Barnett Newman's Legacy at The Ménil

Barnett Newman never was on my list of preferred artists. Comforted by my ability to recognize the "zips" interrupting large fields of colors, when encountering one of his paintings at a museum or a gallery, I would walk by and, after a short glance, move on. I "knew" his work. The exhibition Barnett Newman: The Late Work at The Ménil Collection brought me to reconsider my approach and spend some time to reevaluate his legacy. Assembling not only paintings from the late period (1965-1970) and a few earlier works, the display includes also tools from the artist's studio, two sculptures and unfinished pieces.
The two first paintings on display start a dialogue with their similar but reverse patterns, echoing each other. Proof of the power of colors, the blue painting Untitled, 1970, generates serenity, while drama exudes from the fiery red of White and Hot,1967. The artist's tools are displayed in a glass case close by. Forget palettes and delicate brushes, they include paint rollers and other industrial devices. Facing each other, the next paintings are identical, but created at different periods, illustrating the technical growth and maturation of the artist. The first version of Be I was made in 1949 with oil based paint and the second in 1970, with acrylic. The only vertical zip is precisely in the middle, generating a diptych-type effect. The contrast is striking with, on one side, a flat, dull painting and the other, a bright, radiant, warm version. Nearby, Here I, 1959, standing on a pedestal reminded me of Cy Twombly's sculptures with its raw material covered with white plaster and its simple rough shape.
One room is dedicated to earlier works from the fifties, including Primordial Light, 1954, Ulysses, 1952, Day Before One, 1951, and an untitled wall sculpture from 1959, minimalist in shape, juxtaposing red and black. The paintings' titles provide a clue when looking at the compositions. For example, Ulysses with its two-toned blue separated by a vertical black line evokes a seascape, the sky and infinity. The main room gathers the late pieces like Midnight Blue, 1970, from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne,  or Shimmer Bright, 1968, a turquoise variation from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The display is arranged by colors, and one wall is dedicated to black and white compositions How II, 1967 next to White Fire IV, 1968.  The second sculpture, Here III, 1965-66, is a smaller version of Broken Obelisk which can be seen near the Rothko Chapel further down the street. The three unfinished paintings from 1970 in the last room were found in the painter's studio upon his death and provide a melancholic conclusion to the visit along a few sketches, photographs of the artist's studio and the cover of the October 1971 issue of ARTnews featuring Midnight Blue.
It is a difficult task to describe paintings which physicality needs to be experienced, and photographic reproductions are inadequate to convey the depth of their compositions. The exhibition creates an environment conducive to a full appreciation of the artist's legacy with its carefully selected works set in a chronological progression, disrupted only by didactic sidelines underlining subtle changes in techniques or medium. The bare setting of the rooms, with a bench in the center and soft lightning, provides plenty of space to immerse oneself in each large painting, allowing it to fill the visual field without distraction. The apparent repetitiveness of the paintings creates a language which triggers contemplation and reflection for the engaged viewer. They can provoke emotions and give a sense of infinity, thus reach a spiritual level. Finally, I was able to understand what the art critic Clement Greenberg describes in "Art and Culture" as "emphatic flatness", and feel the "colour breathes from the canvas with an enveloping effect".
At last, I "saw" Barnett Newman's work.

photographs were not allowed
photographs from Bing Images, Creative Commons licence for use

"Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?", 1966
"Voice of Fire", 1967
"Broken Obelisk", 1962

TAKIS, Solo at The Ménil

TAKIS: The Fourth Dimension at The Ménil Collection in Houston is dedicated to the Greek-born artist Panagiotis "Takis"  Vassilakis who, in his search for the fourth dimension, has produced works which defy the laws of gravity. This is the first museum survey in the United States for the sculptor who has a keen interest in science. He is better known in Europe and was recently featured at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris with an installation of his Magnetic Fields. The pieces selected for the show in Houston belong to The Ménil's permanent collection. The great anticipation which prompted my visit was somewhat dampened when I realized that the display filled only one room.
Overcoming my first impression, I progressed methodically, starting with the center piece, Ballet Magnetique I, 1961, a kinetic, hypnotic sculpture, featuring two suspended objects interacting with a central magnet placed on a base. The repetitive motion, energized by the electromagnet, draws rhythmic geometric patterns in space stirred by the "invisible force". Two glass shelves, one on each side of the entrance, are filled with small sculptures made in the early fifties, inspired by the art from the cycladic islands and Egyptian antiquities. Along the walls, Magnetic painting #7, 1962, is built with heavy objects made of iron. Attracted by a hidden magnet, they float in front of a monochrome yellow mustard canvas. Next is a piece of the same period, Tele-Peinture, 1966, aesthetically and technically less pleasing with its heavy black circle for background and protruding pieces of machinery. Facing these, two of The Ménil's latest acquisitions: Magnetic Wall- M.W. 038, 1999, a monochrome red painting using magnets to support coiled wires on the canvas and a musical piece, Musical-M.013, 2000, an hybrid composition adding sound to the visual experience. A collection of Signals running along the gallery length's wall completes the display. Like fragile stems, antennae toppled by small biomorphic or just plain geometric sculptures bend elegantly under their weight.The exhibition which assembles twenty-five pieces includes several Espaces Interieurs spread throughout the gallery. Made in the late fifties, the artist's first bronze sculptures are variations on the same theme, round shapes carved on the surface with deep lines arranged in different configurations.
As a whole, the exhibition is a resume of the artist's sixty plus years career span, assembling works from different periods, focusing on his roots with the early works, followed by the pieces which brought him to fame in the sixties. The proximity of the Cycladic statues in the nearby gallery may be fortuitous, but this is what The Ménil Collection is about: small exhibitions but significant and of great quality. This latest has succeeded in representing Takis's legacy. The artist, too busy creating art, is not interested in promoting his art: "It is a lot of energy to publicize yourself and rush to all the events. I don't complain about that because I wasn't interested in making money, I was interested in making art."
The artist is now ninety years old, and deserves to be better known on this continent. What makes him stand out is his faith in the mission of the artist as a demi-god who conquers invisible forces and transcends the matter by manipulating the laws of gravity.

