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Jean-Michel Basquiat
Van De Weghe Fine Arts
By Nicollette Ramirez Most of the paintings in this show feature "heads" and date from 1982, the artist's most prolific period. From street art to fine art, Basquiat inspired successive artists in his wake who began to see graffiti as a career path that could lead to a show in a gallery, or more. The iconography in his paintings, both in language and image, harken back to a time when New York City was a rough and tumble cacophony of wild extremes that often played out in the street, when there was such a thing as “downtown.”
One such work that captures the unmistakable atmosphere of New York’s downtown scene is "Untitled,” (1982). Utilizing text and imagery, the words "pollo frito", "peligroso" and "broken glass" are set against a bright orange background, conjuring the of grit and grime of an all together different New York. The head shown in this painting sports an “afro” hair style, suggesting it could be the artist himself.
In Crisis X, (1982) the head seems to reference Christ, as the canvas is stretched across a wooden support in the shape of the Cross. The slashes of red and black on the otherwise unpainted surface of the canvas further underscore the theme of Christ’s suffering. Unlike later contemporary artists who would draw on religious themes as parody or for shock, Basquiat’s intentions here appear to be pure. His choice of materials also reflects the period; the concept of the canvas as an instrument of expression, departing from the notion of a “blank canvas” that awaits the muse, builds on Rauchenberg’s example.
Untitled (Head of A Madman), (1982), shows the image of a skull with spiky hair against a jarring blue and orange background. Curiously, Edvard Munch's The Scream, now in the National Gallery in Oslo is shown with the comment: "Could only have been painted by a madman!" This comment, whether from the artist or someone else, reflects the artist's state of mind, and here too Untitled (Head of A Madman) may be refection of Basquiat's opinion of himself.
The vibrant colors of these paintings and the bold, edgy brushwork that Basquiat employs here echo the raw talent that blossomed so briefly from this American artist, whose roots in Haiti and Puerto Rico remind us that such energy still lives on in the streets of New York's diverse artist population.
3/11 through 5/13.
E-Mail This Article 18th Annual Works on Paper Show
Fine Art from Old Master to Contemporary
By Joel Simpson Among the nonstop barrage art shows that descends upon New York in the month of March, the Works on Paper show, produced by Sanford Smith, offers its very particular pleasures. Here you can bask in the impish smile of an 1830s Ingres pencil portrait (which you can take home for $280,000) at the booth of the Galérie De Bayser of Paris, wink at Duchamp’s rubber breast that resembles a hamburger roll adorning the cover of a 1947 surrealist collection of prints at the booth of the Galérie Marion Meyer, also of Paris; guiltily salivate at (or censure) the sordid sexuality of prints by Otto Dix and Georg Grosz at Jörg Maass Kunsthandel from Berlin; or marvel at the continued ubiquity of works by Picasso and Chagall.
Given the impossibility of doing justice to the riches presented by 85 international galleries, here are some of my favorite highlights, including some surprising discoveries.
It was thrilling, first of all, to see the large collages by Romare Bearden (1911–1988) put on display by ACA Galleries, New York. If you’ve only seen them as reproductions, you have no idea of their dimension or their primitive, iconic power, since the collage is usually a smaller-scale art form. These works are in fact huge, measuring up to 68x92 inches, and they are irresistibly magnetic.
The Galérie Aittouarès of Paris exhibited two exceptional young artists. Nina, a 30-year-old Armenian woman who uses only her first name (like Cher), offered an ink drawing of naked, bejeweled women, small-breasted and big-thighed, cavorting sensuously among themselves, caught in a wild dance against a light mesh fabric on a black background, their frenetic bodies belieing their serious expressions. And Jean-Pierre Ruel, working in goache and pen and ink, creates images chiefly of couples engaged in such overheated exchanges that their very forms break down and seem to spill out into abstract expressions of emotions.
Björn Ressle Fine Art, New York, featured an engaging series of images by Polish photographer Silas Shabelewska (b. 1963) entitled Simple Roads. Unprepossessing at first glance these selenium-toned silver gelatin prints present darkling grayscale skyscapes that evoke Rothko’s suspended gradients, while the paraphernalia of highways, mainly signs and lamps, but also bridges, trees, railings and smoke stakes, precipitate to the bottom, almost as an afterthought. The majesty is clearly in the firmament, almost always at dusk, while the trappings of our car culture provide a grounding, not lacking in charm, with their patterns of streetlights, but almost trite in comparison to the depthless mystery of the sky. It is an effective contrast and, I believe, intended. Jane Roberts Fine Arts (of Paris) offered the work of Brazilian-French photographer Carlos Freire (b. 1945), whose trenchant portraits of vanished Parisian luminaries, such as critic Roland Barthes, philosopher Michel Foucault, surrealist poet Philippe Soupault and novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, as well as deceased London stars like novelist Lawrence Durell, artist Francis Bacon, and photographer Bill Brandt lead him to seek the same visual intimacy with the poor of India, Greece and his native Brazil.
