Group Show at The Kreeger Museum

Paintings from the Washington Color School's artists are found in museums worldwide and their names belong to the history of modern art. Closely associated with color field painting, the movement placed D.C. on the art scene's map, even as most of the abstract expressionist artists contributing to a roaring post-war creativity lived in or around New York City. What is happening today in the DMV area (D.C., Maryland, Virginia)? A visit at The Kreeger Museum is the occasion to get a glimpse of Washington's lively art scene. The private residence of collectors David and Carmen Kreeger built by renown architects Philip Johnson and Richard Foster now hosts their collection of paintings and sculptures mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries, displayed on two levels of the building and in the garden. In conjunction with the Hamiltonian Artists, the museum also promotes local artists through its program The Collaborative. The Hamiltonian Artists is a "career incubator program for emerging visual artists" which provides exposure for its fellows as well as more mundane support. The latest exhibition Doing The Work features creations from five Hamiltonian Fellows scattered within the permanent collection. 

Randomly, I started the visit in the library on the first floor where three photographs of Samera Paz are hung on the wood panels. At first, they seem disconnected: pages of an adolescent's diary, still lifes of beauty products or neatly folded cloths. The vivid compositions are made of objects gathered in the foreground leaving little space for the neutral background. They represent a personal history, and "I" included in each title is the link. Can they involve "Us"? Rebellious adolescence, loneliness, consumerism, pressure to fit in,... the gamut of  anxieties expressed through the accumulation of words or objects reaches a wide audience finding common ground. Activist and artist Samera Paz is known for her use of a different medium, menstrual blood. For the show, she simply exposes her vulnerability. 

A narrow passageway lined up with drawings and small paintings from masters like Paul Klee, Picasso, Kandinsky, leads to the next room. Surrounded by the lively colors and lines of the abstract works from Charles Hinman, David Urban and Thomas Downing, Kyrae Dawaun's piece is a surprise, on the floor. Combining copper nestled in a concrete square mound and a geometric structure made of pale bluish limestone framed by white oak, it appears indestructible. The title tells another story: a confluence toward an ill Delta (2023) evokes the fragile ecosystem threatened by climate change and human intervention. Under the playful rays of the sun, like an island on the parquet, the work found its place.  

An intimate parlor is the next stop to watch the three videos from Cecilia Kim. The South Korean artist now living in D.C. stays hidden behind a black screen to perform a slow ritual, her hands carefully handling small pieces of food found in traditional Korean dishes. Lasting twelve minutes to over one hour, the footages reveal the value of  "performed labor", title of the work (Performed Labor, 2021). With its implied respect for nutrients and cultural heritage, the slow repetitive activity leads to a state of quiet meditation, transforming manual labor into a spiritual endeavor. On the walls, still lifes from Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, including the famous Café de La Rotonde (1901) complete an inspiring display.

 The bottom of the staircase is a perfect site for Ara Koh's installation gathering thirteen sculptures made of fired clay. Two to six feet high, they create a landscape evoking the Southwest of the United States. Like sculpted by the elements, their rough surface even shows some cracks, underlining the fragility of the natural world. Core Sample (2020) describes an arid ecosystem, a haunting desert. Through an intense labor, the South Korean artist leaves her marks on the clay to represent "geological time and metamorphosis".

 Matthew Russo's works are found between two major paintings, Flin-Flon XIII (1970) from Frank Stella and Cape (1969) from Sam Gilliam. Practiced Play, Iterations #1-3 (2023), a gathering of white and fluorescent colored sculptures looks like made of playdough. Set on the floor in the center of the room, the line up of small whimsical objects brings a playful distraction to the magisterial display. On the wall, Workplace Drawings #1-15 (2021), a series of fifteen blue and red drawings of surrealistic objects floating on a white background, reveals an infinite world of dreams. 