No photographs allowed
photographs from catalogue

"Magnetic Painting #7", 1962
"Ballet Magnetique I", 1961

Due to time constraints, the blog was published after the close of the exhibition.

Mysterious Magritte

Discover the parallel world of Magritte at the Menil Collection in Houston with Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, a gathering of works produced during the most prolific period of the Belgian artist. He spent three of these years (1927-1930) in France where he lived in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, a Paris's suburb. Magritte mingled with members of the Surrealist movement, applied some of their techniques and began investigating the relationship between objects, words and images which gave birth to famous paintings like The Treachery of Images, 1929.
Facing the entrance, The Menaced Assassin, 1927, a large painting, engages the visitor at once. It feels like walking through a crime scene with two bowler-hatted men staged on each side as repoussoir directing the viewer's gaze toward a strangely silent drama. The scene involves an exposed female corpse abandoned on a red sofa next to a gallant gentleman and three (most likely four) expressionless onlookers surrounded by a mountainous landscape. The focal point is not the victim but the presumed assassin looking at the horn of a mute gramophone. In the same room, The Encounter, 1926, and The Midnight Marriage, 1926, give the same feeling of suspense with their theatrical props ready for a play. This is Magritte's world represented with eighty of his most famous paintings displayed in chronological order.

Reproductions in books or on the Internet (most with bright colors thanks to Photoshop or the like) will never be able to induce the reactions triggered by the view of famous paintings like The Meaning of Night, 1927, The Secret Player, 1927, The Lovers, 1928... The subjects can provoke ambivalence and worse disgust when looking at Girl Eating a Bird (Pleasure), 1927 or The Murderous Sky, 1927 and require going back to Freud 101 for interpretation. A heavy brushstroke, dark colors, dirty pink or yellowish glabrous nudes with furry islands, Magritte has found his niche with his figurative scenes. The following years, he  introduces words and his close association with the Surrealists in particular André Breton shines through his works. The daily objects become a source of associations with pictures and words. The display of  pages from La Révolution Surréaliste and manuscripts from Magritte Les Mots et Les Images enclosed in glass cases are a welcomed break from looking at the succession of paintings. We could call the following period more Daliesque, with bare compositions like Threatening weather, 1929 and the introduction of bright blue skies with heavy white clouds found on paintings, sculptures, objects, like a wallpaper. In the same room, a nude The Eternally Obvious, 1930 reveals the artist's wife in five paintings focused on key parts of her anatomy leaving the viewer fill the voids to reconstitute the whole body. The muse is not the elegant Gala but the bourgeoise Georgette. Close by, The Rape, 1934, a small painting which made the front cover of Breton's book Qu'est que le Surrealism?  (Breton had a sense of marketing)  appears tacky. The visit goes on with less known paintings like Collective Invention, 1935, an inverted mermaid or The Red Model, 1935, a pair of shoes growing into feet. Magritte declined to give the images a symbolic dimension and aimed at creating unease by their "inappropriate" juxtaposition. But it is difficult not to fill objects like the bilboquets and the jingle bells with some symbolic meanings as they recur more frequently in the compositions.
On the Threshold of Liberty,1930, a panel commissioned to decorate the house of an eccentric Briton in London is a resume of cliches: a sky, breasts, a house façade, fire, a paper cutout, all aimed at by a canon. The Song of the Storm, 1937, the only allusion to music with its title, depicts rain falling in a regular pattern and the windless storm stays silent like the other paintings.
Following the visit, it felt that the shocking, mysterious, uncanny works from Magritte lack the poetry, the humor, the wittiness and the vision of the Parisian Surrealists.