The Babcock Galleries, New York, featured prominently a novel Chuck Close (b. 1940) portrait of a woman, made entirely of fingerprints. Close pioneered the exploration of the radical disconnect between detail and whole, with his color-blob gridded portraits. He is also a masterful photographer and printmaker, having produced a series of giant daguerrotype self-portraits. This print, however, seems to make a sly pass at photography. From a distance it captures its subject with photographic literality, but closer up the fingerprints have a hypertrophied grain pattern that flows turbulently against the lines of the composition, lending the piece a disturbing energy.
The most engaging photographic work of the show, however, was that of Rosemary Warner (b. 1950), at Leonard Fox Limited, New York. Warner’s black and white photographs of bodies — lying, standing, together, alone, and making love — have a sculptural quality, which she enhances by means of discontinuities in toning and framing, giving the impression of a collage, whose elements are often unevenly toned. Thus one image will have an essential element (such as a head) appearing to be part of a glued-on postcard, while an arm will be repeated. Another image will have an uneven yellow streak running randomly down a body against a faint blue in the rest of the print. Another is a seven-image composite of a couple making love, entitled wryly, Orgy.The result is an immediacy that intensifies the sensuality, a fine use of the medium to screen the subject.
Then there are the eureka discoveries, the unexpected gems by artists regionally known, who deserve wider recognition. The Valerie Carberry Gallery of Chicago presented two such gems: Aaron Bohrod (1907–1992) was known as Chicago’s best-loved eccentric realist. His hyper-literal paintings and gouaches captured the demotic spirit of the city in its bars and barber shops, as in the work shown here, Chicago Burlesque. His surfaces have a brighter sheen, his colors a deeper saturation than real life, giving his shapes — bottles, bulbs and breasts — a preternatural and seductive tactility.
The other remarkable artist at this gallery, Jim Lutes (b. 1955), manages to combine figurative and emblematic (abstract) surrealism in the same work, overlaying grotesque shapes and multi-colored tangled lines on semi-naive portraits, buildings and cars. This gives his often ironic themes an urgency that is more appealing than the more soberly allegorical (if not downright didactic) surrealism that we often see today.
The most significant discovery among these regional artists was San Francisco watercolorist and printmaker Carl Hugo Beetz (1911–1974). His darkly crowded charcoals and mixed media works in color at Jeffrey Winter Fine Arts reveal a social realism more biting than Thomas Hart Benton, with whom he can easily be compared. Beetz’s drab figures of fighters working out in gyms, or being carried unconscious out of the ring; of jockeys being weighed in or paid off, of gamblers at the track; of businessmen on the bus, or workers swinging a sledge hammer at the railway, or just sitting around bored, capture the grit of men’s lives in the 1930s. You can practically smell the stale cigar smoke. And the works are priced quite low, considering their quality and historical significance.
3/2 Through 3/5.
E-Mail This Article Digital & Video Art Fair (DiVA)
New York 2006
By Chris Twomey Featuring some forty international galleries showing works by digital video artists, this second edition of DiVA (digital video art) proves that videos, DVDs and the digital prints/installations that they spawn, have quietly made great strides in the convergence of Art and Technology. Produced by Thierry Alet’s art fair organization, Frere Independent, and curated by Elga Wimmer, the show took place in the Atrium of the Embassy Suites Hotel in Lower Manhattan, with two levels of its spacious rooms serving as exhibition “booths.” Billed as a tribute to Andy Warhol, the real emphasis was on how to integrate this “next wave” niche art fair into the art collecting marketplace.
The time based offerings included a full program of performance documentations, animations, claymation, repetitive loops, narrative film sequences, classic film montage, multi-channel displays, as well as interactive presentations. A panel discussion about collecting digital video art included representatives from the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid. One price listing for limited edition DVD’S listed prices from $3,000 to $20,000, depending on the artist and the equipment included.
Some of this work showed keen ingenuity. From Paris, Galerie Mamia Bretesche' offered Table for Two, by Helga Steppan and Leonora Chan; a DVD loop projected onto a partly set table from above. The viewer perceives a fully set table, complete
with tablecloth, silver ware, food and two people, whose arms gesticulate as they converse. Glowing in the projection light, this ghostly installation about communication plays with reality, for on the table the sugar in the sugar bowl is real, whereas much else is a projection, mixing 3D truth with 2D fiction.