For most of us "work" evokes enforced prosaic labor, sometimes physically or mentally exhausting , mostly dull. It feels paradoxical to use the word in the title of an art show. Here, photographs, sculptures, drawings and videos are born from a labor transcended by the artists. Their creations spread among the masterpieces enhance the visit and rejuvenate the permanent collection, transforming The Kreeger Museum into a dynamic and nurturing venue.  

photographs by the author:

Ara Koh "Core Sample", 2020

Cecilia Kim "Performed Labor", 2021 (videos)

Matthew Russo "Practiced Play, Iterations #1-3", 2023

Frank Stella "Flin-Flon XIII", 1970

"Drawing in Space": Richard Serra at Glenstone

 

Located on 230 acres in Potomac, Maryland, Glenstone, largest private contemporary art museum in the United States, is a venue where architecture and nature blend in  perfect harmony. Curves and lines from the rolling hills and the minimalist buildings, design a landscape colored by patches of violet grass and yellow wild flowers. Birdsongs are an invitation to walk along the trails and discover the collection of outdoor sculptures. Spring is a perfect time for a visit. 

Among the artists, Richard Serra is represented by three sculptures closely intertwined with the history of the site. The planned addition of Sylvester, 2001, influenced the selection of material and shape of the Gallery designed by the architect Charles Gwathmey. Like an anchor, the massive sculpture permanently located near the building, was first displayed in 2001 at the Gagosian gallery for the exhibition "Torqued Spirals, Toruses, and Spheres". Named after the British art critic David Sylvester, the work, part of the famous Torqued Spiral series, offers a unique experience while walking around and in the sculpture. The entrance is a narrow triangular passage shaped by the unstable edge of the curled sheet of steel. The more than thirteen foot high walls with inward and outward twists allow the light to project like a ribbon in between, and create during the walk a succession of geometric shapes  born from the interplay between metal and sky. Visitors' voices and steps resonate in the claustrophobic space. In the heart of the sculpture, surrounded by the rough rusty metal, the only escape for the gaze is through an oculus filled with the blue-grey sky. Serra's comment "I am using a ton of steel to attain lightness" could not be more appropriate for this piece. 

The trails in the woods become a zigzaggy boardwalk set over a stream and a marshy field to reach a pavilion. Of small size, it is imposing due to its thick concrete walls and wide open dark entrance. The building was designed by the architect Thomas Phifer in collaboration with the artist to house Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, 2017. Inside,  the cold grey bare concrete of the walls and the floor is warmed up by the orangy-brown Cor-ten steel of the four enormous cylinders arranged in the middle of the space. A soft natural light shines through sheaths of transparent glass supported by the ceiling's massive parallel beams. The imposing cylinders of unequal height and circumference, are of same weight "82 tons - the heaviest form that a foundry is able to forge". Numbers do not matter, they are just huge. The walk around, through, back and forth the installation provides a physical experience of the work, representation of the idea of weight. It also allows to connect with the artist as we share the awe he felt looking at the metal while visiting a boat yard with his father and later working in a steel mill. Benjamin Buchloh's statement in his essay for the catalog of the exhibition "Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years" at MoMA in 2007, feels very pertinent after looking at the work, result from a perfect harmony between the industrial material and the Minimalist aesthetic: "the artist as a designer with a renewed celebration of the artist as an industrial worker".

 Lynne Cooke calls Serra's Contour 290, 2004, "one of his most mercurial works". The site specific sculpture ensconced between two hilly meadows can be approached from different paths but stays remote, a wavy line in the landscape, sometimes obscured by trees when seen from different viewpoints. Located exactly 290 feet above sea-level, following the topography of the land, it required a meticulous mapping and engineering to secure the massive structure (15 feet high, 223 length and 165 tons). Closely involved in the process, the artist walked through the site to plan for the work embedded with nature. It introduces a three dimensional view of the landscape and Serra "was more interested in a penetration into the land that would open the field and bring you into it bodily, not just draw you into it visually". In 2006, the scene was disturbed by changes brought to the trees' alignment. If the steel wall from Te Tuhirangi Contour, 1999-2001, in New Zealand appears in harmony with the site (from photographs), Contour 290 merely acts like an accessory to the landscape.

