsical like David Cerny's, called the Anthony Gormley of Prague.

Don't forget your copy of The Prague Post (new edition on Wednesday). It contains everything you need to know about Prague's happenings.

photograph by the author

"Babies", David Cerny, 1967

Colors and music

2011-07-11T13:39:00.027-06:00

100 years have gone by since a memorable concert took place in Vienna and this commemoration makes the exhibition at the Kampa Museum in Prague timely: "Abstraction and Atonality" presents three artists, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Frantisek Kupta (1871-1957) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). It is a low key but powerful event. Small, early works from Kandinsky have been assembled, and it is a delight to look at his woodcuts, watercolors from 1911, 1913, with themes of his natal Russia, fairytales, horses running in the countryside, peasants and noblewomen. The progression to abstract culminates by the end of the exhibition with Impression V, 1911, a colorful oil painting.

Paintings from Schoenberg, the composer, occupy a whole room, self-portraits, hands and eyes, fascinating, bulging, like thoughts and brain were trying to escape the skull through the sockets. His paintings are dark, somber, romantic, with a flavor of Edward Munch. Schoenberg himself decided to curtail his painting and concentrate on his musical career.

Colors always stayed his subject when composing music and he created a musical scale of colors. This is well documented with scores of music like "Yellow Sound". The historical significance of these little pieces of paper cannot be enough emphasized. Schoenberg and Kandinsky's work cristallize the research in synesthesia.
How does Kupka fit in the exhibition? His works are on permanent display at the museum and this exhibition provides the occasion to show his paintings in a different light. Born in eastern Bohemia, he was trained at the Prague Art Academy and later at the Ecole des Beaux-Art in Paris, where he moved in his early twenties. He spent most of his productive life in Paris.

He was interested in using colors and free them from shapes, and his search for abstract develops in front of our eyes, with his colorwheels displayed at the exhibition. The guard, a very persuasive older lady "invited me" (pulled a chair and ordered me to sit) and brought a book in English about Kupka. Full of pride she pointed out to pages about the painter, photographs, and more. Kupka is one more artist brought back home, the Czech Republic is claiming its artists.

The exhibition assembled works from private collections, the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Kampa Museum which contains more than 200 paintings from Kupka.

Kampa Museum, photograph by the author

"Self-Portrait", Arnold Schoenberg, 1910

"The Kathedrala", Frantisek Kupka, 1912-1913

"Impression V", Wassily Kandinsky, 1911

Mainstream Street Art

2011-06-21T19:38:00.031-06:00

One year ago, Swoon crashed the 53rd Venice Biennale with her eco-friendly boat. This was a memorable event in the street artist's career. Known for her disdain for authority and institutions, she was the only female artist featured in Bansky's movie " Exit Through the Gift Shop".
This Summer, her installation, a giant sea monster, inhabits the Great Hall at the NOMA. It is called Thalassa after the Greek goddess of the sea.

Swoon, who moved from Florida to New York City, has made her name by transforming neighborhoods, working in the shadow and creating events with her installations.
This time, her work is an amalgam of New Orleans cliches : a female, colored, prostitute from Storyville, also a siren with sea creatures for decoration, scary black tentacles spreading over the Great Hall. The subject has a dramatic expression and tense pose, looking at the sky, which contrasts with the playful, multicolored, lower piece, the bottom-womb of the creature.The artist has claimed long ago her inspiration from German Expressionism, discovered during a prolonged stay in Prague, and Indonesian shadow puppetry for her lacy cutouts.

The work is made to entertain and hopefully will bring crowds this Summer at the NOMA, but it lacks spontaneity.

To look at this installation, I consulted my inner child and found it was not dramatic enough, did not bring the little chill of fear, knowing it is a dream.

One year ago, an article in ARTnews, described her art, and I found this quote from the artist who was rebelling against "the feeling that you were supposed to create work that has its end place, a life in an institution or a collector's home." This work cannot fly beyond a Summer piece, for the museum.

Where are graffiti, provocative works, real monsters? A street artist, gone on the right side of the law, on the wrong side of the art.

photographs by the author

"Thalassa", Swoon

Ancestors of Modern Art

2011-06-15T19:32:00.048-06:00

Why talk about the latest exhibition at the NOMA? " Ancestors of Congo Square: African Art in the New Orleans Museum of Art" reaches far beyond New Orleans, local history and African art.
This blog is about modern and contemporary art, and African art is the ancestor of modern and contemporary art. Looking at the sculptures, one cannot avoid thinking of Modigliani, Brancusi, Picasso, Braque and so many others. At the beginning of the century, the artists in Paris were visiting Le Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadero (called later Musée de l'Homme) whose collections have been transferred to Le Musée du Quai Branly. The artists deciphered the art and gave their full significance to the pieces, reflections of far away civilizations. The public kept treating them as curios.
Cubism was born, Surrealism followed, and collectors like John and Dominique De Menil understood the connection as testified by the permanent exhibition at "The Menil Collection".

Picasso integrated African art in his famous painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) with two of the subjects wearing African masks.

Of course, African art keeps inspiring numerous artists including African American artists like Romare Bearden. I am not sure that Lee Bontecou would claim her inspiration came from African art, but I could not avoid thinking about these two works pictured above. One was at the NOMA, and I came across Lee Bontecou's work at the Art Institute of Chicago a few days later. African art has become part of our heritage, our artistic language.

The exhibition itself is composed of about 100 works, sculptures and artifacts from different regions mainly from West Africa.

With maps, few comments, the exhibition has an old flavor and reminds me...of the visit at "Le Musee de L'Homme" (a small version). The videos are projected on very small screens, at a time when we can watch great educational programs on giant screens at home.

The audience looking for expertise will feel frustrated by some missing links, approximate dates, or very short descriptions of the works, their origins, their history. Maybe the curator could have brought a surprise here and there, like a reference to a local piece, a local artist?

The display feels remote, African art should be displayed as alive.
Abstract is never far, and the style is very modern... or modern artists have taken deep inspiration in African art.

100 works of art, a great introduction to African art, the exhibition should not be missed.

When the sculpture transcends the individual, when art reaches its deepest meanings and transcends a society. photographs by the author

Top left: Ngbe Society Lodge Emblem, Nigeria

Top right: "Untitled", Lee Bontecou, 1960

Face Mask, Mossi Peoples, Burkina Faso

La Femme aux Yeux Bleus" Modigliani, 1918

Face Mask, Ezzamgbo lgbo Peoples, Nigeria

Fertility Figures, Assante Peoples, Ghana

"Seeing Music"

2011-06-05T13:00:00.024-06:00

The title of the exhibition at the Garden District Gallery is fit for a blog. Music inspires visual impressions, figurative or abstract depending on the artist. Kandinsky wrote about this phenomenon when studying synesthesia.

The works presented at the gallery are another testimony to this theory. Music inspires movement and colors, and most of the works are brightly colored, like the collages of Pamela Marshall.

Too many painters are represented in the gallery, which makes it difficult to appreciate them, each being allowed a small space. Auseklis Ozols is given the front row, with a whole wall in the entrance room.

The sculptures are stealing the show, with birds made from real violins, dissected instruments, spreading their wings, ready to fly with the works from Dennis Parker. Julie Boden chooses to paint the same string instruments with bright colors and lively design like all these were in the violin and the painter just transferred them for us to see. Arman broke the instruments with his Rages and Tantrums, these two artists redesign the instruments making them sing for our eyes.

Just curious, what musicians or piece inspired the artists? What about some music in the gallery during the show?

photographs by the author

"Music to Your Eyes", Pamela Marshall

"Word Bird", Dennis Parker

" Sax in the City Violin", Julie Boden

No Man's Land

2011-06-01T20:02:00.020-06:00

Black and white and all the nuances of grey describe a world of shadows, this is the latest exhibition at the Newcomb Art Gallery on the Tulane campus titled " The History of the Future". Two photographers, Michael Berman and Julian Cordona depict the desert and the migrants crossing the Mexico/U.S. border with fifty or more works.

At a time when most people are looking for a few seconds of celebrity, in the world of illegal migrants, it is difficult to find the subject. The photographer has done a great job offering a glimpse of a few decisive seconds in people's life, like catching the anxious look of a passenger in a car when the border guard is looking at her documents.
Tears, joy, death, fear, the subjects are between a past they are leaving and an uncertain future, and all is said in one shot. Sometimes the photographer arrives too late, and finds only the remnants of life: piles of abandoned clothes, plastic bottles, rags in the brushes. Humans are hounded like animals, driven by their thirst, hunger and betrayed by shoe tracks in the sand, a disturbed stone or flatten bushes.

The other side of the exhibition is about the landscape with breathtaking photographs of an endless, mournful desert sculptured by weather, unforgiving but beautiful in its sparsity and minimalism. There are no shelters in this unforgiving environment but remnants from thousands of unseen, where did they come from , where did they go? One can hear the silence.

The immensity of the desert becomes the refuge of these souls abandoned between two worlds.

I found this exhibition well-balanced with the two photographers describing the story of these countless lives and their interaction with an unforgiving environment. The size of the photographs, framing and colors (black, white, grey) make the overall show look monotonous.

Two photojournalists lost between reporting and art or art in reporting.

photographs by the author

artist's studio

2011-05-28T05:50:00.027-06:00

The visit of the artist's studio is always a privilege and a few weeks ago, I was able to drive to Lafayette, LA, and spend some time looking at Eugene J. Martin's work at his home.

The presence of the artist (July 24, 1938- January 1, 2005) is still felt in the house situated in a quiet neighborhood. The artist's works are pouring out of the studio and invading the house with their colors.

Overwhelmed at first, I looked at the paintings, drawings, collages and was amazed by their quality. One would expect some trials, "doodles", "left overs". The works appear to be created effortlessly, already composed by the artist before being laid on the canvas, smaller during hard times, on paper, bigger during fat times, on canvas, without hesitation, like brain and hand were one. The studio is left intact, quiet with paintings, neatly organized, drawings, stacks of CDs with the artist's preferred music and his ashes on a desk.

It is eerie, but a conversation with Suzanne, his wife, who can recall many anecdotes about the artist, brings me back to reality. The painter lived for his art. Rarely distracted, he would paint almost daily and creation was his mission. He was totally immersed in his work, translating his internal happiness.

He was initially living in Washington, DC, then Lafayette, LA, and was never seeking the limelight ... he did not have time. Some artists live to promote themselves, Eugene Martin was just too busy working.

I recently viewed two exhibitions: "Beyond Black" at the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge and "Dancing String Bean: Paintings and Drawings from Eugene Martin" at the New Orleans African American Museum.

During this visit, I discovered Eugene Martin's collages, made with pieces of his own works rearranged for another message. This is where the "discarded" works find a second life. Collages are most of the time one level, feel second-hand, kind of lazy compositions. Eugene Martin's collages are different. They are visually and intellectually challenging: new perspectives, depth and three-dimensional works.

Suzanne has published several books about the artist whose works are the result of his drive, his self discipline, his creativity. His art is so much him that the artist is still present.

Like remembering a song, Eugene Martin's works are now alive in my head with their colors and shapes. There is no better way to know an artist than to visit his (her) sanctuary.

http://www.youtube.com/nemastoma

letters, quotes, discussions and more

2011-05-22T16:16:00.017-06:00

" Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics" by Hershel B. Chipp with contributions by Peter Selz and Joshua C. Taylor, University of California Press.

Should I start with the last chapter on Contemporary Art or read again Chapter VII on "Art and Politics" or chapter V on "Futurism"? This book can be read from the first to the last page or as needed.

The crumpled book cover is a testimony of my repeated visits. I read it at swimming pools, in airplanes (or airports waiting for airplanes), doctors waiting rooms... The material is so dense that I can spend just fifteen minutes and find material for reflection , like quotes from artists, letters, articles, speeches, critics...
It could appear fragmented but the material is presented in a structured manner with nine chapters, each independent with a well-defined subject: Postimpressionism, Symbolism and other Subjectivist Tendencies, Fauvism and Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Neo-Plasticism and Constructivism, Dada Surrealism and Scuola Metafisica, Art and Politics, Contemporary Art.
The list of contents at the beginning facilitates a search with a short detailed preview and a referral to the page's number.

The illustrations are only in black and white and give a scholarly touch to the book.

A detailed bibliography related to each chapter, a list of illustrations and the index bring more useful informations.

Beyond entertainment, it is an essential.

photographs by the author:

"The Look of Amber", Yves Tanguy, 1929

" Muse I", Constantin Brancusi, 1909-10

Eco art?

2011-05-01T18:07:00.031-06:00

Nature is the only subject of the exhibition taking place at the Ogden Museum of Southern Arts titled "One World, Two Artists: John Alexander and Walter Anderson". Two figurative artists with their own twist, painting the Gulf Coast as we like to think about it. The two artists do not have much in common. John Alexander uses oil on canvass, heavily applied with reds, blacks, dark and bright colors, bringing drama and a flavor of expressionism in his best compositions like the two represented here.

