The visit for
Prospect.3 should start at the
New Orleans Museum of Art, on the second floor, where the visitor can find the nexus of the biennial,
Paul Gauguin's painting
Under the Pandanus,
1891. The title of
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897, another work from Gauguin, would better summarize "the search" which is going to propel the visitors around New Orleans in the next few months. Gauguin is found next to
Degas in the gallery. The two artists mingled while in Paris and, upon his return from New Orleans, Degas encouraged the restless artist to move to the Crescent City. Gauguin ended up in
Tahiti and even further, the
Marquesas Islands, in his search for exoticism and himself. Degas reported to the dealer
Ambroise Vollard: "I advised him to go to New Orleans, but he decided it was too civilized. He had to have people around him with flowers on their heads and rings in their noses before he could feel at home."
The next P.3 artist,
Tarsila do Amaral is represented with a painting and three drawings.
Upon her
return from Europe, the artist traveled in Brazil with the poet
Oswald de Andrade, looking for the primitive and indigenous in her country.
Os Anjos, 1924, is a naive but provocative painting representing
mestizos as angels. One can find the influence of
Fernand Léger in the
tubular bodies and of her childhood in the colors baby blue, pink, she "adored as a child". The Brazilian artist was a member of the
Anthropophagic Movement, and the sketches are related to one of her most famous work,
Anthropofagia, 1929.
Jeffrey Gibson's search translates into a dichotomy in his works. From
Choctaw and
Cherokee descent, he "modernizes" traditional material like raw hide, beads, mixing them with fluorescent light or metal, and in the process westernizes the American Indian culture. He is represented by half a dozen iconic works appropriately displayed next to the golden cabin from
Will Ryman, titled
America, 2013, part of the
permanent collection.
Two abstract expressionist landscapes from
Ed Clark and one of his oval paintings are next to a work from
Joan Mitchell belonging to the permanent collection. The american artists became friends in Paris. Mitchell, who lived in France most her adult life, meets the criteria for P.3. In one of his essays,
John Ashbery states: "she voluntarily became an apatride, not an expatriate".
Alma W. Thomas did not choose to leave her birthplace. She was uprooted during her childhood from her native Georgia to Washington, D.C. with her family, to flee the racial violence. In the three paintings selected for P.3, she depicts nature with her characteristic brushstrokes and vivid colors. She was a member of the
Washington Color School.
Huguette Calan, another female artist, was born in Lebanon, taught in France and is currently living in California. Her body-landscapes are filled with sensuality and poetry.
The paintings from
Frederick Brown are first and last, decking the Great Hall. Musicians have been selected among his portraits which include folk heroes, religious figures and more. Music is a dear theme in New Orleans, however, I could not find the link with P.3.
At first, the Prospect.3 exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art seems spotty, but after some consideration, the works embedded in the permanent collection offer a platform to look at the landscape from
Asher Durand or the boxes from
Joseph Cornell with new eyes. This is what the biennial is also about.
photographs by the author:
"Os Anjos", 1924, Tarsila do Amaral
"Quiver", 2012, Jeffrey Gibson
"Sunrise", 1973, Huguette Calan
Icon, 2011, from Will Ryman, is located near the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park during Prospect.3. The thirty foot tall sculpture features five red roses, one of them climbing straight up to the sky and the gigantic red flowers are looking odd, profiled on a Southern autumnal background. The work meets all the definitions of Pop art with its monochrome meaty red industrial paint covering petals, stems and thorns made of stainless steel. The shorter version of the 2011 installation on the Park Avenue Mall in Manhattan is surrounded by a black fence which obscures the bottom of the sculpture- to prevent lovers from scribbling their initials? 
