Currently on view at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, through September 5, is Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting. This exhibition, which is a collaboration with Hayward Gallery in London, shows more than 70 paintings, spanning the period from 1958, five years prior to his debut in 1963 at the legendary Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, to the present day. Curated by Lars Nittve and Ann-Sofi Noring, the installation groups Ruscha’s works in chronological order so as to allow the viewer to see the development of the artist’s various motifs and styles over time.

The exhibition’s overarching theme, of course, is words and their constantly shifting relationships with context and message. As the curators explain, “In all his paintings there are tensions and frictions at play: between foreground and background, between text and image, and between how words look and what they mean.”

Installation shot, Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years Of Painting. Photo by Åsa Lundén, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

More text and images after the jump…

Ed Ruscha, Echo Park Studio Los Angeles, California 1963. Photo by Joe Goode, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Ed Ruscha (born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska) grew up in Oklahoma City. He found a love for typography when worked, in his teens, as a type setter at a printing and bookbinding company. Early sources of inspiration were found in the work of Robert Frank and Man Ray, but it was ultimately Ruscha’s move to Los Angeles, where he began studying art and commercial graphic design at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts). By the time he left he had discovered the work of Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, and his attention had shifted to making paintings with loud, punchy, monosyllabic words such as Oof (1962) and Noise (1963), for which he is most well-known.

Ed Ruscha, Noise, 1963. Courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Although Ruscha never left the motif of the word, his paintings began taking on longer phrases and flashier backgrounds. In 1980 Ruscha developed his own typeface, named “Boy Scout Utility Modern,” which he used in many of his works thereafter. An example can be seen in 90% Angel, 10% Devil (1982) and in recent works, such as Baby Jet (1998).

Ed Ruscha, 90% Angel, 10% Devil, 1982. Courtesy of Moderna Museet.

In 1986, Ruscha began aseries of wordless, “strokeless” silhouette paintings. Although traditionally the artist only used oil paint on canvas, for this series he “wanted something smoky and difficult to see.” Against his own principles, Ruscha used a spray gun and acrylic paint to achieve the blurred effect. A blanked-out word or image, he felt, “can suggest to you something like a censor’s strip. Or it can suggest the opposite. It can suggest a space for thought…” But always a formalist, it is the “bang of the black and white together” that most interested him.

Ed Ruscha, Untitled, 1986. Photo by Paul Ruscha, courtesy of James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles.

Installation shot, Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years Of Painting. Photo by Åsa Lundén, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

A recent motif found in the exhibition is that of the mountain, the first of which he painted in 1997. These are not depictions of actual mountains, but rather peaks and ranges as the artist imagines them. An artificial, manufactured sublime, the mountains serve as backdrops to words like “Me,” “The,” and “Co,” or phrases such as “Daily Planet,” “Wall Rockets,” and “Bump and Bubble.” As the artist explains, “The backgrounds are of no particular character. They’re just meant to support the drama.” “I’ve always liked the idea that if you stare at a word long enough it begins to lose meaning,” he shares, and in this sense, the word is pared down to its essential characteristic: that of shapes. “I always looked at a word like it was a horizontal bunch of abstract shapes, which is really is.”

Installation shot, Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years Of Painting. Photo by Åsa Lundén, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Installation shot, Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years Of Painting. Photo by Åsa Lundén, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Ed Ruscha, Annie, 1962. Photo by Paul Ruscha, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Ed Ruscha, Norm’s, La Cienega, On Fire, 1964. Photo by Paul Ruscha, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Ed Ruscha, Talk Ra

Ed Ruscha, Scream, 1964. Photo by Paul Ruscha, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

dio, 1988. Photo by Paul Ruscha, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Ed Ruscha, Triumph, 1994. Courtesy of Moderna Museet.

Ed Ruscha in his studio, Venice, California. Photo by Leo Holub, courtesy of Moderna Museet.

- J. Lindblad

Related Links:

Exhibition Site with video interview [Moderna Museet]
Ed Ruscha’s Great Subject [Financial Times]
Exhibition Review [The Guardian]
Exhibition Review [The Independent]
Exhibition Review (in Swedish) [Dagens Nyheter]
Exhibition Review (in Swedish) [Svenska Dagbladet]
Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting at the Hayward Gallery [The Times UK]
Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting takes alt-view of America to the Hayward Gallery [Culture 24]

The forthcoming exhibition of works by acclaimed Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami at the Palace of Versailles has sparked protests by French traditionalists and conservative groups.  Due to open on the 14th of September, the show will feature 22 works by the artist displayed throughout the Palace and the gardens including 11 pieces created specifically for the exhibition. As with the Jeff Koons’s exhibition, which showed at Versailles in 2008, a group of traditional supporters of the historic Versailles Palace protested against a commercial and at times sensationalist artist showing work in such a landmark of French history.

More text and images after the jump…

Oval Buddha Silver (2008) by Takashi Murakami, via Chateau de Versailles

Murakami’s work, often inspired by Japanese Manga comic strips, has recently branched out with commercial partnerships and ventures.  Far right fundamentalist circles criticize the association of such activity with the historic reliquary of the Palace of Versailles. Versailles Director and former French culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon stated that the scope of the exhibition is “to give visitors to historic monuments the chance to discover art that is less familiar to them” as well as attract viewers to the Chateau itself.

A  work by Takashi Murakami at the Palace of Versailles, via Chateau de Versailles

Aillagon instead finds there to be an interesting correlation between Versailles and Murakami. “You know, the Hall of Mirrors [in Versailles] is a kind of manga, a comic strip for the glory of the king’s region,” he said in a recent interview with the Mon Versailles blog.  The Murakami exhibition is part of a series which intended to merge historical with contemporary art at the Palace of Versailles in the attempt to draw new visitors to the site.  In addition to Murakami and Koons, French pop artist Xavier Veilhan has also shown at the Chateau.

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami poses in Chateau de Versailles’ House of Mirrors,via CBC

As for the artist himself, Murakami has clearly pondered over the relationship of his work to this historic landmark of French culture and history. “For a Japanese like me, the Chateau de Versailles is one of the greatest symbols of Western history. It is the emblem of an ambition for elegance, sophistication and art that most of us can only dream of… But, in many respects, everything is transmitted to us as a fantastic tale coming from a very distant kingdom. Just as the French people find it hard to recreate in their minds an accurate image of the Samurai period, the history of this palace has become diminished for us in reality. So it is probable that the Versailles of my imagination corresponds to an exaggeration and a transformation in my mind so that it has become a kind of completely separate and unreal world. That is what I have tried to depict in this exhibition. I am the Cheshire cat that welcomes Alice and Wonderland with its diabolic smile, and chatters away as she wanders around the Chateau. With a broad smile I invite you all to discover the Wonderland of Versailles.”

Related Links:
Protesters Decry Murakami Show at Versailles [CBC]
Japan’s Pop Artists’s Versailles Show Sparks Protests [France 24]
Murakami’s Planned Show at Versailles Riles Right-Wing Critics [Artinfo]
Japan Artist at French Chateau Sparks Protest [The Independent]
Murakami Versailles [Palace of Versailles]
Murakami angers traditionalists in France with Versailles Installation [LA Times Blog]
La Froideur for Murakami at Versailles [The Art Newspaper]
Takashi Murakami: “Mon Versailles, Version Manga” [Le Figaro]

-R.A. Proctor

Art Observed was on site for MELT: an experimental, site-specific dance installation performed at the Salt Pile in lower Manhattan through September 12, 2010. Choreographed by Noémie LaFrance, best known for staging similar conceptual pieces in unconventional urban spaces, MELT incorporates both the aesthetic and acoustic particulars of its location into a multi-media sensory experience. Watch the video below for AO’s exclusive MELT short clip.

The 30 minute performance features eight seated women, each harnessed to the wall beneath the Manhattan Bridge. The dancers are wrapped in a mixture of beeswax and lanolin, which gradually softens, drips, and liquefies, in order to create the illusion that they are melting.

More images and text after the jump.

The choreography is designed to evoke the euphoria and exhaustion of approaching the sun. The dancers melt so that their souls may “escape their ephemeral bodies and disintegrate into light.” They move in similarly-paced yet distinct gestures, to an original score by Erin McGonigle.

MELT aims to engage the audience in a sensual and dramatic visual experience, functioning as both a performance piece and sculptural installation. The work incorporates a variety of themes including  global climate change, ritual, mythology, and female beauty.

