Virgil Marti's pouf, Sigmund, 1010, mixed media, attracts a crowd in the period room created for the Picasso show at the PMA

Virgil Marti’s pouf, aka Sigmund, sits in a place of honor–dead center in the beautiful terra cotta red salon room that replicates the 1912 Salon d’Automne. Sigmund is meant for reclining.

The Marti installation looks like it belongs in the room, which is filled with paintings and sculpture by artists including Juan Gris, Francis Picabia. Marcel Duchamp (check out the Nude Descending a Staircase in the background of the picture above) and Amedeo Modigliani.

We visited the show on a Wednesday afternoon, and business was brisk as we observed museum goers sitting on Sigmund without a second thought, resting against the cone of fur to better view the upper reaches of the salon-style hanging.

Roberta lounging on Sigmund. Here's the materials: plywood, foam, cotton muslin, metal gliders, foil-coated metallic leather, acrylic faux fur, vinyl, embroidered silk, printed cotton, cotton tapestry, linen velvet, embossed velvet and cotton bullion fringe

We also tried it out for ourselves! We were both enchanted with Virgil Marti cheek by jowl with art historical giants. Well, Pablo wasn’t in the same room, because he wasn’t in the 1912 show, but he dominated the rest of the exhibit.

Pouf with mother and child.

On closer examination, the pouf is no powder pouf. It is subversive and witty, merging a hillock of fake fur behind seat sections upholstered with a quirky range of fabrics from embroidered silk to metallic leather! The upholstered shape and size overwhelm the materials just enough to provide inviting seating that doesn’t scream “don’t touch, I’m art.”

The museum commissioned Marti to make this for the salon recreation. The PMA owns some original Victorian poufs, Curator Michael Taylor explained, but they’re not to sit on anymore.   Marti’s new pouf, with its high backrest, is maybe the biggest pouf the artist has made, Taylor said.  The pouf is designed, as the originals were, to allow a salon viewer neck support when they lean back to observe art hung almost at ceiling level.

Half Past Three (The Poet), 1911. Marc Chagall (French, born Belorussia, 1887 – 1985). Oil on canvas, 77 1/8 x 57 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Speaking of craning your neck to the ceiling, Taylor pointed to some of the high-up paintings and said they had never been shown at the PMA at that elevated placement  – or on a terra cotta wall.  He said the light catches the works differently at that rarefied height and lets them sparkle in a different kind of way.

In the salon, we fell in love with the Juan Gris paintings, and then dashed around the rest of the show–200-plus art works, mostly from the museum’s own collection, with only ten works on loan, says Taylor. We were looking for more work by Gris. Nearly each and every one was satisfying, with tremendous color and graphic snap. Taylor told us Gris was a neighbor of Picasso’s and a cartoonist before he began painting, and that cartoon sensibility certainly shows.  About the form of “synthetic cubism” he practiced, Taylor said Gris picked it up very quickly.

Man in a Café (1912). Juan Gris (José Victoriano González Pérez), (Spanish, 1887 – 1927). Oil on canvas, 50 1/4 x 34 3/4 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950.

We admired the velvety blacks of Picabia, which on closer inspection were shiny and tar-like. How’d he do that?  And we were struck throughout by how many people of the period were making the same sort of imagery — men in bars, women in bars, portraits galore and references to industry and furniture. It must be taste. Taste of the times, taste of the artists and taste of the collectors.  How different is that from today with sky crystals, eco-deer and skulls peppering the gallery scene, the obvious taste of artists who make the work and collectors who buy it?

Man with a Lamb, 1943-44. Pablo Ruiz y Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973). Bronze, 79 1/2 x 28 inches. Base: 30 x 13 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of R. Sturgis and Marion B. F. Ingersoll, 1958. © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The exhibit is hung chronologically and includes photographs of the literati of the day as well as the artists.  And at the end, with World War II era works, the show becomes somber and elegaic.  Picasso’s Man with a Lamb  – a work that towers over you in the middle of the last room — is poignant as it seems to encapsulate the sadness and horror of witnessing war and destruction and being powerless to stop it.

The show requires tickets. Here’s the rest of the ticket info.

Melanie Boreham. Forest of the Inside. Human hair and wire.

Melanie Boreham. Present pasts. Human hair, wire, aluminum, beads and nylon monofilament.

