Meet Taylor Mead at Boyd Satellite

Shocking? A male nude? Masculine/Masculine: The Nude Man in Art From 1800 to the Present Day, a thorough exhibition which included more than two hundred sculptures and paintings related to the subject took place at the Musée d'Orsay in 2013, and according to the curator, "the paradox is that we think we live in a very liberated society but the male nude still troubles people." This month, Boyd Satellite gallery is testing its visitors with three photographs of  a naked Taylor Mead taken by Andres Serrano. A collection of selfies made by Blake Nelson Boyd as part of the Taylor Mead photobooth series, paintings, drawings and memorabilia complete the exhibition Taylor Mead in Exile.
There is no way to avoid the three giant photographs (60"x 50") organized like a triptych at the entrance of the gallery. The unconventional portraits of Taylor Mead, cut at the level of the upper thighs, are showing a decrepit body supported by a cane, staged in provocative poses: contrapposto on the left, full derrière in the middle and prominent display of sexual organs on the right. He is obviously enjoying the session and above all, the then eighty six years old artist appears perfectly comfortable with his body. On the same wall, the series of photo-booth pictures taken in 1995 by Boyd look like miniatures. A younger Mead sits in different costumes, from tin man to Superman or Mickey Mouse, relishing the roles. Mead was a poet, an actor and also a painter. Five of his abstract and semi-abstract paintings surrounded by almost twenty of his drawings on the opposite wall attest of that. Each piece tells a short story and the subjects vary, but exposed genitals and cats provide most of them. A projection of the "Lonesome Cowboys", a film by Andy Warhol featuring Mead as one of the actors, next to photographs in black and white of Taylor Mead and friends, provides a sampling of the artist as an actor. Memorabilia, including cane, hat, glasses, a copy of  "On Amphetamine and in Europe" published in 1968, even a sample of his ashes, give a museum-like quality to the exhibition, a celebration of the artist's life.

Serrano's photographs steal the show. Nude? Male nude? Old male nude? One can see plenty of buttocks while visiting the Uffizi in Florence: warriors, athletes, ephebes or angels, but nothing like this. Serrano is not the first to show ugly old men, Lucian Freud comes to mind. The classical poses and the use of chiaroscuro, a venerable technique, with a black background shadowing the pale flesh, make the compositions a pastiche. Serrano and his sitter are a prefect match, both relishing controversy (remember Piss Christ from Serrano? ) What makes the photographs provocative? When looking at a nude, we are expecting to find beauty, but beauty cannot be old according to stereotypes. I found the nudes beautiful because genuine. Mead is not afraid to expose himself, embracing his appearance, his frailty, with a wink in the eyes, defiant of time, for ever young. What disturbs the viewer is that the photographs, like mirrors in fairy tales, represent the time to come. The recoil at first look is a learned behavior, similar to looking at spiders or snakes. Is not art supposed to bring us out of our comfort zone? To quote Mead:" You want to play around with poets but you don't want any of the dangers or consequences."
Mead is not in exile, he has found a place in New Orleans.

photographs by the author:

Taylor Mead pill bottles from Blake Boyd's collection

from the "Nude" series, Andres Serrano, 2012

Finding Home

It takes a collection of memories and all kind of materials to rebuild "home". For the exhibition Expanded Media at the Carroll Gallery on the Uptown Tulane University campus the five selected artists include Anita Cooke, Mark Grote, Rontherin Ratliff, Nikki Rosato and Sadie Sheldon.
At first, the narrative piece from Sadie Sheldon overtakes the room with its huge brownish wave along the wall facing the entrance. In The Flood, 2013, a female figure steers a boat tossed by the storm. The materials used to build the work, tarp, heavy canvas and weathered metal, allude to an industrial world of shipyards.The resulting composition is a scene full of drama.
Close by, four recent "boxes" from Ratliff inspire various emotions but are all about loss and rebirth. Reconnecting with the past through found objects is the artist's specialty. With a variety of materials, from feathers to old telephones, playing with light reflections, he creates a faded world, desolate, abandoned, where life stays in suspense. The works of Mark Grote are displayed in one room, appropriately so. The brightly colored objects could take over the muted colors of fellow artists's works. The wall sculptures become fun toys, leaving the imagination run wild. Smaller but characteristic pieces of each artist are found in the next room and the visit proceeds with the "maps" from Rosato who transforms roads, interstates into the blood vessels of otherwise transparent silhouettes. Anita Cooke's pieces complete the show. Built with material like bicycle tire tubing, duct tape, felt, electrical parts, vinyl polyester ruffle yardage... they result in disciplined, minimalist compositions.
Looking back at the title of the exhibition, the materials used by the artists are so diverse that it becomes irrelevant to try to identify them. Transcending the media, each artist develops his/her own language, inspiring melancholy with Ratliff, humor with Grote, or drama with Sheldon. Refusing to abandon the debris left by the disaster, they built their practice around them, linking past and future, conceptualizing the objects and in the process giving them a new life.
With this show, the gallery has succeeded in making us aware of local artists with a well-balanced display of their works. Ten years ago, Katrina brought a lot of destruction but taught them a lesson that cannot be learned in art schools.

