Big Things at Hirshhorn

 

"Immersed in art" is not a figure of speech at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. It sums up the visitors' experience at the latest exhibition Big Things for Big Rooms. The straightforward title describes ten installations set in a succession of galleries on the third floor of the museum, a collection of diverse works spanning from the sixties until today, representing art movements from color field to land art and more. 

An explosion of colors at the entrance comes from a huge painting-sculpture, Light Depth (1969) from Sam Gilliam. A commission from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, it is a quintessential work of the artist's Drape paintings and a fitting start to the exhibition. Sam Gilliam born in Tupelo, Mississippi, spent his adult life in Washington where he became a prominent member of the District's arts community and was nicknamed the "Dean" in recognition of his influence. In contrast, Untitled (1969) from Robert Irwin is a sober piece made of shadows created by four white spotlights shining through a frosted clear disk, drawing organic shapes on the white wall. The flower-like pattern reaches a perfection found in nature with a dark band in the center like a pistil. The recently deceased artist (1928-2023) was part of the Light and Space movement prominent in California in the sixties and seventies. The following installation, Carrara Line (1985) from Richard Long could be a model for a land art piece set in the great outdoors: the narrow rocky white path running almost the whole length of the gallery invites the visitor for a walking meditation. The pure line of Carrara marble enhanced by the grey floor may lead to nowhere or to eternity. Minimalism and light art define the work from Dan Flavin (1933-1996) represented by "monument" for V. Tatlin (1967), one of the thirty-nine versions of the series started in 1964 ending in 1990, tribute to a beacon of the Constructivist movement Vladimir Tatlin. Set at floor level along the wall, the reductive neon sculpture splashes white light reflecting on the shiny ground. A blinding white, Théia 1, A (1979/2025) from Lygia Pape is a small piece representative of her Ttéia series. The ethereal corner piece made of tenuous gold threads seems to appear and disappear in a shifting interaction with the viewer walking by. A monumental spidery installation from the same series Ttéia 1, C (2003/2025) was recently on view at Bourse de Commerce/Pinault Collection for her first solo show in France, appropriately titled Weaving Space. Lygia Pape was a prominent member of the neo-concrete movement in Brazil. The natural light coming through a row of windows and the view of the neoclassical buildings across the Mall compete with Cloud (H2O) (2006), the installation from Spencer Finch suspended from the ceiling of the vast "Lerner Room". The ninety-five "water molecules" (white light bulbs arranged in a horizontal “Y” shape, with trios composed of two smaller bulbs and one large bulb connected by black metal rods as described in the brochure) are engineered to form a cloud-like construction easily mistaken for a decorative lightning. In contrast, Moon Dust (Apollo 17) (2009) brought dreams and poetry to the lobby of the Baltimore Museum of Art for several years. Installations can be overshadowed by their surroundings.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Following the intermission, part two of the exhibition starts with Round Rainbow (2005), a work from Olafur Eliasson set in a smaller dim gallery. Through a machinery (tripod, light, glass ring) easily disregarded, the magician of light creates fleeting shadows of orbs, spirals, volutes, resolving in rainbows, mirages on the walls, ways to reach a realm beyond time and space. The quiet visit is interrupted by loud sounds coming from a huge wooden shipping crate in the next gallery, its opening facing away. Inside, an absurdist video with a humorous twist features an endless loop of "chew, pass, wipe, pass back, receive, pack" between female protagonists in a satire about human physical labor and female exploitation in a capitalist economy. The commodity is human sweat and saliva, the final product, lemon-scented wipes. Boxes of "Tropical Breeze", their commercial name, are stacked high outside and inside the container, ready to be shipped. The installation Tropical Breeze (2004) from Mika Rottenberg is more than twenty years old and may not sustain the passage of time in a new age of robots. The refreshing site specific installation from Rashid Johnson is like a tropical island made of a metal skeleton filled with an exuberant greenery, homey props, and decorated with minimalist white light fixtures. The Changes (2025) offers a healing place, a refuge where the visitor can be vulnerable, a home. The conceptual piece can leave you indifferent or filled with empathy triggered by the live plants, the artist's goal. The last "big thing" is Third Light (2006) from a series The 7 Lights (2005-2007) about the seven-day creation narrated in the Bible. Paul Chan's installation combines sculptural elements, a rustic wooden table on sawhorses in the middle of the room, and animation with shadow silhouettes of objects and human figures floating on rectangular puddles of varied colored lights coming from a projector. The third day of the creation is about the apparition of life on earth. The fourteen-minute show leaves plenty of time to meditate on light or its absence, on enlightenment or lack of it. 

The ten works require more than the average thirty seconds usually allotted by visitors to view a piece of art. The selected diverse installations require a total physical and mental immersion to be fully taken in. Slow Art Day is April 11 this year. Here the only way to interiorize the art is a slow visit. At the end of the show, a small comfy room with deep armchairs is an invitation to browse through books and read quotes from each artist posted on the walls like Robert Irwin's "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees" or Dan Flavin's: "I am not interested in creating objects, but rather in creating experiences."   