The term "architectural promenade" coined by Le Corbusier to describe "the intelligibility of a building  given less through axonometric drawing than through the ways one moves through the space", applies perfectly to the visit of Serra's three sculptures "not objects we inspect but arrangements of space in which we move" (Buchloh). Hubris has to be part of the process of creativity, motivating the artist to redesign and domesticate nature with metal. Nature is resilient and follows its own rules but the massive sculptures, which at first sight seem eternal, show some vulnerability with their rusty haptic surface damaged not by the elements or time but by the visitors. Minimalism is about redesigning the space, here Serra "drawing in space" redesigns nature and sky.  Does the sculptures' symbiosis with nature offer more than a casual walk? A spiritual experience? The artist makes his goal clear: "I don't think public sculpture is going to change the world, but I do think it might be a catalyst for thought. To see is to think and to think is to see." 

photographs by the author:

"Sylvester", 2001

"Contour 290", 2004

"Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure", 2017

Kara Walker in Virginia

 

                

 Cut to the quick, an old idiom suggests physical and by extension mental pain. The title of Kara Walker's latest exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art gives a hint to the mood of the show about "slavery, sexism, violence, imperialism", themes which she started to  investigate early in her practice and keep being its mainstay. The fifty-three-year-old artist has gained international recognition and created one of her major work Fons Americanus, 2019, for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London. The exhibition set in the main gallery of the museum, features more than eighty pieces from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation. 

Why Virginia Beach? The resort, largest city in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, is close to the site of the first landing of twenty to thirty enslaved Africans in 1619. A history refresher is recommended before visiting the exhibit which starts abruptly with scenes of the American Civil War. Twelve enlarged and revised prints of Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War, a two-volume anthology published in 1866 and 1868, feature stenciled silhouettes to complete scenes in which a whole group of the community had been omitted. At first confusing, Kara Walker's Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, (the series is made of fifteen lithograph and screenprints) offers a new outlook on history. The wall texts are explanatory. 

The scholarly beginning is followed by a display of more iconic works including a bronze relief portrait of a heavily featured African woman (False Face, 2017) and black cut-paper silhouettes on white background. The display is not in chronological order and a triptych inspired by Christian altarpieces, revisited through African and antebellum symbols, Resurrection Story with Patrons, 2017, is found next to An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters, 2010, a series of etchings introduced by a poem from Ciona Rouse. Hidden in a cubbyhole due to its graphic content, and easily missed, National Archives Microfilm M999 Roll 34: Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands: Six Miles from Springfield on the Franklin Road, 2009, is a 13 mn video depicting rape and pillage with cut-out black puppets on bright backgrounds, the only colors in the show. Testimony, 2005, five framed stills from the video complete the display. More prints of different sizes mainly of the late 1990's and a few short poems from Ciona Rouse all related to the themes listed above are lined up on the walls. The black and white monotonous display is complemented by small scale models of famous works like Fons Americanus, 2019, and The Katastwóf Karavan, 1997, set in glass cases on pedestals in the middle of the room. The former is an uninspiring bronze maquette of the magistral sculpture erected in the middle of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, while the latter brings back memories of the Prospect.4 Triennial in New Orleans where visitors got to share with the community a moment filled with emotions triggered by Kara Walker's installation along the Mississippi River. A playset in stainless steel describes lynching in a burning African village next to a smudgy lithograph illustrating the libretto of the famous opera Porgy and Bess published in 2013. Satiated by images of rape and pillage, the visitor is invited to rest and reflect in a dedicated space offering deep soft cushions, books, mental health resources, a communal journal and a video of the Emancipation Oak projected on a large screen. 

A brief reprieve is needed before tackling the series titled The Emancipation Approximation, 1999-2000,  where the subjects of rape and miscegenation are treated through mythological references. The succession of twenty six screen prints displayed in the narrow gallery tells a story filled with violent sexual acts between the swan (the white man) and Leda (the black woman). Black babies with white swan heads are born from the forced intercourse. Their silhouettes are drawn on grey backgrounds. The graphic series describing rapes and more sexual perversions is verging on obscenity. The accompanying wall texts about police brutality, health and wealth disparities, mass incarceration and today's nominal freedom of Black Americans, while raising genuine concerns, appear irrelevant to the work, so does its title. 

Hailed as a leading artist of her generation, Kara Walker was the youngest recipient of the Mc Arthur Fellowship at the age of twenty eight, and dedicated her career to producing "Black women's art". The eighty works spanning almost twenty five years are a testimony of her commitment. Over the years, she used various media while keeping the graphics of her iconic cut-out black silhouettes, and succeeded in reaching local as well as international audiences. However, her attempts to infuse spirituality to her works like in the triptych Resurrection Story with Patrons, 2017, or give them a mythical dimension, fall flat. Twisting history, she stated: "I'm fascinated with the stories we tell. Real histories become fantasies and fairy tales, morality tales, and fables. There's something interesting and funny and perverse about the way fairytale sometimes passes for history, for truth." At the end, her work, blurring reality and myth, history and tales, may confuse some of her audience and offers little hope. 

