Graduation!

The latest exhibition at the Woldenberg Art Center on the Uptown Tulane campus included the works of three students realized for their Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts.
Their artists' statements available at the entrance in a folder were a great introduction to a well prepared show in the spacious and well lit gallery.
Starting with the works from Margaret Spacapan, with her transformation of industrial objects, keeping their shapes but changing scale and material, she introduces new meanings to an element of concrete retaining wall or ventilation system. These mundane pieces when executed in a different media acquire a new status. Light, ethereal in glass or heavy, funerary in cast concrete, they loose their function but gain a  minimalist aesthetic and symbolic value.

The bright painting from Madeline Marak (a pentaptych) is a résumé of her presentation, an accumulation of colors, shapes, designs and memories from childhood. Two abstract panels suggest a relationship between natural and man-made world. In the adjacent room, pattern pieces at first have an uptownish flavor till one looks closer and discovers the fading, scratches, watermarks and the deeper meaning of the work. Like photographs, perfumes, the wallpaper samples bring memories and stimulate the imagination. Catheter Bags, 2012 is an interesting caricature of our consumer world where  very intimate indispensable products  are covered by colored graphics to give them an appealing look. The pink designs hide the function of the object, the catheter bag.

Sam Crosby invites us to a party and we feel like being too early or too late. This is the intention with The Party, 2012. We can anticipate the fun but know that fun is always tainted with some regret. Crosby uses repetition to give us a feeling of boredom with twelve identical clown faces arranged next to each other or with Aloha, Aloha, 2013, a similar pattern of shower curtains applied on a board. Yes, fun can be overwhelming and a tropical paradise can become oppressive.


In all their works, with different media, each artist has delivered a consistent message.
Graduation, a milestone, the end and the beginning,
Congratulations!

photographs by the author:

work from Margaret Spacapan
"Fairfield Breakfast Room", Madeline Marak, 2012
detail "The Party", Sam Crosby, 2012

Homage to John Scott

With John T. Scott's preferred jazz tunes playing in the background, the Louisiana Art and Science Museum downtown Baton Rouge invites the visitor to look at the artist and his colleagues' works during the exhibition Rhythm and Improvisation: John T. Scott and his Enduring Legacy.
The display of a collection of sculptures and wall pieces on the ground floor places  the emphasis on John Scott, the sculptor. The gathering in one room could be oppressive but the arrangement by series and the wide space allows a walk through to appreciate each work in its context. Several pieces from the Circle Dance Series, monochrome with their characteristic patina evoke music, dance and were included in a previous exhibition Beyond Black at the Shaw Center for the Arts in 2011.
In the middle of the room, a number of painted sculptures from the eighties and nineties are all about Scott's mindset. Sacred Music for Sonny Stitt, 1991, Fragment Dance, 1990, Summershine, 1984... lines, circles, arcs, squares give shape to rhythm in space and bold sometimes discordant colors fuse in harmony. One cannot avoid thinking of artists like Kandinsky, Schoenberg at the beginning of the twentieth century and the intellectual undertone of  their synaesthetic experiences. Scott's art is more physical in inducing a relationship between auditory and visual, he is not listening to a colored note but to music which he translates into a composition, rhythm and all. The present is already past and anticipates the future, "jazz thinking" brings dynamic to the works.
Dancing at the Crossroads (1996), a representation of the crossroads between human and spiritual worlds, the Lush Life Series, 1998, eight chrome plated aluminum wall sculptures paying homage to Bill Strayhorn, Storyville series, 1978, Diddlie Bow series, 1980 and more, contribute to this rich exhibition.
Along the way, comments about Scott's life, his motives, including the list of his favorite jazz players and musical scores, give an insight into the artist's inspiration. When working in his studio or teaching, music was always in the background.
On the way to the second level, visitors are gathering to look at a video of Scott projected on a giant screen and on top of the stairs, a large print Olympia Brass Band, 2002, and three collages remind us that the artist was also a painter, made prints and included other media in his works.
Scott's legacy brings the visitor to the second part of the exhibition, a gathering of colleagues, friends, students with a presentation of samples of their works. The comments regarding Scott's influence on their own creativity, their relationship with the artist, infuse a personal touch to the show.
"Ethic, creative courage, wisdom, sacred work" the words define a deep respect and love for their mentor or/and friend: Frank Hayden, Ron Bechet, Jeffrey Cook, Lyndon Barrois... the list goes on and the space is filled with works illustrating the same "critical thinking" which allowed them to fly on their own and thrive. An  abstract representation of the famous saxophonist and his music, Stitt from Martin Payton, made of heavy steel but light like a feather, defies the laws of gravity. Clifton Webb's intriguing  Eye of the Storm about the awe inspiring nature evokes a sacred object, a magical instrument, concentrating light and energy and spreads its shadow on the walls. Paintings, prints, sculptures, the abundance of works makes it impossible to comment on each of them, but each helps us connect with Scott as we discover their own flavor and Scott's ongoing legacy.
"Homage to John Scott" may be too deferential, one finds warmth, fondness, love and the show ends up being a celebration of Scott's life, thanks to his friends.