                                                        

photographs by the author:

-Rashid Johnson "The Changes" (2025

-Mika Rottenberg "Tropical Breeze" (2004)

-Sam Gilliam "Light Depth" (1969)

More at Hirshhorn

Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection 1860-1960, the title of a major survey of the museum's artworks omits part of its content. To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, the Hirshhorn is not only providing a review of a century of art history through 270 of its masterpieces, it offers also a selection of paintings and photographs from nineteen contemporary artists, strategically spread throughout the seven galleries. Each work is displayed on colored walls to call for attention and is accompanied by a  text introducing the artists, almost half of them women.     

 You cannot miss the sculpture of Nicolas Party at the entrance. The massive, towering bright head of a humanoid possibly born from a computer could be replicated ad infinitum. Emotionless, of garish colors, simply called Head (2018-2022), the sculpture made me long for Party's installation Draw the Curtain (2021) wrapped around the building during its renovations. In keeping with bright colors, Cobalt Blue Dress (2020) from Amoako Boafo, artist-in-residence at the Rubell in 2019, is hung side by side with a portrait Mrs. Kate A. Moore (1884) from John Singer Sargent. The provocative setting allows to compare the fresh simplicity of Boafo's anonymous sitter to the haughty socialite, highlighting the changes in society. 

The next featured artists are photographers, each paired with a painter. The result can be baffling. Per the wall text, an abstract  photographic assemblage from David Alekhuogie about Black Lives Matter connects him to "a long history of Modernist painting" and in particular to a bird's eye view of the Eiffel Tower from Robert Delaunay. In keeping with these questionable associations, we find Barbara Kasten linked to the constructivist movement, Paul Pfeiffer with George Bellows and farther the painter Nathaniel Mary Quinn next to Picasso. Catherine Opie's series about the inauguration of President Obama would suggest that she is a photojournalist. She is best represented by her raw, sometimes difficult to look at intimate photographs of herself or outcasts. Her photographs are matched with a painting from Childe Assam commemorating the first anniversary of US entry into WWI. In gallery 5 labelled "Aftershocks" about post-war artists, Rashid Johnson's monochrome abstract Anxious Red Painting "August 18th" (2020) is deemed "stylistically having much in common with that of Jean Dubuffet". Why not Cy Twombly's red scribbles? 

Size matters. The large multimedia piece from Loie Hollowell overshadows a delicate pastel from Georgia O'Keeffe, less than a quarter of its size. Colors matter. The hues of  Ann Pibal's geometric abstract acrylic on aluminum panel "build on ...Piet Mondrian and other de Stijl artists" are skewed by the orange paint of the wall which transforms a piece of art into a decorative accessory worthy of an interior design magazine. The unfortunate effect of the colored walls is that it undermines the works like the dreamy rococo-inspired scene from Flora Yukhnovich or the moon like landscape from Torkwase Dyson. 

Untitled #12 (The Marsh) (2017), a gelatin silver photograph from Davoud Bey is more than it seems. At first a large (5-foot-wide) reflecting black surface (on an orange wall), the photograph reveals a quiet body of water surrounded by hazy brushes under a moonless sky when coming closer. Immersed in the night landscape, one can imagine the terrifying journey of the enslaved persons travelling the Underground Railroad under the cover of darkness. Stepping back, I saw my own fading shadow and the work turned into a memento mori. Looking at the powerful piece I could not find its "dialogue with Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley". The only sculpture from contemporary artists in the galleries Selfportrait nude descending a staircase at the Raval (2012) is a conceptual work from the Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas featuring a ladder to nowhere made of discarded material matched with a small collotype reproduction of the famous painting from Marcel Duchamp. Zao Wou-ki, Franz Kline and Torkwase Dyson favor black. Bird and Lava #4 (2021) from the latter is a  view of a lunar landscape crossed by floating strokes of black paint attached to short threadlike white tails and a tiny orange dot at the bottom, like a spark. The rounded canvas (8 feet in diameter) feels like looking through a telescope. The tondo reveals the skills of the artist who can create at once a meditative and narrative piece through her mastering of abstract and conceptual art.

 I may have missed a few artists, but like tasting too many wines, it becomes difficult to stay focused on each one. Curators are supposed to help us go through the maze of the exhibition and the attempt to single out contemporary artists by the colors of the walls is distracting at best. The location of their works, the comments on the wall texts, are constant reminders of the influence of past trailblazers. What makes them successful contemporary artists is that, after digesting centuries of art history, they refresh techniques and themes, own them, and make them relevant to today's world.