In contrast, Walter Inglis Anderson's pastel watercolors tell the story of a lost paradise. The painter lived in Ocean Springs, MS, and the local museum, called after his name displays Anderson's work around the year. The painter, sculptor, ceramist, potter, writer lived with nature and represents the soul of the Gulf Coast with his unique style. His travels are reflected in some of his water colors, referring to Egyptian friezes. The exhibition brings a personal touch with pages from his diary and ink drawings.
Of course, I am biased...I love the work from Walter Anderson. Are we predisposed to prefer what we recognize? On these week-ends, when I am passing-by the museum of art in Ocean Springs, I walk through to take a peak at the display of Anderson's paintings and marvel.

photographs by the author
entrance of the exhibition

"There is a Bluebird on My Shoulder", 1985 John Alexander

"Herons in Heat", 1987, John Alexander

"Redwings, Crabs, Frogs", 1945, Walter Anderson

"Father Mississippi", 1953, Walter Anderson

"Horizontal Pelican", 1945, Walter Anderson

...and more at the NOAAM

2011-04-23T14:07:00.017-06:00

I read about Margaret Taylor-Burroughs (1917-2011) and knew of her activities geared toward developing art and art venues for African-American artists. Through her writings, she kept promoting her cause and her dedication came to fruition with the opening of the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago.

She, herself, was an artist and it is very appropriate to have her works displayed at the New Orleans African American Museum. Recently, I visited the exhibition composed of linoleum cuts, woodcuts and a few paintings.

The (mainly) portraits are describing subjects with empty, frozen expressions lacking spontaneity. The artist studied the muscles generating these expressions, outlining them with simple, stylistic lines rendering them emotionless. No joy exudes from these works. Even the young subjects playing hop scotch are "behaving". It becomes an imaginary world in which children are wearing bows on their heads, are never dirty and can stay motionless. It reminds me of the illustrations from my childhood books written as teaching tools.

Her intend was to liberate, to express her cultural identity. She stayed mute and conformist, afraid of "letting it go" in her works. It did not materialize in her art, but as a woman of African-American descent, she was a pioneer.

The museum is bringing interesting artists and Eugene Martin's works are displayed in the hall of the main building as reported in a previous blog. Paintings from local schoolchildren occupy an annex. They are worth a thousand words.

no photographs were allowed

photograph of the courtyard, NOAAM, by the author

Scholarly artist

2011-04-19T17:08:00.024-06:00

The Knoxville Museum of Art presents "Ziaoze Xie: Amplified Moments", the first exhibition of the artist in the United States. Xiaoze Xie ( Shau-zuh She-ay) is born in Guandong, China , in 1966 and belongs to the "Tiananmen Square generation." He is presently a professor of Art and Art History at Standford.

The background of Xiaoze Xie may explain his fascination for the written media. " Books because of my horror at the destruction of books by the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution" states the artist in an article published in 2009. The exhibition plunges the visitor in the artist's world with several dark paintings of medium size. They all have a common subject: books, newspapers, abandonned. Some of the works are paintings from his Library Series ( MET Library, 2009, The MOMA Library, 2005, Shangai #1...). With a dreamlike realism, they bring a flavor of silent decay.

More books follow in the next work Untitled (Being and Nothingness #1), 10 square paintings arranged in a bigger grid-like installation, representing red shadows of books from well-known authors like Marx, Sartre, Nietzsche... glowing on the black background (burning?).

Contrasting with these is an "Apocalypse Now" style of fiery rendition of downtown Baghdad, during the i nvasion in 2003 with Fragmentation Series. A closer look shows a mixture of newspaper clips on the left side and the story of the event, painted in layers, burning of official buildings, lines of tanks, weapons, and a layer of local citizens crushed in between. The painting is like a postcard but purposely blurry, like a memory.

The next series of paintings with a heavy political undertone is also related to the Iraq war. It is a gallery of portraits in black and white: Dick Chesney, Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush Cabinet... These are the low point of the exhibition, with their weak message and doubtful impact.

For once, the work I found the most interesting and profound was a video. I often feel that videos are just an excuse to rest for a while, a pretext for a brake. In front of this black and white video, there was no seat. Approximately ten minutes in length, it is about the everyday crowd, you and me in public transportation, anonymous faces, and hands, a lot of hands young and old holding newspapers. The headlines are about wars, disasters, our daily consumption of news. They come and go, horrific but the anonymous person goes on with life, undisturbed. Tomorrow will bring fresh news. The succession of pictures, the collision of events provoke drama and reflexion.The end is poetic and sad with a page of the newspaper floating in the wind and falling on the dirty steps of a subway.

I keep my preferred work for the last " Order (The Red Guards), 1999" : It is a giant scroll -like canvass, depicting a library but old and dusty, with books on shelves, of course in black and white, the books fall from the shelves and at the bottom, closer to the viewer they become dust. Blood-red metal squares like spikes are planted in the wall following a regular pattern.

Among these 30 paintings, drawings and installation, Ziaoze Xie's message is the strongest when related to his cultural heritage. The artist's nostalgia for printed media appears anachronistic when the headlines are about another Chinese artist from an older generation (Ai Weiwei) using social medias to be heard.

photographs were not allowed

photographs from Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-no/2933544350/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-no/2932677231/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-no/2933544186/

"Dancing String Bean" and more at the NOAAM

2011-04-09T16:50:00.025-06:00

The French Q uarter Fest is in full swing and the Treme is quiet today, soaking in the afternoon sun.

On Governor Nichols Street, the NOAAM (New Orleans African American Museum) presents a new exhibition featuring works from Eugene Martin (1938-2005), titled "Dancing String Bean: Paintings and Drawings by Eugene Martin".

The hall is lightened by the colors of several paintings, two of larger size, "The Happy Bartender" and "The Duchess of Texas", both 1994 and on the other side, four paintings, smaller but with the same construction: a background made of colors delineated by sharp lines building a frame and fluid shapes to describe the subject in the center and tell a story. Violet and brown are sometimes used to bring drama (Untitled 2000), but the message is usually happy with a touch of irony.

Then, I concentrated on the drawings, lined up carefully along the walls. The earlier ones, made with ink and bamboo sticks on paper, with weird little personages, cousins of "Ubu", like in "Avoiding Rush Hour" with an upside down moon. The drawings come to maturity with the next set. One of them gives the title to the exhibition.

When looking at these, the viewer, unknowingly, is engaged in the process of seing. The artist is using a well-known optical illusion (cognitive type) described by Joseph Jastrow who drew the famous "Rabbit or Duck?" (1899). Black or white, white or black, the viewer can choose or rather his/her brain. But this becomes too scientific, let yourself enjoy the subjects about happiness , love, dance, .... Just look again...The technique of the drawings is very clean and gracious in its simplicity.

Paintings from the artist can also be viewed in Baton-Rouge, at the Shaw Center for the Art during the exhibition titled "Beyond Black: Ed Clark, Eugene Martin and John T. Scott". The works are more challenging, with the same vivid colors but a sophisticated message. The same irony flavors the works from different periods: whimsical, playful, happy!

I am still discovering the prolific artist. My only regret about the exhibition is the small space ( used at its best by the curator) allowed for the show.

The energy of the colors and the subjects of Eugene Martin bring joy and happiness. Leaving the museum, I can hear a faint music. My imagination? Eugene Martin's works are jazzing.

NOAAM, photograph by the author

all other photographs, courtesy Marie Vinouze, curator of the exhibition.

"The Duchess of Texas", 1994

"Dancing String Bean"

The exhibition at the NOAAM

Social on Julia Street

2011-04-03T15:11:00.013-06:00

Last evening, on Julia, there was art and people were invited to jam. A Spring tradition, "Jammin' on Julia" is well advertised. The crowd is thinner each year and showed little enthusiasm yesterday...Why? Food and music are at the rendez-vous, what about art? Le Mieux Gallery was presenting two artists. Nathan Durfee with "Moments Behind the Eyes", characterized by his anachronistic personages, with their heads in a bubble, isolated and dreamlike. The technique is a mixture of realism interrupted by pixelated areas and naive. The result is disconcerting. Kathryn H unter is the other featured artist, with bright colored cuttings. "Confluence" is about animal and human relationships. The Jonathan Ferrarra Gallery and Arthur Roger Gallery did not bother to bring a new show, and I had already spent plenty of time a month ago looking at the new works of Dawn Dedeaux. Paul Campbell's works were displayed at the Heriard-C imino Gallery. "Koosh" is a series of paintings made with paint-soaked koosh balls and strings saturated in paint. The result is described as "a delicate dance of formal composition and spontaneous chaos." I felt like the repetitive act with random results produced flat works, decorative at best. Finally, I visited Gallery Bienvenu presenting its yearly show of Raine Bedsole's works. The boats with their mystery and symbolism create a strong impression on me. Unfortunately, the mass production of the boats, in all sizes to accommodate buyers, and different colors to match interiors, weakens the message.They are becoming repetitive and meaningless. What about new works? One of the space has become a "Spa" where the visitor can let his/her inner talent flow. The well aligned canvasses were waiting for customers. Artists and gallerists beware, there is no art without viewers.

photographs by the author from top to bottom:

"Ethan Was Studying and Had no Time To Save the Planet" Nathan Durfee

"Stormed" Kathryn Hunter

Rayne Bedsole

Nothingness? Abstract Art?

2011-04-03T10:36:00.019-06:00

How to describe "nothing" or "nothingness" defined as something inconsequent, of no significance?

"Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock" is a book composed of six chapters transcribed from six lectures delivered by the fifty-second Mellon lecturer, Kirk Varnedoe, at the National Gallery of Art during the Spring of 2003.

The first lecture gives an overwiew of the subject, and set the stage for the next five. The author makes references to Professor Gombrich, a previous lecturer, who presented abstract art as "being, at best, whims of trendy fashion, and, at worst, tainted with the most dangerous policies of totalitarian thoughts". After laying out the arguments of the detractors (hoax, propaganda, pictures of nothing...), Kirk Varnadoe with a deep knowledge of the subject, rehabilitates abstract art, corroborating his thoughts with abundant examples, illustrated with numerous photographs to make his point.

He helps the reader (or listener) to make sense of the history of abstract art, starting with the influence of Russian constructivism, to the Bauhaus, and its influence on french art and art in New York, Italian futurism and Pop art. The book is dense and the author goes in depth, discussing artists and their works to build the case for abstract art from Pollock, Tony Smith, Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, Piet Mondrian...The history of abstract art unfolds.

A whole chapter is dedicated to minimalism which was a reaction to Pollock's abstract expressionnism . "Less is more", with differences between East Coast and West Coast minimalism, the West Coast being more Venetian (with softer colors and materials) and the East Coast more Tuscan (hard-edged). I must confess, this is the first time I understand the works from Donald Judd, McCracken and others. Activating the space around the work, making the viewer aware of the space around the work, is a new concept brought by minimalism.

After this presentation of minimalism,the next chapter, which you could expect, is about the evolution of minimalism, the reaction to the movement, with sometimes facetious works, presented in the chapter titled "satire, irony and abstract art". It is a side of abstract art, I was not familisr with . The author puts in parallels works from Roy Lichtenstein and Mondrian or Vasarely or Oldenburg and Brancusi, for example. It ends with a detailed study of Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns works.

The title of the last chapter is "abstract art now", now being then, 2003.

The six chapters, written each to be a lecture, are not disconnected and keep the reader interested by this history of abstract art since the 1950s. Kirk Varnedoe is a great lecturer (and writer) displaying in a very entertaining manner, his vast knowlege. The illustrations are plentiful and well chosen. Notes at the end of each chapter and references at the end of the book bring more information about the sources used by the author.

Abstract art is a challenge for the viewer who has to be engaged when looking at it. This book will help the viewer because:

"Understanding the tradition of abstract art sharpens our experience of what we are seing". "For those who learn it (the tradition of abstract art), it can make something out of nothing".

photographs by the author

"Four-Sided Pyramid", Sol Le Witt, 1997

"Black Plank", McCracken, 1967

"Circle I" and "Circle II", David Smith, 1962

"Number 1" (Lavender Mist), Jason Pollock, 1950

Empty space

2011-03-12T13:12:00.009-07:00

The visit of Blinky Palermo's exhibition at the Hirschhorn becomes an endless walk around the second floor of the museum, with the works of the artist peppering the walls (follow the link to see the photographs.) It is an important retrospective of the works from 1964 till 1977, year of the death of the artist, deceased prematurely on a trip to the Maldive Islands.

For me, it ended up being an intellectual journey. Do not expect emotions, the place appears empty, a dead space. The works representing the periods from the Stoffbilder (fabric paintings) to the Metallbilder, are staying mute. They do not generate any energy. Chromatic, complementary, the colors are for research not for art. The progression along the gallery becomes as boring as listening a student practicing his scales. The works are tedious and at the end sterile. One hopes that the artist eventually uses the colors to send some message...to no avail.

A student of Beuys, defined as a colorist, he also has been called a successor of Matisse and Rothko?

Photograph of the artist, Creative Common

No photographs were allowed

Premonitions

2011-03-11T19:26:00.029-07:00

Alexis Rockman's nightmarish works are lining up the walls at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. " A Fable for Tomorrow" includes 47 paintings representing 25 years of the prolific artist's career. Art? Science? Fiction?

The works are talking about genetic mutations, extinction of the human specie, cross-species copulation, disasters, evolution. Apocalyptic, the message is stark, delivered sometimes with bright or dark colors. The legacy of a culture (ours) is destroyed, annihilated. The paintings describe a strange fauna and flora, peaceful, in harmony, a world populated by ferns, primitive insects or strange mammals, where mankind has no place. They also suggest sounds, like buzzing, chewing, water splashes, animals copulating... Overall, it is a quiet world.

Inspired by the dioramas he gazed at during his childhood's visits to the American Museum of Natural History, by science-fiction movies, or by the painters from the Hudson River school, Bosh, Grunewald, scientists like Von Humboldt, the resulting works are a detailed realism, almost compulsive. Like a scientist, the artist is describing creatures of the future, not created or imagined but carefully researched, at least this is the impression. For example, Evolution, 1992, is a meticulous repertory of 214 plants and animal species. A key is available for the viewer next to the work, like you would find at a museum but in several centuries.

