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

Meet Braque in Houston

For those of us who could not travel to Paris, a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is a chance to discover or rediscover Georges Braque. A shorter version of the exhibition that just took place at the Grand Palais, Georges Braque: A Retrospective is a collection of carefully selected works, each meaningfully displayed to bring the visitors on a journey of the artist's career. The first room is filled with landscapes from L'Estaque, along the littoral or the surrounding countryside and views of the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris. Influenced by Cezanne and Fauves like Derain, these were made in 1906, 1907 and the bright expressionist colors, yellows, violets, oranges, will never be seen on Braque's palette again. Rapidly, the same landscapes take subdued tones and become populated with solid masses defined by sharp lines. The transition to Cubism is subtle, but perceptible through a series of landscapes from L'Estaque again, made at a later date in 1908. A primitive figure Grand Nu, 1908, unlike Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, did not make waves through the art world, but  introduces a new chapter marked by the close relationship with Picasso which lasted till the onset of WWI. The next paintings, landscapes and still lifes, define Analytic Cubism characterized by multiple points of view, where the object becomes fragmented and its pieces rearranged to create three dimensional works in dark browns, greens, black. Built from the inside out, the paintings become vertiginous and crowded without ups or downs, sometimes whirling in circular motions. Instruments are a recurrent theme reflecting Braque's interest in music particularly Bach which can explain not only the subject but also the rhythmic lines and patterns in his paintings. Abstraction seems to be around the corner. Taking another turn, in 1912, Braque adopts a flatter style with simpler geometric shapes cut in paper then glued or collages. Trained as a house painter, he introduces pieces of false wood, false marble, calligraphic letters, numbers, shaped canvasses and veers to a more figurative phase later called  Synthetic Cubism, a period cut short for Braque who was conscripted in 1914. His intertwined path with Picasso during these six years makes it difficult to dissociate their works usually displayed side by side in museums and for once, we can meet Braque without Picasso. Their paths will diverge for good at the onset of WWI. Braque is seriously wounded in 1916, temporarily blind. His paintings reappear in 1917.

The second part of the exhibition is about a new Braque. Colors are back, even reds but dark and muted, and the artist slowly leaves Cubism behind. Following the fashion, he produces a series of  Neo-classic Canéphore in the 1920's. His series of Ateliers or Billiards, are showing dark overcrowded interiors without windows. In 1923, when asked by a journalist what he thought of Cubism, the artist answered: "I do not know what it is." He is accepted at the Salon d'Automne in 1922, represents France at the Venice Biennale. But I cannot see life in the heavy still lifes, 1930-1940 and the late figurative landscapes appear muddy, tormented and "silty" per Braque. It may be a broad and superficial judgment but I found the post-war paintings as a whole lacking dynamism, somber, depressive, neurasthenic to use a fashionable word at the time. Braque's fame is at its highest in the 60's and the French government gave him national funerals. Shortly after, the art world proceeded to forget him.
The exhibition is an overdue resurrection of Braque's legacy, minus the sculptures and drawings which I understand were part of the show in Paris. A well-balanced walk through the artist's periods with short didactic comments to introduce rapidly evolving periods of Cubism, it is also the occasion to see post-WWI paintings, understand a painter who has been lost in the shadow of Picasso, give him back his place in the history of a movement prelude to Constructivism, Futurism and remind the world of his contribution with his collages still inspiring contemporary artists.
One can wonder what would have happened if Braque had not gone to war.

photographs were not allowed
photographs from Google images

"Violin and Pitcher", 1910
"Fruit Dish and Cards", 1913
"Black Bird and White Bird", 1960