The dancers featured are Elizabeth Wilkinson, Mare Hieronimus, Teresa Kochis, Celeste Hastings, Ori Lenkinski, Adi Kfir, Meghan Merril, Marcy Schlissel, and Sarah Donnelly.

MELT runs Thursday through Sunday nights until September 12th, 2010 at the Salt Pile, 74 Pike Slip at South Street, under the Manhattan Bridge. It is presented by Sens Production, a not-for-profit production company specializing in site-specific dance performances.

-S. Humphrey and K. Leung

Related Links:

Sponsor’s Website [Sens Production]
Dance Review: Melt by Noémie Lafrance [New York Times]
Women on the Verge of Melting [WSJ]
MELT – Salt Pile [Village Voice]

Currently on view at the New Museum is “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine,” the first comprehensive American exhibition to feature the interdisciplinary British artist, writer, and collaborator. Often overlooked, both popularly and commercially, Gysin (1916-1986) has frequently been characterized as a foil of failure within the historical narrative of Beat-Era success stories. He is generally credited as the inventor of the “cut-up” method, a medium which culminated in his co-authorship of the experimental collage-manifesto The Third Mind with William S. Burroughs.

Brion Gysin and William S. Burroghs, The Third Mind, 1965.

Brion Gysin and William S. Burroghs, The Third Mind, 1965.

The exhibition, which includes over 300 objects, draws its title from the spinning, cylindrical sculpture created by Gysin’s friend and “systems advisor” Ian Sommerville in 1962. Dreammachine’s incised metallic exterior rotates around a single light source, projecting undulating, psychedelic, flickering imagery, enshrouding viewers in a shared experience of the artist’s nearly-forgotten dream-making.

Brion Gysin with Dreammachine, 1962.

The New Museum leaves the nature of Gysin’s dream to the discretion of the viewer, allowing it to be subjectively characterized as either an outmoded, hackneyed, acid-tinged reflection of an overrated era of popular culture, or a probing, timeless inquiry into selfhood, creativity, and the artistic process. Mixed-media works like I Am That I Am seem to point to the latter; to a weighted and ambiguous vision of the artist’s reflection in the mirror of his culture and social milieu. The show succeeds in revealing Gysin’s complex, dynamic, and interdisciplinary artistic character. It offers a refreshed perspective on critical type-casting, which simultaneously explores the artist’s historical personage, critical reception, and diverse body of material work.

Brion Gysin, Ivy, 1959.

Gysin was born in Taplow, UK, in 1916. According to the exhibition’s curator Laura Hoptman, Dream Machine “…represents an approach to the notion of the new that is somewhat different from the Museum’s standard—one that emphasizes relevance and fresh information over chronology, and brings to the fore a relatively neglected yet very influential innovator who continues to have a strong impact on artists working today.” Following its run at the New Museum, the exhibition will travel to the Institut d’art Contemporain Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, where it will remain on view through November 28, 2010.

Related Links:

The New Museum [Dream Machine]
“Brion Gysin: Dream Machine” [Artnet]
Bohemian Rhapsody [New York Magazine]
Brion Gysin, Dream Machine [Artlog]

As part of the Edinburgh Arts Festival, Fruitmarket is honoring one of Britain’s most popular and esteemed artists, Martin Creed, in a major solo exhibition of recent and newly-commissioned work. Entitled “Down Over Up,” the show focuses on basic visual properties like the differentiation of size, proportion, and tone of everyday objects such as chairs, tables, boxes, and Lego pieces. Creed has often been criticized for the accessible quality of his materials and technique; while this aspect of his practice is visible in “Down Over Up,” the artist has also incorporated more conventional art forms such as paintings, drawings, and sculpture into the exhibition.

Creed initially won critical acclaim for his minimalistic sculptures, in which he rearranges everyday objects. He manipulates the common as a material representation of his primary preoccupation: modern culture. The artist often creates work in order to elicit particular responses from the viewer, by deploying a spectrum of motifs ranging from the absurd to the familiar.

When entering the exhibition, the first work the viewer encounters is a neon sign over the entrance suggesting that “Everything Is Going to Be Alright.” Comforting and witty, this work brings Creed’s background as a musician, poet, and conceptual artist to the forefront and prepares the viewer for a display of work combining candid humor and thoughtful commentary.

Creed often makes a point to create work which blurs traditional distinctions between fine art and utilitarian objects. While his art is sometimes criticized for its sparring qualities, the concept behind it is anything but minimal. He strives to demonstrate that aesthetic beauty can be composed from ordinary, pre-existing materials. The work in “Down Over Up” that most clearly conveys this goal are his sculptures fashioned from store-bought wood planks. Their treatment of themes such as measurement and progress is a recurring motif in “Down Over Up,” where Creed also explores his obsession with steps, intervals, increments, progressions, and regressions.

Curated by Fruitmarket’s Fiona Bradley, the exhibition spans two floors of the gallery. While Bradley and Creed were preparing for the show, the artist was simultaneously engaged with a monumental commission to renovate the nearby Scotsman Steps. This staircase is an outdoor landmark linking Edinburgh’s old and new towns, notoriously considered to be an uncomfortably narrow decent. Creed plans to transform the experience the Scotsman Steps into an elegant space of bilateral mobility. Each of the one hundred and forty stairs will be inlaid with a unique marble slab from around the globe. A project reminiscent of the Renaissance, Creed’s goal is to create a small tribute to our world, so that utilizing the staircase becomes an international voyage. The project will be completed later this year, and serve as a cosmopolitan homage to Edinburgh’s historical significance.

Creed’s initial designs for the Scotsman Steps included a plan to transform the monument into a musical synthesizer staircase. While the project was untenable for the outdoor space, Fruitmarket commissioned an adaptation of this staircase for the gallery, which now integrates the first and second floors of the show. This commission was supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Expo Fund, and will remain at Fruitmarket as part of the permanent collection. As visitors ascend or descend the staircase, each step sounds a different note on the musical scale, creating unique melodies contingent upon the visitor’s pace and the population in the gallery.

Martin Creed, Work No. 997, 2009, courtesy of The Guardian.

Martin Creed, Work. No 998, 2009, courtesy of Telegraph.

Martin Creed, Work No. 508, 2006, courtesy of The Guardian.

Bradley chose to explore Creed’s interest in staircases throughout the exhibition, particularly through paintings like Work No. 508. Every positive plane creates a negative one beside it, and every ascending staircase creates a descending one above it, in an elegant display of balance and order.

Martin Creed, Work No. 960, 2010, courtesy of The Guardian.

Also displayed is an installation composed of thirteen different potted cacti, ascending in order by height. Here Creed addresses the tension between systemization and spontaneity. While the cacti are precisely arranged, their identities are individual and idiosyncratic. Another work in the show that addresses this dichotomy is a video in which the artist and a friend follow two dogs, one small, and one large. The characters move around a bare studio in a row. By staging this performance in the artist’s studio, Creed transforms an ordinary experience into one of surprise and unanticipated humor.

Martin Creed, Still From Work No. 670: Orson & Sparky, 2007, courtesy of The Guardian.

Martin Creed, Work No. 1020, 2010, courtesy of The Guardian.

Outside the exhibition, the nearby BBC public monitor displays an ongoing screening of Work No.732: Flower Kicking. Also coinciding with the show was a performance of Creed’s Ballet, Work No. 1020, presented by Sadler’s Wells and Fruitmarket at Traverse Theatre, as part of the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe from August 8th through the 15th. This work also plays with the notion of progression and the ordering and reordering of the mundane experience. Based around the five primary positions in ballet, and the notes on the musical scale, Creed lines up five dancers by height, similar to his cactus installation. Each of the dancers is repeatedly performing ballet movements in one of the five positions, with a musical note applied to each movement. A live band performs the musical accompaniment, with Creed as the guitarist in the ensemble.

Creed’s exhibition is woven throughout the urban fiber of Edinburgh. Earlier this year, Thames & Hudson published a major survey of the artist’s work. He was the recipient of the 2001 Turner Prize for Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off. In 2008, he accepted the Duveen Commission at Tate Britain and presented Work No. 850, a performance piece in which runners sprinted through the museum space in thirty-second intervals. Both of these works enjoyed overwhelmingly positive critical response.

-A. Goldberg

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Fruitmarket Gallery]
Artist Interview [Dazed Digital]
Exhibition Review [The Guardian]
Festival Review [Edinburgh Festivals]

Currently on view at Los Angeles County Museum of Art is “Pure Beauty,” a retrospective of work by John Baldessari. The exhibition features one hundred and fifty objects produced by one of the most influential living American artists, representing over five decades of his storied career. The show is curated by LACMA’s Leslie Jones, with Jessica Morgan, curator of Contemporary Art at the Tate Modern.