The artist mingles with scientists and went on expeditions in Antarctica and produced "South", 2008, which I thought, is a mediocre composition made of seven panels. He also visited Guyana and brought back illustrations of plants and insects. His most recent period embraces expressionism with his "Big Weather" series depicting tornadoes and severe weather.

The exhibition is timely as the world is watching the events unfold in Japan. The breadth of the message is limited, and I think that it is due to the technique of the artist who has not built his own style to deliver it. He is making references to so many artists from different backgrounds and centuries and the encyclopedic knowledge of the artist stays at one level, weakening the piece of art. Upon leaving the museum, I wondered if I just visited an exhibition sponsored by National Geographic.

photographs by the author

Mardi Gras

2011-03-08T05:33:00.003-07:00

Mardi Gras Indians

photograph by the author

Gauguin, the "sauvage"

2011-03-07T06:51:00.020-07:00

The retrospective of Gauguin's works has reached our side of the Atlantic. The exhibition was recently a complete success at the Tate Modern. The day of my visit, the attendance at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, should predict the same enthusiasm from the visitors. Two levels of the museum are occupied with 150 paintings, sculptures, drawings, ceramics, starting with self-portraits, and progressing through the life of Gauguin. Like a biography, we can follow the painter evolving, according to new places, new friends or circumstances. I never dreamt of seeing these works , dispersed all over the world, at the same location.

The periods are well represented, the artist abandoned Impressionism rapidly, was for a short period one of the Symbolists , evolved to Cloisonnism and Synthetism. Gauguin marginalizes himself and, at the same time, develops the style he is most remembered for, Primitivism. Alone in Tahiti or the Marquesas Islands, recluse in his own world, he creates his paradise, often ill and surrounded by squalor. At times, unable to afford the supplies to paint, he uses the local woods and makes sculptures. The artist always finds a media to create. He is on a mission: " I am a great artist and I know it. It's because I know it that I have endured such sufferings".

Most of his major pieces are here: Oviri, The Yellow Christ, Spirit of the Dead Watching and so many more. Some of the works are not aging well like Ondine ( my opinion). One could regret the smaller display of his earlier and Brittany period.

The exhibition is about Gauguin, the maker of myths, transcending his surroundings and producing a unique collection of works. In parallel with his search for a sometimes confused mysticism and the Universal, he develops techniques and themes that will inspire future artists.

Most art lovers think they know Gauguin, at least I did. But I realized that my knowledge was fragmented. This retrospective, the first in the United States since 1980, gave me the opportunity to look at the works again in a more organized fashion, allowing me to understand the artist. I found the comments somewhat brief, of course the catalogue is always a good resource. Instead, I reread the book written by Bengt Danielsson " Gauguin in the South Seas" and the "Journal des Iles" from Victor Segalen who landed in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands a few months after Gauguin's death and repatriated some of the works on the boat "La Durance".

photographs 1 and 2 Creative Commons

bottom photograph from website http://www.janesoceania.com/tahiti_gauguin1/index.htm

French speaking? follow the link http://lunettesrouges.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/10/30/gauguin/

Abstract art in Baton-Rouge, LA

2011-02-20T10:19:00.042-07:00

Baton-Rouge this week-end?

The LSU Museum of Art presents three abstract artists, from African-American descent, John T. Scott, Eugene Martin and Edward Clark. It is a great occasion to visit the Shaw Center for the Arts, a sober six-storied building located along the Mississippi river, downtown Baton-Rouge. It is a quiet day in an otherwise busy venue, home to the Baton-Rouge Symphony, the LSU School of Art Gallery, the LSU Museum of Art, the Manship Theater (325 seats), classrooms and amenities such as a sushi restaurant on the rooftop.

The place is eerie (early Saturday) but I feel privileged to be here, alone among all these works. After a short introduction with enlightening comments about the artists and abstract art in the African-American community, the exhibition progresses with paintings and sculptures.

The giant canvasses from Edward Clark occupy most of the first and second room, bringing colors and movement to a point of romanticism, rendering abstract landscapes impressionistic, like "Louisiana Red" 2004, red sky, dark swamps, and infinite pale waters reflecting a peaceful , ethereal glow with the four elements air-fire, water and earth interdependent in the painting.

This is followed by "Luminous Turbulence", 2002, pinks and greys, "The Wave" 2006, blues and browns with the brush leaving deep crevasses on the canvas like the lines used to date trees, telling the history of the landscape.

Ed Clark is known for his "push broom" technique, applying the color on the canvass with a broom, bringing spontaneity and a physical dimension to his paintings. He can be qualified as a member of the American action painting movement.

Occasionally, he gives some relief to the canvass by using dry pigments, clay or soil from the countryside he is depicting, like in "The Crescent", 2006.

Smaller paintings, from the 60's and 70's, have a characteristic oval shape. Mainly related to voyages made by the artist, they evoke places with colours, and also bring memories of smells and sounds. The painter travelled extensively and produced the "Bahia Series", 1988, pink, violet , blue, the "Yucatan Series", 1976, turquoise, violet and pale blue, or the "Southern Light", 1978, green, black, blue. I found these paintings less spontaneous. The oval shape freezes the dynamic of the works.

The artist is well represented with 8 giant canvasses, 5 paintings in the oval series, and smaller works. For me, the "Wasted Landscape", 1961, seen above, is the most powerful of the large canvasses with its violent colors and message.

John T. Scott, a son from New Orleans, well known for his kinetic sculptures, is painting and sculpting music with his "Jazz thinking."

The works on display are mainly sculptures, like "Diddle Bow #1", 1983. The "Diddle Bow Series" was inspired by the African warriors who were using the hunting bows to make music after the fight. " Ritual Cutter 1&2", 1978, features two instruments of torture, in bright orange colour and "Dancing at the Crossroads", 1996 occupies a whole wall. The colours are a mixture of Mardi Gras and African exuberance. One can read a story, but the work does not use the space well, hybrid, between a wall decoration and a sculpture.

My preferred works are half a dozen sculptures from the "Circle Dance Series", light, gracious, of small sizes, made in patinated bronze which gives them an eternal look. They are creating rhythm in space with their circles of dance, strings and thin hammers. Like strange instruments, they could be played. "Boarded Back Window", 2001, "Kloee's Dream", "Zydeco Two Steps" with the lines of a dancer enhanced by the play with the shadows.

Three "Ethiopian Graffiti" complete the display.

The exhibition ignores his woodcut prints, but it is another story, and they would not fit in this colored display.

The third artist, Eugene Martin, was born in Washington, DC and later in life, moved to Louisiana. His paintings are a mixture of abstract and figurative. The painter never sided for a style and cubism, surrealism, color field techniques can be found in the same work. In a way, this makes him unique.

The colours are bold, sometimes just gaudy. His satirical abstract pieces send a cartoonish message, but in a sophisticated way, confusing the viewer.

The artist wrote: " They are opposing forces in all living things. My work reflect this and stirs up a contrast of emotions."

This exhibition is very rich and helps me understand these three artists, inspired by their roots, including colors and themes.

They were pioneers using the new abstract language, building their own voice. They will keep being heard.

The gallery's space is well used, and the abundance of works does not translate into overload. They are carefully displayed, each in its best light, without infringing on the next.

My eyes filled with colours, my next visit is the roof of the Shaw Center to enjoy the timid Spring sun and look at the lazy Mississippi.

1. "Wasted Landscape" 1961, Edward Clark

2. "Ethiopian Graffiti #3", John T. Scott

3. " Untitled" 2000, Eugene Martin

4. View from the top floor of the Shaw Center for the Arts

photographs 1, 2, 3, courtesy of the LSU Museum of Art

photograph 4 by the author

Water, boats, history

2011-02-12T06:42:00.013-07:00

This new season, the Newcomb Gallery on the Uptown campus at Tulane University, presents Reflections on Water in American Painting, an exhibition of 51 paintings from the Arthur J. Phelan Collection.

The painting in the first room gives the tone to this event. It represents early steamboats and was part of the display for the " Exposition Universelle" in Paris, 1855. It's interest is purely historical.
(photograph 1)

The paintings, all of modest size, represent boats, or more romantic views, with the sea and countryside in the background during the Hudson River School's period.

The realistic paintings, like postcards represent pleasant subjects, sea, beaches, rivers, swamps, succeeding to boats and bridges but none of them give us a whiff of sea breeze.

The collection has more a historical interest than artistic.

In 1913, the Armory Show brought a storm from Europe and American artists embraced the new ideas ... one century ago.

1. "Bateaux a Vapeur Geants", Hippolyte Victor Valentine Sebron, 1853
2." Steamboat at Night, Mississippi River", Charles M. Mcllhenney, ca. 1885

3." Beach Scene", Aiden Lassell Ripley, 1925

photographs 1 and 2 by the author

photograph 3 courtesy Newcomb Gallery, Tulane University.

Creativity and Disease

2011-02-10T19:12:00.011-07:00

Still thinking about Wojnarowicz's works, I read " Creativity and Disease: How illness affects literature, art and music" by Philip Sandblom, M.D., Ph.D.. First published in 1982, the book is a collection of anecdotes: Matisse was trained as a lawyer but following appendicitis became a painter, Schumann was a pianist but became a composer because he suffered from arthritis... The author describes mental diseases, congenital malformations, aging, defects of sight, hearing, pain, tuberculosis and their effects on the artists and their creativity. He also makes an early disclaimer, stating that the content is not scientific. It is a great reading, giving some insight into the artists lives and their challenges. Visiting the Hirshorn, I finally understood the paper cut collages from Henri Matisse, made at the end of his life. He was unable to stand due to a huge ventral hernia, but kept drawing on the walls around his bed with a long cane. A picture of the scene is included in the book with 82 other illustrations. It contains also 154 references for further reading. Overall, the book brings a new dimension to the artists works, allowing the reader to look at them under another angle. Ultimately, artists have to overcome their human conditions to become creators. photograph by the author "La Negresse", Henri Matisse, 1952

Openings and closing

2011-02-05T20:05:00.010-07:00

First Saturday of the month, the galleries on Julia Street are opened late for the new exhibitions. The crowd is thinner than usual, it is cold in New Orleans.

Arthur Roger Gallery presents Ida Kohlmeyer, a well-known artist in this city, defined as an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor. The collector can buy small works of great quality making this exhibition a "do-not-miss". Daily, I am exposed to Kohlmeyer's "Lollipops" on my way to work.

What about young artists? I noticed Steve Teeters from Lubbock ,Texas,

brought by Prospect 1.5 to Le Mieux Gallery. The artist is using an easy language to speak to us about corporate America through his sculptures. The message is clear.

The Heriard-Cimino Gallery is presenting Carlos Betancourt with photographs and sculptures. Vibrant, full of life, an explosion of colors and shapes with favorite objects, flowers, toy bears, candies, beads for the compositon. The photographs are guaranteed to put the viewer in a great mood. (...decorative, superficial, ennoying with their cute exuberance and obviously favorites, with some red dots already on the walls).

The closing party for Prospect 1.5 is taking place at an interesting venue: Second Line Stages, advertised as a state of the art sound stages located in the Garden District. In a corner, small works of art are displayed (poorly) for the silent auction organized to raise money for Prospect 2. The total art on sale will raise maybe 10 000 dollars...a pitance compared to the budget of such event.

This year, Prospect 1.5 is a make-over with 50 artists.
My opinion about this event? random, poorly advertised. I visited two galleries in my neighborhood, The scope of the event was a far cry from Prospect 1.

So far, I have not experienced anything close to the Biennale in Venice, but time will tell.

Waiting to see Prospect 2.

photographs by the author

1. "Semiotic Staff #11", 1987, Ida Kohlmeyer

2. " Nest Egg" Steve Teeters

3. The entrance at Throwdown 1.5, Second Line Stages

ants, fire and controversy

2011-01-21T19:42:00.014-07:00

After a tour of the permanent collections commented by NOMA's Director Emeritus, looking at Chinese potteries, paintings, sculptures and listening to the history of the museum's collections, the crowd moved to the auditorium to view David Wojnarowicz's video "Fire in My Belly" recently banned from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. The controversy still lingers at the Smithsonian...politicians versus artists.

I felt privileged to be able to watch the entire silent video (approximately a half hour) at the local museum in New Orleans. The visitors in Washington D.C. are not allowed to look at the short 4 minutes 11 seconds version. I was also curious to see the crowd's reactions. Some people left early, visibly upset, my neighbor was making painful sounds during the roosters fight, but overall the room was very quiet, almost too quiet, one could feel some tension.

The raw video was of poor quality at times. The silent version gives all the weight to the pictures, gruesome. A scene succeeds to another, but there is some progression to the story which usually ends up in death, like in the combat of roosters. The rapid succesion of pictures creates an emotional overload, one has not completely absorbed a scene and is hit with the next.

During a half hour, the spectator is saturated with death, tragedy. The message is grim, without hope.

The edited four minutes version (with 11 seconds of controversy) is especially moving. Touched by the images, disgusted at times, I felt like the artist wanted me to participate to his suffering. The artist made me more receptive.
I found the video very powerful, difficult to watch, unpleasant at times.

The controversy has drawn the attention to, but also away from the artist's work. Interesting exhibitions bring up controversy. Desacralisation? Censure? It is important to recalibrate these words, adapt their meaning with the evolving values of our society. Last Summer, visitors had to be eighteen years old to look at Larry Clark' photographs at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, but in Prague fifteen years old could visit the exhibition "Decadence Now".