Going Viral, Mel Chin at NOMA

A retrospective is usually a display of works in chronological order with appropriate short comments on the side. In Mel Chin: Rematch, at the New Orleans Museum of Art, this approach quickly becomes a vain attempt in light of the diversity of the artist's practice. The seventy pieces differ by size, media, subject, and the logistics  to install the show must have been a challenge for all involved.
Mel Chin is born in Houston from Chinese descent and early works like Western Dynasty Urn, 1974, with its Chinese inspired design decorated with the symbol of a Longhorn or Vertical Palette, 1976-1985, which refers to the five Chinese elements are reminders of his dual roots. The influence of Dada and Surrealists, like Joseph Cornell (who can be seen at NOMA) is quite apparent in Homage to Cornell or Magnolias in the Moonlight, both made in 1976, but already, Bird in a Cage, 1976, alludes to an extinct specie of pigeons and  forebears some of the artist's future themes.
See/Saw, 1976, a Land art project in Houston, Myrrha P.I.A, 1984, a sculpture for Bryant Park in New York City or Lecture Ax, 1988, a conceptual piece made for a lecture, illustrate the diversity of the works early on, but the opening of the show is stolen by The Extraction of Plenty from What Remains: 1823-, 1988, a large-scale sculpture which includes two broken columns, replica from the White House, surrounding a cornucopia made of tree fibers, mud, coffee and (goat) blood. The perfectly staged introduction to the political activism of Mel Chin is a critic of the policies of American administrations in South America, and after reflection, appears to favor an easy symbolism to tackle a complex problem.
Material related to the project Revival Field started in 1990 includes photographs, drawings, a model of the actual outdoor fields, a piece of corn hanging in a cage and a long description of the "interdisciplinary project combining art, science, and public affairs" to clean toxic material through hyperaccumulator plants, in short phytoremediation. This section of the exhibition and Operation Paydirt, 2006, launched following the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, represent the artist as a catalyst for projects aimed at improving community lives. Through these, Mel Chin reaches his full bloom as a conceptual artist and activist.
A major installation arranged in an oval gallery shaped by the intersection of two circles or vesica piscis, Operation of the Sun through the Cult of the Hand, 1987, represents eight "planetary" sculptures, seven arranged along the walls and a free-standing sculpture for Mercury. Inspired by Greek mythology, Eastern and Western theory of alchemy, made with seventy different materials, the installation stays murky due to its density and complexity.
Upon reaching Circumfessional Hymenal Sea (Portrait of Jacques Derrida), 2005-2006, I realized that I was spending more time reading the commentaries than looking at the art.The French philosopher Jacques Derrida inspired the painted wooden sculpture, an impenetrable repository of knowledge, allusion to the closed world of academia and possibly the remoteness of philosophers. The description of the concepts behind the sculpture fills two pages of the book published at the occasion of the exhibition.
The subject becomes darker with Cluster, 2005-6, a series of jewels, copies of wounds inflicted by weapons of war. Rubies, diamonds, shine in place of wounds and blood and the allusion to the economics of war is quite direct. More on wars with a Glock-17 9mm handgun transformed in a surgical first aid kit or a pipe in a bomb and two racially charged pieces exuding violence, Night Rap, 1994, and Fan Club, 1994.
A comfortable sofa allows for a break to watch looped television clips of  Melrose Place, a soap opera.  In the Name of the Place, 1995-97, is a collaborative work between 120 artists who embedded 150 props in the sets and introduce humorous to politically charged subliminal messages. The lack of interaction and follow-up with the audience weakens an otherwise interesting project.
KNOWMAD, 1999, is a video game built at MIT consisting of tents filled with colorful carpets and a pomegranate tree. One must chase fruits through the tents and gets points... I managed to play three minutes, distracted by the beautiful designs of the carpets. The video's goal is to bring attention to the precarity of nomadic life.
A carpet is also featured in Degrees of Paradise, 1991, a three part installation which includes a vestibule decorated with a Tantrist "graffiti" and two womb-like dark spaces with decorated ceilings. On one side, a representation of the earth's atmosphere weaved on a rug and the other, a dynamic representation of clouds made with fourteen video monitors. Crossing cultures, interdisciplinary, mixing technology and tradition, the work represents the artist's hallmark.
The exhibition concludes with two major projects. The Funk and Wag from A to Z completed in 2012, the compulsive work fills a room with 524 collages made from images printed in The Universal Standard Encyclopedia of Funk and Wagnalls. Surrealist, politically charged, poetic, satirical, the association of images is filled with symbols, concepts, allusions, references, and the installation can become overwhelming  if one attempts to look at each collage. In contrast, Operation Paydirt, an ongoing project well known in New Orleans is a simplistic approach to a complicated problem, lead contamination and ultimately violence. Visitors are invited to participate and draw an anonymous Fundred.
Our Strange Flower of Democracy, 2005, could not find a better place to explode than the Great Hall. A variation of the cargo cult, the representation of a bomb made with bamboo and coconut twine can trigger a discussion about damages inflicted in the name of democracy. The provocative work relates to Mel Chin's practice who describes ideas as viruses inserted within a social realm to bring changes. The artist is not seen as a creator but as a catalyst for ideas and actions, staying remote but impacting directly on our world and lives. Chin sees the role of the artist as a facilitator, "a guide for navigation through legal, political and social worlds".
A Renaissance man or a maverick? You decide.