John Baldessari Hands and/or Feet, 2009 via Marian Goodman Gallery

A renowned patriarch of Conceptual art, Baldessari was born in 1931 in California. He studied at San Diego State College, U.C. Berkeley, UCLA, the Otis Art Institute, and the Chouinard Art Institute. He received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2000 from the Otis Art Institute, an honorary Ph.D. from San Diego State University, San Diego, California in 2003, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.

John Baldessari via Marian Goodman Gallery

In his audacious visual experiments, Baldessari combines photomontage, painting, and language. In his early work, the artist made use of the platitudes commonly associated with art history and theory.

Examples of the artist’s early work via Marian Goodman Gallery

Related to his early text paintings were his Wrong series, which paired photographs with lines of text from a book about image composition.

John Badessari Wrong 1967-1968 via LACMA

In this early and important example of conceptual art, Baldessari casts himself in the role of amateur photographer. For this series, the artist had himself photographed in front of a palm tree to create the illusion that the tree were growing out of his head. The image plays on the common realist admonition to young photographers against staging pictures in this manner.

John Baldessari, Magnetic

Since the early 1980′s, Baldessari constantly explored the connection between the image and the written word; the essence of communication. He has attributed this interest in language to it’s similarities in structure to games, as both operate by an ordained and mandatory system of rules. In this spirit, many of his works are sequences illustrating attempts to accomplish an arbitrary goal, such as Throwing Four Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line. In this series, the artist captured his attempts and displayed the “best out of 36 tries;” 36 being determined by the number of shots on a roll of 35mm film.

John Baldessari Throwing Four Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line, via LACMA

Baldassari received the prestigious Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the 53rd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale in 2009. His works are included in permanent collections of numerous contemporary art museums around the world, among them the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate Modern, London. The exhibition is on view until September 12, 2010.

Relevant Links:
Exhibition web-page: John Baldessari:Pure Beauty [LACMA]

Art Observed was on site Tuesday, August 24th for the opening of Miles Mendenhall’s solo show at Half Gallery. The exhibition is the product of Mendenhall’s first off-screen collaboration with ‘Work of Art’ judge and Half Gallery co-owner Bill Powers.

On view are eight new works that echo the artist’s black-and-white screenprints from the Bravo show’s finale. His large-scale manipulations of digital imagery feature luminous geometric patterns, which reflect the artist’s enduring fascination with technology and, in particular, “the computer’s inability to compute certain visual information.” For more on Miles work in this exhibition and his artistic practice, watch the exclusive AO interview with the artist and Half Gallery owner Bill Powers.

more images, story and links after the jump…

The crowd outside Half Gallery

Light Bank, 2010

Guests of Half Gallery

The opening reception was very well attended, particularly considering the gallery’s small size. Mendenhall’s fellow ‘Work of Art’ contestants Jaclyn Santos and Judith Braun were in attendance, as well as dozens of other visitors who overflowed onto Forsyth Street.

Half Gallery co-owner and ‘Work of Art’ judge Bill Powers

Fellow ‘Work of Art’ contestant Jaclyn Santos

Earlier in the evening, AO spoke with Miles and Bill about their thoughts on the exhibition and Miles’ plans for the future. During our conversation, Bill informed us that much of the show had sold before the opening (prints from editions of three sold for $1,200 each).

Two Lights in Tilted Black Plane, 2010

Four Lights on Titled Black Pane, 2010

Visitors with masks

Reception book

Visitors outside

The exhibit remains on view at Half Gallery, 208 Forsyth St., through September 14th, 2010.

Related Links:

Exhibition Website [Half Gallery]
Miles Mendenhall’s Half Gallery Opening [Paper Mag]

‘The Geometry of Kandinsky and Malevich” is currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. The show, which includes only seven paintings, features the works of Russian artists Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944). The small scale of the exhibition permits an intensely focused look at two of the pioneers of abstract art. Although all the work is presented in one room, the representative paintings of each artist are hung in distinctly separate areas. This spatial orientation refers to the fact that, although Kandinsky and Malevich were contemporaries, and explored similar formal concepts, they did so independently of one another.

Vasily Kandinsky, In the Black Square (June 1923) Image via Guggenheim Museum

Vasily Kandinsky, Composition 8 (July 1923) Image via Guggenheim Museum

In contrast to the Kandinsky retrospective at the Guggenheim last year, ‘The Geometry of Kandinsky and Malevich” features works solely from the artist’s early years at the Weimer Bauhaus. His use of geometric motifs during this period reflects many of the theories of color and form developed in his 1914 treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art; a publication which first appeared during the time when Malevich was creating his Suprematist compositions. Unlike many of his Russian contemporaries, who were also experimenting with geometric compositions, Kandinsky believed that particular shapes expressed a certain spirituality and psychological meaning beyond pure form.

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism, 18th Construction (1915) Image via malevichpaintings.com

Kazimir Malevich, Mystic Suprematism (Black Cross and Red Oval) (1920-22) Image via malevichpaintings.com

The paintings by Malevich all feature overlapping geometric forms against a white background. The artist made extensive use of the three basic Suprematist elements, the black square, circle, and cross, while gradually expanding his palette and diversifying his repertory of shapes. These dark, layered figures appear simultaneously to float, fall, and ascend against the lighter backgrounds. In this manner, the white background evokes the concept of infinite and universal space, in contrast to the concrete geometric forms presented within them. In addition to the polychromatic juxtaposition of forms in the works on view in the current exhibition, Malevich was also exploring monochromatic suprematism during this period. Both modes were largely informed by concepts delineated in the artist’s treatise of 1915, From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting.

While Malevich sought a non-objective and non-representational method for producing communicative imagery, Kandinsky’s art maintains links with the objective world by including elements resembling natural phenomena like clouds and rainbows. A comparison between the two artists speaks as much to the trajectory of abstraction in the early 20th century as to their discreet approaches to new modes of image-making, and illustrates important points of contention in the emergence of modernist philosophy.

Kazimir Malevich, Painterly Realism of  Football Player (1915) Image via malevichpaintings.com

- S. Zabrodski

Related Links:
Exhibition Site [Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum]

Currently on view at the Saatchi Gallery is ‘Newspeak: British Art Now,’ an exhibition featuring more than 30 young British artists whose work is represented in the collection of Charles Saatchi. The European premiere of the show was held at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia in October 2009.

for more story, images and links…


Installation view

Goshka Macuga’s Madame Blavatsky, 2007 via The Guardian

The show borrows its title from George Orwell’s novel “1984,” where “Newspeak” is an artificial language created to restrict the flow of thought in the dictatorial society of the future. The current Saatchi exhibition demonstrates the extraordinary idiomatic variety of contemporary artistic expression in Britain.

Installation View

Steve Bishop, Christian Dior, 2008

John Wynne, Untitled , installation for 300 speakers, pianola and vacuum cleaner

Over the past decade, Saatchi has tended to gravitate more towards young artists from the United States, the Near East, or Eastern Europe.  For the first time since 1992, when he began a series of exhibitions featuring young conceptual artists (most of whom held BFAs from Goldsmith College in London), Saatchi hosts an exhibition of indigenous talent on a grand scale.  His previous endeavor culminated in the historic “Sensation” exhibition of 1997 at the Royal Academy, which included works by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Marcus Harvey.

Lynette Boakye, Politics, 2005

As Lynette Boakye, a graduate of  Central St Martins School of Art and Design, describes her work in ‘Newspeak’ on the gallery’s website: “I’ve been working on a series of portraits. None of them is of existing people, but they are familiar. My roll call is growing and it contains some of my favorite characters. They include Grammy winners (gracious in acceptance of awards), revolutionaries, fanatics, anthropologists and missionaries (good for showing us how to live), savages (good for showing us how far we have come and how not to live), radicals and the generally angry, amongst others.”

Installation shot

Johnathan Baldock , Andromeda 2007

William Daniels, William Blake II, 2006.

William Daniels’ painting (above) is based on Thomas Phillip’s 1807 portrait of artist and poet William Blake.  According to the Saatchi Gallery, “Daniels’ William Blake II is uncanny in its decrepit, post-apocalyptic semblance. Exchanging the rich, warm hues of Georgian parlour painting for the ashen greys of his recycled study, Daniels revives his art historical subject as a zombie-like effigy, an homage to a hero that’s both futuristic and decayed. Through Daniel’s attenuate process of working from life models, William Blake II resounds with a heightened sense of the presence of the subject before the artist, bringing to light issues of originality, authenticity, and the malleability of documentation.”