Would I have watched the video if not banned? Most likely not.( It would not have been on the big screen at NOMA!)

view video

dissonance and abstraction

2011-01-09T19:47:00.031-07:00

At the NOMA's (New Orleans Museum of Art) bookstore, I came upon another treasure for a few dollars. My latest find is a book titled Schoenberg, Kandinsky , and the Blue Rider, published for the exhibition of the same name which took place at the Jewish Museum in NYC from October 24, 2003 till February 12, 2004.

Paintings from Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky and artists from the Blue Rider were exposed together, recreating the group's exhibitions before WWI.

One century ago, the 2Nd of January 1911, new compositions from Schoenberg were played in Munich. In the audience, Kandinsky and Franz Marc were listening...and Kandinsky was drawing. At the time, he was exploring synaesthesia ( the idea that senses were interrelated) and translated the music with colors in Composition III.

The 2Nd of January was followed by a fruitful relationship between the painter and the composer, who first exchanged letters and eventually met.

Along the five essays written by different authors, the reader will learn about the birth of abstraction in that part of the world, the personal lives of Schoenberg and Kandinsky and their inspirations.
Schoenberg himself was a painter. Trained by Gerstl, he was selling portraits at times to supplement his income. He produced oils and drawings for several years before WWI and after a few exhibitions decided that he was just an amateur. He concentrated on his musical career. Kandinsky was an admirer of his works and was painting the music of Schoenberg , who brought discordance, generating energy, creating thoughts, movements. A new era was born: abstraction and dissonance.

The book also describes the birth of the Blue Rider movement, its first exhibition and the publication of the Almanac.

The intellectual effervescence of the time and place was abruptly interrupted by four years of a brutish war. Franz Marc joined the Imperial Army and was killed in 1916, Kandinsky moved back to Russia and Schoenberg to Austria where shortly after the war, he was exposed to the anti- Jewish atmosphere. He moved to the States and Kandinsky eventually to Paris.

The two artists exchanges were very fertile. The book is a testimony to this. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of the relationship and its lasting influence on the art in the 20Th century, bringing a synergy, a simultaneous musical and visual revolution.

The book includes 61 plates reproducing the works presented at the exhibition in NYC, a detailed biography of Schoenberg and Kandinsky, numerous references, and a CD with the entire pieces played at the concert the 2Nd of January 1911, including Second String Quartet in F-Sharp Minor, op.10, Three Piano Pieces, 0p 11, Lieder, opp. 2 and 6.

The Centre Pompidou had a major retrospective of Kandinsky's works in 2009.
Schoenberg's concert? I listened to the recording and discovered that I could see colors too.

Link to the recording of one of the "Three Piano Pieces, op.11" played that evening in Munich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrjg3jzP2uI
1."Der Blue Rider", Kandinsky, 1903

2."Composition VII", 1913

3."Impression III" (Concert), 1911

(1 and 2 public domaine, 3 Flickr sharing)

A modern palace

2011-01-06T11:01:00.022-07:00

This is the last day of the exhibition titled: " Monet-Warhol: Masterpieces From the Albertina and the Batliner Collection" at the National Gallery in Prague or to be more specific the Veletrzni Palace (Art from the 20th and 21st Centuries)

Two months ago, a large panel advertising the exhibition greeted me at the airport. Paris was struck by a Monet fever with two exhibitions, one at Le Grand Palais and the other at the Musee Marmottan. Of course, I was curious to see Monet in Prague. My deception was great when I realized that only one of his paintings was on display at the entrance, "The Water Lily Pond", 1917-1919. The rest of the exhibition was composed of mediocre works from known painters like Max Ernst, Dubuffet, Fontana, Sol LeWitt, Matisse, Kandinsky and more and of course a few Warhol. No photographs were allowed. The 80 works were on loan from the Albertina's permanent collection in Vienna.

However... the visit was worth it. First, I discovered another area of Prague, after a trip with the tramway from the Vltava river to the hills with a beautiful view of the city.

I was also able to visit the permanent collections. The building itself is modern, vast with ample space to display the collections of modern and contemporary art dispersed on 5 floors. Like any building in Prague (it seems) it has its own history. Built in 1925-29, it was destroyed in 1974, and rebuilt to reopen in 1995.

There was a disclaimer at the beginning of the exhibition of International Art, the collection is still modest due to the country's isolation during the Communist regime. Some of the paintings were not in great condition, but one could find Klimt, Egon Schiele, Edward Munch, Egon Adler, Otto Dix, Georg Grosz to name a few.

Czech artists were well represented, and I discovered most of them

Of course, an area was occupied by the works made in glass.

I spent several hours in the Museum, and forgot that I came to see Monet-Warhol...so much more.

photographs by the author

1.The introduction to the exhibition with three sculptures: " Six Headed Horse", Germaine Richier, 1956, " Standing Cardinal", Giacomo Manzu, 1978, "Under the Bridges of Paris", Max Ernst, 1961

2." Castle with a Moat", Georg Klimt, 1908-1909

3."Family Trip", Max Ernst, 1919

4."Great Dialogue", Karel Nepras, 1966

5."Three Dimensional Composition for the World Exhibition", Rene Roubicek, 1922

The "Mad Potter of Biloxi" and the OOMA

2011-01-02T10:40:00.026-07:00

The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art just opened along the Gulf Coast, in Biloxi, Mississippi. The story of the museum in itself, is interesting. Almost completed in 2005, it was entirely destroyed by hurricane Katrina. The architect Frank Gehry went back to the drawing board and designed a new version which includes several independent structures with different functions.

The Mississippi Sound Welcome Center, a wide open space is a meeting place, with a coffee shop, a museum shop and a small gallery to present local artists (and, of course, a cash register with a helpful cashier)). From there, according to taste or mood, the visitor can climb to the third floor and enjoy looking at the Ocean, or just continue following the covert passageway and reach the two main galleries: the "IP Casino Resort Spa Exhibitions Gallery" (an unfortunate name) lighted only with skylights, a space conceived to adapt to the needs of different exhibitions with its adjustable walls and the "Gallery of African American Art". These were my main interests on the campus. The visitor can also find replicas of the Creel House and historical artifacts.

The "George E. Ohr Gallery" and the "City of Biloxi Center for Ceramics" should be completed in 2012.

At the present, the museum is hosting three exhibitions of interest and I started with "The Seeker" presenting twenty-two sculptures from Richmond Barthe, a sculptor close to the New Negro arts renaissance of the 30s in Harlem. Spanning from late 1920's to the 60's, the sculptures are technically flawless, mostly inspired by sexuality, religion and black history.

All the sculptures are figurative, of the same style and the sculptor did not experiment over time. The sophisticated expressions, sometimes too lyrical can become repetitive and lack in originality. Somewhat out of style, they are representative of a genre.

Next was an exhibition titled: "Mortal to Mythic: the Transforming Power of Art, Andy Warhol, selected prints from the Cochran Collection." Twenty-seven prints, including series like "Cowboys and Indians", "Myth Series", and well known prints, like the portrait of Mick Jagger and "Moonwalk". I discovered another Warhol, story-teller, different from the Pop artist with the cans of soup or the portraits of Marylin Monroe. I spent some time in front of The Shadow, which is a self-portrait. Inspired by the Indian custom of the girl drawing the shadow of her lover on the wall as he is sleeping, catching his profile for eternity. I found this self-portrait very moving, the expression of a deeper, thoughtful, fragile, self-preoccupied Warhol-Janus.

Jun Kaneko's glazed ceramic sculptures are scattered through the outdoors and the main gallery. The artist who was born and raised in Japan is highly influenced by his background. The peaceful giant heads, talking to each other are staying mysterious, maybe too Japanese for my taste. The artist is also a painter but none of his paintings were on view. It is the first time I am exposed to his works.

Works from local artists are displayed in one area of the Welcome Center with Helene Fielder from Booneville , MS, this month. "Balancing Act" features several stoneware sculptures with lively colors and shapes.

Of course a whole gallery is dedicated to Ohr's works. I am not inclined to look at potteries but Ohr is reaching beyond the craft. He is enlighted when creating each unique piece. The quality of his works is so far unequaled, so thin, almost translucent when in bisque form (later works), if glazed so colorful, so brilliant. The subject is always interesting, humorous,

inspired. The pot is reaching another level, and the potter transcends the material. Ohr' always surprises me and I am looking forward to see the opening of the George E. Ohr Gallery in 2012.

The visit is definitely worth it, very detailed brochures provide ample information about the artists and the museum itself. The design from Frank Gehry succeeds in "promoting and preserving the culture of Mississippi and the Gulf Coast" and allows guests artists to be displayed in this unique setting. After the visit, one can use the gentle stairs to reach the third floor and look at the Gulf's waters... maybe too close.

"Pitcher" George E. Ohr

"The Boxer" Richmond Barthe, Art Institute of Chicago.

Work from Jun Kaneko, photograph by the author

View from the OOMA, photograph by the author

No photographs were allowed in the Galleries

Katrina at the O

2010-12-19T19:27:00.006-07:00

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans (the O) is presenting an exhibition titled: "One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds" by Dave Anderson.

One more exhibition about Katrina and its aftermaths, really? I saw some photographs on the website and decided to go anyway...I am glad I did.

The photographs are centered around one block of the lower 9th Ward in New Orleans and its rebuilding after the hurricane.

The subjects are people I meet in New Orleans daily, confronted with their worst fear: loosing their homes, which is more than walls, it is their history, their only refuge and legacy, a home.

The photographer is catching them in their despair, but knows also how to bring humor like in "Mystery Chicken", a pair of chicken parading in the street totally out of context, or "James on a Ladder", the prank pic we would do of a member of the family to laugh at during a later reunion.

Augustine and Stacy on each side of the fence one white, one black, and so close, united in the same story, the same tragedy.

Then, a lighter note, the child playing in the grass, oblivious.

"Maxine Blue" or "Maxine at Dusk", Maxine devastated, still alive , already gone.

The new houses appear bright, so defiant , better than before, but empty. Where are the scratches done over the years, where are the souvenirs, A lifetime has been cleaned and there is no going back. It is poignant, life will never be the same.

The photographer in this sobering exhibition catches a resume of countless lives.

photographs by the author

The Duchamp School

2010-12-16T19:18:00.014-07:00

Carrying on my business one recent day (in Paris), I went to the BHV, where I last expected to find an art exhibition, but the title gave me a hint: "Courant d'Art au Rayon de la Quincaillerie Paresseuse." (approximately:Flavor of art at the lazy hardware department)

On the top floor, at " l'Observatoire du BHV", the (not too busy) shopper could take a few minutes to look at the works from fifteen young (and not so young) artists but all alive, made under the duchampian approach of the "ready-made" objects.

I noticed the French adjective to define works derived from Marcel Duchamp 's ideas: "duchampien" now also used in English, duchampian.

I thought about it and found that if we look at every object of our daily life as potential art, life becomes complicated. An object is an object. The esthetic (color, shape, decorations...) can be improved, the function should not be compromised.

Duchamp had a genial idea at the time, and became famous because of it.

The next step is the work from Arman with his

Accumulations, Coleres and more. He destroys, multiplies the object, and in the process gives it a new dimension, creating a work of art. The object cristallizes emotions and the artist interacts with the object.

Duchamp, indeed... the School of Duchamp ? Cute idea from BHV, great advertisement and a nice stroll for the not too busy shopper. But I do not need so many locks on my bicycle, one will suffice.

photographs by the author

"Sans titre", 2010 John M. Armleder

"Marcel Brancusi, Demultiple Marcel", 1987, Gerard Collin-Thiebaut

"Sans titre", 1999-2010, Richard Fauguet

on Art and Artists

2010-12-06T19:15:00.030-07:00

A few days ago, I came upon a book written by the artist Raymond Mason (1922-2010) "At Work in Paris: on Art and Artists." The painter who became a sculptor was born in England and lived in France for most of his productive life.

In this book, Mason talks about artists he met, interacted with, admired ...or not. The final product is a great medley of characters from Giacometti to Balthus, along with Picasso, Duchamp, Matisse and more, also the Who's Who of the time, including art collectors, gallery owners and art critics. The book is a candid report of daily, sometimes mundane conversations, in-depth analysis of the works from artists like Rodin, Giotto, Jacques-Louis David, also here and there texts related to Mason's works, written for exhibitions catalogues.

Several chapters are dedicated to Giacometti. Mason had great respect for the artist, 20 years older, who he considered one of his masters. His writings make us also appreciate the man, modest, generous with others, detached from daily preoccupations and money, driven by his work.

The notes related to Balthus are enlightening for me, I never understood the artist. Mason states that his first meeting with Balthus changed his life and he recognized "the second pillar, with Giacometti, on which a new art of the figure and the figurative world could be built."

Dubuffet is described as heartless, Picasso cruel and superficial, Cartier-Bresson optimistic...

One day, Giacometti interrupted Mason: "You are just a mondain."

A few photographs of the works from Mason made me reflect about the writer...His work appears populist and he was trying to be understood and appreciated by all viewers, regardless of their backgrounds. The sculptor is a great critic of other artists but has little insight about his own productions. At some point he compares his works with Giotto's.

Mason was not afraid and made his opinions known, discarded Minimalism and embraced figurative art reintroducing colors to sculptures.

The book is entertaining, it starts like a biography, but very quickly becomes a succession of sometimes disconnected short chapters. The author knows how to sprinkle some humour and makes us reflect about art.