no photographs allowed 
photographs by the author:
NOMA's façade
"Our Strange Flower of Democracy", 2005

Virtual Reality

 Portraits, still lifes, landscapes become a virtual reality through manipulation of fine details, perspective, viewpoint, lighting, shadows. In her exhibition Hyper Real at the Caroll Gallery on the Tulane campus, Bonnie Maygarden goes one step further. She creates a new reality combining synthetic material and colors. Artificial oranges, greens are applied on the pleather or nylon which is crumpled and then laid flat like a canvas, a technique reminiscent of Hantaï's pliages. In a dreamier version, the fabricated landscapes are black, white and all shades of grey filled with anticipated drama in their quiet emptiness. Coined by Jean Baudrillard and defined as "the generation by models of a real without origin or reality", the concept of hyperreality is met in Virtuous Reality, 2013, Stylus, 2013 or A.Void, 2013 and similar works. In the same venue, Maygarden gives a variation on an impossible green with Buffering, 2014,  next to a minimalist sculpture made of four planks, possibly an homage to McCracken. This reminds us that the exhibition is set up for her Master thesis and includes also two works derived from photographs and neon showing the whole spectrum of the artist's practice. Minimalism and hyperrealism are not known to stir emotions and to avoid a possible monotony of the perfectly staged show, Maygarden activates the space with a mirror unfolding on the floor, reflecting the surrounding space. Hyper Real assembles older and newer works but the unity of the message creates harmony and an atmosphere of quality, rigour and professionalism.
My only regret, the exhibition lasted only two weeks.

photographs by the author:

"De.Fragment 1", 2013, Enamel on nylon
View of the exhibition

The Rubell Collection in New Orleans

With 28 Chinese in Miami and 30 Americans at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, the Rubell Family Collection is showing its extensive holdings of art works. Miami is known for its patrons like Margulies, Cisneros, De La Cruz or Pérez who sponsored the recently opened Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The foundation goes one step further and organizes itinerant exhibitions. The selection displayed at the CAC includes almost one hundred works from thirty African-American artists representing all styles from minimalist to expressionist, abstract to figurative and conceptual art, through paintings, videos, installations, photographs. The theme is focused on "issues of racial, sexual and historical identity in contemporary culture" and gives a  thread to the show which could otherwise lack cohesion due to its diversity and become overwhelming due to its size.