photographs were not allowed
photographs Google images

"The Empty Mask", 1928
"The Lovers", 1928
"The Menaced Assassin", 1927

Conversation at the Menil

Mix and match "Byzantine things", modern and contemporary art works, throw in a few odds and ends like a Boli from Mali, the visit of Byzantine Things in the World at The Menil Collection is full of surprises. This crude description does not reflect the goal of the exhibition stated in a brochure available at the entrance: "our purpose, at least partially, is to explore the way that modernism allows us to see new aspects of Byzantine culture" and rediscover Byzantine objects outside of their historical background. It also states what the exhibition is not, like attempting to show the influence of Byzantine art on Modern art or features of modernist art in Byzantine art. With this in mind, the visit becomes a challenging experience.

The display of Byzantine icons, crosses, pilgrims tokens, reliquaries, religious paintings and other small items is scattered in four large rooms among modern and contemporary art pieces or vice versa. Starting with  crosses, the clear symbol in the Byzantine display, hanging on walls or represented in paintings, contrasts with its representation in modern pieces like a work from Dan Flavin lighting a corner, a white composition from Rauschenberg, Crucifixion and Reflection, 1950, or a black painting from Ad Reinhardt, where it becomes subtle, hidden in the composition. Gold fills the next showroom. In the Byzantine paintings, it gives an aura of inner strength to the subject, a godly spiritual radiance usually associated with Saints whose relics become precious while preserved in a gold vessel. On the other hand, James Lee Byers, Robert Rauschenberg or Yves Klein are treating gold on a material level, enhancing its richness, its shine and its status as a symbol of opulence and luxury. Gold keeps its power through the centuries and across cultures.
From then on, the exhibition looses its thread, and the succession of disconnected works becomes random: a small female nude from Alberto Giacometti (Nu Debout, 1953), minimalist sculptures from Donald Judd (Untitled, 1965), Barnett Newman (Untitled, 1950), a Nkondi figure, more Byzantine "things", more works from Rauschenberg (Gold Painting, 1952) or Flavin, one painting from Mark Rothko, Vietnam, 1965, from Michelangelo Pistoletto, abstract expressionist paintings from Willhem de Kooning and paintings from Fernand Léger, a print from Kiki Smith,... by then, the goal of the visit is forgotten... maybe the pleasure of looking at the pieces, one by one, takes over.
A previous exhibition of the works from Maurizio Cattelan had put a new twist on the permanent collection with his whimsical pieces scattered through the rooms. This time, a sort of a confusion ensues and the Byzantine artifacts from the fourth to the fifteenth Century seem lost in the glass cases, overtaken by the size and number of the modernist works.  Out of their context, they also loose their aura and spiritual dimension, which, one would hope, should have been enhanced by its close proximity to the modern pieces.

What the exhibition failed to demonstrate is another of its goal: showing that contemporary art is "inert and passive, dependent upon the viewer's gaze" as opposed to Byzantine objects seen as "dynamic and changeable, fully capable of affecting the world".
The Menil offered a conversation, it was another occasion to display its unique collection.

no photographs allowed
photographs Flickr photo sharing
"MG9", Yves Klein, 1962 c.
Boli from the Bamana people of Mali
"Untitled, cornerpiece" Dan Flavin, 1969

Side Line

The setting is perfect for the display of Richard Serra's drawings and paintings at The Menil Collection. The works are in harmony with the white sharp lines of the building designed by Renzo Piano. The exhibition includes two rooms dedicated to smaller drawings. Sketches drawn on small pocketbooks during the artist's travels are on display behind a glass case in the hall. Material for his inspiration, they are a prelude to his bigger installations, paintings and sculptures. The visit progresses to larger textured drawings, shapes like volcano craters, dark dusty, drawn with paint sticks and wax, grease crayon. The display brings the visitor to the big paintings, laid against the walls from floor to the top of the high ceilings, creating a cathedral effect and redefining the space. His "Installation Drawings" of the mid-70's like Abstract Slavery, 1974 are menacing, flat black shapes. The black color accessory to the shape does not reflect the light. The color is not the subject but creates optical illusions, the walls and ceiling are not straight, the space is skewed and creates a dizzying effect. There is no story. This is it.

These works are the basis of the language of the artist, the material from which the sculptures are born. It should be the introduction to the exhibition which took place in 2007 at the MoMA Richard Serra: Forty Years.
"I had always an affair with drawing and a natural hand-eye coordination" is a modest statement from the artist.

...a low key exhibition of major proportions.

photographs were not allowed

photographs by the author at the East Wing, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (2011)

Here and there

Works from Maurizio Cattelan are scattered among the permanent exhibitions at the Menil Collection. The pieces surprise the visitor, like a dead horse lying on the floor of a room lined up with (great) paintings from Magritte.