photographs by the author:

"Vulnerable Embrace", 2015, Rontherin Ratliff
"Not Your Mother's Apron #2", 2009, Anita Cooke
"The Flood", 2013, Sadie Sheldon

Stories and History

For the new "art year" in New Orleans kicked off during White Linen Night, Arthur Roger Gallery presents an exhibition featuring three generations of African American artists, including the famous  Life magazine photographer Gordon Parks born in 1912 and the native artist Bruce Davenport in 1972. The show gathers a large collection of works from Willie Birch and introduces new pieces from Whitfield Lovell. The four artists, through different media and languages, contribute to a conversation about memory and history in their search for roots and identity.
Starting with the black and white photographs from Gordon Parks, nine portraits of the boxing champion known as Muhammad Ali reveal the multiple facets of the athlete's character, including his vulnerable sides, through subtle manipulation of light, shadows and composition. On the opposite wall, the four colorful large-sized works from Davenport relate to the iconic fighter who we learn, is the artist's father figure since childhood. With his naive technique, Davenport draws a bird's eye view of the ring encircled by rows of spectators themselves surrounded by smaller squares filled with side line stories, quotes and artist's thoughts. The felt pen drawn pieces viewed from afar suggest abstract geometric compositions and become alive as we come closer.
The thirty-four charcoal and acrylic drawings on paper from Willie Birch fill the largest gallery, plunging the visitor into a very New Orleans world. Black, white and all shades of grey, each drawing gets its inspiration from the city: lavish chandeliers next to abandoned sneakers and empty lots. A hose becomes a snake, shoes aligned on the pavement belong to a group of veterans marching in the street, a hat laid on a shawl is the artist's self-portrait. The simple graphics tell elaborate stories built around the object, life's witness. Willie Birch brings us on a stroll around the city while he teaches us how to see.
Sixteen of Lowell's works are found in the adjacent gallery. They include a selection of portraits of anonymous African-Americans borrowed from old photographs. Detailed profiles or full faces are drawn with charcoal on vellum, wood veneer or vintage wallpaper. Meditative, they exude gravitas, an expression usually associated with Roman statues or paintings, to which the artist was exposed during his travels in Europe. The windowless space creates a museum-like atmosphere, quiet and dark. The only bright color is the red from the American flags included in the piece facing the entrance. Featuring a full-length portrait of an African-American, the official portrait is close to another figure drawn on wood, surrounded by bombshell casings. Lovell states "I want to evoke a sense of place, to be able to feel the spirit of the past for a moment, to feel the presence of these people". Some  works may have gone one step further, setting African-Americans in their country's history.
The exhibition which includes respectively, "Ali", "The Dapper Bruce Lafitte Introduces: Draw Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee", "Seen and Unseen: Coupling" and "First Impressions", manages to define common grounds between the four artists and reveals the connections between the themes of their works. Through personal experience, anonymous characters or objects, with different media and style, the four artists are contributing to the African-American history and the carefully staged display results in a show with profound content.

photographs by the author:

"You're My Thrill", 2004, Whitfield Lovell 
"Say Hello to the Dapper Say Goodbye to Davenport, Jr.", 2015, Bruce Davenport, Jr.
View of the exhibition

Lights and Shadows at the MFA Houston

This Summer, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston offers a unique display with the exhibition Cosmic Dialogues: Selections from the Latin American Collection. The artists represented  have a common interest in light and movement, with works combining futurism, light art, op art, kinetic art and constructivism. Highly inspired by European movements, they are innovative in their concepts. A large area is dedicated to Gego, a Venezuelan artist, followed by the major installation from Gyula Kosice, The Hydrospatial City, (1946-1972). The last room allows to sample works from diverse artists, among them, Abraham Palatnik and Julio Le Parc.

In the hall, two hanging sculptures from Gego introduce the display of a significant body of work, which includes wall sculptures, more suspended sculptures, drawings and prints. Built with stainless steel wire and iron, the sculptures have the lightness of spiderwebs. Enclosing an empty space, spreading their shadows on the walls of the gallery, they stay decorative. The eyes must accommodate before walking in the next room where the visitor gets immersed in the world of Kosice. He took twenty five years to realize his installation based on the premises that "Man will not end his days on earth". The habitats conceived for the survival of humans after the destruction of the earth are interesting from an architectural point of view. A total of nineteen Plexiglas models float in space surrounded by seven light boxes along the walls. Bathing in a bluish ethereal atmosphere, the transparent structures are glowing in a golden light and project their shadows on the floor and walls. Designed for a futuristic world, they are a mixture of science fiction and poetic dreams. A pamphlet available for reference, contains technical drawings about each "station" and its function. A video and photo collages dedicated to the installation follow-up in the passage leading to the last room humming with the sounds of motors and livened up by flashes of lights. Each work has its own rhythm and the two Mòviles from Julio Le Parc, 1968 and 1960-1966, caught my attention first. Made of squares of metal suspended vertically, in perpetual slow motion, they reflect the lights with a disorienting effect. The artists are represented by one or two iconic works for a total of nine: Gregorio Vardanega with his "chromatic square spaces turning in a spiral" made in 1968, Martha Boto his companion in Paris, with a kinetic op piece Optique Electronique, 1965, as well as Horacio Garcia Rossi with one of his "unstable light structure" made in 1966. Two small wall sculptures from Kosice integrate water interacting with light. A special mention should be made about Abraham Palatnik who became an innovator and catalyst for the light movement in Brazil. His five minutes video, "a kine-chromatic piece" made in 1962, features an evolving abstract landscape in constant shift of colors, orange, violet, red, fuchsia, with no obvious start or end.