The first gallery of the show The Departed led me to the second room to discover Boreham’s paintings, drawings, videos and additional sculptures. In her exhibit, the 22-year-old multi-disciplinary artist reveals the extent of her exploration of and fascination with hair by unveiling her entire process. While her paintings and drawings reference the styles of Schiele and Klimt (seen more explicitly in her previous work, viewable on her website), Boreham excels in the creation of sculptural objects. A display case exhibits jewelry all woven from human hair, a disturbing and fascinating sight. A nod to exquisite Australian artist Fiona Hall, Boreham’s case weaves and unravels complex human histories and the complexities of display. While I appreciated seeing the entire process of the artist through different media, the multi-media exploration diluted the poetic strength of her work.

Melanie Boreham. Head in the Clouds. Pencil on paper.

The description of The Departed carries the weight of a self-conscious over-intellectualization symptomatic of too much of the arts in Sydney. Boreham claims her hair pieces are about the “anxieties of separation and the breakdown of relationships.” Boreham has rationalized her way too far from the source and seems blind to the poetic strength of her work. Hair is tied up in our identity, is attached to our history. In the past hairstyles connoted status and even today in orthodox religions, hair holds a certain power, needing to be hidden or removed for modesty’s sake. Beyond all that, hair is a very subtle indication of life: it grows slowly; it becomes lustrous when healthy; cyclically, we cut it. Hair, along with nails, grows after death. During WWII, all those in concentration camps had their heads shaved. Where did their hair go? Did it have a life of its own? What happens to all our severed locks? Hair as a subject and material holds immense potency (it was the theme of the first volume of the Sydney-based book project Trunk by Suzanne Boccalatte and Meredith Jones bringing together writing and art). To sculpt severed hair into natural forms speaks to a somewhat morbid yet fascinating reality of life after death. In her choice of material and form, Boreham has unlocked visual poetry.

Melanie Boreham. I left you behind. Watercolour, human hair and rose on wood.

There is a strange and enthralling quality within Boreham’s sculptural work that she must fully trust. In The Departed, the artist is too quick to reveal her process, too quick to over-analyze her mission. She should instead leave her viewer captivated by trusting her sensitive poetic instinct and only revealing the mysterious and ethereal otherworld she has created.

Melanie Boreham’s The Departed will be on view at Hardware Gallery (263 Enmore Road, Sydney, Australia) until April 1, 2010.

Allison Reimus, acrylic on wood, at Grizzly Grizzly. Note the victorian "pouf" in the space, just like the "pouf" in the Picasso show at the PMA!

I don’t mean to imply that the paintings are pompous because they’re not. But, with their antique flavor and evocation (to this viewer) of spaces in which big, dramatic human gestures are at home, they bring to mind the theatrical warhorses.

Allison Reimus, acrylic on panel, Grizzly Grizzly

Don’t miss the one piece in the hallway outside the gallery which is Alice in Wonderland-like in its size-shifting. Here the diamond patterns on a red wall might be plausible for the odd room-like space suggested. But right around the corner from the red wall lurks a wall in a super-sized rosette patterning that looks like it could swallow you whole.

Allison Reimus, painting installed in the hallway outside Grizzly Grizzly

Chatting with GG’s Wilhelm and Matthews uncovered the fact that they’ve booked monthly shows through August, including a performance artist duo in May, for which they will also have a live band at the opening — not in their small space but in one of the large empty spaces down the hall. Wilhelm and Matthews had been to the Whitney Biennial and the art fairs and were thinking thoughts about curating. The group seems to be carving a niche for itself, showing works mostly by out of town artists who come to them through their various networks. It’s a great beginning. They want to do some exchange shows, they said, and that too sounds promising. I told them Grizzly Grizzly should do a meet-up with Extra Extra. How odd is it that these two double name galleries sprang up here within several months of each other.

Joe Boruchow image from his new graphic novella Stuffed Animals.

Here’s a link to David Hiltbrand’s story on Joe and his book, in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.

Gotta say, the title of this graphic novella is pure Joe–so be prepared for the dark side. (I guess there’s a theme here–dark side, night-time adventure, and the Night Lights).