"La Foule Illuminee" Andre Mason http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_uj/4148846302/sizes/m/in/photostream/

"Girl at a Window" Balthus http://www.flickr.com/photos/hisgett/4682322838/

"Walking Man II" Alberto Giacometti http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

"The Departure of Fruit and Vegetables from the Heart of Paris, 28 February 1969" (1969-1971) Andre Mason

Along the Vltava river

2010-12-02T18:50:00.016-07:00

The walk to the Kampa Museum located on the bank of the Vltava river in Prague is very romantic, especially a month ago, with all the colored foliage. The island is a park, and the building hosting the museum has a long history starting in 1393. It used to be a water mill, of course was damaged during wars, burned, was rebuilt...and after more recent incidents was finally acquired by the City of Prague which allowed the museum to open in 2003. It looks like the week-end residence of a rich aristocrat, with its main building hosting the permanent collections and the Stables exhibition hall, the temporary exhibitions.
Meda and Jan Mladek, Czech-American collectors, contributed to most of the permanent collection, which includes more than 200 works from

Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957) and sculptures from Otto Gutfreund (1889-1927). These two Czech artists' works occupy two levels of the museum and are displayed in a chronological order. Kupta's path is a history of the abstract movement and the Parisian life. I discovered Gutfreund and his cubist sculptures like "Don Quixote" (1911-12), or Cellist (1912-13), dynamic, full of character, powerful. It is poignant to look at his post-war works, academic, emotionless, like the artist had disappeared from his works. He was well-known then, professor at the College of Decorative Arts in Prague. He drowned in the Vltava river in 1927.

The permanent collection of Central and Eastern European artists is rich with hundreds of paintings, sculptures, drawings from Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian artists from the 60's to the 80's and later years. Several donors added works to this already rich collection, including George Soros.

In the Stable exhibition hall, next to the museum, a temporary exhibition was dedicated to Ladislav Novak (1925-1999), who is an original Czech artist. An action painter of a kind, he created "Decollages", "Fumages" and the famous "Froissages", creating a dreamlike world. A fairy like, lonely character is the center of a story, and annotations in French are inscribed with a pencil at the bottom of the works, giving clues about the character depicted. The works could be the illustrations for a book.

One cannot escape the history surrounding these works. Most artists , living in exile or in hiding, could not be silenced and this museum is a testimony to the power of their creativity.

A quote from Jan Mladek is encrypted on the entrance of the Kampa Museum: " If a nation's culture survives, so does the nation". The Czech Republic should fare well.

"Madame Kupka among verticals" (1910-1911) Frantisek Kupka

"Don Quixote" (1911-1912) Otto Gutfreund

photograph by the author:

"Rose" (1978) Ladislav Novak

view of one room, permanent collection at the Kampa Museum

Gloom and doom

2010-11-20T18:23:00.025-07:00

The CAC (Contemporary Art Center) in New Orleans is presenting a collection of mainly paintings, few installations and sculptures with nature as a theme, selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.

The colorful display occupies the first and second level. Featuring numerous artists, the different style's works are of uneven quality. After walking through the exhibition, two thoughts came to mind. Digital photography has changed the vision of contemporary artists. The influence is overwhelming with painters like Torban Giehler with "Mont Blanc",2002, (link is to "Matterhorn", same technique), Jack Goldstein or Timothy Tompkins with his sculpture "Highway 89A". Integrating digital photography in the process of their works, the artists are transforming the landscapes into patchworks.

Another message from this exhibition is that nature is not a benign, nurturing mother earth. Nature is wild, scary. The background for the blue, white flowers is bloody red in "Klenator Draculas", 1977, from Billy Al Bengston, the sunset is cold-violet not warm-orange in "Vrindaban", 2003, from Andy Moses, twigs are dry, threatening.

Cindy Wrigh t's butterfly is bringing bad omens. Where are the fruits, the green pastures, the calming scenes a la Corot?

The new paysagists are seing violence, destruction, gloom.

Are they predicting other disasters?

Are we still living in harmony with nature?

top photograph: view of the First Floor Gallery at the CAC
"Klenator Draculas", 1977, Billy Al Bengston
bottom photograph: Massoud Yasami "On the Edge #5", 1988

"Decadence Now: Vision of Excess"

2010-11-13T19:19:00.017-07:00

The title is promising and the exhibition quite ambitious.

Located in the Rudolphinum (Prague, Czech Republic), one of the oldest concert hall, hosting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gallery focuses on contemporary art and, for this exhibition, on decadence in art going back over the past 30 years.

Upon crossing a vast hall, climbing a staircase to reach the gallery, the visitor is overwhelmed by the quiet, heavy atmosphere and plunges into the first room, a collection of self-portraits from well known artists like Maplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Catherine Opie, David Wojnarowicz, Joel-Peter Witkin, Damien Hirst to name a few.

Deformed bodies, inflicted pain, degradation of the self, the photographs are disturbing.

Four more themes are the subject of the exhibition: Excess of the Body: Sex, Excess of the Beauty: Pop, Excess of the Mind: Madness, Excess of the Life: Death.

One feels repulsion, horror, fascination and intense emotions. All taboos are transgressed and the artists have reach a point beyond which there are no limits.

The media used for some works evokes pain , death, like the artist's blood for "Dessin au Sang #1" (1997) from ORLAN, Erwin Olaf' s academic portraits of princesses with blood splashing across their angelic faces or Geza Szollosi's work with "Project Flesh" (2004), which includes a female pelvis in formol.

Religion with "Saint Sebastian" (1978), "Was the Jesus Heterosexual" (2005) from Gilbert and George, "Veronica wipes the Face of Jesus" (2004), the Stations of the Cross Series from David Bailey and Damien Hirst, or pornography with Jeff Koons's "Blow Job-Ice", 1991, are followed by the last room occupied by works related to death.

At some point, I feel saturated. To rekindle the interest, I try humor, but this does not work, the subjects are very serious indeed.

Yes, it is disturbing, remote because in a museum, but close because of the subjects brought up by these works. We can all agree on the quality of the exhibition, bringing together great works.

"Room #13" is an extension to the theme Excess of Beauty, located across the street at the Museum of Decorative Arts and presents decadence in fashion and design. It is definitely weird with a collection of dolls complete with their death certificates.

More decadent exhibitions are taking place, at the Brno house of Arts with works of Joel-Peter Witkin, at the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen with works of Ivan Pinkava, at the DOX gallery in Prague with works of Gilbert and George...

The booklet advertises decadent movie festivals, conferences, concerts, discussions...

Prague!

2010-11-10T04:19:00.008-07:00

Destination Prague and no time to prepare for the trip.

Upon my arrival, I was glad to find a copy of The Prague Post, a weekly publication in English. The list of galleries, museums, restaurants, bars, concert halls and more is exhaustive. I will not be able to attend all these venues. The choice is difficult.

To discover the city, I walked: Nove Mesto, Mala Strana, the old castle, Stare Mesto...my map is falling apart.
From "John Lennon Peace Wall" in Mala Strana, the Memorial to the victims of Communism or a recent landmark like the dancing house from Frank Gehry which catches the eyes of the visitors along the river, to castles, churches, Kafka's house, the walk becomes a history lesson.

from top to bottom:

the dancing house from Frank Gehry,

the Memorial to the victims of Communism from Olbram Zoubek, sculptor and the architects Jan Kerel and Zdenek Hoetzel

"John Lennon Peace Wall"

photographs by the author

Larry Clark in Paris

2010-11-08T01:07:00.012-07:00

The latest exhibition of Larry Clark's works is creating a heated debate in the media and the art world in Paris. The city of Paris which owns the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, has decided to forbid the entrance to minors ( below 18 years old in France.) In an interview for Beaux Arts Magazine, the artist himself states that he was stunned by the decision and that he has no problems showing his photographs to his own children.

The exhibition titled "Kiss the Past Hello" starts with a display of photographs made by Clark's mother. She had some talent, documenting dog shows, family events, a homey, warm world with a Rockwellian flavor.

Without transition, the viewer is plunged into the dark world of drugs with "Tulsa" (1971.) The photographs, all in black and white and of a small format, line up the wall and the procession is slow, every viewer wants to be confronted with the images. We take turns to look at these scenes, taken in Tulsa, Oklahoma, documenting Clark's friends shooting drugs: a dark background, bright lights, needles.
The second room is lined up with bigger format photographs with "Teenage Lust" (1983) and are mainly related to sex: close photographs of phallus's and vagina's without surrounding, just anatomical pieces or sex acts sometimes perverted like in "Brother and Sister" (1973). The pictures, without poetry, like a documentary, hit the viewer.

The next room has photographs in colors, depicting poor Latino neighborhoods, and introduce us to the world of poverty and marginalisation.

Clark's subjects do not inspire pity. He brings up the conflicts of teenagers experimenting with drugs, sex and guns. Their acts are not perversions, they are confusion, search and sometimes just games.

The question remains, censorship, yes or no? Should we forbid teens to go to the museum? The Mairie de Paris is afraid of being sued. What about putting a disclaimer at the beginning of the exhibition and warn the viewer? Parents could decide if they want to bring their children. Teenagers would be also warned.
Teens are not allowed to look at a document showing their peers living through their darkest times. I can imagine teens running out of the exhibition to shoot drugs and have sex! Instead, it could be a great starter for discussions between generations.

The great retrospective, fifty years of the artist's work with more than 200 photographs brings the crowd to the museum. Pornography or paedophilia? These words have been used. I do not agree, the photographs are a testimony, photojournalism.

Larry Clark is a mere observer... like his mother. Just different subjects!

the photographs of Larry Clark are available on numerous sites

Rootless artist?

2010-11-04T09:10:00.016-06:00

A whole exhibition is dedicated to Gabriel Orozco at the Centre Pompidou, Galerie Sud. Finally, it is the occasion to view the work of an artist who, so far, as been difficult for me to understand. Orozco lives several months per year in Paris, but spends time also in New York City and Mexico City. Born in Mexico, he claims to be rootless , rejects the idea of regional or national identity and does not have a studio. He is known for his interactive works like "Ping Pond Table" (1998).

We are warned before entering to obey the orders given by the guards, two persons dressed in Mexican policemen uniforms, part of a performance called "Imported Guards" (2010). Is it supposed to be humoristic? The room appears dark and colorless (other than three to four paintings as above). I read again and again about the artist's statement, the transformation of the everyday object to make it reach a new artistic dimension. Duchamp? One step further?

The brochure describes also three lines: the floor, the market tables and the walls. I started to walk along the walls, and looked at photographs, drawings and paintings, without emotions, including in front of the photographs of the work called "My Hands Are My Heart" (1991), showing the hands of the artist molding clay to the shape of a heart in front of the torso of the artist, symbol-cliche.

On the tables, surrounded by a black line on the floor as described in the brochure, the viewer can look at a testimony to "ten year's sculptural experiment". I found that the residues of ten years of research were not that exciting: socks stuffed with papier mache looking like sad vegetables, ("Two Socks", 1995), a game of chess but skewed "Horses Running Endlessly" (1995), sculptures in terra-cotta evoking the relationship to the body, and constantly a guard in uniform warning the viewer not to cross the line. The visit becomes frustrating. Was this the goal? The visitor cannot interact with the works, they are staying out of reach. I thought "French Flies", (2010) was funny. Numerous flies flattened, each on a little piece of white clay, swatted by the artist last Summer when he was spending some time in the French countryside.

The third part, with the objects on the floor is definitely worse, maybe the objects are bigger: "La DS" of course is on display but the viewer cannot approach it. Then the objects succeed each other lying on the floor or hanging from the ceiling: shoebox (Empty Shoe Box, 1993), a running fan with toilet paper whirling around ("Toilet Ventilator", 1997), an elevator modified to fit the artist's body (Elevator, 1994), three arms in clay (Three Arms, 2005) , a torso (Torso, 2004) and more... all these objects modified by the artist to generate a new space and surprise the viewer.

The walls are transparent and I see the astonished passerbys taking a glimpse. I feel some relief upon leaving the Galerie Sud.

No photographs were allowed.

Photograph by the author made at the FIAC, "Trebol Time" (2005)

Back to the FIAC

2010-10-24T12:40:00.007-06:00

OK, OK, I was still recuperating from the time zone changes the other day. I went back to the Grand Palais and had a great visit today, even after waiting more than one hour, sometimes under the rain with a valid ticket in my pocket. The crowd would not bulge.
I did some shopping, why not a small Chamberlain in my office, a Cy Twombly for the waiting room, a Joan Mitchell for the entrance. Donald Judd would match my furniture in the living-room.
Of course I am jocking...but I am dreaming, and like many visitors, making pictures, our way of owning part of these chefs- d'oeuvres. Sometimes there is a small red dot on the wall, but not too many, and usually they are near works from well-known artists.

Like the other visitors, one more look...till next year.

short notes, on the road

photographs by the author

right: "Chicago Caryatid #4", 1979, Lynda Benglis

left: "Abat-jour #2", 1919, Man Ray

Around the FIAC

2010-10-23T11:37:00.012-06:00

The long week-end at the FIAC in Paris includes a visit to other art shows like SLICK, Show Off, Art Elysees, Access and Paradox and more.

As a tradition, I spend a few hours in Le Marais and this time visited Access and Paradox, rue Vieille du Temple.

The exhibition located in the indoor market is a mixture of galleries, associations, private and public institutions with 32 stands. The artists represented are from France, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and one artist from Sarajevo. UNESCO is involved in this project as part of the program "2010, International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures."