Betye Saar, one of Kara Walker's detractors, stated in the 1991 PBS series I'll Make Me a World:" I felt the work of Kara Walker was sort of revolting and negative and a form of betrayal to the slaves, particularly women and children; that it was basically for the amusement and the investment of the white art establishment." It is ironic that the collector who sponsored the exhibition Jordan D. Schnitzer is the scion of a wealthy white family from Oregon.

photographs by the author:

"Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated): Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun Boats", 2005

"African/American", 1998

"Resurrection Story with Patrons", 2017

Philip Guston at the National Gallery of Art

 

After a two-year-long delay, the exhibition  Philip Guston Now  just opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Expectations are high following earlier showings at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Guston (1913-1980) disappeared more than forty years ago, and a retrospective of his career which spans half a century allows to take a fresh look at his work in today's context. Time has come to reassess the artist's legacy overshadowed by controversy. The exhibition assembles more than two hundred paintings and drawings from public and private collections, displayed in the temporary exhibition area near the auditorium of the East building designed by the architect Pei.  

Like advertisements, a video, two iconic paintings (Rug, 1976, and Painter's Table, 1973, from the National Gallery of Art's permanent collection) and a wall text, introduce the exhibit. The artist's short biography provides the thread for the show organized in chronological order, and includes at the bottom a warning about its content. At first glance it feels like being in the wrong place: Picasso? De Chirico? Max Ernst? and more... The self-taught artist ( Guston could not afford art classes) gets his inspiration from the bests and acquires a flawless technique producing works like Mother and Child, c.1930, or Female Nude with Easel, 1935. In Bombardment, 1937, a tondo about Guernica, Guston expresses the horror of the dramatic event with evocative images surrounding a fiery explosion. He finds work as a muralist, influenced by artists like Orozco and Siqueiros. Early on, the "student" introduces personal marks like a lightbulb in Nude Philosopher in Space-Time, 1935 or a hood in Drawing for Conspirators, 1930, rich in symbolism. 

The path of the artist veers slowly to abstraction with tight compositions like The Porch, 1946-1947 and The Porch II, 1947, followed by three dark red paintings made from 1947 to 1950 in which shapes are hardly visible, like fading hieroglyphs. Guston's move to New York City, where he reunites with his high school's friend Jackson Pollock and the group of abstract expressionist painters, appears to be a new beginning, and the next gallery is filled with colors from  paintings lined up on both sides: the pinnacle of Guston's abstract period is represented by about ten works starting with an earlier piece White Painting I, 1951, and ending with Fable, 1956-1957, and Voyage, 1956.  Guston rejected the fame brought by the exhibition of his works at the Guggenheim in 1962, and his black-grey self-portraits Smoker, 1963, Painter III, 1963, Head I, 1965, reflect his mood at the time. All along, the display of drawings combined with the paintings highlights the artist's reliance on the technique, foundation of his practice. In the late sixties, he literally went back to the drawing board. The artist's struggle comes to light through about twenty of his studies (1966-1968) organized on a wall, starting with a line, a shape then an object, followed by twenty five small images of painted objects (oil on panel) set in a narrow passage. From design to colors, lightbulb, iron, curtain, nail, book, shoes, ..., reach a "Gustonian" status and define his cartoonish alphabet. A sign at the entrance of a gallery on the right side warns the visitors about its content: the famous Marlborough paintings, at least some of them. In 1970, the exhibition at the Marlborough gallery with thirty new paintings represents a watershed in Guston's practice and life. Being surrounded by key works from Guston can be overwhelming: bigger size, pink color, content. It takes some time to look at The Studio, 1969, Caught, 1970, City Limits, 1969, ... more than ten paintings from the period next to each other. The omnipresent hooded figures, intellectually acceptable in Guston's context, remain culturally sensitive and the show's lay-out allows to skip the area filled with the paintings representing the crux of Guston's practice. 