photographs by the author

"Circle Dance: Lil' Bone for T. Bone", 2001
"Eye of the Storm", 2007, Clifton Webb
View of the exhibition

Romanticism in Lafayette

John Hathorn: A Retrospective at the Acadiana Center for the Arts assembles forty works from the 80's till the present and reflects the period during which the artist, born in 1954 in Oxford Mississippi, lived in Louisiana. At first glance, the dominant colors, red and black, hint a romantic flavor to the show.

The installation inspired by the well-known Raft of the Medusa from  Géricault and Shakespeare's play The Tempest takes over the first room. An assemblage of pulleys hanging from the ceiling holds the raft, a wooden plank covered with scattered paintings, sketches, notes, a book, oil can and diverse objects. One can imagine a lonely artist tossed on a sea of emotions, a very romantic theme featuring the heroic individual who transforms his emotions in aesthetic experiences.
Following a tour around the Raft (2012), the paintings on the walls reflect Hathorn's interest with the color red. Among them, A Note on Red, 2000, a blood red thick impasto with a colored sample (the artist's blood?) in a vial hanging from a thread attached to the canvas or Suspension in Red,1985, a red composition interrupted by a dark vertical side with a pencil (the artist's tool?) hanging from a thread. Later in the exhibition, a new series of eleven works, The Cardinalis Sketches, is represented by On Rilke's Fifth Elegy, 2012. Hathorn statement about this series "the color red serves as a point of departure both formally and conceptually" is a testimony of his ongoing fascination with red.
 The Baudelaire Sketches series (2009-2012), The Grammar of Water series from 2006, have the same flavor of Abstract Expressionism and a muddy brown color provides the background of the stormy compositions.
The First Word of a Poem (on Rilke), 2012, The Desire to Paint (on Baudelaire), 1998 and other paintings allude to Hathorn's interest for poetry and his search for correspondence in art. The titles are poetry on their own: The Silence of the Void, The Benefits of the Moon..., some compositions include written lines of poetry.
Looking at the paintings brings the visitor to a second large room centered around a complement to the raft: the artist's work table covered with vials, filled with colored potions, bits and pieces, including a waste basket full of used tubes of paint. The artist shares his most private moments (the act of creation) and gives a sanctified view of the artist in front of his altar.
In the same area, Cardinal, 1996, includes an ironing table covered with oil paints of different colors next to the canvas hung on the wall. Like the writer's notebook filled with scratched, erased, revised words, the painter's gigantic palette is the colored testimony of his labor.
In the same vein, two palette sculptures (1994-1996) covered with a thick impasto (several inches) become tormented landscapes sculpted with a knife.
The search for "the poetry of light", "the sanctity of light" like in Large Bather, 1997, inspired by Rembrandt and Vermeer has been haunting the artist.

The repetitive themes and uniformity of colors generate some boredom as over the years, Hathorn's message and technique have stayed consistent and his lengthy comments next to the works leave no place for humor.

Introduction and conclusion to the show, the raft sums up the retrospective as the word romanticism sums up its content.

(My visit was on the exhibition's last day)

photographs by the author:

Raft, 2012
The Grammar of Water (Twelfth State), 2006
Suspension in Red, 1985
View of the second room

A French Story

While reviewing my note books, I found twenty six pages written about the exhibition L'Art en Guerre at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Closed in February, it is now on view at the Guggenheim in Bilbao till September. The scope of the exhibition which assembles a large amount of material including not only rarely seen or previously unseen paintings, drawings, sculptures but also documents, posters, hand written notes, diaries...goes well beyond art.
Starting with the opening day of the first international surrealist retrospective at the "galerie des Beaux-Arts", January 17, 1938, the exhibition gives a review of the art created in France till the onset of the Cold War, covering almost ten years reflected in four hundred works from one hundred artists, some well-known, others anonymous. It tells the story of the shattered artists' lives, interned in French camps, exiled or hiding in clandestinity and its influence on their creativity and how their fate during that tragic period shaped the art in France.