The exhibition is on view until October 17, 2010.

Relevant Links:

Entering a Whole New Head Space [The Sunday Times]
Is it me or is Newspeak Good? [London Evening Standard]
Charles Saatchi’s Newspeak [Financial Times]
Newspeak: British Art Now [Guardian]

A Van Gogh painting valued at $55 million dollars was cut from its frame and taken from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo on Saturday. Despite reports that the painting, referred to as either ‘Poppy Flowers’ or ‘Vase and Flowers,’  had been recovered from an Italian couple at the Cairo airport yesterday, Egyptian officials now confirm that the painting remains missing.

Improper security measures have been cited as a contributing factor to the painting’s theft. According to Egyptian state prosecutor Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, only seven of the 43 security cameras in place were operational at the time of the incident, and none of the museum’s alarms were enabled. Transit centers throughout the region and Europe are currently on alert, and at least 15 Egyptian officials have been temporarily barred from leaving the country.

This is the second time the painting has been stolen from the Khalil Museum. In 1978, it went missing for two years before resurfacing at an unknown location in Kuwait. Egyptian officials have never released details regarding the identities of the individuals involved in this case, or confirmed whether or not they were tried in court.

The museum is located in the former home of Egyptian collector Mahmoud Khalil, and contains primarily European paintings and sculpture of the 19th century. The institution reportedly has very little traffic, which may partially account for the lax security measures in place.

-S. Humphrey

Related Links:

Egyptian Minister says Van Gogh Painting Still Missing [BBC]
Security lapses blamed for van Gogh theft in Egypt [MSNBC]
Van Gogh Painting Stolen From Cairo [NPR]
Van Gogh Theft…Blammed on Lax Security [Bloomberg]
Security Blamed in van Gogh Theft [WSJ Online]

Currently on view at Whitechapel Gallery is “Painted Truths,” the first major European exhibition of work by American artist Alice Neel (1900-1984).  Featuring more than sixty paintings produced over the course of her artistic career, the show focuses upon the psychologically insightful and expressive portraits for which she is best known. Also included are a number of Neel’s cityscapes, in which the anonymity and exteriority of New York City are shown alongside the artist’s intimate depictions of its inhabitants.

Alice Neel, Ninth Avenue El, 1935. Image credited as above.

Although her work was largely neglected or dismissed by critics and collectors for most of her life, Neel’s name is often associated with her portraits of major figures of the contemporary art world. Andy Warhol sat for her in 1970, willingly revealing the scars incurred by the assassination attempt he survived two years earlier, as well as the physical imperfections for which he was famously self-conscious. She painted artist Robert Smithson in 1962, the same year in which she was first featured in a major review by ArtNews. Also in the current exhibition are Neel’s portraits of important art historians Linda Nochlin (Linda and Daisy, 1973), and Meyer Schapiro (1980).  The former was completed shortly after the publication of Nochlin’s seminal essay “Why have there been no great women artists,” which appeared in ArtNews in 1971.

Alice Neel, Robert Smithson, 1962. Image via AliceNeel.com.

Alice Neel, Linda and Daisy, 1973.

The installation is organized around several recurring themes of Neel’s portraiture: the Essential Portrait, the Allegory, Portraits from Memory, the Psychological Portrait, Nudes, Old Age, Parents and Children, and the Detached Gaze.  Such structure is difficult to impose, however, as most of the works on view arguably occupy several of these classifications at once. The categories provided are nevertheless instructive in considering Neel’s enduring preoccupations with certain types of subject matter and various representational modes.

Neel’s interest in depicting parents with their children, pregnant women, and her own family is often attributed to the troubled circumstances of her personal life. The death of her first daughter was followed by the loss of her second  to divorce, when her husband took the child and fled to Cuba. Her early life in New York City was plagued by a series of unstable romantic relationships and great financial hardship. Her ability to observe and portray suffering in an unsentimental manner is evident in early works like TB, Harlem, 1940, in which one of her neighbors is shown in bed following a tuberculosis procedure.

Alice Neel, TB, Harlem, 1940.

“Painted Truths” also includes a documentary about the artist directed by her grandson, Andrew. While the film does not obscure the many difficulties faced by the family as a result of Neel’s artistic pursuits, its presence enriches the artist’s sensitive and complex portraits of her own family. Hartley (1966), a portrait of her younger son painted at the age of 25, is among the most frank and engaging pictures in the exhibition. It’s contrast to her depiction of poet and critic Frank O’Hara, painted in 1960, reveals the artist’s use of style as a primary vehicle through which to communicate characteristic traits.

Neel’s sustained interest in portraiture over nearly seven decades is as remarkable as the consistency with which she explored particular aspects of the human condition. She is often credited with having revived the format of portraiture, despite the male-dominated artistic culture in which she worked, and its critical preference for abstract expressionism and pop art.

The present exhibition, which debuted at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in March, will remain on view at the Whitechapel Gallery through September 19, 2010.

-S. Humphrey

Related Links:

Weird Wonderland: Alice Neel at Whitechapel Gallery [The Guardian]
Alice Neel: Painted Truths, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London [The Independent]
Alice Neel: Painted Truths [Whitechapel Gallery Website]
Alice Neel: Painted Truths at the Whitechapel Gallery [Telegraph, UK]

Almost two years to the day after Lehman Brothers filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, the bank will auction off hundreds of artworks worth some $16 million in hopes of raising funds for its creditors. There will be an auction at Sotheby’s New York on September 25 followed by an auction at Christie’s London on September 29. The smallest of the three auctions will be held at Freeman’s in Philadelphia on November 7 and will focus on the Lehman’s Contemporary Art holdings.

Damien Hirst, We’ve Got Style (The Vessel Collection Blue/Green), 1993 (est. $800,000-1,200,000) via Sothebys.com

The Sotheby’s auction in New York will offer 400 works from Lehman’s U.S.-based art collection. Many of the most sought after works at the sale come from the collection of Neuberger Berman, an asset management firm that Lehman acquired in 2003. Neuberger bought Damien Hirst’s We’ve Got Style (The Vessel Collection Blue/Green) in 1994 for less than $100,000. Next month the work is estimated to fetch $800,000-1,200,000, making it the top lot at the Sotheby’s sale. In second place are Julie Mehretu’s Untitled 1 and Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled (Three-Tiered Perspective), both estimated to bring $600,000-800,000.

John Currin, Shakespeare Actress, 1991 (est. $500,000-700,000), via Sothebys.com

Other lots with pre-sale estimates in the $400,000-700,000 range include works by John Currin, Liu Ye, Neo Rausch, John Baldessari, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Richard Prince, and Gerhard Richter. The sale is hoped to fetch as much as $13 million.

The sign that hung at Lehman Brothers’ headquarters in London, up for auction at Christie’s on September 29 (est. £2,000-3,000)

The Christie’s sale in London on September 29, aptly titled Lehman Brothers: Artwork and Ephemera, will feature not just works of art but also more modest memorabilia such as tea caddies, cigar boxes, and books. The 300 lot sale will include items from Lehman’s London and European offices and is hoped to fetch around $3 million.

Samuel Walters (1811-1882), The Ship Frankfield off Table Bay (est. £15,000-25,000) via Christies.com

More than 30 percent of the lots at Christie’s are valued at less than £1,000 and are being offered with no reserve. The lots for sale range from Old Master pieces to Modern works, including Samuel Walters’ The Ship Frankfield off Table Bay, which is estimated to fetch £15,000-25,000 and Gary Hume’s Head of Bruce Bernard estimated to bring £70,000-100,000.

The Freeman’s auction will be the third Lehman sale at that auction house and will be composed of some 250 lots estimated to bring $250,000-350,000. The sale will include mostly Contemporary works on paper by artists such as Robert Mangold, Alex Katz, Sol Lewitt and Judy Pfaff.

While the upcoming sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Freeman’s might represent a effort to raise funds towards Lehman’s debt and includes some desirable pieces, the proceeds will be miniscule compared to the billions of dollars the bank still owes.