Following the Cyclops series, which include the famous derisive self-portrait Painting, Smoking, Eating, 1972, the tone becomes intimate with the inclusion of Musa, his dedicated wife. Never the focal point, she is depicted as a remote but powerful presence, with on top of her head, a hairpiece like a sunset. The Ladder, 1978, depicts a touching scene in which the painter climbs a blue wall to reach Musa, a spiritual endeavor. Guston is facing aging and illness, torn between his roles as caregiver and artist. He holds his brushes tight while embracing Musa in Couple in Bed, 1977. The background is black and grey with a watch in the center of the painting. Time is running out. In a corner, a few drawings commissioned by the Navy and studies for murals made between 1936-1942 feel out of place as the exhibition progresses toward the last decade of Guston's career defined by  darker works like Flame, 1979, Talking, 1979 or Kettle, 1978, facing a series of smaller canvasses still lifes from 1980, on view for the show in Washington only. Before reaching the last gallery, the ominous hand of God emerges from a puffy cloud, drawing a line (The Line, 1978). Six more late paintings, three of them about the studio, make up the grand finale including a one hourlong documentary about the artist in the nearby theater.

The exhibition is flawless from the selection of works, to the wall texts and intermingled artist's quotes complemented by an essential catalog. It highlights the tight connection between Guston's life events and his practice and rejuvenates his paintings seen in a new social and political context. The visit of  his career's most controversial period is softened by appropriate wall texts and the plan of the galleries. Projecting his personal conflicts on the canvass, the artist makes himself vulnerable as he brings along a great dose of cynicism and humor. He does not shy from his personal demons which brought him to adopt a most reviled figure as his doppelganger: "The idea of evil fascinated me,..., I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil?"

 Another quote about the Vietnam war gives a key to his practice: 

"...What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into frustrated fury about everything- and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?" Guston did not believe in art for art's sake. It appears that if his early years including his abstract expressionist period deserve attention, Guston really thrived when he became himself: a storyteller.

                                              

photographs by the author:

"Self-Portrait", 1944

"Dial", 1956

"The Studio" 1969

"The Street", 1977
         

At the Rubell DC

 

With more than 7,400 works by more than 1,000 artists in its collection, the Rubell family has become a prominent mover of the art world, extending its reach from Miami to Washington DC with the Fall opening of the Rubell Museum DC in the Southwest Waterfront area. Ensconced in the heart of an African-American community, the Randall Junior High School building abandoned for decades was recently renovated to become an art venue, leading to the unavoidable gentrification of the neighborhood. The challenge will be to keep its soul despite its new purpose. From the entrance through the auditorium going up up and down the stairs of the three levels, corridors, classrooms (now galleries) are a constant reminder of its previous life. 

Bathed in the sunlight drawing shapes on the floor, the wide space of the auditorium is the perfect setting for four major pieces by their size and quality, two on each side. Kehinde Wiley's Sleep, 2008, and Another Man's Cloth, 2006, from El Anatsui are like magnets for the viewers as they walk in. The punchy introduction is followed by a visit of the first gallery (twenty four total!) where the viewers can immerse themselves in Keith Haring's cartoonish series Untitled (Against All Odds), 1989, dedicated to Don Rubell's brother deceased from AIDS, while listening to the music of What's Going On, an album from Marvin Gaye's, previous student at the school. The surprisingly small size of the rooms allows intimate solo or group shows. One of the galleries is dedicated to female artists with nudes from Mickalene Thomas, Cecily Brown, Marlene Dumas and Lisa Yuskavage, another to African-American male artists with works from Glenn Ligon, Rashid Johnson, Gary Simmons and Leonardo Drew who takes over the show with Untitled #25, 1992, a giant wall of cotton placed in the middle of the room, a feat in itself. The self-taught artist Purvis Young from Miami, gets two walls in a corridor for his paintings about funerals, protesters and pregnant women, and Hank Willis Thomas for his Unbranded Series, 2006-2008, in which he highlights the perverted use of black men's image in advertisement, a wall to wall display of photographs filling a gallery and an adjacent narrow passage.  It is the occasion to discover the caricatural portraits from Tschabalala Self empowering black females, accompanied by a wall text about intersectionality, and Sylvia Snowden's series Shell;Glimpses, 2010-2012, about her daughter's character depicted through an abstract expressionist vein with brash colors and heavy impasto. 