Should we be reminded of the influence of prehistoric cave paintings on Picasso each time we look at his bulls? 

photographs by the author:

Torkwase Dyson "Bird and Lava #04" (2021)

David Alekhuogie "34.0113°N, 118.3358°W, Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Drive" (2021)/ Robert Delaunay "Eiffel Tower and Gardens, Champ de Mars" (1922)

Loie Hollowell "Boob Wheel" (2019)/ Georgia O'Keeffe "Goat's Horn with Red (1945)

Flora Yukhnovich "Lipstick, Lip Gloss, Hickeys Too" (2022)

Prospect.4: at the Jazz Museum

Prospect.4, the New Orleans art triennial, includes almost twenty venues spread throughout the city, intermingling with its sites, museums and traditions for the next few months. The Jazz Museum located in the Old U.S. Mint building on Esplanade Avenue appears to be a good choice to start the visit. The works, some created for the occasion, others dug from archives, are displayed on the second floor. Assembling a medley of international and local artists, the exhibition includes paintings, collages, installations, videos and sculptures.

Hank Willis Thomas is one of the fourteen artists featured in the show. His bronze sculpture History of Conquest is located on a grassy area in front of the museum. Inspired by a delicate bibelot from Jeremias Ritter, a seventeenth century German artist, it weighs one ton and consists of a giant snail mounted by a small figure described in the original piece as a Nubian or a Moore, carrying bow and arrows. Appropriation and re-conceptualization rejuvenate the symbolic meaning of the work. Fiend, 2017, a massive piece from Rashid Johnson fills the hall of the second floor. The simple cube, topped with lush tropical greenery, is a multi-directional microphone waiting to be activated by the visitor. In addition, the installation involves a display of culturally significant objects (books, vinyl, Shea butter, ...) lined up on shelves, transforming the work into a repository. Guided by Pete Fountain's music, the visitor walks through two rooms filled with mementos and historical instruments like Fat Domino's or Dr. John's pianos followed by twenty-eight empty boxes of reel-to-reel tape recordings decorated by Louis Armstrong. The collages made with newspaper clippings, photographs of musicians or movie stars, reflect Armstrong's humor, joviality and his disposition as a visual artist. On a different subject, the four paintings from Michael Armitage represent exotic scenes à la Gauguin, telling stories about exclusion, violence and death. The most graphic piece Necklacing, 2016, represents a man burned alive, defying death with a sardonic smile. The rugged texture of the canvas made of  lubugo bark cloth allows the painter's brush to meander around random holes in the fabric, enlivening the landscapes. The artist confided in an interview that he was "most interested in stories that have an ambiguous moral position." Between dream and reality, his paintings reflect this. Dario Robleto brings us back to the realm of music with his installations.  American Seabed, straight out of a taxidermy collection, includes butterflies pinned on fossilized inner ear bones from whales. The insects' antennas are made of stretched audio tape of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row". The collaboration between Robleto and Lance Ledbetter of Dust-to-Digital, results in a "multimedia installation of visual representation of the history of recorded sound".  Vinyl displayed behind glass with printed texts of songs and visual material are paired with headphones diffusing Washington Phillips's music, gospels from 1902 to 1960 with Goodbye, Babylon (Remix), 2015, sermons and lost blues. Last, also featuring religious songs, Sunday's Best, 2016, a 16 min video from Larry Achiampong illustrates the impact of the worshiping practices of the Roman Catholic Church on the artist's Ashanti community. The video was shot in London where Achiampong lives and works.

Across the hall, photographs and other items from the Jazz Museum's permanent collection make an odd introduction to Peter Williams's paintings. His cartoonish gaudy compositions push the boundaries of good taste to the limit and his caustic humor about race generates feelings of awkwardness. Maybe this is the idea. In the adjoining room, two sculptures from Satch Hoyt's fail to energize the space allocated to the artist. Both made with tambourines, Redemption represents a cross on the wall while Ascension (The Chain), 2017, is suspended from the ceiling. The video from  Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander, Quarta-feira de cinzas/Epilogue, 2006, fits the theme of Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp. The post-carnival activities of a colony of ants hauling discarded confetti like treasures could have taken place in New Orleans on Ash Wednesday. Maider López Under the walls, 2017, is a work in progress and involves the artist's intervention to cover corporate advertisements on construction sites with walls of primary colors.
A large space is dedicated to New Orleans artists closely associated with the city's traditions, starring Big Chief Darryl Montana with six of his sculptural costumes and a collection of artifacts surrounded by photographs from Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick catching live scenes of Mardi Gras Indians celebrations. Two huge panels represent Ron Bechet who states: "the rich visual traditions, icons and symbols of New Orleans are the basis of my work". The display includes colorful sculptures from John T. Scott.

The scope of the exhibition makes it attractive to New Orleans residents as well as visitors from out of town. With music and visual art in mind, it also introduces international artists like Achiampong whose work is included in the Venice Biennale this year or Michael Armitage who just had a major exhibition at Turner Contemporary. One can regret a few technical blunders like the noisy air conditioning covering the sound of Achiampong's video or the missing piece from Satch Hoyt  Splash, Ride, Crash described on the wall text. And if the Mardi Gras Indian costumes are stunning, they need to be worn. Absent are the bands, the music which propels them through the streets in New Orleans.

Prospect.4 in sync with the city.

photographs by the author:

Hank Willis Thomas "History of Conquest"
collage from Louis Armstrong
Michael Armitage "Baikoko at the mouth of the Mwachema River", 2016