Works from Surrealist artists, well-known (Duchamp, Tanguy, Dali, Eluard, De Chirico...) or less-known  (Delvaux, Denise Bellon...) and series of "Cadavres Exquis" from 1931 signed by artists like Breton, Sadoul, Eluard, Man Ray, Tzara are representing the pre-war period. Escapades from reality, humor, cynicism, they are facing rarely seen pieces made in captivity by Max Ernst, Bellmer, Wols, interned in camps in the South of France, or Freundlich who died in deportation.

A list of the artists and their works would be fastidious and pointless. The curators organized mini exhibitions to show well-known artists ( Picasso, Matisse) or movements (religious art, art brut), while presenting lesser artists in the context of the time with numerous documents, photographs, posters,  providing a thread to the main exhibition.
Picasso remained in Paris during "l'Occupation" and kept working in his Left Bank atelier where he had painted Guernica. Ostracized by the Nazi regime, he kept a low profile and most of his production became public after the war. Matisse also well represented with paintings and famous cutouts, was in the South of France and had to deal with the arrest of his daughter by the Gestapo. Elderly and in fragile health, he kept a daily work schedule and published Jazz in 1947.

The art in France reflected a divided country with artists like de Vlaminck, Van Dongen, Derain, de Segonzac collaborating with the Vichy government and the German occupiers, artists who chose to stay in Paris, working in the shadow like Picasso or artists who took refuge in the South like Matisse, Bonnard, Rouault. Others like Chagall fled Europe for the United States.
In Paris, attempts to "art as usual" punctuated the war time with events like the exhibition at the gallery Braun in 1941 which introduced the "Jeunes peintres de Tradition Française", the opening of the "Musée d'Art Moderne" in 1942 or the exhibition at the "Galerie de France" in 1943. But freedom of creativity was thwarted by the Vichy regime headed by the Nazis, which denounced degenerate art and promoted a return to "real art" (banned abstract, encouraged the use patriotic colors and themes centered on family, work...).
Few artists like the Alsacian Joseph Steib were discovered after the war. His satiric colorful paintings denouncing Nazism and Hitler were realized in his kitchen and exposed once in his town hall under the name The Salon of Dreams.
But many artists did not return from the camps and left only few works to remember them like Myriam Levy, Charlotte Salomon, Nussbaum and some stayed anonymous. For them, art became a mean to escape the reality of the camps and they unleashed their creativity on any material they could spare: matchboxes, cans, cardboard boxes, fabric. If sometimes technically weak, the pieces are of great historical interest and the poignant memories left from the camps are emotionally overwhelming.
In contrast, the story of the gallery Bucher, a safe heaven for artists is heartwarming. Her director, Jeanne Bucher who ran her gallery discreetly during the war, brought the outside world to Paris,  promoting works from "avant-garde" artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Robert Motherwell, Nicolas de Staël.
A following outstanding display is devoted to religious art, art brut and primitivism spearheaded by Dubuffet during the period following the war but it feels off the subject.

The exhibition is the occasion to remember a history which is still haunting France. The art world changed after the devastating war and artists discovered the United States, abstract expressionism followed by minimalism.

no photographs allowed at the exhibition

photographs by the author:
"The Look of Amber", Yves Tanguy, 1929
Detail of a Cutout from Matisse
Wikimedia
"Guernica", Picasso, 1937

Sound Art

Background Noise, Perspectives on Sound Art from Brandon LaBelle published in 2006 is a path down memory lane going back to the early fifties till the new century. It also brings us on a world wide tour in approximately three hundred pages dedicated to the development of sound art. At first, the reading appears daunting, with a dense text, numerous notes and references at the end of each chapter and a few black and white photographs.

After a brief introduction to clarify the difference between sound and music, listening and hearing, the author proceeds to give a mostly chronological analysis of sound art in eighteen chapters grouped into six parts. Starting with a presentation of  John Cage's work and its impact on sound art, the author describes the evolution of sound as it becomes a tool for artists. The inclusion of sound in happenings,  Fluxus, new technologies, conceptual art, Minimalism (sculptures or sound activate the space), all promote the development of sound art. Furthermore, sound in defining the space becomes an architectural element, a material to shape for acoustic design now considered in urban development. Reaching beyond the subject of sound art, the author discusses the social and ecological impact of sound, its repercussions on the health of a community, promoting harmony within ourselves and the universe, initiating poetry and dreams.

