Rothko's Thoughts by Rothko

The book written by the painter Mark Rothko in 1940-41 (maybe started as early as 1936) and published by his son Christopher in 2004 "The Artist's Reality, Philosophies of Art" is short but dense. Written by the artist to define his thoughts about art in general, art history, artists, philosophy, sociology of art, he also discusses the foundations of Beauty and Myth. Ultimately, Rothko appears haunted by the question formulated in his introduction to the chapter titled Art as a Natural Biological Function: "Why paint at all?".

The painter stays mute about his own path or works and the reader will find only a few references to abstract.

The book is a catalyst for Rothko's search and ends abruptly without a conclusion... Rothko kept painting.

photographs by the author:

"Untitled" (The Subway), 1937, Mark Rothko

"Untitled", 1949, Mark Rothko

Marketing Pop

...or Soup.

Andy Warhol can be in your kitchen this Fall with the launch of a limited edition of Campbell tomato soups sold exclusively at Target to commemorate the first paintings of the now famous "Campbell Soups Cans". At the time, the Campbell soup company considered suing the artist...and now promotes the soup, thanks to the artist.

Warhol is everywhere this season, starting at my neighborhood art gallery, Pop is in the air. The gallery offers an interesting exhibition featuring the works of local artists, like Jeffrey Pitt, Sarah Ashley Longshore next to well-known artists like Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg. I could buy a silkscreen of Jane Fonda or Marilyn Monroe. ( respectively 68,000 and 160,000 dollars).
Now what about the market? Confusing.
The Andy Warhol Foundation is getting ready to put more than 350 paintings, 1000 prints, thousands of drawings for auction (flooding the market), in an effort to raise money.

An exhibition just opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art: "Regarding Warhol Sixty Artists, Fifty Years" explores the impact of Warhol on contemporary art.

photograph by the author

Visual Medley

Summertime, a random walk in New Orleans brings me to the K&B Plaza. For months...years, I have been driving by, every day, on my way to work. The building, occupied by offices, was purchased by the art collector Sydney Besthoff and some pieces of the collection are on display for the public. Of course, most of the outdoor sculptures from the Sydney and Walda Besthoff collection can be seen at the NOMA's sculpture garden

The small Plaza stays cool in the shade of a few trees, refreshed by the mist from Isamu Noguchi's sculpture-fountain, " The Mississippi",1961. "The Bird" (for Charlie Parker),1979, from Charles Ginnever looks like a giant blue piece of origami. With a steep angle of attack (aeronautical term), the sculpture appears unstable and heavy and at the same time ready to fly and soar in the blue sky. The iconic piece represents the work made by Ginnever in the 1970's. The sculptor stated "The sculpture is not made to trick anybody. It's just that [in] the way they are placed, they challenge our perception."  A sculpture from George Rickey swings in the wind and frames the clouds. Like in any collection, there are odds and ends, a sculpture from Tony Cragg, "Sinbad", 2000, appears discarded in the background. Arthur Silverman's sculpture "Interlocking boxes", 1978, from Arthur Silverman, a local surgeon-sculptor is given a prime spot in front of the building. The visitor can sit in the shade on "Three Hand and Foot Bench".

In the entrance hall, two soundsuits from Nick Cave, 2011, (recent acquisitions) greet the visitor. Loud, colorful, they represent the "New Orleans Mardi Gras" spirit and clash with a minimalist sculpture from Nicolas Schoffer, "Chronos 8", 1986, and a white marble sculpture from Nicolas Neri " Carrara Figure #2", 1979 faced by a succession of randomly selected works: a bronze from Renoir , "Bust of Venus", 1915, next to a sculpture form Lin Emery, "Variations", 1978, a kitschy clock from the furniture designer Wendell Castle, "Bird Clock", 1984. Then, right and left, two narrow passages are cramped with paintings, sculptures mainly from the 70's and 80's. Three photo realists painters are featured with "Sunset Street", 1984, Robert Bechtle , "Bond's Corner Spring", 1975, Tom Blackwell , "Pullman", 1974, John Baeder. Sculptures scattered along the walls,  organic like "Sunburst", 1964, from Harry Bertoia or Michel Malpass, clash with "Sunbird", 1982 from Niki de Saint-Phalle. Two paintings from Charles Bell complete the display (I may have forgotten a few names).