The presentations were very interesting indeed, but I will not detail each of them which would be tedious. A gallery from Norway has an installation and performances, unfortunately, these are scheduled, and time is precious during the FIAC, I could not wait.

I noticed the work from Luc Kheradmand with "Agonizing Memories", 2009-2010, presented by a young gallery (ISDEAD) which is relocating in Belleville in a few months (work is in progress).
It is a collection of documents from 50 computer viruses which have contaminated the Internet from 1980 till 2009, selected by the artist because they give a glimpse into the personal history of the authors or the history of cyberculture.The work is composed of two parts, a book and the viruses stored on memory cards (follow the link on "Agonizing Memories" to look at it.) Most of the quotes on the book are poems like the virus LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT, citations, complaints. The artist is building "an archeology of the future."

Lina Scheynius, a swedish photographer, made me feel like a voyeur. Through a peephole I could look at white and black photographs of her daily life, one per day, for a year, some very personal, each a page of her photographic diary.

Another event was taking place on the first floor: "Art by Telephone". Fourteen artists mailed the material needed to build their work. On the receiving side, two curators are following the instructions from the artists, by videoconference, and build the work. The telephone used in the past by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in 1922 is now the Internet and I can see (briefly) one artist on the screen. Unfortunately, technology can be tricky and the picture disappears. The sound is almost inaudible at times and the show appears quite desorganized... I never had a chance to see the artist's production.

no photgraphs were allowed

1/2 FIAC

2010-10-21T11:22:00.012-06:00

Today, I visited the FIAC at the Grand Palais. Compared to last year, the crowd was sparse. Was it because of the strikes in Paris? If I had not read the papers I would not have noticed the disruptions, at least in my area.
The gallerists appeared morose and the visitors were not buying.
Space is plentiful. Last year, a mezzanine was adding square footages and well-known galleries had created a sanctuary-like structure, surrounded by private guards to show their best pieces.
Overall, the galleries did not bring great treasures this year, but mainly small minor paintings from well-known artists, sometimes straight from the seller, still hanging in questionable frames.
Noticeable were works from Louise Bourgeois, who died this year, Joan Mitchell and Lynda Benglis, also two works from Jean-Michel Basquiat. A great restropective of the artist is taking place at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
This is my first impression, usually the right one.
I still have to visit the other half, at the Cour Carree du Louvre. I may even go back to the Grand Palais...in case I missed something.

short note, on the road...

The King of the streets

2010-10-20T12:36:00.012-06:00

Waiting for the opening of the FIAC tomorrow, I could not miss the exhibition "Basquiat" at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. A retrospective of Jean-Michel Basquiat 's works (1960-1988) planned for the 50's anniversary of his death.

The story of his short life is centered mainly around Manhattan where he became known for his graffitis signed SAMO. The early graffitis begin the exhibition, with their primitive symbols and drawings, arrows, suns: cave art in the street. As we progress along the rooms, the technique changes and the colors become brighter and brighter, till they reach a caribbean flavor, with the subject often drawn in black on sharp reds, oranges, yellow, blue backgrounds. The paintings are violent and the language becomes personal with symbols like the crown. The artist paints everything including old refrigerators, wooden panes, bags, with ferocity. He is translating the violence of the street on the canvass and becomes the voice of the anti-establishment and presents himself as a paria. Through his paintings, he makes the kings of the street become part of the art world.

A number of paintings refer to the anatomy of the human body, like "Skull", 1981. The artist describes the horror of being, a skull with black content and bones like a cage or a prison. Using what he calls his "cultural memory", he offers a glimpse into the underworld where kings get their heads cut off and pictures himself as a young derelict.

The works of Jean-Michel Basquiat are noticed and soon are hanging on the walls of the galleries. His message becomes political, the words are changing: liberty, skinheads, asbestos, negroes... He creates "Slave Auction", 1982, "Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta", 1983 and "Revised Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta". The only light painting is "Self-portrait with Suzanne", 1982, with pastel colors and a happy subject.

The works loose their spontaneity. The association with Andy Warhol is not a success for Basquiat. He has become a member of the new establishment but his voice is chocking. One more time, he tries to reach his roots and compose paintings with subjects related to Voodoo, african masks. The result? an advertisement like "Zydeco", 1984 or the caricature of an african-american on gold background "Gold Griot", 1984. His preoccupation with death becomes overhelming and he composes one of his last piece called "Eroica II", 1988. The colors are flat, heavy and the composition has lost all energy.
The king of the street is no more.

The retrospective is very extensive with 100 paintings, drawings, objects. But some viewers cannot be reached. The german couple next to me shakes their heads, and the lady from the 16th arrondissement honestly declares that she will never understand. The giant fishhook on "Revised Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta" is not a threat to the catfish, but to african- americans who used to be hung from trees. How can we understand the graffitis without walking in some areas of NYC?

Jean-Michel Basquiat was so young when he died fifty years ago, if...

photograph by the author: ENOB, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1985 at the FIAC

Tantrums, Accumulations, and more...New Realism

2010-10-18T12:34:00.016-06:00

In Paris, the first visit on my list: Arman (1928-2005) at the Centre Pompidou. I was curious to see a restropective of the artist who made the news when I grew up. Would I find his works provocative? irrelevant?

The visit brought me along the artist's path, from his Allures, his Cachets in the 1950's and 60's to the last piece called The Day After, 1984. The exhibition was presented by themes and more or less chronological order. Poubelles, Coleres and Coupes, Accumulations, Art Industry. The object is shattered, recreated, accumulated and acquires a soul in the process, brings the emotion: repulsion in front of the Poubelles Organiques (Organic Garbages), horror when looking at the Accumulation of gas masks titled "Home Sweet Home", 1960, discomfort in front of the "Portrait-robot of Eliane", a morbid display of her personal belongings. The "Portrait-robot of Yves Klein" , his friend, is touching, a judo uniform, an old tie, a crumbled letter, a blue page, a leaf, like relics in the transparent square box. The works can bring a smile, "Kill them all and let God sort them out" an accumulation of insects sprays or serious thoughts, "The Massacre of the Innocents", an accumulation of broken dolls.

With his Tantrums or Rages, the artist destroys the object, and I still cannot understand why so many instruments inspired this violence: banjos, mandolines, violins, cellos, pianos, trumpets... I understand the broken televisions, tables, cars...

Along the works, great videos from the artist can be looked at, also a very special document, the manifest of the New Realism signed by Arman, Yves Klein, Restany and others.

The last section (1980's) shows Arman, painter again, using colors with the same rage. He throws the paint directly on the canvas, walks on it, smashes the tubes. Some of his late works appear fake, Arman becomes a caricature and like any artist repeating himself, his message becomes flat like in "Hello Jackson" 1990, "Starry Night", 1995 or "Desert Bike", 1991.

The exhibition finishes with one of his darker work: "The Day After" made in bronze, a remake of his Combustions from the 1970s: a show of the anguish caused by the destruction of a civilization represented by the object which represents us...is that it?

I highly recommend this exhibition, the curators have ensured that all the major works of the artist are included and presented in an interesting context.

Arman still surprises me. His message is relevant today. The headline news are about crowds burning cars in France, adolescents destroying the objects which define the daily world they resent and feel powerless to change.

photographs were not allowed

top photograph http://www.flickr.com/photos/workflo/5025224751/

bottom photograph from the author: "La Victoire de Salemotrice", 1967, Accumulation Renault

Paris!

2010-10-11T16:16:00.007-06:00

The preparation for a trip to Paris starts on the Internet. The art scene is busy in October. From the 21th till the 24th, the FIAC brings together 194 galleries and 3500 artists at the Grand Palais and Le Louvre with works exposed along the Jardins des Tuileries.

Just around the corner, an exhibition of Monet's works takes place also at the Grand Palais.

The Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris is showing a retrospective of Jean Michel Basquiat's works and the Centre Pompidou has two outstanding exhibitions one dedicated to Arman and the other to Gabriel Orozco.

Takashi Murakami is at the Chateau de Versailles.

And more... I have to visit ADDICT Galerie, and a number of galleries in "Le Marais" area and I have been invited to a photographer friend's new studio!

Strikes are on the horizon and may change some of my plans...but walking in Paris is not that bad after all.

Love in the Garden

2010-09-24T19:41:00.012-06:00

With its title and the invitation's photograph, what a program for the yearly event at the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden.

As a member of the New Orleans Museum of Art, I get invitations to balls, dances with local bands, movies, and now yoga sessions, Tai Chi and Chi Kung (?) in the galleries. Museums are creating programs, some of them I find questionable , to bring patrons.

This evening, I chose to attend the function. It is the occasion to look at the sculptures in the light of the flickering torches against the dark background of the night.

The music from the band and the culinary surprises provided by the finest restaurants in New Orleans make the visit very enjoyable.

The sculptures are taking another dimension and some become islands of lights, others become phantoms in the bushes. Their shadows mingle with the trees, and the garden becomes a new adventure.

The giant spider from Louise Bourgeois is trying to build a web around one of the tables and Segal's bench glows under the light.

I would not miss a walk in the Sculpture Garden at night... I do not think that I will attend the yoga session at the Museum.

photographs by the author

Dali: The Paintings

2010-09-11T09:32:00.011-06:00

My latest reading is heavy. Before my visit to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, which latest temporary exhibition features Dali, I started to read the book produced by Robert Descharnes and Gilles Neret. "Dali: The Paintings."

Composed of two volumes, Part I (1904 till 1946) and Part II ( 1946 till 1989), it includes 1648 illustrations and tells the great story of Dali. It contains extensive quotes from Dali's "Secret Life". The book is full of anecdotes which allow us to understand the complex human being and his conflicts.
The reporting of everyday events, like the story of his inspiration for the "Soft Watches" (the idea struck Dali one evening after eating camembert for dinner), never becomes mundane. We learn about Dali's anxieties, including his difficult relationships with women. His first meeting with Gala, who became is wife, is touching, and like any love story is unique. A detailed account of Dali's life including his relationship with his father, his friends, his financial difficulties and more, helps the reader understand the complexity of the man and the artist who was often called a genius and often misunderstood (he enjoyed both).
The reader can follow the maturation of the artist through his different periods, presented in the context of the art movements of the time with the history of his life in the background.
The book is also an extensive compilation (not a catalogue raisonne) of the artist's works with enlightening comments from the authors.

Some of the quotes from Dali's Secret Life :

" As a child I adored that noble prestige of old people, and I would have given all my body to become like them, to grow old immediately! I was the anti-Faust. Wretched was he who, having acquired the supreme science of old age, sold his soul to unwrinkle his brow and recapture the unconscious youth of his flesh! Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life, let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating, on the condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul."

"One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams."

And many more...

Dali was looking for eternity...his work is timeless.

The High...

2010-09-09T20:46:00.029-06:00

... is the Museum of Art in Atlanta. Named after the High family who donated the land on Peachtree Street. The High is located in Midtown and is easy to spot: a congregation of white buildings added over the years.

Richard Meyer (1934), who favors the color white, designed a 135,000-square-foot building in 1983. Two new buildings were added in 2002 to expand the museum's size to 312,000 square feet. The architect for this project is Renzo Piano (1937).

The color white is the only common feature between the buildings. The curvy building from Meyer otherwise clashes with the angulous shapes from Renzo Piano. Piano's style, who built the Menil Collection in Houston, is recognizable, but due to its scale, the buildings looks like vast, windowless, graceless hangars. The one level museum in Houston, also white, has a mediterranean flavor and the system of panels to filter the sunlight brings an extra nautical or aerial touch. Adding to the coldness of the High is the grey cement courtyard as opposed to the fresh green lawn in Houston.

Walking through the entrance, the visitor is surprised by the brightness of the surroundings and the vast space of the atrium which spreads from the first floor to the skyway level, white with a touch of blue through the glass ceiling (the day of the visit).

At each level, balconies overlook the central area, and a gently inclined walkway brings the visitors to the different levels.

The three buildings (the Stent Wing, the Wieland Pavillion, the Anne Cox Chambers Wing) are connected by glass bridges.

To the left, "Mouth #15" Tom Wesselman, 1968

There is no shortage of space for the permanent exhibition. Large walls and wood floors, the setting is ideal. However, the visit was short due to the lack of interesting collections. European, American paintings, sculptures, crystal, furnitures...the collections are sparse and made of minor works .

The goal of my visit was to see the temporary exhibition "Dali: The Late Work". The works were crammed on the walls or in the corners. The rooms were packed, full of visitors brought by this unique exhibition showing some rarely seen works. They were unable to take the few steps back and forth necessary to appreciate the visual effects of some of the paintings (for example: "Fifty Abstract Paintings") and feel the full impact of the monumental compositions like "Santiago El Grande". The temporary exhibition was not given the space it deserves.

The High has a lot of space, what about the content?

"The Shade" a sculpture from Rodin is a gift from the french governement to the High. 106 Atlanta arts patrons who died in an airplane crash at Orly airport in Paris in 1962.

"House III" Roy Lichtenstein, 1997 decorates the side of Meier's building.

photographs by the author

"Academic Surrealist or Surrealist Academician"

2010-09-06T08:53:00.011-06:00

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta presents a well publicized exhibition titled: "Dali: the Late Work.". On display are the works produced during four decades (1940's till the 1980's) by the prolific artist. It could be called his post-Surrealist period ( he was banned from the Surrealist movement in 1934).

The first room is an introduction with photographs from Philippe Halsman showing the artist in various poses. The photographs from the series "The Cosmic Dali" are well-known with "Dali Atomicus" (1948), "Mid Summer Night's Mare" (1949) among others, a total of fifteen photographs to wet our appetite.