The spotlight given to Gego's work results in a long winded introduction to the show, a black and white monotonous display lacking surprises in an effort to show "all the collection". The following installation from Kosice is a welcomed adventure in a cosmic world of galaxies and space stations. The subject related to the future of the human race on this planet is more than ever haunting artists, among them Dawn Dedeaux in New Orleans. Kosice's transparent dwellings bring an Orwellian flavor with their promotion of a communal life where no privacy is expected. In the late fifties and sixties, a great number of the Latin American artists migrated to France where they found a nurturing environment and associated with French artists like Victor Vasarely who founded the GRAV (groupe de recherche d'art visuel). They brought innovative ideas and introduced media like light, Plexiglas, Formica, motors, pumps, water...
The relatively small exhibition provides a review of a significant movement and allows to discover or rediscover artists sometimes overshadowed by better known Latin American artists from the same period (who also came to Paris) like Carlos Cruz Diez or Jesús Rafael Soto.

photographs by the author

"Esfera No.7", Gego, 1977
"Optique Electronique", Martha Boto, 1965
"The Hydrospatial City", detail, Gyula Kosice, 1946-1972

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.

Somber Notes at the CAC

Radcliffe Bailey: Recent Works, the latest exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans takes over the first floor of the venue. The show assembles six large new wall pieces and the eighth version of a site specific installation, Windward Coast. In addition, two works are set in the "oval gallery". The African American artist based in Atlanta keeps drawing his inspiration from the history of the Atlantic slave trade, espe-
cially the Middle Passage, music, and more recently, disasters.
Sounds of piano keys falling on the ground escape from a conch hung to the wall and a giant music stand supports a stack of wind instruments in a small space near the entrance, setting the tone for the exhibition. Music is also referred to in the next piece which fills the front of the main gallery and, viewed from the street, provides a great window display. Lost in the heap of wooden pieces, far away, a lonely black head covered with glitter bobbles in the middle of a sea of piano keys. The famous piece, Windward Coast, has already been much commented upon since its display for the exhibition Memory As Medicine at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2011. Conceptual art leaves plenty of leeway for interpretation, and I ventured into looking at the forlorn head as the artist himself.
Recent works fill the remaining space in the lobby of the Center. They include Clotilde, 2014 and Clotilde II, 2014, variations on the same subject. Both include a heavy coat of black sand covering objects like ropes, train tracks, cotton, a slave boat's replica, or toy-size railroad tracks. They refer to the scuttling of a slave ship in the Bay of Mobile in 1855 and are hung next to Black Night Falling, 2014, a graffiti of a sort. On a rough canvas, one can decipher the name of islands or countries (Haiti, Jamaica, Senegal, ...) or detect footprints, shadows, under a sliver of moon, surrounded by scribbles of heavy black paint. The next pair of works have a gory appearance with the preserved corpse of a crocodile for On Your Way Up, 2013, and dismembered doll's arms on a rubber backdrop for Congo, 2013,  alluding to "a surrogate crucifix", curios from European elites or the Nile River for the former and imperialist activities of Leopold II in Central Africa after the Berlin Conference in 1885 for the latter, according to the wall text. Comments related to the works are spread throughout the exhibition in an attempt to elicit a direct interaction with the viewers via social media like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The predominant black color overshadows the exhibition filled with detailed historical references somewhat limiting the breath of the works. Over-inflated descriptions like "big things, large scale, minimalist, abstract sculptural works", "profound sense of serenity, with a hypnotic, repetitive aesthetic similar to Japanese rock gardens" or "Gargantuan" weaken the genuineness of the artist who also compares his studio to a church, a sacred space. His goal is to infuse a mythical dimension to historical events, ultimately give an Odyssean flavor to the sad slave trade. Conceptual art represents a challenge as a mean of narrating history. The flat sea of piano keys lacks energy, rhythm, "waves" and stays strangely silent. As a whole, the works trigger little emotions and lack vision for the future.
If any sound is coming out of the exhibition, it is a mournful tune.

photographs by the author:

" On Your Way Up", 2013
" If Bells Could Talk", 2015
" Windward Coast", 2009-2015