 The randomness of the display transforms the visit into an adventure. I had to squat to get a better look at some pieces, under the eyes of amused office workers behind their glass doors.

photographs by the author:

"The Mississippi", 1961, Isamu Noguchi

"The Bird" (for Charlie Parker). 1979, Charles Ginnever

"Pin Ball #3", 1984, Charles Bell

"Sunbird", 1982, Nikki de Saint-Phalle

"Three Hand and Foot Bench"

Moving Sculptures

Sounds of bells awake the Ogden Museum of Southern Art on a Saturday morning. Lin Emery's sculptures are on.  The automatons come alive with their servo-motors humming. The artist is well-known for her kinetic sculptures powered by water, magnets or wind.

"Breaking News", 2002, a large installation, fills a whole room. Protesters on the left, a tense group driven forward with fighting energy, on the march, are facing soldiers, straight and ready, in a tight formation on the right. They stand on each side of a body of water represented by a mirror surrounded by a red lining, symbol for blood. In the background hands are turning right, left, right, left, below white banners. Under the bridge of hands the ground is made of  Penrose tiles decorated with words in different languages. Littering the floor, they are meaningless and powerless. The subject of the work is dark and bloody and throws off the viewer. One expects automatons to be fun , a music box, a bird for a clock, not to show a battlefield or allegories to represent the Media and its inefficiencies. The shadows on the wall multiply the participants and animate the whole space.

Next room, "Acolytes", 1990-1992, feels incongruous. 

The four priests are part of a larger installation called "Sanctum"  and used to stand outside the temple, guardians of a sacred ceremony. Undisturbed, they rise and fall, up and down,  kneel, stand, kneel, stand, respectable, projecting their halos on the walls, but part of the work and story is missing.

A kinetic wall installation (2005) creates shapes and the sculpture redesigns itself  with a repetitive shape and rhythm. It is the closest  work to another kinetic sculptor's concept, George Rickey.

Across, the "Flower Drum", 1985, is producing the bell-like sound which fills the museum. The flower opens and closes, symbol of the cycle of life.

The exhibition confirms that, for me, Lin Emery's most powerful message is contained in her giant outdoor sculptures, " borrowing the forces of nature".

photographs by the author
"Breaking News", 2002
"Acolytes", 1990-92
"Flower Drum". 1985

Under The Spell in New Orleans

Ralston Crawford (1906-1978) is not the first visitor who moved permanently to New Orleans. He is even buried at St. Louis Cemetery. The artist, well-known for his urban and  industrial paintings, discovered the Crescent City and under the spell, recorded with his camera the microcosm around him. The exhibition " Ralston Crawford and Jazz" at the New Orleans Museum of Art presents an extensive collection of his work. The catchy title is an understatement, the photographs and paintings treat a much broader range of subjects.

Hundreds of photographs are regrouped into themes:
 music, portraits, cemeteries, New Orleans streets. At first, paintings, lithographs, inks on paper, appear randomly scattered among them, but a closer look shows a careful selection to illustrate the influence of the photographs on the paintings and vice versa. The painter, considered a precisionist, was also a photographer ...or the photographer was also a painter, one finds the same "eye" in the construction of the scenes. With the lines created by shadows in bright sun bathed streets, he builds a geometric background to frame the subjects: Mardi Gras bands, funeral parades, crowds, portraits... 

A few examples give a glimpse in his technique. The portrait of Bill Matthews, 1955, is a lesson in composition. The arms of the trombonist smoking a cigarette, draw a triangle with the table and the face is a circle falling along the slope of his left arm. Most of the photographs are built around simple shapes suggested by a pillar, telephone poles, a drapery... Waldon "Frog" Joseph, trombone and Joe Thomas, clarinet is another example with the instruments arranged in parallel oblique lines in the center of the photograph. The musicians are accessory to the composition with the clarinettist's face melting in the trombone's shadow. The subjects are seldom looking at the camera and even the bodies turn away from it as featured in the photograph of two dancers.  If their looks are caught , they remain expressionless like the absent stare of a sick woman on a gurney or in the shadows like the eyes of the "Woman with Hands on the Hips" 1950-60's. The musician Jerome Green is caught with his eyes closed.  

All the photographs are black and white. What about the paintings and lithographs? The palette is limited to earth tones, flat blue, grey, with occasional black and white to depict lifeless, cold, emotionless landscapes.   