All along, carefully selected works are discussed to illustrate the ideas developed in the different chapters and numerous artists are referred to. The dense text can be overwhelming and the author includes summaries, usually at the first person, to make the point. These are very helpful before starting another chapter.
A book to read from cover to cover once and then to keep close by as a tool for further reference.



 

photographs Flickr sharing: http://www.flickr.com/

"Mucilaginous Omniverse" Dimitri Gelfand and Evelina Domnitch, 2011 (standing wave that forms out of oil droplets above a water surface being radiated with sound)

"Piano Preparado" John Cage, photograph taken in 2006

"5 Horizons" Ryoichi Kurokawa, 2010, Digital Music s and Sound Art in Concert

Time and Teabags

The Emerge Gallery, a small oval space at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans is reserved for site specific installations and the latest, A Thousand Threads is a creation from the conceptual artist Luba Zygarewicz.
The threads carefully stretched from the second floor to the ground create a whirling web underlined in the background by the colored teabags falling along the walls like dry flowers. A closer look reveals a date on each teabag, a sort of melancholic calendar. The daily breaks for tea engender thoughts about time, rituals to control the uncontrollable of life, permanence. The teabags hang from thin threads, a reminder of the frailty of life and the uneven lengths of the threads, a measure of the daily memories' weight. Teatime is repetitive but the different colors, shapes (and most likely flavors) of the teabags represent a particular day. Proust who wrote In Search of Lost Time found his lost memories in the perfume of the madeleines, Zygarewicz used teabags to represent time creating, a poetic installation, built days after days after days...

photographs by the author:
"A Thousand Threads" a site specific installation by Luba Zygarewicz at the Contemporary Art Center
view from the first floor, 
detail
view from the second floor

Venet's Arcs in New Orleans

Spring is a time to wander in parks filled with birds, flowers and sculptures. Bernar Venet, a French artist, is well represented in New Orleans with works uptown (on the Tulane campus) and downtown ( in Lafayette Square). Famous in France, he is reaching an international audience with sculptures on five continents, including far away New Zealand.
The artist born in 1941 was close to members of the New Realism movement like Arman, César, Villeglé in the early sixties and after a two months stay in New York discovered Minimalism and moved to New York City in 1967. His biography is readily available on the Web. His show at the Versailles Palace garden in 2011 brought plenty of controversy, not about the sculptures but due to its location on a site of historical significance.

Back to the sculptures in New Orleans, I could not find a date on the signs next to them. Referring to Venet's biography, they both represent the period of the nineties but were most likely conceived much earlier. After spending time travelling and teaching art history at the Sorbonne from 1971 till 1976, the artist resumed his career. He embraced the concept of monosemy, works conveying a single meaning and perfected his gesture through a mathematical language to create his Arcs Series.

Downtown, the sculpture has replaced the intimate Eye Bench from Louise Bourgeois which at the corner of the square, provided a place to sit, reflect, converse and lighted the area at night. Venet's arc under the foliage is hardly visible and the steel stays dark and cold in the shade. Due to spatial constraints, the background appears flat and compacted. In one word, the sculpture feels odd in its surrounding..

 In contrast, I found the sculpture uptown in harmony with the landscape. On the green campus, in full sun, the Cor-ten steel takes reddish warm colors and the shape provides a frame to  older buildings, trees or passersby allowing a positive interaction between the sculpture and its environment. Venet, known for his mistrust of all ideologies and theories, sees  his work at one level, it just exists. A closer and farther look at the sculpture brought up some thoughts. The round form is a feminine symbol, alludes to  meeting and also spiritual energy. The broken circle brings the viewer to look up at the sky and its broader cosmic unity.
In both places the mathematically perfect shape, the strong raw steel contrast with the organic shapes and matter, underlying the perfection of mathematics versus nature.

The artist himself is skeptical about his work being displayed outdoors. Speaking about his site specific sculpture in New Zealand he stated: "I prefer my works inside a room- that way you aren't distracted by the surrounding landscape...to me, a work of art has its own identity..."

The comparison between the two sites suggests that the role of outdoor sculptures is to define a space and  foster an harmonious relationship between piece of art, landscape and architecture. 

photographs by the author


"230.5° Arc x 5", Bernar Venet
"Eye Bench" Louise bourgeois
"Arcs in Disorder" 3 Arcs x 5 , Bernar Venet