-J. Mizrachi

Related Links:

Sotheby’s e-Catalog [Sothebys.com]
Christie’s Press Release [Christies.com]
Freeman’s Press Release [Freemans.com]
Lehman Creditors May Get $16 Million as Hirst, Freud Auction [Bloomberg.com]
Lehman Brothers’ Art Treasures to be Sold at Auction [Guardian.co.uk]
Lehman’s Art Collection to Go Under the Hammer Two Years After Bank’s Collapse [Telegraph.co.uk]
Lehman’s Louvre, on the Auction Block [Businessweek.com]
Lehman Brothers $10m Art Sale to Include Early Damien Hirst [Guardian.co.uk]

Greater New York, the third quinquennial exhibition organized by MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art, features 68 artists and collectives from metropolitan New York.  Recently completed and specially commissioned works alike showcase diverse talents and media, including sculpture, painting, photography, film, and large-scale installations.  A purposefully provocative exhibition, Greater New York emphasizes themes of trauma, identity, and ecological, political, and psychological exploration.  Curators of the colorful 2010 iteration selected artists of varying degrees of repute through online submissions, studio visits, and recommendations, assembling a brimming observation of contemporary New York City culture.

Images, text, and an interview with participating artist Conrad Ventur after the jump…

Among the standout displays is David Brooks’ simulated tropical rain forest: utilizing two floors of the gallery, Brooks exhibits trees cast in concrete, destroyed and preserved at once.  By allowing viewers to circumnavigate the exhibit and observe the piece from multiple floors, Brooks creates a semi-interactive experience that seems to be the hallmark of PS1’s 2010 incarnation.

Lucy Raven explores themes of globalization as well, documenting copper wire manufacture routes from Nevada mines to Chinese smelters, compiling 7,000 still photographs into an animated presentation that asks her audience what it means to be “wired.”  Raven also displays her travel notes, informational pamphlets, and personal photographs to supplement her documentation.

Ishmael Randall Weeks similarly incorporates travel and geography into his work, with sculpture being his preferred medium.  Weeks’ installation includes carvings honed from glued-together stacks of papers, books, and magazines to create topographically accurate coastlines or hills, in addition to plants, tables, and lights he assembles to lend the room an appearance of inhabitability.

Ryan McNamara’s piece is a work in progress; entitled “Make Ryan a Dancer,” it documents the artist’s daily dance lessons at MoMA PS1.  McNamara’s work will culminate in a finale performance, during which he plans to utilize the entirety of the MoMA PS1 building space.  McNamara’s video footage and written documentations exemplify a principle trend in this year’s exhibition: the creation and exhibition of art that chronicles or represents the artistic process.

David Benjamin Sherry’s technicolored self-portraits, serenely hued, reference S&M and the premise of renewal.  Pieces including Soaring Yellow Morning Breath and Born Feeling Begins relay subject matter that is both serious and taboo, using simplified, streamlined palettes.

Hank Willis Thomas’ piece, Unbranded: Reflections in Black By Corporate America: 1967-2008, explores forty years of Black American representation in the media.  Thomas displays forty advertisements printed and run in as many years, removing their textual particulars and adding his own titles to the timeline.

Leigh Ledare’s photographs have garnered perhaps the most publicity, not only for their explicit nature but also for their Oedipal resonance, with the subject of his work being his mother’s sex life.

Photo courtesy of Conrad Ventur

The curators of Greater New York, Klaus Biesenbach, Connie Butler, and Neville Wakefield, have offered up workshops and studios in the PS1 building to working, exhibiting artists.  AO had the opportunity to speak with Conrad Ventur in his studio about his piece, This is My Life (Shirley Bassey).

AO: Thanks for having to me your studio. What are you working on right now?

CV: PS1 opened up some studios for the artists in the Greater New York show—a couple of free rooms—so whenever we need to work on something over the next five months we can do it, planning and sharing the space with the other artists.  Down the hall in the exhibition is my featured work, part of the quinquennial, that sort of kaleidoscopic, expanded, cinematic piece.  And here in the studio I’m trying some new display methods for an ongoing project of mine.  It’s essentially a series of re-performed Andy Warhol films from the sixties that has taken me a year to produce. I’m using the same actors he used. They are a kind of living link to some interests I have been exploring in my work over the last couple of years.

AO: Out of your various cinematic endeavors, how did you decide which to feature here at the Greater New York show?

CV: I did a project last year, with the same moving images, at a really tiny non-profit space on the Lower East side, called Forever & Today, and it’s literally the smallest gallery space in New York: I thinks it’s about seven feet wide and ten feet deep.

AO: Is that about the size of the space here at PS1?

CV: The space here is even smaller, which is great.  It makes the work more unexpected.  And it’s in the basement level, where people aren’t really prepared to see this type of work.  The PS1 curators responded to some of my latest projects and we thought that situating it in a dark, small space would be perfect, so we decided to go with the Shirley Bassey.

AO: What attracted you to her footage in the first place?

CV: For this exhibition, the footage fits contextually with the work of the other artists here.  The curators were interested in how we are using materials and looking at our process of art making.  So we chose Shirley because of the sentiment of her songs and the way I handled that material.  It fits in with the show, the sentiment of Live Your Life and Be Happy: those types of messages.  And we project it in a special way, with three channels featuring this prismatic effect.  It’s a good message and an interesting way to feature it for the public at large.

AO: Is Bassey someone you’ve admired for a long time?

CV: She’s a new discovery for me. Her song ‘This is My Life’ caught my attention about a year ago while I was noodling through YouTube, and I downloaded around a dozen different versions of it. She’d been performing that one song for thirty or forty years.  She’s changed, but the lyrics have not.  I thought it was amusing to put a few of these different versions together. Then, when I started to really research her, her biography struck me.  She came form a mixed background: her father was Algerian and she was born in a very poor town in Wales, and out of the talent she had and the commitment she made to entertaining, she grew to become one of the biggest recording artists in Europe.

AO: When did you begin to use the technique featured in this exhibition, with the refracting crystal projections?

CV: They’re my prisms.  I jokingly call it my “Crystal Method,” just as a nod to my coming of age in the late nineties.  I loved that band.  But they are prisms; I buy them in Chinatown, and they’re New Age prisms, meant to balance the energy in your house, or in negative spaces, and to bring you wealth and good health…which hasn’t yet been featured in the narrative of the work, but it’s definitely there. Eventually the New Age bit will reveal itself more and more in the work. But right now the content focuses on the message and the materials. Basically about two years ago I started a bricolage technique, where I’d put different materials together with the idea to create different ‘affect’ for the audience. ‘Affect’ was the name of the game. First I took a Marlene Dietrich live performance meant for a television broadcast, and grabbed that off the Internet, and spent a lot of time on the computer manipulating the file, so that if it was projected onto a disco ball, what you get is hundreds of little singing Marlene Dietrich’s spinning around the room to this anti-war song ‘Where Have all the Flowers Gone?’ I warped the file in After Effects, screwing around with it to really bend and multiply what was projected. Instead of a fracture, you get hundreds of little faces, which was a huge technological feat of mine. I put that in a black room and it was like being inside a music box. A while later in my studio I found out I could do the same thing with rotating prisms, without manipulating the computer files at all. I could just project it as is and turn the room into a kaleidoscope. People experience the song differently this way. I think it’s more emotional this way.

AO: Do you have a background in technology of this sort?

CV: My background is in photography. So now I guess there is a bit of an extension of how I think about portraiture and moving image that started about ten years ago. How moments, especially those that are part of a kind of ‘collective memory,’ are captured mechanically, cataloged and stored, and then released and re-presented or processed or multiplied is a key interest of mine. So many recorded experiences/performances get flattened, compressed and rewritten to the point of no return. In my latest installations, I feel like I’m giving these recordings a new life.

Conrad Ventur’s projector at work

Sharon Hayes, REVOLUTIONARY LOVE: I AM YOUR WORST FEAR, I AM YOUR BEST FANTASY

Amy Yao, Anarchist Clowns Protesting at G8

Kalup Linzy, Which Way to Paradise? Lips or the White Horse?