The view of a life size woman crucified in a packing crate (viewed from the back) dressed in a short white gown near a virgin Mary from the french Middle Age is shocking at first, it si so unexpected.

The artist is challenging the viewer. I saw Magritte better, I looked at the statue better. The pair of dogs lying in a room full of Byzantine art made me acutely aware of my surroundings.

The installation called "All", nine sculptures of body covered by shrouds already seen at the New Museum in Manhattan is there occupying a whole room, but is missing the singer. The voice brought solemnity.

The "Ave Maria" is saluting in one room, bringing a lot of comments from the visitors. A waxed hand with missing fingers but the third, is hanging in another room, a wink from the artist.

At the end of this unique exhibition of Cattelan's works, one realizes that they mingle very well with other art. The artist is provocative, but should not art be provocative at times? The shock of the images brings reflection. A whole room filled with the works from Cattelan would loose the purpose.

The drummer boy was there on the roof, playing on time every hour, reminding us that after all none of this is too serious.

photographs from the Menil Collection's website

Cy Twombly

Across the main building from The Menil Collection, the Cy Twombly Gallery also designed by Renzo Piano, houses more than thirty paintings and some sculptures from the artist. It is a permanent collection.

The space is well used and the paintings (some could be called murals due to their size) line up the walls without being cramped. Walking through the gallery, the viewer can take some distance and slowly comes closer to the works which are coming alive under the well controlled soft light.


What appeared to be a delicate, playful work of lines and "cheery" colours (bright pink, yellow, blue), becomes a tortured, hesitant work of words, half erased and rewritten, lines punctuated by long slashes of thick coats of paint partly covering another graffiti. The pink becomes dramatic, a colour of pain ("Analysis of the rose as a sentimental despair"). The strokes of the brush which appear light and gentle from afar, are heavy, brutal when getting close to the canvas.

Cy Twombly writes on one painting: "In his despair he drew the colours from his own heart."

This sums up my lasting impression after this visit.



The artist was recently commissioned to paint a whole ceiling for the "Salle des Bronzes" at Le Louvre. This heavy composition is a poor reflection of the Cy Twombly I just met in Houston.







photograph from artdaily.org


photographs were not allowed at The Menil Collection

The Menil Collection

The major building, conceived by Renzo Piano hosts permanent and temporary collections.

Some time needs to be spent going through the permanent collection, the items displayed maybe small in quantity but are of great quality: arts from Africa, the Pacific Islands, Pacific Northwest Coast, classical Mediterranean civilizations, small sculptures from Eastern Turkey, the Cyclades Islands. I am not an expert but got some education visiting the "Musee de l'Homme" or Musee du Quai de Branly" and appreciated this area of the building. The visitor gets to travel, not only geographically, but also in time with the Byzantine and Medieval collections followed by Modern and Contemporary Art.

Each object (paintings, sculptures, artifacts) is well displayed like collections of masks or this panel "Thunder bird and whale" from the Pacific Northwest.






As the visit progresses, one meets Modern Art. The setting creates a space dedicated to each artist with a De Chirico room, Max Ernst room, Magritte room, etc...

Here and there, Maurizio Cattelan surprises the visitor.


The Surrealist movement is well represented with an added room full of diverse objects which have a common feature: they were inspirations to artists from that movement. The exhibit is titled "Witness of a Surrealist vision". The dark space and the cramped display makes us feel like discovering a long forgotten attic. This causes a visual overload which the Surrealists would have found conducive to creativity: associations, visual puns, oppositions, hidden art. A small catalogue is available for the visitor . I preferred to leave my eyes guide me through this rich collection.

A temporary exhibition "Leaps into the Void: Documents of Nouveau Realist Performance" is set up in an area where one can see the famous photograph from Yves Klein and a copy of the newspaper the artist had produced at the occasion with several sculptures from Yves Tanguy and Niki de Saint-Phalle.

My only regret: one day was too short to visit the Menil Collection.

photograph from the Menil Collection's website

Surprises in Houston

Choices have to be made this week-end in Houston, from the Menil Collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a lot of ground to cover. There is also FOTOFEST2010 BIENNIAL, a biennial international meeting held in Houston, Texas, started in 1986 to promote photography. This year, the calendar of events stretches from March the 12th till April the 15th and is made of workshops, exhibits, discussions, parties, lectures...the program is very busy. I did not plan to attend and will skip altogether the event which brings a crowd in town.

The Menil Collection is the first stop...and turns out to be several visits: the main building built by Renzo Piano hosting the Menil Collection and temporary exhibitions, the Rothko Chapel, Cy Tombley Gallery, Dan Flavin Installation at Richmond Hall and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum. The buildings are located in a sprawling neighborhood, South of downtown Houston, within walking distance of each other.

The day will be filled.

photograph by the author