Tickets for the event are on sale at Johnny Brenda’s. To buy the book now visit kettledrummerbooks. Stuffed Animals will be available at Philadelphia independent bookstores soon.

artblog, the Philadelphia region’s oldest and most complete source of online reviews, discussion and opinion on the visual arts, has been awarded a grant by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

A recent photo of libby (left) and roberta (center) participating in a reading of Maira Kalman's childrens books at the ICA. Also pictured, event organizer and ICA Senior Curator Ingrid Schaffner (right).

“Philadelphia is now one of the hip visual arts towns in America. You have Los Angeles and New York and Miami, where I live, but Philly is one of those towns, too,” said Dennis Scholl, program director for the Knight Foundation, which is based in Miami.

“artblog makes sure that anybody anywhere anytime can find out what’s happening in Philadelphia. Blogs are easy to do, but the question is which ones are special, which are more than just one person’s meditation. artblog is special.”

artblog was begun in 2003 by two collaborating artists, Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof.

“This money will give us a chance to reach a broader audience for Philadelphia’s fabulous art scene,” said Fallon and Rosof. “We will be using new technologies on artblog to help art lovers navigate to galleries and art events around town. We also will create a new series of podcasts modeled on our favorite radio talk show,‘Fresh Air.’”

Fallon and Rosof also share English literature and writing backgrounds. They met in the mid-1980s and began working together as painters and sculptors. Despite grants, commissions and accolades, Fallon and Rosof were frustrated with how few people their art was reaching. So they took the art out onto the street where they gave it away. One of these giveaways is documented in Academy-award nominee Wendy Weinberg’s film “Art of Activism” (excerpt here):

That same activism spurred them to create artblog to fill a growing gap between the burgeoning art scene and the shrinking art coverage in the print media.

The Knight Foundation also recently gave grants in Philadelphia to the Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, the Institute of Contemporary Art and Vox Populi Gallery.

The Philadelphia Foundation participated in the issuing of the Knight grant.

Libby told you about Ai’s work, which is featured now in a solo show at Arcadia University.

Artists are shaking up education in Brooklyn, and one of the people involved, Chris Kennedy, will be visiting Philadelphia today at basekamp, sharing his story at a potluck meeting tonight.  Teaching Artist Union (TAU) in Brooklyn and its upcoming project The School of the Future (SOTF) are examining the incorporation of art, innovative teaching methods and non-traditional learning environments in a provocative program that asks if a school even needs a building.

Cassie Thornton, one of the founders of SOTF

I learned about TAU and SOTF at a Plausible Artworlds discussion at basekamp in early February. Over SKYPE, Chris Kennedy and Cassie Thornton, the two Brooklyn-based founders of the SOTF, provided a thorough explanation of the project and of Teaching Artists, a group that now includes over 50 members and holds monthly meetings at Union Hall in Brooklyn. (More about TAU on their website and blog.)

Thornton, who works at the Brooklyn Arts Council and The Center for Urban Pedagogy and Kennedy, who works for the Institute of Applied Aesthetics made convincing arguments for a non-traditional, non-building-based approach.

SOTF was initially conceived as a one month performance of education and has grown into a larger project-based experiment. The school will be run by artists and a mix of professionals, social activists, preschool teachers, afterschool teachers, curriculum designers, and professors.  The words curriculum and art project are interchangeable creating a school that doubles as a group art show.

The artistic process is the central theme in all of the projects. Cassie and Chris are curious how the school can inform traditional teaching practices.

Who’s funding this school?  Currently there is no specific funding from any institutions. They are looking for sponsorship and support. The following organizations are current supporters: Open Space Alliance, Trust Art, Association of Teaching Artists, The Institute for Applied Aesthetics, and Teaching Artist Union

SOTF's site plan

Opening this July in Bushwick’s Sgt. Dougherty Park, SOTF will attempt to offer education in a public space. Their hope is to activate the space and incorporate the local community. This park is next to a superfund site, one of the most polluted waterways in the country as well as the noxious fumes of the Bronx Queens Expressway. Their hope is that art can respond to the site and bring awareness to its current challenges. The proposed facility will be open and portable shelter structure built around a series of pillars and cubes that frame the center of the learning environment.

A photo collage of the School of the Future

The school will be free–no tuition charge to students or parents. SOTF has secured permission from the city to use the park and they are doing a grass roots/canvassing effort to engage the community in both the curriculum and in the classes. Its for/about/with the community.