David Benjamin Sherry, gallery view

Alex Hubbard, Acid Test

Emily Roysdon, Story of History (in and out of context/+3)

Deville Cohen, Hairy Mountain and High & Dry

Leidy Churchman, Painting Treatments (3)

Leidy Churchman, Fellow

Leidy Churchman, Tabletop

Daniel Gordon, Blue Face

Erin Shirreff, Teeth

Erin Shirreff, Teeth, Closeup

Caleb Considine, Annie

Vlatka Horvat, To Go On (Around)

Vlatka Horvat, To Go On (Around), Closeups

Vlatka Horvat, To Go On

Leigh Ledare, Mother Spread with Tiara

Leigh Ledare, Fur is Fabulous, Mother Tried to Catch 22, Me and Mom on Bed, Untitled, and Ribbon and Flowers

Deana Lawson, Assemblage

Deana Lawson, Ohio Series

KB Hardy, Position Series 11 – 32

KB Hardy, Best Friends

LaToya Ruby Frazier, The World is Yours

Alice O’Malley, Storme DeLarverie, Chelsea Hotel

Maria Petsching, Uninvited

Maria Petsching, Uninvited, Closeup

Maria Petsching, Born to perform

Pinar Yolacan, Mother Goddess series

Pinar Yolacan, Mother Goddess series, closeup

Dani Leventhal, Fox

Dani Leventhal, Black Sand Beach

Alan Saret, Brick Wall and Sun

Tauba Auerbach, Untitled (Fold)

Adam Pendleton, gallery view

Liz Magic Lazer, Mine

Zipora Fried, U.A.

Zipora Fried, C.O. and T.H.

Zipora Fried, Wardrobe and a few hundred knives

Hank Willis Thomas’ piece, Unbranded: Reflections in Black By Corporate America: 1967-2008

William Cordova, Laberintos (after octavio paz)

Adele Roder, Untitled

Michele Abeles, 8th of April

Michele Abeles, Number, Fabirc, Man, Hand, Rock, Icons, Cardboard, Potatoes

Michele Abeles, Man, Shadow, Fan, Rock

Nick Mauss, Depend, fasten, lower, suppose, dwell

Brody Condon, Zion forest, Wintermute, SenseNet, Pyramid, Cheap Hotel, and Turkish Alley

Sam Moyer, Bleach Beach

Sam Moyer, Untitled 2 (Coogan’s Big Duster)

Dave Miko, gallery view

Mariah Robertson, 45

Mariah Robertson, 50

Caleb Considine, Baggu I

Caleb Considine, Untitled

Tamar Halpern, gallery view

Kerstin Bratsch, Wer Ich Wirklich Bin

Zak Prekop, Untitled

Naama Tsabar, Untitled

Uri Aran, gallery view

Uri Aran, Untitled

Elizabeth Subrin, Lost Tribes and Promised Lands

Bruno Jakob, THE BRAIN

Aki Sasamoto, Skewed Lies/Central Governor: Collaboration with Saul Melman

Franklin Evan, timecompressionmachine

Daniel Gordon, woman with an Earring

Alisha Kerlin, gallery view

Alisha Kerlin, Closeup

David Adamo, Untitled (the rite of spring)

-L. Kissel

Related Links:
Greater New York [MoMA PS1]

Open until Friday, August 20 at Andrea Rosen Gallery is a group exhibition featuring artists Carol Bove, Sterling Ruby, and Dana Schutz. Each of the works on view in this summer show explore themes of confinement, disaster, and violence, uniting the disparate styles and material approaches of the three participating artists.

Carol Bove’s two Harlequin sculptures are a compelling departure from her well-known drawings and assemblages. Constructed from Plexiglass and expanded sheet metal, these 8-foot tall boxes function as either mesh cages or transparent portals, depending on the viewer’s perspective. Their title derives from the pattern created by the sheet-metal netting, in reference to the Commedia dell’Arte character whose costume popularized the print, and possibly to the versatile products of Picasso’s pre-occupation with that subject. In either case, Bove’s sculptures eloquently address the dichotomy between possibility and containment.

Installation view.

Sterling Ruby contributed a mixed-media collage on paper entitled Pyramid Club, and a free-standing wooden anvil spray-painted with the title The Consolidator, both of which suggest a kind of impending doom. In the former, images of celestial bodies are pieced together to create a decidedly fiery pyramid, seen through a facade of spray-painted smoke.  Both works reflect the artist’s engagement with architectural forms, the mechanisms of social hierarchy, and interdisciplinary material practice.

Installation view.

Dana Schutz is represented by three recent paintings, all of which examine grotesque scenarios through a colorful, humorous lens. In Talk Talk, a man chats on the phone while compulsively cutting away at his eyelashes. Escape Artist shows a man pinned to a target (which also appears to be his bed) by three knives, holding a fourth knife in his mouth. Her last canvas depicts the unfortunate meeting between an index finger and a table fan, in which the self-inflicted dismemberment is articulated through a particularly cubist vocabulary.

-S. Humphrey

Related Links:

Carol Bove, Sterling Ruby, Dana Schutz [Time Out NY]
Carol Bove/Sterling Ruby/Dana Schutz [Art Info]

Currently on view at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington streets is Tauba Auerbach‘s Quarry; an installation at the South-end of the High Line, where the Whitney Museum expects to open their downtown branch in 2015.  The exhibit, which runs from July 18 though August 29, 2010, is the second installment of the three-part series ‘Whitney On-Site: New Commissions,’ a project anticipating the start of construction on the museum’s new building, currently scheduled for next Spring.

In Quarry, Auerbach (whose work was featured in the museum’s Biennial this year) plays on both the present form and future purpose of the site in question. Using red, yellow, and blue safety netting, she created a multicolored interlace along the chain-link fence, on the Gansevoort Street-side of the construction zone.  On the Washington Street side, she double-layered the chain-link, and added a bright blue tarp as a backdrop. Using photographic decals, she also transformed the trailers housed behind the fence into giant slabs of marble, cleverly referencing the nature of the materials to be mined within.

Tauba Auerbach, Quarry (detail), 2010. Photograph by Linda Yablonsky, T-Magazine Blog.

Aerial view of Quarry. Photo courtesy of Maura Heffner, The Whitney.

The variety of perspectives from which to experience the installation is characteristic of Auerbach’s current work, which often explores the optical experience of the viewer as it is driven by their movement around an object. Quarry symbolically acknowledges the conceptual possibilities of the site, through the use of materials which simultaneously address and obscure its present function.  The work summarizes, from start to finish, the process in which it also participates.

The ‘Whitney On-Site’ series debuted in May, with an installation by Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker. Their project entailed wrapping the exterior fence in brightly-colored vinyl, printed with fruit and geometric patterns. Barbara Kruger will contribute the third and final installment later this year.

-S. Humphrey

Related Links:

Whitney On Site: Tauba Auerbach [The Whitney Museum]
Inside Art: Whitney Heads for the High Line [NY Times]
Artifacts: Tauba Auerbach’s Quarry [T Magazine Blog]
Tauba Auerbach [Artist Site]

Currently on view at the Neue Galerie is an exhibition featuring the work of German artist, Otto Dix (1891-1969). The show was organized by Olaf Peters, Professor of Art History at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Following its run at Neue Galerie, the show will travel to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition is the first solo museum show of Dix’s work in North America. Although widely regarded as one of the most important artists of the 20th century in Europe, Dix has been slower to attain widespread appreciation among American audiences. The 100 plus works featured in this exhibition, which include drawings and paintings, emphasize Dix’s ability to portray the often brutal realities of his time, with the cynicism and satire which characterized the “New Objectivity” movement.

Otto Dix, Reclining Woman on Leopard Skin (1927)

Installation view, First Gallery: War, Neue Galerie

The exhibition is divided thematically and touches upon four major subjects of Dix’s ouevre: Word War One, Portraiture, Sexuality, and Religious and Allegorical paintings. The first room in the show delves into Dix’s experience on the battlefield during the first World War, and the subsequent impact that this on his art. This room includes Der Krieg (The War), a series of 50 etchings depicting the many horrors of warfare. These works, deeply indebted to Goya’s Disasters of War prints, are presented in a dimly lit room with a cave-like entrance.

Otto Dix, Group Portrait: Günther Franke, Paul Ferdinand Schmidt, and Karl Nierendorf (1923)

Installation view, Second Gallery: The Weimar Years, Neue Galerie

For all of Dix’s distortions of perspective, space, and the human figure, viewers to this exhibition will quickly appreciate the communicative power of his compositional choices, and his artfully deployed, poly-stylistic vocabulary. The Old Master flavor of works like St. Christopher IV (1939) illustrates Dix’s capacity to articulate naturalistic detail in his portrayals of the human body. Dix often emulated great German artists of the past like Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Holbein, in both technique and composition. By working within this stylistic tradition, Dix inserted himself into the canon of German art and artists. He also used these styles to mask his critique of the Third Reich, which was quickly gaining power in Germany during the 1930s.