There is no beginning or end to the exhibition and I started on the top level with a work from Kara Walker depicting sexually charged scenes through her cut-paper silhouettes, facing a piece from Rodney McMillian, a carpet soiled by the remnants of daily life, stains from poverty, neglect and despair, a world away from Beuys's cocoon-like soft covers. Three photographs from Hank Willis Thomas hit a nerve. I am not surprised to read about his interest in advertising. His message is direct, short and to the point: a branded head, an athlete attempting to jump with a chain attached to his ankle, the price of a son's burial. Glenn Ligon is well represented with several works including America, 2006, and another neon work reading " I Sell the Shadow to Sustain the Substance", a famous sentence from Sojourner Truth printed on the photographs of a self-portrait she was selling to support the cause during the Civil War. The neon covered with black paint lights up the wall behind, creating a reverse effect. Ligon's works possess the powerful sobriety of minimalism. This is in contrast to the expressionistic paintings from Robert Colescott, which I realized, are outrageously funny with their historically and politically savvy humor. For the first time, I had a chance to appreciate both artists. The lonely work from Jean-Michel Basquiat unfortunately does not represent him at his best. Four sound suits from Nick Cave are standing guard, looking decorative and off subject. The photographs from Rashid Johnson need to be mentioned. They are showing a side of black African-American success, sophisticated males, dapper, proud to join the tie and pin-striped crowd. Noir, 1978, from Barkley L. Hendricks, brings us back to the tradition of portraiture with a black male, fragile in his exposed nudity. On  the first floor, a work from Leonardo Drew can be seen from the street, a massive piece of minimalist art made with (a lot of)cotton and Kehinde Wiley's African-American street heroes acquire a new powerful status in their Great Masters surroundings. We can get a taste of Kerry James Marshall with two of his works, meet Lorna Simpson represented by Wigs, 1994 or the outsider artist Purvis Young. The list goes on with Wancheti Mutu, William Pope, Carrie May Weems, Renée Green, Gary Simmons... Through different techniques and media, all contribute to the conversation.
Overall the exhibition is very busy, sometimes difficult to follow with highs and lows. Some pieces feel like they are displayed to fit the walls but the visitor can make his own choice in the collection of "many of the most important African American artists of the last three decades".
The list of African American artists who could have been selected goes on, Willie Cole, Shakaia Booker, Rashad Newsome...
How to appreciate such diversity? Known artists, less known? I remember Aristotle's quote: "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance".
Most of the works would pass the test.

photographs were not allowed
photographs from Google images


"Triple Portrait of Charles I", 2007, Kehinde Wiley
"Pygmalion", 1987, Robert Colesscott
"America", 2008, Glenn Ligon

Different Stories

Carl Joe Williams, multimedia artist and musician is from New Orleans where he finds inspiration and subjects. His works can be viewed in galleries like The Front on Saint-Claude or around town for his public art. His latest exhibition at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi Shades of Perception occupies the African American gallery where colors and music greet the visitor. The artist's musical compositions, part of an installation made of painted totems and speakers fill the air, the rhythm translated in patterns of bright colors on the poles.
The  surrounding paintings on the walls are narrative figurative compositions. Williams paints on  abandoned objects like doors, wood shutters, bathroom mirrors, crutches... and gives his version of Americana through works inspired by artists like Grant Wood or Norman Rockwell. In American Shotgun, 2012, the couple (father and daughter in Wood's painting) assumes the same pose but the farmer's pitchfork from American Gothic, 1930, is replaced by a musician's trumpet. Rockwell's No Swimming, 1921, a playful adventure, turns into an unlawful act in No Trespassing, 2012 and Prom Dress,1949, becomes Paulette, 2012, a young prostitute choosing a dress for work. The shift is subtle and can fool us, but the titles do not lie. The portrait of a girl blowing a dry thistle, a butterfly flying away, carrying her dreams, symbols so sweet, so fresh, contrast with the harsh design of the Calliope Project profiled on the right corner in Calliope Dream, 2012. Haloes surrounding faces and backgrounds reminiscent of stain-glass give a quasi-religious aura to Williams's paintings and looking at A Moment of Silence, 2012 or Family Value, 2012, I can hear Gospel music.
An emotional message from the artist.

photographs courtesy Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art:

American Shotgun, 2012

 Mixed media on found door, 72” x 35”

 Hearing the Voice of God, featuring   Jeremy “Mojo” Phipps, 2012

Mixed media on found wood pallet, 31” x 24”