Galeria Moises Perez De Albeniz, from Spain, presented an American artist, Dennis Adams, with an evocative single channel video called Make Down. In it, the artist looks into a mirror as he scraps off a thick layer of green make-up from his face with paper on which we see the face of a woman. The woman’s picture is a "still" from the film The Battle of Algiers, 1965. In the film, she portrays an Algerian woman who disguises herself in order to plant a bomb in the French quarter of Algiers. As a mirror of our times, her picture serves as a powerful reference which emotionally impacts the simple act of rubbing clean.
the:artist:network featured a large white balloon hanging portentously from the ceiling, which served as backdrop for Katja Loher’s video installation. Simultaneously, the gallery’s radio network broadcasted interviews with artists live from their exhibition rooms. Called "art after dark," this live digital format presents the "talk show" as performance art, as manifested through the artist.
In the hallways between the exhibition venues, Andy Warhol’s film, Mario Banana played in a continuous loop. The filmed performance of a man made-up like a woman, licking provocatively on a huge banana, offered a fun backdrop to the fair. Other seminal video films by Jonas Mekas and an anthology of Fluxus films selected by George Maciunas were shown in the Maya Stendhal Gallery room, in keeping with the Andy Warhol tribute.
The show organizers also set up “media containers” in public places throughout Lower Manhattan, as an inventive effort to integrate the New York City environs into the ambitious event program, which also included stretch limousine rides around Manhattan with curators, artists, and art world players called "Critical Conversations," provided by AC:Hospitality Suite. Although one of the smallest of the fairs to take place during what has become known as the Art Week in New York (aka the Art Week in Miami), DiVA packs some impressive innovations.
3/9 through 3/12.
E-Mail This Article Whitney Biennial
Day for Night 2006
By E.K. Clark There is an aura of deja-vue to this installment of the Whitney Biennial; although about one hundred artists were invited, more than four hundred are actually included when you count the many collectives and the shows within shows — a practice that marks a departure in the curatorial style from the past. We are, if you will, promised a made to order revolution; an exhibition that purports to showcase art that takes risks and pushes boundaries. What is delivered, however, is largely work and attitudes that seem all too familiar. The title Day for Night is taken from Truffaut’s 1973 film La Nuit Americain which is essentially a film about filmmaking, in which Truffaut references the use of camera filters that change day into night (to save on film set production costs) as a metaphor for the confusion that is the hallmark of real-life as compared to the harmony that we look for in art. Indeed, this Biennial is short on esthetics and overwhelmingly political. However, the subversive elements have been domesticated (institutionalized) by the wholesale acceptance of the selected work and their underlying concepts.
Mark Di Suvero and Rikrit Tiravanija’s fifty foot Peace Tower located in the sculpture court greets visitors as they enter the exhibition. Over 200 artists were invited to contribute 2 x 2 protest signs which cover the sculpture and line the back walls. Forty years ago to protest the Viet Nam war, Di Suvero built the original Peace Tower in the streets of Los Angeles and invited some of the same artists. At that time, his work elicited violent responses and was physically attacked. Then, that was subversive and effective political art. In the Whitney courtyard, his sculpture looks merely quaint and almost loveable, in a sort of nostalgic way. Everybody feels good, this is after all preaching to the converted in a hot-house environment that is protected from the elements. No one is going to be upset or otherwise impacted by this work here.
Down by Law, organized by The Wrong Gallery features works by more than forty artists including several pieces from the Whitney’s permanent collection. This exhibition explores
the myth surrounding the American outlaw, pretty safe material
that offers a mild distraction.
Paul Chan’s riveting 1st Light is one of the more successful
works in this Biennial. Within a surreal, trapezoidal projection
on the floor, swim what looks like a detritus and history
of our technological civilization; dark silhouettes of cell-phones,
eye-glasses, cars, sperm-like creatures, electric poles and
even human figures move helter skelter over the surface in
the darkened space.
Lucas deGiulio creates a room full of poetic works that diverge
from the party line of this show, in that they also have esthetic
merit. Particularly compelling is a series of glass bottles
embedded in the walls called Yeast-n-Jar Holograms (2004-06).
Green aquarium-like views reveal strange three dimensional
growths.
Pierre Huyghe’s A Journey That Wasn’t conflates
fact, fiction and representation in a stunning film with an
unusual musical score that recreates a journey to Antartica
in search of a mythical animal, staged and filmed, at the
Wollman Rink in Centrak Park in 2005.
Also notable is Urs Fischer’s The Intelligence of Flowers,
a striking sculptural installation in which two revolving
horizontal sticks are suspended with lighted candles to create
giant circles with dripping wax on the floor. This phenomena
can be viewed through a huge hole in a wall created by the
artist, while the excavated debris from the hole is set out
in another part of the space. This spectacle is quite mesmerizing.
The Whitney Biennial is essentially is a formulaic affair,
a predictable ritual launched with the best of intentions;
and this year’s show proves once more that good intentions
aren’t always enough.
3/2 through 5/29.