Otto Dix, Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber (1925)

Dix’s potraits stand out among the highlights of this exhibition. The artist relied heavily on color to illustrate the personality of his sitters, and nowhere is this method more apparent than the striking portrait of Anita Berber. The dominance of the color red, slinky dress, dyed hair, heart shaped lips, and fiery background reference the dancer’s provocative character and turbulent life. Amid these bold, red hues, Anita Berber’s macabre visage stands out; her pasty white skin, pencil thin eyebrows, and puckered lips appear at once sinister, comical, and sympathetic. Though her heavily made-up face is aged and decayed, Berber was only in her 20s when she sat for Dix.

Installation view, Third Gallery: Self-Portraits, Neue Galerie

Otto Dix, Portrait of the Laryngologist Dr. Mayer-Hermann (1926)

While Dix masterfully portrayed the atrocities of war and the lurid world of prostitution, he also painted scenes of familial life. More than one canvas on display depicts a mother cradling her newborn child. Although some of these works feature Dix’s characteristic distortions, there is a degree of tenderness that pervades the painting and surpasses their occasionally grotesque qualities. Dix also painted himself and his family in several self-portraits. The variation in the artist’s portrayals of himself and his loved ones reveals particular insight into Dix’s perception of his role in the world.

Otto Dix, Dr. Heinrich Stadelmann (1920)

Otto Dix (1891-1969) was born in Untermhaus, Germany. Exposed to art from an early age, Dix attended the Dresden Academy of Arts starting in 1910. He voluntarily enlisted in the military following the outbreak of World War One. His war time experience had a profound effect on Dix psychologically and artistically. The 1920s and 1930s, the years of the Weimar Republic, are considered the most important period of Dix’s artistic career. In 1925 Dix contributed work to the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) exhibition along with artists such as George Grosz and Max Beckmann. Dix was deemed a degenerate artist by the Nazi regime and, like all artists in the Reich, was forced to join the government’s Reich Chamber of Fine Arts. After being conscripted into the German militia in World War II, Dix was captured by the French army and was released after the war. He spent his remaining years in Dresden, painting mostly war-related subjects and religious allegories.

Otto Dix, The Artist’s Family (1927)

- S. Zabrodski

Related Links:
Exhibition Site [Neue Galerie]
Always Outrageous, Frequently Disturbing – Roberta Smith [New York Times]
Otto Dix: Painting the Town Red [New York Times Magazine]
Dark Pleasures – Peter Schjeldahl [The New Yorker]
Critical Dix [Art Net Magazine]
Slide Show: Otto Dix [NYR Blog]

Dennis Hopper’s photograph series, 1961 to 2010, courtesy of When You Awake.

‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard,’ a comprehensive survey of artwork by the late cultural icon, is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition explores an interdisciplinary body of creative work produced by actor, director, photographer, painter, sculptor, and conceptual artist Dennis Hopper, over the course of his prolific sixty-year career. More than two hundred objects crafted in a variety of media are on view, including a rare early painting completed in 1955, before to the loss of the artist’s studio and much of his work in the 1961 Bel Air fire. Curated by artist Julian Schnabel, ‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard’ is the inaugural exhibition of the museum’s new director, former New York gallerist Jeffrey Deitch. Prior to his death in May of this year, from complications related to prostate cancer, Hopper also played a significant role in the organization of the exhibit.

MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, actress Diane Keaton and Jean Stein at the Opening of ‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard’ on July 10th, 2010, courtesy of the Huffington Post.

More images and text after the jump…

The exhibition represents Hopper’s life-long engagement with American visual culture, tracing his artistic development from the photographs, sculptures, and assemblages created in the 1960′s, through painting and graffiti-inspired wall constructions produced in the 1980′s and 90′s, and large-scale billboards, film installations, and sculptural work from the last ten years of his life.  The works on view reflect the hybridity of Hopper’s stylistic interests, including abstraction, the ready-made, pop, and conceptual and performance art, illustrating his enduring fascination with the dialogue between popular and progressive culture.

Dennis Hopper, Double Standard, 1961, photograph, courtesy of the LA Times.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Hopper’s celebrated ‘Double Standard’ photograph of 1961. The image depicts the two Standard Oil signs located at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard, Melrose Avenue and North Doheny Drive on historic Route 66 in Los Angeles, captured through the windshield of a car. The picture was selected by then-emerging artist Ed Ruscha, a close friend of Hopper, to serve as the invitation to Rucha’s solo exhibition at Ferus Gallery in 1964.

This personal anecdote, and its reference in the exhibition’s title, reflect the significance of Hopper’s enduring interdisciplinary collaborations, and the cultural impact of an artistic community which he was instrumental in creating. Schnabel describes Hopper as “A painter without a brush,” suggesting that his artistry does not reside exclusively in the realm of material production. Rather, he proposes that Hopper’s achievements be characterized as a spectrum across which art-objects, visual culture, and social context are synthesized through his particular creative agency. This aspect of the exhibition’s premise has raised questions about the extent to which Hopper can be considered a ‘fine’ artist, and about the increasingly problematic use of that term in a multimedia age. Critics have also challenged the curatorial assertion that Hopper’s success and visibility as an actor were the product of his personal creativity and novel artistic approach, rather than a convenient platform from which to access an elite social milieu. The show’s title suggests that Hopper’s complete body of work has been under-appreciated as the result of a cultural double-standard applied to his daring conflation of Hollywood celebrity with legitimate artistic persona.

The exhibition attempts to address the complexity of Hopper’s artistic accomplishments, while acknowledging and endorsing his popular celebrity. Many of Hopper’s friends, some of them the subjects of the works on view, appeared at the opening to celebrate his life and mourn his passing. Ed Ruscha’s son, Eddie Ruscha, acted as DJ for the event, attended by a large, high-profile crowd. A dinner co-hosted by Jeffrey Deitch and hotelier Andre Balazs at the Standard Downtown followed the opening, where guests included Ed Ruscha, Billy M. Bengston, Julian Schnabel, Fred Hoffman, Tony Shafrazi, Diane Keaton, and Liv Tyler.

Julian Schnabel and Marin Hopper at the Opening of ‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard’ on July 10th, 2010, courtesy of The Daily Beast.

Selma Blair and Liv Tyler at the Opening of ‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard’ on July 10th, 2010, courtesy of The Daily Beast.

The first section of the show features the artist’s early sculpture and assemblages, as well as photographs documenting the development of progressive pop-art culture in the 1960′s, taken both in Los Angeles and New York. Hopper’s work from this period captures the quintessential visual experience of the two cities during that time: the billboards, automobile culture, and changing American landscape. Hopper was instrumental in introducing the imagery of Los Angeles’ graffiti and gang paintings into the conventional, fine-art culture of the gallery.  In this series he creates a dialogue between the abstract expressionist style then popular among his contemporaries, and the visual forms of L.A. street culture.

Dennis Hopper, La Salsa Man, 2000, fiberglass, latex paint, and steel, courtesy of the LA Times.

Also included in this section are two thirty-foot-tall sculptural works: “La Salsa Man,” and “Mobil Man,” re-cast and reconfigured from a purchased mold under the the artist’s instruction, as an homage to the contemporary roadside aesthetic that inspired them. These were originally characterized as “found art” or “ready-mades,” and shown alongside the work of Dada master Marcel Duchamp, with whom Hopper collaborated in 1963.  The result of this collaboration is “Hotel Sign,” a sculptural work also on view in the current exhibition.

Dennis Hopper, Photograph of Ed Ruscha, 1964, courtesy of the LA Times.

Dennis Hopper, Photograph of Robert Rauschenberg, 1966, courtesy of the LA Times.

Hopper’s photographs, widely regarded as the highlight of the exhibition, are hung salon-style, floor to ceiling.  They document his interpersonal relationships, social environment, and the shifting cultural climate of 1960′s Los Angeles.  The series includes images of the civil rights march on Selma, early pop-art exhibitions in Los Angeles, anecdotal scenes captured on-set in Hollywood, and his more recent fascination with abstract street art in Venice, California. They reveal an attentive and curious eye, the artist’s keen and often ironic sense of humor, and fascination with the lived experience of historical events.

The second section of ‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard’ features a series of paintings from the eighties and nineties, inspired by graffiti-covered walls and the urban landscape of Los Angeles. This grouping also includes Hopper’s set-like wall constructions, monumental billboard paintings from the early twenty-first century and, a more recent series of abstract landscape photographs.