A complement to the exhibition, a selection of photographs from the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University confirms the historical legacy of Crawford's work: New Orleans 1950's-60', Louis Armstrong's birthplace, Old Clubs, Big 25, Dew Drop Inn, Blue Lamp Bar, Golden Leaf Hotel, Mulberry Grocery Store... 

Interestingly, his heartless industrial landscapes, his photographs show the same lack of emotions, an emptiness leading to expectations. Lines and shapes from buildings, instruments, musicians or crowds build a tense scene set before or after the action. 

Five films are also projected, for more than one hour, great studies in light and shadows.
At the end of the exhibition , a whole room is dedicated to geometric abstract lithographs showing the same preoccupation with shapes to create tension.

The text at the beginning of the exhibition made an attempt to justify the title, trying to apply the definition of Jazz (improvisation, polyphony, syncopation) to Crawford's work. I could not find the connection but discovered an artist's vision, a lesson in catching the unseen and untold.

no photographs were allowed at the NOMA

photographs by the author

banner at the NOMA's entrance

"Under The Third Avenue El" (The Brewery), Ralston Crawford, 1934

Montgomery Museum of Art

YBA...not so Y

The late 1980's saw the birth of the Young British Artists movement which fired up the art scene in Britain and spread globally. A quarter of a century later, it is time to reread the book from Julian Stallabrass written in 1999: "High art lite. The rise and fall of young British art".

In ten chapters, approximately 300 pages, the author describes the cultural, economic, political landscape that allowed the thriving of artists described as preoccupied by money and a cult of personality. The book presents a negative critic of their works, intellectually flawed but accessible to the masses. The world of the collectors is represented by Saatchi whose name is closely associated to the rise of  the YBAs, manipulating prices, making and undoing artists .... In the process, the author goes in great depth to describe the history of the movement also called: "The New Neurotic Realists". The list of artists is long, some are now very famous, others forgotten. 

Whatever happened, a generation of artists put Britain on the world map and names like Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley, Tracey Emin keep making the headlines.

A must read book, sometimes lengthy, controversial because of its negativity. 

  

photographs Flickr

"My Bed" Tracey Emin

"Fluoroidobenzene" Damien Hirst

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalartcollective/5094789332/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackcubegallery/6666822905/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Sampling at the Mississippi Museum of Art

A trip to Jackson was the occasion to visit the temporary exhibition titled "The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art" at the Mississippi Museum of Art. With forty works on display, it could have been called "Sampling Walter O. Evans' collection...". The permanent collection is located at the recently refurbished SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia. There are two ways of looking at the exhibition: a walk through the vast hall at the entrance of the museum, a fifteen minutes visit at the most or an in-depth look at the works and the artists in the context of the African American art movement. I chose the latter.

A dozen artists including Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Horace Pippin, Benny Andrews were represented by a work or two and a short biographical note.
"Dust to Dust" (The Funeral), 1938 was my preferred work, a gouache on paper from Jacob Lawrence, a reminder of his skills in using colors, compositions, subjects to capture the moment and give a sense of history to a simple street scene. The display of his epic work "Toussaint L'Ouverture" made for an unforgettable visit at the NOMA in the past.

Two collages represented the other star of the exhibition, Romare Bearden, who is in the spolights lately with the celebration of the centennial of his birth. In the Summer issue of ArtNews Gail Gregg reminds us of the artist's legacy in an article titled "Beardenmania" and provides a list of all the events related to the celebration.

Artists like Charles White are remembered for their political involvement, Elizabeth Catlett, who passed away a few months ago, for her social engagement. She was represented by an iconic sculpture in bronze "Black Women Poets", 1984 and one print "Head of a Nigerian", 1976.

If I had not seen works from Benny Andrews at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in the past, I would have gone by without noticing a small painting, not one of his bests. Abstraction was represented by one oil on paper from Norman Lewis, "Untitled" 1975, a blue composition.
Lois Mailou Jones was present, in the background with two watercolors, seascapes.  The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts  just presented a survey of her career "Lois Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color" with fifty five works. I had a chance to go through and discover the artist I did not know before.

The names of the artists echoed terms like Harlem Renaissance, activism, militancy, identity, protests... a period which paved the way for the next generations of African American artists and I would refer to the recently released book from Bridget R. Cook " Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum" to place their works in their historical context.

photograph by the author:
"Caribbean Forest", 1977, Romare Bearden