The list of artists goes on: Maurizio Cattelan, Carrie Mae Weems, Christian Boltanski, Danh Võ, CadyNoland,... Sometimes represented by one small piece lost among the overcrowded display like Kara Walker or Robert Colescott, the fifty artists selected for the exhibition are all "responding to pressing social and political issues" through their works as described on the museum's website. The walls are covered with  paintings, drawings and photographs, along the stairs, the landings, the corridors, leaving little space to take a step back. A few sculptures are located in the central halls on the first and second floor. The visit ends in the basement where three installations are relegated possibly due to their sensitive subject and shocking visual impact on some visitors especially children. Starting with the least controversial, a room filled with plastic detritus thrown among broken classical columns, all covered with imitation gold leaf. A refusal to Accept Limits, 2007, from John Miller invites the visitors to wander among  glittering piles of garbage. Next door, in contrast, three pieces from Josh Kline bring a miserabilist touch with a lighted shopping cart filled with various items and a too realistic female body lying on the floor in a fetal position, thrown in a transparent plastic bag. The long-winded wall text poorly printed about capitalism predicts a dismal future. Is Casja von Zeipel a provocateur? Post Me, Post You, 2022, her pornographic installation with all the props made a stir last Spring at the Frieze New York Art Fair and appears more appropriate for a sex-dungeon. Enough said about it and forget the selfies... gross. 

What's Going On, the vague title of the show, allows the inclusion of diverse works and a long list of artists, the ultimate aim being the presentation of the Rubell Family Collection for the benefit of the visitors (and the Collection). However, more can be less. 

photographs by the author:

John Miller "A Refusal to Accept Limits", 2007.

Tschabalala Self, "Two Girls", 2019

Cecily Brown "Black Painting 4", 2003

Hyper-realism

  

A former private mansion rue de Grenelle in Paris shelters the permanent collection of the Musée Maillol, primarily dedicated to the sculptor. Usually quiet, the venue with its grand staircase and dark rooms, is taken over by a crowd spilling in the street, attracted by the travelling exhibition   Hyperréalisme: Ceci n'est pas un corps ("Hyperrealism: this is not a body") well-advertised on tourists' websites. Hyperrealism includes a whole gamut of realistic paintings and sculptures with a twist, hence the prefix, and emerges from photorealism, an American art movement born sometimes in the 1960's as a reaction to the post-WWII abstract movement. Confused by the shapes, colors, and meanings of nonrepresentational works, frustrated visitors come by, eager to look at art they can relate to. The exhibition features thirty six works from thirty artists and spans almost forty years. In addition, a special display highlights four pieces spread among Maillol's permanent collection on the top floor . 

What I thought was a distraught visitor leaning against the wall turned out to be my first encounter with the show: a life-like sculpture with long blond hair, wearing jeans and t-shirt like everyday teenager, Caroline, 2014, from Daniel Firman. The cow-boy and two tired laborers from Duane Hanson and Ethyl, 2003, from Tom Kuebler fit perfectly the first theme "Human Replicas". In the same realistic vein, cliché with their props: hats, boots, buckets or a lasso for the cow-boy, they look cartoonish and fail to provoke an emotional connection. In contrast, two sculptures in polychrome bronze, John Deandrea's American Icon - Kent State, 2015 and Dying Gaul, 2010, are unsettling. In the dark room, their bodies glowing under the spotlights, the distressed naked humans are represented in their most intimate details, pubic hair included, and their poses speak of a tragic destiny, one of violent death. Moving on, the moody sculpture from George Segal  Blue Girl on Park Bench, 1980, expresses the sadness of loneliness through the melancholy of the color blue. Farther, a nude also from Segal, appears abandoned, drifting on a couch, white like a ghost. Representing himself with a (tortured) tree trunk from the waist down or surrounded by birds, Fabien Merelle's self-portraits allude to his deep connection with nature. More nudes fill this section dedicated to monochrome works with among them a very classical portrait in marble from Fabio Viale. "Parts of the Body" is taken over by a central piece from Peter Land, an adjustable body, another self-portrait asleep this time, snaking its way at the center of the room. Valter Adam Casotto cuts his body in pieces. Enlarged lips, elbow, palm, ..., with magnified creases and lines are covered with innocent drawings from his childhood, a not so subtle allusion to aging. Andy Warhol's bust by Kazu Hiro appears very official with his grey hair well parted, closely shaved face, looking down at the viewer, without a smile, chin firmly set on two fingers in a judgmental pose, ready to take his place at Madame Tussauds. An iconic sculpture from Carole Feuerman and the famous Ave Maria, 2007, from Maurizio Cattelan, get lost in the display. "Playing with Size" and "Deformed Realities" assemble almost half of the group show's artists who represent  diverse countries and continents: Australia, Serbia, Italy, Republic of North Macedonia, Belgium, South Africa, Sierra Leone, United States, a testimony to the international reach of hyperrealism. 