Experimentation! Art! Collaboration! Portable Learning Structure! These innovative explorations into education may provide valuable insight into art’s value in a learning environment.  What do artists bring to education? Cassie says, artists ask questions that don’t have answers. She believes that students are too busy memorizing and should have more opportunity to wonder and explore. Artists are invited to participate in SOTF  by submitting curriculum online. Instead of a traditional curriculum, participants are encouraged to curate their perfect day using the practice of art in education.

The Teaching Artist Union and The School of the Future are dynamic and inspirational additions to the education system.  Chris Kennedy will be visiting Philadelphia on March 16th for Groups and Spaces, the next Plausible Artworlds Skype Potluck from 6-8pm at Basekamp. There will also be a potluck dinner on March 17th at 7pm for members of groups and spaces in Philadelphia and anyone who would like to collaborate with this community! During the dinner, Janette Kim of Columbia’s Urban Landscape Lab will share renderings of a physical archiving unit and library that will accompany the Groups & Spaces site to provide a physical interface for the information gathered through the site.

Bruce Nauman, Giorni, as installed in the Perelman Building. Photo ©m.river on Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mriver/4226905072/, with photographer's permission

The Italian version is transcendent. To see it, you will have to cross the Parkway to the Perelman Building. The gallery there is a glorious, large space. There the sun streams in through the arched windows, and the flat, rectangular speakers become milestones in a journey you take on foot across the alley of speakers. That sense of a pathway and a progression is critical to the success of the piece. The arched windows and shadows emphasize that sense of an arcade, a pathway through life.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's 40-Part Motet, installed at MoMA, 2005, photo by Roberta

The English version, Days, in the main building,  is squeezed into a relatively small gallery. There the rectangular speakers become a pedestrian but too-important presence that raises the question, Why does this look so homely? After all, the hardware is no homelier than Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s 40-Part Motet at MoMA. Again a large space was an important factor. And so was the beauty of the music. Even though the speakers were a major visual presence, they helped people the large space.

Nauman’s piece is more techno, and the technology feels unfriendly in that space of white walls, technically mixed voices, and nothing but rectangles.

Ai Weiwei, Colored Vases, 2006, vases from the Neolithic age (5000-3000 BCE) and industrial paint, from between 10 inches by diameter 9 and 14 1/2 inches by diameter 9.5, Courtesy AW Asia collection

One is by international art star Ai Wei Wei–his first US solo show outside of New York–at Arcadia University’s art gallery. It is cool, conceptual, and contemporary.

Ai Weiwei, Watermelons, 2006, porcelain and glaze, 17.5 x 15 inches, courtesy the artist

The other is a group show less-known artists at the Mutter Museum, and it is hot, material, and almost Victorian in its concerns and approach.

They reflect the changing status of clay in the art world as a medium that can go in almost any direction. I don’t mean to suggest that the work in the two shows is of equal interest. I do mean to suggest that the work around town reflects that diversity.

Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn at Arcadia University

“I think he’s pulling my leg” was what one Arcadia faculty member said to me the night of a talk on Ai Weiwei by art historian Dr. Charles Merewether. His March 3 talk was delivered in conjunction with the artist’s exhibit Dropping the Urn, Ceramic Works, 5000 BCE – 2010 CE.

Well, I guess he is, but with great seriousness of intent. The best humor is always about something–or it might not be so funny.

Ai Weiwei, Dust to Dust, 2009, ground Neolithic potter (5000-3000 BCE), glass jar, 10.25 inches high, courtesy the artist; inside the jar is pulverized earthenware, which looks a lot like dirt.

What intrigued me was how the issues explored by Ai Weiwei reflect the same issues that Joao Ribas was pondering in the Works on Paper show–how to determine artistic value in a culture that allows for duplication, multiples, and transfer of information to an unprecedented degree.

While Ribas was exploring this issue in relations to the internet and digital powers of reproduction, Ai is exploring it in the context of an ancient culture with a seemingly unlimited population who can reproduce things by hand ad infinitum. Ai also spent about a decade in America, and although he has returned to China, it helps explain how he has incorporated so much of what is going on here. Ai is sitting comfortably between the cracks of two great civilizations, playing their values and methods against each other.

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1955, triptych of gelatin silver prints, each 49 5/8 inches high, courtesy private collection in New York.