The second room is occupied by ten small paintings executed between 1930 and 1940, at a time when Dali was part of the Surrealist movement. Theses paintings represent for me the Dali I know the best. I came to see the late works.

Finally, the visitor reaches the subject of the exhibition. The gigantic canvasses, including "Madonna of Port Lligat" 1950, "Santiago El Grande" 1957, "Christ of St John of the Cross" 1951, "Assumpta Corpucularis Lapilazulina" 1952 have not been displayed in the United States since the 50s. A mixture of Surrealism and Classicism, they define the religious period of the artist. Dali mixes his own symbols (horns from rhinoceros, eggs from ostriches) and religious symbols. Gala, his wife becomes the virgin Mary. Pope Pius XII encouraged Dali to pursue his search for religion, the painter became an iconoclast in the process.

The technique of the artist is flawless. For the "Christ of St John of the Cross" , he uses chiaroscuro. The special angle looking at Christ from above makes the viewer feel like being God looking at the crucified subject who himself is looking down to the fishermen, representing us, the viewers.

The visit continues with Dali's preoccupations: genetic, atom, the search for eternity are the subjects of the works, lithogaphs, prints, paintings. He mixes art, science and some charlatanism.

A small room is dedicated to Dali, the illustrator: "Don Quixote", "Ten recipes for Immortality", "The divine Comedy" . These lithographs are well known, a reminder of the quality of the artist. The prints are technical masterpieces.

Random portraits of famous personages can be seen in a corner, also, in the same area, a few jewels and Dali's game of chess, his experimentation with holography, two videos for tired visitors, more photographs from Halsman. This section of the exhition does not flow well. It is just "put together".

Dali is also the precursor of Pop art. "Portrait of my Dead Brother" 1963, "Fifty Abstract Paintings" 1963, "The Sistine Madonna" 1958 are crammed with among other works the sculpture titled: "White Eagle" 1974. Unfortunately, the space is very crowded, and this visual experience is hampered by the size of the room.

And then, it is over. The special Dali store is right there, one can buy fake mustaches, cups with Dali's portrait, jewels...

As a whole I was deceived by the exhibition...not by Dali. The rarely seen works deserved a better setting. The High Museum of Art is not short of space and could have used three times the square footage for this exhibition to give it its full impact. It would also allow a better flow of the crowd.

Dali, Don Quixotte

photographs are reproductions from the book: " Dali: The Paintings" from Robert Descharmes and Gilles Neret, made by the author

1. "St. James of Compostela", 1957
2. "Landscape at Port Lligat", 1950
3. illustration for "pages choisies de Don Quichotte de la Manche" by Joseph Foret, 1957

Blue mountains

2010-08-05T19:25:00.020-06:00

This Summer, what about a trip to... Knoxville, TN.

The Dogwood Festival is in full swing, bringing artists from different backgrounds: musicians, sculptors, actors, painters.

Knoxville is putting on a show. Marketplace is filled with visitors and the crowd applauds a piece of Shakespeare played by local comedians. Downtown is thriving.

Sculptures are lining the streets and the parks.

Crowds of parents and children are making family pictures next to the sculptures, finding a background, a space to inhabit.

This is a giant step for this city which appears to ignore the economic downturn.

"Tower of Remembering" Robert Pulley

"Gilding the Lily" Duke Oursley

"Threaded" Isaac Duncan"
"Wrapped around you" Davis Whitfield

"Prism Arc with Folded Circle" Carl Billingsley

"The Storyteller" Mike Rolg

photographs by the author

Listen to Jazz and look at paintings

2010-07-10T12:00:00.007-06:00

Music from Ted Nash and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra inspired by paintings: "Portrait in Seven Shades".

The musician selected seven painters including Monet, Dali, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, Chagall and Pollock. Seven videos were made at the MOMA, they can be viewed on YouTube.

No comments, just listen...and look.

(FOLK) ART

2010-07-08T20:00:00.018-06:00

The exhibition at NOMA titled "Swamp Tours: Exploring the Louisiana Contemporary Collections" made me reflect on the subject of Art versus Folk Art.

It is a medley of works bringing together "unusual and unexpected acquisitions" from the NOMA.

The artists represented include David Butler, Clementine Hunter, Lynda Benglis, Noel Rockmore, Ida Kohlmeyer, Jeffery Cook... and more. There is art and folk art. Well, where do we draw the line?

I tried to find the elements of folk art, is it its utilitarian, decorative? Is it it's reflection of more primitive mythology and fears? Does it represent a smaller community?

Art work is intellectually driven, significant, representing a society, a civilization.

It is also the viewer.

It is a fascinating subject and I am not to write a thesis,... just thinking... This exhibition is very interesting indeed , sometimes whimsical. A flavor you would not find anywhere else, complete with the gourmet turtle soup I had for lunch at the museum's cafe.

photographs by the author

Forty

2010-06-27T11:27:00.015-06:00

This Summer, the NOMA presents 40 artists with two characteristics in common, they are women and from Louisiana. The works cover the period from 1965 till 2010. The two rooms dedicated to this exhibition appear cramped, filled with sculptures and paintings.

There is art for every taste, Surrealist, Realist, Abstract... from known and not so well known artists.

The exhibit is interesting because of its diversity, which also makes it difficult to absorb.

Among all the artists, I noticed the work from Jesselyn Benson Zurik (1916), "the Madonna of the Chair", 1980. It is an interesting minimalist sculpture but it is already a late work for the Minimalist movement.

Another original work from Ida Kohlmeyer retains the attention. "Mythic Throne", 1986, combines painting and sculpture. One can find a flavor of New Orleans but also an early combination of high and low art which made Takashi Murakami well known in the 90s till the present.

Rayne Bedsole is represented by a collage of a silhouette againts a dark background. Her works make me dream. I especially like her boats, symbols of voyages, including the ultimate voyage. Her use of symbolism blends the Mythology of different cultures to create works telling the universal story of Mankind.

One of the limitations of such exhibition is that it presents a very narrow window of some artists career. For example, Lynda Benglis, a prolific artist, who expressed herself with strong messages to fight for women's representation, deserves a better display than one sculpture.

Of course, one of Lin Emery 's kinetic sculpture "River Tree" was at the center of the room. Her metal sculptures, with nature as the subject, are well-known in New Orleans.

Even with some informations about the artists printed next to the works, this exhibition stays superficial. Using a musical term, the works are too discordant to be appreciated in such closeness. One can ask the goal of the curator: to show a great number of women artists in Louisiana? Unfortunately, it just resembles another end of the year College or art school exhibition.

photographs by the author

Black holes and spaceship

2010-06-16T19:47:00.012-06:00

Lee Bo ntecou at the MOMA fills an entire room with three sculptures and a dozen of works on paper. This is the latest exhibition of the artist titled: "Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense" which covers 30 years of the artist's career.

The room is centered around a mobile which occupies most of the space with its moving shadows.

The wall sculptures, which became the artist's signature in the 50s are made of steel and canvas taken from discarded conveyor belts. They are ominous with this black hole. The works are untitled to leave the imagination of the viewer wander.

These works represent the post-war period of the artist, when using discarded material was still a novelty.

The mobile (1980-1998) took 18 years to complete. It looks maybe like a vessel from outer space, some alien composition but contrary to the wall sculptures dark and threatening, it came from a happy fairy tale. I found it very decorative, elegant but with a message somewhat weaker.

Overall the exhibition did not meet my expectations, too few works were displayed to represent the artist. An overview of her works is available in this article.

photographs by the author

body and place

2010-06-09T19:47:00.012-06:00

Walking on Broadway in Manhattan, I met Antony Gormley ...a sculpture, cast of the nude body of the artist, located accross the Flatiron Building.

The Madison Square area is the scene of an installation titled Event Horizon . Thirty one sculptures are perched on top of buildings, or just stand on the ground like this one.

The sculpture feels out of place expressionless, humanoid from another planet, with a stiff pose, frozen in space and the crowd keeps flowing by, unaware of this intruder.

It is almost a game...finding the sculptures. I see one, a small silhouette far away. I am looking at the sky, clouds, light and back to the street . The crowd appears different now, part of a bigger space. This scene in Manhattan is like a theater. I realize, the universe, the sky, the skyline, the buildings, the square, my space, myself are all intricate, we are all part of the same world at this instant. Of course, this awareness occurs only if the viewer is "playing the game', let him/herself be a participant. The intention of the artist is reached, to reawaken the bodily sense of self.

This installation is not intrusive. It can be ignored, and a large number of passersby are doing just that.

Am I looking better at the skyline of this area of Manhattan?...probably, I am discovering new angles, unreachable places.

The artist himself describes the goal of the installation: "The level of invisibility and the idea of the gaze, is the principle of the work; the idea of looking and finding, or looking and seeking, and in the process perhaps re-assessing your own position in the world."

This month, a major installation from Antony Gormley can be viewed at the White Cube Gallery also Critical Mass is displayed in Sussex and the artist is looking into exhibiting in Asia.

top photograph from the author

bottom photograph from http://www.flickr.com/photos/28722563@N05/4468781794/

Julia Street

2010-06-06T14:27:00.011-06:00

This week-end was busy in New Orleans for the art lovers. Friday night was the opening of a new exhibition at the Garden District Gallery, titled "Treasures of the Gulf". Among the 18 artists represented, Bill Myers from Ocean Springs did retain my attention with his sculptures. Interesting compositions, well seated (on a pile of fake books usually), they are built of strong materials, but they appear fragile and bring a flavor of nostalgia. Each tells a story.

The same evening, I visited the studio of the sculptor-music composer Christian Van Campen...one week early, his open house is next week.

Yesterday was the first Saturday of the month and the art galleries were opened late for their new exhibitions. At the Arthur Roger Gallery, one room was filled with art from local artists related to disasters...again. The work from Dawn Dedeaux "Broken" 2006-2007, sounds of laments coming out of a wide broken pipe is so timely.

Another work, from Jacqueline Bishop , titled "Tresspass"2003-2004 is premonitory.

The show "Field Recordings" was lighter at the Heriard-Cimino Gallery. In a dark room, the videos from Courtney Egan went through the lifecycle of a flower with "Repercussion", or made the Spanish Moss float on the wall. All these videos require precise synchronisation of the cameras and sometimes sounds.

The action was also in the street, a Jazz funeral for the dead pelicans went by. At the end of the parade, they left behind an installation?...street art?

photographs by the author

photographer, artist

2010-06-01T18:50:00.010-06:00

Photographer, artist...

We are talking about Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22,1908-August 3, 2004), French photographer, considered the father of photojournalism. A fourth exhibition (1947, 1968, 1987) of this world-known photographer, one of the founders of the Magnum Agency, is taking place at the MOMA till June 28.

Three hundred photographs were chosen by the curator who divided the impressive collection by themes: Modern times, Encounters and Gatherings, Beauty, Old Worlds, New World, , Portraits, Photo Essay... The visitor could be overhelmed, but the presentation is so well organized that one goes from room to room, eager to look at more photographs and travel in time and space.

Some of them in particular did touch me, they reminded me of a time when the weekly magazine Paris Match was in every household. These were the news, Cartier-Bresson's photographs bringing the other side of the world and they made me dream when I was a child.

The "eye" of the photographer captures scenes from Harlem, the French countryside, Montmartre, scenes from China, historic moments, everyday life, portraits from well known writers, philosophers... The world was waiting for Cartier-Bresson to create the event? Cartier-Bresson was listening to the world, knew how to be at the right place and the right time and click in cadence with the event, anticipating it.

Each photograph is a composition, this may be due to an early training as a painter. Later in life, Cartier-Bresson abandonned photography and went back to painting and drawing..

The magic of the little Leica camera...which appears big today.

Performance Art at the MoMA

2010-05-25T20:02:00.018-06:00

Marina Abramovic is sitting like a queen, a priestess, in the middle of the atrium at the MOMA. Her subjects can face her and gaze at her eyes as long as they feel like. The line is long, and there is a crowd watching the scene. "The Artist Is Present" is a Performance Art show, with the artist sitting daily from the opening of the museum till it closes.

The day I visited, she was wearing a white gown. It looked like she was still in her comfortable bathrobe and it felt homey. This red gown would be appropriate for Christmas. Is she afraid of her aging body? Days after days, she is facing a viewer at a time, surrounded by the crowd but ...absent. Did the patient visitors feel different after this lifetime experience? Was this like hypnosis? Did she communicate some energy? Was this encounter uplifting? What occurred during these long minutes or hours? Watching this event, I was quickly bored and ...

went on to the upper floor. Ignoring the warnings at the start of the exhibition, I plunged into the noise and the images to look at 40 years of the retrospective... It was not a pleasant experience: looking at a beautiful woman screaming till she passes out, self-inflicting wounds , reaching a catatonic state after ingesting medications... The videos were graphic.

Several performances were reenacted by actors.These are not "Happenings", spontaneous with the involvement of the viewer. They are well rehearsed pieces, with very slow motion, forcing the visitor to stay and stare. Voyeurism? Interest? An actor is lying naked with a skeleton on top of him in "Nude with Skeleton" (2002). An actress perched high along a wall, naked on a bicycle seat, moves her arms slowly at times in "Luminosity" (1997). Was it shocking? Not really, I did not feel involved and just watched.

Freud would have brought an interesting side to this exhibition.

A video shows Marina naked wearing only the hat from her mother (or father) with the communist star, standing mesmerized with blood oozing from the wound drawn on her belly (the five pointed star). One can imagine the little girl, who never felt loved by her powerful communist mother, rebelling.