 One can find works from Ron Mueck or Berlinde de Bruyckere next to those of less known artists, showcasing the diversity of backgrounds and practices. Following the rich display, "Shifting Boundaries", the exhibition's last chapter provides a glimpse into the future of hyperrealism, and sculpture in general, when the boundaries between fiction and reality are blurred and technology becomes the art as illustrated by the talkative animated piece Jonathan, 2009, from the duo Glaser/Kunz. At the end, the irresistible selfie takes over the show with the visitors lining up to become the subject of Erwin Wurm's piece Idiot II, 2003, eager to expose themselves to the anonymous crowd of social media. 

Repulsion, compassion, indifference, the viewers go through a whole gamut of emotions mixed with curiosity and voyeurism. Many resist the temptation to touch the more haptic pieces of art... are they real? Spread in the rooms, loop videos of artists' interviews in which they reveal their techniques take away some of the magic. More or less relevant quotes are also available on the walls. However the  bodies frozen for eternity appear objectified rather than transcended and this impression becomes more acute when they are spread among Maillol's sculptures. The short conclusion to the show leaves us pondering about the future of hyperrealism, stretched to the absurd. 

Upcoming: three special showings for naturists allowed to go through the exhibition totally naked!

                                                        

photographs by the author:

"Stringiamoci a coorte", 2017, Valter Adam Casotto

"Untitled (Man in a Sheet)", 1997, Ron Mueck

"Pat & Veerle", 1974, Jacques Verduyn

 

The year of women artists at Hirshhorn

                In 2009, the curators at the Centre Pompidou in Paris took the bold decision to fill the venue  with works selected from the permanent collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, solely created by women artists. elles@centre pompidou which took place from May 2009 until February 2011 was a revelation for visitors like me. More recently in 2021, Women in Abstraction showcased the ongoing interest in gender themed exhibitions extending lately to smaller museums like the Musée du Luxembourg with Pioneers: Artists in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties, a show about the influence of women artists between the two World Wars. This Fall, the Hirshhorn in Washington D.C. is catching up with an exhibition of works selected from its permanent collection. Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection "unites almost a century of work by 49 women and nonbinary artists". Located on the third floor, it assembles paintings, sculptures, collages, photographs, videos and installations spread in the galleries of the circular building.  