Ai shows himself in three photos (Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn) dropping what he claims is a 5000 BCE vase, but is it really? The idea that the vases might not be as old as purported is not my own. Merriwether himself said, “Is it original or is it a copy? He [Ai] has never said onoe way or the other.”

Perhaps the vase in the image is one of the numerous skillful reproductions–and maybe even originals–that I’m told sell a dime a dozen along any Chinese roadway. And if we can’t tell the original from the copy, is the original more valuable just because it is old? And is the skillful copy more valuable than an American factory-made, look-ma-no-hands copy?

If Ai is transgressing vis a vis Chinese values, I suspect the transgression has more to do with the political nature of Chinese millions working for low wages at repetitive tasks and perhaps about the loss of an ancient civilization. He sure is transgressing vis a vis our own values here, which have more to do with whose hand is the real hand and the intrinsic value of something aged. All I know is if I go into a museum and purchase a copy of an ancient clay pot, I pay some cash that suggests the quality of the copy has a value in and of itself.

Ai Weiwei, Coca Cola Vase, 1997, vase from Neolithic Age (5000-3000 BCE) and paint, 13 inch diameter, courtesy Tsai Collection, NY

By painting the Coca-Cola logo on a purportedly ancient pot (Coca-Cola Vase), Ai is discussing capitalism and the recent invasion of American values, companies and methods into China’s ancient culture, with incredible economy of means. Yet China’s ancient culture is no more. It has been transformed first by homegrown Communism. So the label may be on a Chinese capitalist product, perhaps? Either way, our cultures, for all their differences, are amalgamating before our eyes!

Ai Weiwei, untitled, 2006, porcelain, 1 ton, diameter approx. 80 inches, courtesy the artist

As for the one-ton pile of porcelain sunflower seeds, each made by hand and unique, and doubtlessly manufactured by minions, I couldn’t help think of the seeds as people, and the copies as mere husks and simulacra, their useful value actually less than the cheap real thing but their market value as art astronomical.

But the issue of time is clearly very much on Ai’s mind, of a culture that is knocking down its past to make way for its own brave new world.

Ai Weiwei, Souvenir from Beijing, 2002, brick from dismantled hutong house, box of iron wood from dismantled temple of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), 3.75 x 13.75 x 8 7/8 inches

I thought this show of a mere 12 pieces is great, capturing the contradictions of a world undergoing constant social and economic revolution–expressed in timeless materials and methods. Not all the pieces were equally satisfying, but all in all, if I’m getting my leg pulled, I hope Ai continues.

The Ai Weiwei exhibit, which was curated by Gallery Director Richard Torchia and Gregg Moore (artist and Arcadia associate professor of art and design), runs to April 18, with several upcoming related events–two talks and film, on the agenda. The show and events are free and open to the public.

The  Mutter Museum show, Corporeal Manifestations, is one that I thought was likely to be overlooked in the onslaught of clay shows in more traditional gallery spaces.

The Mutter, a museum of medical history, is a Philadelphia treasure with a national reputation for its collection of medical oddities, anatomical specimens, models and old medical instruments. Corporeal Manifestations manages to capture the weirdness of the standing collection. The fanciful physiological oddities of the sculptures are more about psychological manifestations than medical ones.

The works are all representational and with a variety of influences from grotesque to Maillol to Dali.

Roxanne Jackson, "Cadaver Study with Grill"

Of the work by the 11 artists included in the show, what I personally found most interesting were Tom Bartel’s Red Headed Step Child, armless and red-faced in his jammies, looking like he’s still a little unformed and unready for life, and Roxanne Jackson’s Cadaver Study with Grill, which suggest the trappings of success and fashion are fleeting.

Others in the show are Kate MacDowell, Melissa Mencini, Jason Briggs, Christina West, Anne Drew Potter, Colleen Toledano,  Jessica Kreutter, Tip Toland,  and Sergei Isupov. Toledano is a Philadelphia artist and the others come from as far away as Seattle, and points in-between. The show was curated by Sasha Reibstein, an Associate Professor of Art and Director of Ceramics at Palomar College.

If you have iPhone technology, this exhibit has an app with lots of helpful background information.

The exhibit will be open until August 2, and general admission of $14 makes seeing this show seems steep, unless you are also going to look at the wonderful standing exhibits in the museum.

General Admission, $14
Ages 6-17, 65+, students and military with valid ID, $10
Children under 6, free.