Home in Louisiana

A visit in Lafayette, the Cajun capital, can start at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum or the Acadiana Center for the Arts, downtown.
Two Louisiana artists who gained notoriety in the Big Apple and beyond, are home and will be sharing the "University of Louisiana at Lafayette's College of the Arts' 2013 Spark Lifetime Achievement Award" in March.
Known internationally for his neon pieces started in the 60's, Keith Sonnier, born in Mamou, Louisiana, made his way to New York City and became a figure of its blossoming cultural life. Labelled as    Process and Environmental art, his works have been exhibited at the Leo Castelli, Mary Boone and Pace, three famous galleries. Two iconic pieces are on display at the University Art Museum, a work from the Media Series (1992) and Dauralde Abri (2000), a ladder underlined by two green neon tubes leading to a plastic shelter fit for a small non claustrophobic human, curled in a fetal position. Perched on an elevated support, the small cabin made me think of Absalon's cells, a Louisiana version for a swampy ecosystem. In his Media Series piece, antennas, satellite dishes, numbers, words, drawn and painted, fill the nylon stretched on the metal frame of a camping bed. Circles, ellipses, lines, intersect, overlap, interconnect and obscure the void space, a view of the sky or the universe. A unique artist in sync with our time.
Half of the museum's first floor is dedicated to Richard Landry for Dickie Landry's New York: 1969-1979. Born in Cecilia, Louisiana, and currently living in Lafayette, the musician worked in NYC and collaborated with other artists including painters, choreographers, writers, actors. For this exhibition, Landry did print personal photographs of well-known artists he interacted with casually in the course of diverse projects, and provides unique black and white shots of William Burroughs, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Gordon Matta-Clark in his Soho restaurant, Robert Rauschenberg in his Captiva Island studio in Florida or a first hand view of the Philip Glass Ensemble performing in Einstein on the Beach or Dressed Like an Egg. An hypnotic video 1.2.3.4 (1969) experiments with the source of sounds, showing hands, lips and instruments. Two paintings representing Landry's geometric abstract style and a videotaped interview of the artist complete the show, an enlightening exhibition about a multi-talented artist bringing a breath of NYC to the deep South.

The Acadiana Center's guest, Luis Cruz Azaceta, migrated from Cuba at age 18, lived in New York City, fell in love with Louisiana and made it home. The title of his exposition Louisiana Mon Amour tells it all. It is also the title of a new installation. The exhibition starts with known works from his Shifting States Series, 2011. Red, black compact shapes surrounded by white fumes for Iraq and the oldest color, violet, for Egypt, both are oppressive paintings of anonymous, empty, phantom worlds. His newest works keep up with disasters closer to home with Sandy Hook Shooting, 2012 and Boston Bombing 3, 2013. A narrative representation of the events with a caricatural expressionistic rendition of the unfortunate actors for the former and in the latter, an explosion of human pieces enclosed in a magma-like substance with the two shooters isolated in a corner, present a summary of the tragedies.
It seems that Azaceta's world is getting darker and we are reminded of this while looking at a few of his earlier pieces like Transit, 2005, Museum Plan for Edison, 2006 or at the entrance City Painter of Walls, 2009, clashing with their bright colors. Two installations complete the exhibition. Evacuation Highway, 2005, created in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, shows highways jammed with cars, going nowhere. The highlight  is of course Louisiana Mon Amour, a gathering of recuperated, patched objects, glamorized with punchy, Caribbean colors, a reflection on Louisiana's recovery and a tribute to its
resilient and resourceful inhabitants. Over the years, Azaceta, a member of the Cuban diaspora, has become a Southern artist, preoccupied by the land and its people.

photographs by the author:

"Longhorn Study", 2006, Keith Sonnier (at Octavia Gallery in New Orleans, no photographs allowed at Hilliard Museum)

view of the exhibition "Louisiana Mon Amour", Luis Cruz Azaceta at the Acadiana Center for the Arts