Organized by themes, the exhibition starts with "Eye, Body", a salient subject exploring voyeurism, violence, objectification of women, isms related to race and gender, through diverse works including Display Stand with Madonnas, 1987-1989, a towering accumulation of Virgin Marys from Katharina Fritsch. Further, Billie Zangewa in  A Vivid Imagination, 2021, represents a lonely matriarchal figure set in her backyard garden invaded by an ill-defined threatening white shape, fostering a feeling of doom. A major work from Carolee Schneemann Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions, 1963-1973, feature photographs of the naked artist surrounded by attributes like snake, ropes, tarp, feathers, broken mirrors, and more. During her performances, the artist offers her body to the visitor's gaze in tableaux recorded by Erró. Pain and trauma inspire the next works, from a video featuring Ana Mendieta in the nude, pouring blood on herself then rolling in white feathers to Cecily Brown's painting "à la Soutine", Hoodlum, 2000-2001, inspired by her surroundings in New York City's Meatpacking district. Throwing soil from a plantation on a white wall to represent a map of the United States sums up the performance from Kiyan Williams filled with historical references. Senga Nengudi's R.S.V.P X, 1976/2014, like a drawing in space, enlivens a corner of the gallery where the elegant sculpture seems ready to dance. Adding to its aesthetic element, the piece made of panty hoses filled with sand and rose petals alludes to the resilience of women's body during pregnancy. Did Nengudi hint also at their psychological resilience? Conceptual art allows us to speculate.                                                 Following the somewhat tense works, "Nature and Abstraction" offers a break with a stunning triptych from Joan Mitchell. Size, vibrancy of colors, vigor of the brush, makes it an ode to nature and life. This also describes two paintings from Alma Thomas nearby. The cocoon-like sculptures made of alabaster, wood, silk, metal, from Lee Bontecou and Barbara Hepworth have a motherly side while Jay DeFeo's drawing and Carlotta Corpron's photographs capture the play between light and darkness to produce abstract landscapes. Ultimately, the contemplation of nature becomes a spiritual journey conveyed through Arcanum #2, Helen Lundeberg's painting. Oo Fifi, Five Days in Claude Monet's Garden, Parts 1 and 2, 1992, videos from Diana Thater, provides a cheerful transition with its exuberant colors contrasting with the muted hues of the works in the next gallery labelled Poetry of Perception, starting with a meditative painting from Agnes Martin. The realm of poetry, a way to express the intensity of emotions, encompasses also works of art like sculptures, paintings, which can trigger intense feelings. However the minimalist pieces on display generate little of these: Untitled (LeWitt)) #1, 2016, from Liz Dechenes inspired by Sol LeWitt, Night Naiad, 1977, a totemic piece from Anne Truitt or Untitled (Orange Oval), 2019, from Eva LeWitt stir little emotions. Jennie C. Jones in Light Grey with Middle C (variation #2), 2013, adds a musical element to the visual experience, referring to the most abstract of the arts. Following this first part of the exhibition, a large space provides a place to relax on comfortable sofas while reading the very relevant posters from Guerilla Girls splashed on the walls. 

"Stress Position" could be the title for Sondra Perry's installation (Graft and Ash for a Three Monitor Workstation, 2016) introduced by an invitation to pedal an exercise bicycle while watching videos of the artist's avatar. The following works are more or less related to the theme, a painful subject to reflect upon: "How does stress condition our physical spaces, bodies, and possibilities for freedom?... evident here are the ways in which marginalized bodies must continually persist in the face of resistance, pressure and even violence." The conceptual work from Eva Hesse Vertiginous Detour, 1966, sums up the long wall text while two homey photographs from Deana Lawson leave us speculate about a darker side to their story. "Earth Knowledge" includes two artists represented by installations, Dana Awartani from Saudi Arabia and Michelle Stuart associated with the Land art movement. "Shape Shifters" organized around Louise Nevelson's Dream House XXXII, 1972, features also three smaller works from Betye Saar and a portrait from the pioneer Niki de Saint Phalle. The exhibition concludes with an installation from the New Orleans born artist Zarouhie Abdalian: threnody for the unwilling martyrs, 2021, a final unsettling lament.

The diversity and abundance of works displayed is a testimony of the prolific creativity of women artists and the show provides a glimpse into the growing permanent collection: "Over the past five years 35% of Hirshhorn purchases artworks... made by women and non conforming artists. Last year alone, this number was nearly 60%." This commitment by the Hirshhorn Museum gives us the occasion to discover younger artists and savor revisiting famous ones. Long wall texts have become an unavoidable component of exhibitions, skewing the traditional relationship between artist, work of art and viewer. Under the museum's auspices, the printed statements become the official interpretation of the works of art with adds-on for "kids", possibly addressed to young teenagers (but set at a height for a six year old), robbing them of their emotions, imagination and creativity. 

 The clearly stated goal of the exhibition is not only to look at works from women artists but also consider the role of the museum in promoting them and emphasize "the significance of gender in creating and perceiving an artwork, the effects of categorizing artists by gender". This brings up ongoing concerns about the "ghettoing" of women artists. While museums have sponsored art by women, the art market is still trying to catch up. Regarding the viewers' bias, it may vary according to their personal experience. About the artist? Of course their gender influences and enriches their work.  

The year-long exhibition leaves plenty of time to visit and revisit. The only regret, the collection could be rotated over the coming months to display more works of art from women and nonbinary artists.

                                            

photographs by the author:

Rosalyn Drexler "Put It This Way", 1963

Senga Nengudi "R.S.V.P. X", 1976/2014

Guerilla Girls "Women in America Earn Only 2/3 of What Men Do (from Portfolio Compleat:1985-2012)", 1986/exhibition copy 2022