The third and final section consists of a series of film instillations highlighting Hopper’s career as a director and actor. His directorial credits include Easy Rider (1969), The Last Movie (1971) and Colors (1988). He appeared as an actor in over 200 films, including American classics Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Giant (1956), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Apocalypse Now (1979), Blue Velvet (1986), Speed (1994), and Basquiat (1996). Through his work in film, Hopper met Tony Shafrazi, who would eventually become his art dealer, and who was also instrumental in the realization of this exhibition.

The show’s curator has cited Hopper as a major force by which the status of film as an expressive medium was successfully elevated to fine art, and as an important source of inspiration for his own substantial body of work. Despite the controversy surrounding the pretext and content of ‘Dennis Hopper Double Standard’, it is widely regarded as both a celebration of the artist’s life and a testament to his cultural legacy. Criticizing the extent to which the exhibition succeeds in qualifying Hopper as a legitimate ‘artist’ is arguably limiting; while visionary masterpieces like Easy Rider will endure the undulations of contemporary taste, it is a bold and worthy endeavor to address those aspects of any artist’s body of work which may fall uncomfortably outside the realm of quantifiable material production.

-S. Humphrey and A. Goldberg

Related Links:

Press Release [MOCA]
Dennis Hopper Obituary [NYTimes]
MOCA’s double standard on Dennis Hopper [LA Observed]
MOCA’s Dennis Hopper Double Standard Exhibit Opening [Huffington Post]
Art Review: Dennis Hopper Double Standard @ MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary [LA Times]

Horizon Field

Currently on view is a unique project in the mountains of Vorarlberg, Austria produced by British artist Antony Gormley (b.1950) in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Bregenz. Entitled Horizon Field, the project consists of 100 life-size solid cast-iron figures of the human body, dispersed over an area of 150 square kilometers in the Austrian Alps. The positioning of the figures in such a special location addresses the relationship between human beings and life on earth.

More text and images after the jump…

Horizon Field (2010) by Antony Gormley, via The Guardian

In Gormley’s words, “Horizon Field asks: Where does the human project fit within the evolution of life on this planet? The works form a field in which living bodies and active minds are involved in measuring the space and distance through the field of these static iron bodies, and of course both skiers and hikers will be part of this. This installation recognizes the deep connection between social and geological territory; between landscape and memory.”

Horizon Field (2010) by Antony Gormley, via The Guardian

Each sculpture is mounted at an interval ranging from sixty meters to several kilometers. The figures look in all directions but never face each other. Some are placed in areas where they can be easily viewed by hikers or skiers, while others are visible yet situated in unreachable areas.

Horizon Field (2010) by Antony Gormley, via The Guardian

The figures do not represent particular individuals. Rather, they refer to where a human being once was and where any individual could be.

Horizon Field (2010) by Antony Gormley via The Guardian

Antony Gormley’s iron figures engage human perception, imagination and physical sensation. They will be in place for a total of two years, during which time they will be exposed to the natural elements of wind, rain and snow as well as various lighting conditions. The works themselves will become weathered over time thus providing continually new impressions and discoveries for the viewer.

Horizon Field (2010) by Antony Gormley, via The Guardian

British sculptor Antony Gormley (b.1950) has explored the human body as a place of memory and transformation for over twenty five years. Horizon Field further investigates the relationship of the self with the environment, interpersonal relationships, and life itself.

Related Links:
David Levene Photographs the Horizon Field by Antony Gormley [The Guardian]
100 Life-Size Cast Iron Figures Antony Gormley Installed by Helicopter in the Austrian Alps [Artdaily]
Antony Gormley Poses Lofty Questions in the Austrian Mountains [The Guardian]
Antony Gormley-Horizon Field: A Landscape Installation in the High Alps of Vorarlberg, Austria [E-Flux]
Kunsthaus Bregenz-Horizon Field [Kunsthaus Bregenz]
Antony Gormley’s Sculptures Hit the Heights[BBC]
Antony Gormley: A Sculptor at His Peak [FT]

-R.A. Proctor

Currently on view at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, is the group show Picture Industry (Goodbye to All That), curated by artist Walead Beshty. ‘Picture Industry’ refers both to the physical setting and the conceptual pretext within which the show is presented, with Los Angeles as the focus in terms of both place and content. Included in the exhibition are works by Tauba Auerbach, Thomas Barrow, Carol Bove, Troy Brauntuch, Tony Conrad, Abraham Cruzvillegas, De Rijke / De Rooij, Liz Deschenes, Isa Genzken, Wade Guyton, Robert Heinecken, Karen Kilimnik, Imi Knoebel, Michael Krebber, Glenn Ligon, Erlea Maneros Zabala, Albert Oehlen, Manfred Pernice, Seth Price, Richard Prince, Josephine Pryde, R.H. Quaytman, Eileen Quinlan, Miljohn Ruperto, Michael Snow, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Charline Von Heyl, Kelley Walker, James Welling, Christopher Williams & Christopher Wool.

Installation view, Regen Projects II, Los Angeles

Installation view, Regen Projects II, Los Angeles

Beshty references the idea of ‘late style,’ a phenomenon whereby the hollowness of the contemporary landscape raises questions about the viewer’s expectations for an honest experience of art, architecture, and to a certain extent, life. The terms ‘Picture’ and ‘Industry’ play important roles in determining the contextual premise of the exhibit, as interpretations for both ideas are quite varied, especially in Los Angeles. Beshty explains “Pictures have a knack for supplanting the concrete, sliding as though self-lubricating around the globe, like poltergeists; they haunt the world they represent like vague recollections, inhabiting concrete forms briefly until slipping off to another host… And what to make of the application of the term industry, with the heaviness of factories and smoke stacks encircling it, to the production of ephemeral pictures whose power is synonymous with their lightness? It could be said that it is the seemingly invisible and ephemeral aspects—the means of distribution, the contextual frame, the vicissitudes of taste, and an object’s ability to “pass”—which serve as the most robust material of the contemporary work, an embrace of convention that produces an endless sequence of provisional “meanings.” Perhaps the only solution available to us is to allow pictures to be concrete, to reclaim their moments of heaviness, instead of pretending that they are endlessly able to float listlessly in the breeze.”

Installation view, Regen Projects II, Los Angeles

Installation view, Regen Projects II, Los Angeles

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Regen Projects]
Walead Beshty artist page [Wallspace]

Currently on view at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, Greece is an exhibition featuring the work of late artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010). The exhibit highlights a body of the artists sculptural work known as the “Personages,” which Bourgeois produced between 1947 and 1953. These totem-like objects have Surrealist origins, and explore the subconscious human sentiments of anger, sexuality, fear and suffering. Eight of these “Personages” are displayed alongside the artist’s most recent series of gouaches.

Listening One (1947) by Louise Bourgeois, via Tate Modern

Also featured in this exhibition is Avenza Revisited II (1968-1969), one of the artist’s most acclaimed works. It belongs to a group of sculpture which Bourgeois described as representing an “anthropomorphic” landscape. The series was likely inspired by Avenza, an area in Carrara, Italy renowned for its marble quarries, where the artist spent a period of time working in stone. The Carrara quarries are perhaps best known as the preferred marble source of Michelangelo and other Renaissance masters. Bourgeois’ creation thus refers to both the rich geology and art-historical significance of the region, in which she herself was a participant.

Femme Volage (1951) by Louise Bourgeois, via The Guggenheim

The tall, slender, life-size sculptures known as the “Personages” represent individuals, couples, or groups.  According to the artist, “My work grows from the duel between the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group.” Bourgeois originally explored these forms in wood, later translating them into bronze.

Spiral Woman (2006) by Louise Bourgeois, via The Whitney

The series of red gouaches on view also investigate issues of interpersonal relationships, but with an emphasis on family, pregnancy and child rearing. Made with soft blood red paint which, a substance simultaneously physical and ethereal, these delicate works depict the stages of motherhood from conception and pregnancy to birth and childhood.

Louise Bourgeois (1947), via Huffington Post

Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was born in 1911 and studied at the Ecole de Louvre and in the private atelier of Fernand Leger. In 1983 she married the American art historian Robert Goldwater and moved to New York City. A retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1982 brought her international recognition. In 2007, a traveling retrospective of her work was exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Hirschorn Museum in Washington, D.C.. Bourgeois lived and worked in New York City until her death on May 31st, 2010.

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Museum of Cycladic art]
The Late Athenian Triumph of Louise Bourgeois [GR Reporter]
Louise Bourgeois, Influential Sculptor, Dies at 98 [NY Times]

-R.A. Proctor