The beautiful scene with the arrow titled "Rest Energy" (1980), made me think about these old postcards lovers used to send each other. But can it be reenacted with actors? The intensity of the relationship between Ulay and Marina Abramovic which transpire in this scene cannot be reproduced.

The artist who mixes her history and Balkan's history early on, has developped a cult of personality over the years, and this weakens her message.

A debate is heating up among performance artists ( galleries, copyright lawyers, museums). Who should perform? The artist only? Can actors reenact a performance? As a viewer, I feel that the point to all of this art is to look at the artist perform. The performance belongs to the creator, otherwise it feels like looking at a copy. The presence of the artist, his/her aura is essential to the performance of the work. I found the videos powerful because I was looking at Marina Abramovic, the artist, struggling, suffering, conquering her fears, her mind and body. How can some actor reenact this?

This is the path the artists has to go through to reach beyond. Watching another human being suffer, struggle, is unsettling. I think that the videos had more impact on me than the reenactments because I felt some empathy for the artist, the actor is paid and doing a job. This experience was thought provoking. Art is not always pleasant to look at.

The cult of personality...because Marina Abramovic is unique.

links to photographs http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixteenmiles/4422517148/

http://www.moma.org/

no photographs were allowed

History lesson

2010-05-11T06:26:00.017-06:00

The works from the German painter Otto Dix (1891-1969) are at the Neue Galerie in NYC, a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Upon entering the building, I felt like attending a private party. The Staff was courteous and directed me to the tea room on the first floor, I was hungry and cold. The music was soft in the background and to reach the exhibition on the third floor, I chose the steep wooden stairs lined up with beautiful ironwork, bathing in the soft light from the glass ceiling, instead of the elevator.

This cozy feeling was short-lived when going through the entrance of a dark room lined up by 50 etchings. "Der Krieg" was published in 1924. The painter volunteered during WWI and was assigned to a field artillery regiment in the Army. He took part in the Battle of the Somme and was wounded several times. He was sent to the Eastern front and back to the Western front at the end of the war. The works are graphic accounts of these years, depicting soldiers, maimed, brains dripping from skulls, a soldier dead with bones pocking out of the uniform. The white and black prints are telling the story.

Some compared these works to Goya, known for his paintings, also a printmaker.

Several watercolors were also in the same room, paintings of decayed intestines. This is not the imagination of the artist, this is not a caricature. This was reality during the "Great War".

During my childhood in the East of France, I visited Verdun and the battlefields several times for "school trips". There it was, horrific.

Next were paintings depicting the society from the Weimar Republic, well to do personages, pathetic and grotesque, several self-portraits with models even the painter's family, also watercolors depicting sexual murders.

The last room was filled with portraits of well known citizens, a lawyer, a physician, a poet, the dancer Anita Berber. My preferred is the portrait of the journalist Sylvia Von Harden which was not included in this exhibition ( seen at the Centre Pompidou in Paris). The painter captures his subjects with the same technique using the pose, the color of the clothes, the background. He has become the painter of a society, a sick society, and Hitler did not appreciate this.

It is a time in history we would all like to forget... on both sides.

top photograph by the author

bottom photograph MOMA http://www.flickr.com/photos/ocad123/2763228639/

Blue, pink, and more...

2010-05-10T19:46:00.014-06:00

Picasso (1881-1973) brings crowds at the Metropolitain Museum of Art, at least it did the day of my visit. His works are breaking records at the last Christie's auction. The Met could not go wrong with the latest exhibition titled "Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art". Three hundred works, the entire collection from the Met is on display.

The early works start in 1901. The progression is chronological and it is interesting to see a now famous painter like Picasso trying different techniques, copying other painters like Toulouse-Lautrec or Degas, Manet, Van Gogh, his neighbours in Montmartre.

Several paintings from the Blue period (1901-1904) are in the next room, depicting tragic characters like in the "The Blind Man's Meal". The Pink period is also well represented with harlequins and the famous painting titled "At the Lapin Agile". Slowly, one can see the artist experimenting with lines, colors and his transition to Cubism.

His mistresses are represented with "The Dream" or "Woman Asleep at a Table", and several portraits of Dora Maar.

A succession of neo-classic portraits mainly pastels made after a trip in Italy following WWII depict his wife Olga. They are lifeless and academic.

The show goes on with linoleum cuts which I found soulless, technically interesting.

The last room is occupied by prints, works done at age 83 years old, the painter allows himself to be irreverent to the church, other painters and famous personages. They are representing scenes of debauchery, soft pornography. The commentaries next to the prints are essential to follow the stories.

A well-intentioned father is explaining to his 6, 7 years old daughter the works of Picasso:" this is woman and here is a man..." In the name of art, the little girl is allowed to look at scenes that would embarrass adolescents, but she is looking avidly, very interested!

Every work from Picasso IN the Met, must have been displayed and I wondered about the goal of this exhibition, 0ther than presenting the works chronologically.

Picasso, Picasso, Picasso! Picasso is also at the MOMA till August 30th.

The Picasso Museum in Malaga is showing 50 works with a common theme: horses, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona is opened with more works to look at. How can an artist fill so many places?

The Musee National Picasso in Paris is closed till 2012 for upgrades.

I visited the exhibition "Picasso et les maitres" (October 08-February 09) at Le grand Palais in Paris. Picasso's inspiration has been called "cannibalism pictural", but when measured with the Great Masters he cannibalized, he fared well.

photographs by the author

Painting the Blues

2010-05-05T18:32:00.021-06:00

The Blues in New Orleans is played, sung. This month at the NOMA, "Beyond the Blues" is the title of the exhibition showing the paintings from the Amistad Research Center " specialized in the history of African-American and other minority ethnic groups".

One hundred and fifty works have been selected from a rich collection and are displayed in several rooms organized in five categories: Inhabiting our world, Believing in Divinity, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Living in the Moment and Seeing with Candor. I chose to wander from room to room and enjoy the paintings from known or unknown painters. I was discovering most of them.

The works cover more than 120 years from the late nineteenth century painters and early twentieth century like Edward Bannister and Ossawa Tanner who were exposed to European influence and studied there, to the painters from the "New Negro Movement" in the 20s and 30s followed by more modern painters like Vincent Smith from Brooklyn represented by "Annie Lou loves Bill" done in 1960. In this painting he mixes collage and graffiti on a rough red background. It was standing out among the other artists, most of them represented by non controversial subjects, depicting winter like Driskell with "Winter Landscape" 1974, "Triborough Bridge" from Aaron Douglas, "Carnival" from Keith Morrison 1966, with Caribbean colors.

Sam Middleton is the closest to Jazz, I thought, with his spontaneous colors, lines, movements, splashes, represented in "Still Life" 1970 and "Beyond the Blues".

For the women, Clementine Hunter, whose work is considered "Folk Art", was present in a corner. I found the sculpture "Target" from Elizabeth Catlett very powerful, with the bronze head of an Afro-American male in the sight of a gun.

Other painters were inspired by the naive style from Haiti, like Ellis Wilson with his famous "Funeral Procession", 1954.

The star of the show was Jacob Lawrence with his series on the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture and Haiti's history.
Forty one paintings, gouache on paper, from Jacob Lawrence, a painter, story-teller. It made me think of the" images d'Epinal", the colors were darker with stylized shapes. Each painting is depicting a chapter of Haiti's history. In parallel, it tells the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture's life. He was the leader of the slaves revolt and eventually became a General. He was imprisoned by the French and died one year later of a "broken heart". A medley of cubism, naive art creates flat paintings using the color to create some perspective. The painter himself stated that the colors came from his childhood, Harlem where he was born and raised. He was 21 years old when he painted this series.

The revolt of the Amistadt is also depicted by Lawrence Jacob. My preferred version is from Romare Barden made from a mixture of collage and painting : a map of Africa, a boat and the face of an African slave with red, black and other bright colors.

Of course , two sons from New Orleans should be mentioned, Jeffrey Cook who went back to his African roots to create the sculpture called "Dogon Box" 1996 inspired by the sculptures from Mali, and John Scott (1940-2007) with "Closest to Blues and Jazz". He made this statement:"what I have been trying to do...in my art is make a piece that would be similar to what African-American musicians have done with gospels, and blues and jazz, so that when you hear it , it wraps around your soul."

photograph NOMA from the author

General Toussaint L'Ouverture: danforthmuseum.org

Dreamtime

2010-04-26T12:50:00.017-06:00

For the first time, aboriginal art is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with fourteen works painted mostly during the past decade.

Developed in the course of 20 000, maybe 40 000 years of history, representing more than 600 groups, aboriginal art can be considered as modern. It is born the year 1971, in the community of Papunya in the Northern Territory where a young art teacher encouraged schoolchildren and Aboriginal men to draw tribal symbols on bark, walls, canvas. Till then, the signs had been traced in the sand with a stick and were a tool to communicate between aboriginal tribes who had different languages. They were also a mean to reach the Dreamtime.

Each symbol has a different level of interpretation and cannot be understood without some initiation. To quote the introduction to an exhibition of aboriginal paintings "Dot and Circle", 1985 in Melbourne, Australia:

"Andrew Crocker sees the paintings working effectively on at least four levels:

a) mnemonics for the stories which are depicted and which are also sung and which comprise Aboriginal lore and law;

b) cartographic mnemonics which inform and remind of topography and proprietary rights to land according to Aboriginal law;

c) religious expression. The paintings have scrupulously omitted esoteric subjects. Often, however, while the painting is ruled safe, the full story associated with it cannot be revealed;

d) the authentic artistic expression of a contemporary painter."

Since the paintings have been made with acrylic on canvas, aboriginal art has flourished and is shown in galleries and museums in Australia. The recognition of aboriginal culture in Australia is almost parallel to this art movement represented by several groups, some from the Northern Territory, others from Central Australia or Western Australia.

This did not happen without reservation by some members of the tribes who felt that these secret, sacred symbols should be viewed only by initiated tribal elders. Within the tribe, not all members were allowed to look at the signs, especially women. It is ironical that, according to an article in Artnews, "today some of the most sought-after aboriginal painters are women".

Prices are climbing with a triple digit gain since the 70s.

The anthropologists have lost, the art world has gained. The art viewer can be introduced to a secret world, inspired by this vast land. But could "aboriginal art" be considered neo-colonialism, or is it a natural adaptation to a new world?

photograph by the author

Trees, arbres, sunflowers and more

2010-04-22T19:40:00.012-06:00

Spring, Joan Mitchell is "the" artist of the season in New Orleans. Her works are displayed in three venues: the CAC. the NOMA and the Newcomb Gallery.

Starting with the CAC, downtown, the first floor is filled with lithographs and etchings.

Joan Mitchell's works can appear difficult to view at first. She is a well-known Abstract Expressionist painter who developed her own style, which can be recognized after looking at a number of her paintings. She had different periods, some darker, others more luminous. Her technique and her vision are unique. When one looks at her series on trees, we could call her Impressionist ( some may cringe). The trees are seen at different time of the day, and they appear dark, menacing with the light yellow illuminating the painting in the background. She is clearly giving an impression of the late time of the day, dusk.
The series of sunflowers could be described as dynamic, vibrant. She is not painting sunflowers. She is concentrating a lifetime of looking at sunflowers.

Uptown at the Newcomb gallery, a different set of works can be viewed, pastels and watercolors all inspired by nature. The presentation of the exhibition is well done and the bright colors of the works glow in the soft light of the gallery. The visitor can understand the different periods of the artists. One room is dedicated to a diptych which occupies a whole wall. Done the year of her death, it is an apotheosis with rich colors, movement, a story of the painter's life.
Joan Mitchell is one of the artists who, dealing with their own mortality composed brilliant pieces, like a final message, and at the same time, a hope for the future.

Joan Mitchell's works need to be looked at again and again: poetic, with impressions, colors, movements and intellectual talking about life, death.

Art in the desert

2010-04-14T23:17:00.012-06:00

During my visit in Las Vegas, I wondered where this city of almost two millions inhabitants and thousands of visitors was hiding art.

My search on the Internet before the trip was pretty discouraging. The Las Vegas Art Museum and the Southern Nevada Museum of Art located for a while in the Neonopolis are closed since 2009.
The Bellagio's art gallery is also closed. I was told by the concierge that it would reopen the 1st of May for a new exhibition.

Well, what is happening on the art scene in Las Vegas? I just read that the architect Frank Gehry who designed the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Cent for Brain Health, just completed, likes it!

But I can see unfinished buildings and The City Center, whose story has been filling the pages of the Wall Street Journal, is one of them. It appears near completion. I visited the site and got my first impression: big, a city within the city. Not revolutionary in design, it boosts to be in technology and is a "green complex of buildings". The numbers are staggering: 76 acres, the biggest, the most expensive, a 40 million dollars art collection with a sculpture from Maya Lin, a painting from Frank Stella in a lobby, works from Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg...

I stumbled on the unavoidable sculpture from Moore in a courtyard. The place is so gigantic that the art is lost in the decorations and becomes decoration itself.

Will visitors come just to see the art? I did. I found the architecture. It is a new flavor for Las Vegas, away from the playful themes of the other casinos.

The economy has whipped out the art in the community, so complaints the local newspaper. .

Which makes us reflect on art and the economy... or the community?

I guess, the function of the city is not conducive to the art.

The rooms I am sitting in the whole day listening to a conference, are called: Titian, Veronese, Bellini...

I will have to cross this hall to reach the casino,

Las Vegas (The Strip) after all, is a big amusement park for adults.

photographs by the author