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Edvard Munch
Museum of Modern Art
By
Nicollette
Ramirez
Edvard Munch is often referred to as the father of Expressionism
because of his emotion charged paintings created at a time
when painting — as a medium for artistic expression
— was challenged by the extrordinary technological advances
of the late 19th and early 29th centuries. Mythologized as
he was in the 1930s and 1940s, one can understand why today
he still holds sway over those who see his paintings the first
time. His work is timelessly mesmerizing. Munch was an artist
who took much of his inspiration from his life, colored as
it was by his own as well as his family’s illness. Moreover,
Munch’s relationships with women were often very unstable.
In his work, he was able to transform personal traumas into
metaphors for a study of modern life. The experiences common
to everyone — birth, death, love, sex, illness, melancholy,
anxiety, alienation and separation, and a communion with nature
and society — are represented in his paintings, prints
and drawings through depictions of landscapes, portraiture,
society scenes and interiors in the artist’s signature
style.
Munch’s style varied between a clear representation
akin to realism, and a more blurred, expressionistic style,
depending on his subject matter and his relationship to what
he was painting. Regardless of the period in his career, he
used both styles, never adhering strictly to one. For example,
in The Artist’s Sister Inger, 1892, Inger’s face
is clearly defined, and the lines of her dress are blurred,
while The Scream, 1893, is almost complete expressionism.
In Death In The Sickroom, 1893, the blanched faces and still,
dark figures set against the stark orange floor capture the
oppressive mood of the situation. Self Portrait During The
Eye Disease I, 1930, also shows Munch’s physical pain
and psychological unease at that time and perhaps reflects
the nature of the disease in the long brush stroke of harsh
primary colors like red, green, yellow, blue and the blurred,
demonic vision of himself like the creature in The Scream
which is notably absent from this show.
Munch’s self portraits chronicle the various stages
of his life, from a young, handsome dandy in Self Portrait
With Cigarette, 1895, to a man riddled with psychological
pain in Self Portrait in Hell, and then later in life, as
an old man, Self Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed.
1940-42. In the latter, one gets the sense that time is running
out and Munch’s deathbed awaits.
Other portraits immortalize people from Munch’s circle
of friends, like the writers Ibsen and Jager, and other apparently
unknown but no less interesting people whom he met, as in
Black Man Wearing Green Striped Scarf, 1916-17. Others, such
as the subject of The Day After, 1894-95, are universal in
their representation of human experience. Munch’s technical
genius can be seen in the echoing of images and lines in this
painting. The diagonal of the pink arm and long black hair
hanging off the side of the bed mirrors the vertical lines
of the the bed posts, and the bent knee of the woman’s
leg follows the same curve of the white pillow and the headboard.
Munch’s involvement with women can be seen not only
in direct references in paintings, but also in metaphors such
as Jealousy, 1895, which shows his emotional state at that
time. A woman, wearing a red cape that is open to reveal her
body reaches a hand up, as if to pick a fruit off a forbidden
tree. She converses with another man in the background, while
Munch seethes in the foreground of the painting.
The eroticism that is part and parcel of Munch’s treatment
of his female subjects is further emphasized in his depiction
of mythical figures, such as Mermaid, (1896), Vampire, (1893-1894)
and also in The Madonna, (1894-95). In the mythical forms
of mermaid and vampire, a woman’s sensuality, passion
and physical attraction bode imminent destruction. In these
paintings Munch alludes to his own ambiguous feelings, veering
between desire for and fear of women. The Madonna, enveloped
in a womb-like red haze, is almost in as much ecstacy as Bernini’s
St. Theresa. She is a beautiful representation of the archetypal
goddess of love, whose serene sensuality stands in contrast
to the anxiety-ridden figure of the artist who appears in
other paintings from this period.
The Madonna, Mermaid, Vampire and The Kiss, (1897), form part
of the Frieze of Life which Munch was inspired to create while
in a painful relationship with Milly Thaulow. The Kiss shows
a couple whose separate lines are so blurred that the two
have become one. In Separation, (1896), not part of the Frieze
of Life, the opposite is true; the man stands alone in black
clutching his heart with a hand outlined in red, while a lighthearted
woman in white wanders away. The use of the contrasting light
and dark colors and the predominance of red around the grieving
figure of the man, again reflect the artist’s emotions
regarding the separation.
Munch’s landscapes and cityscapes also reveal his emotional
state. Though Mystery of the Beach, (1892), is arguably not
his best landscape, the title appropriately describes the
mood of these landscape paintings and of Munch’s entire
body of work; mysterious. In particular, his sympathetic treatment
of the mystery of nature, of human beings, of life itself
and the universe as a whole, is perennially attractive to
viewers.
2/19 through 5/8.
Ed Note: This is the first major retrospective of Munch’s
work that has appeared in an American museum in 30 years.
It is accompanied by two films; one which includes footage
shot by Munch.
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John Santerineross
Dream
By Michael
MacInnis
One of the more intriguing of photo books to explore the
darker elements of the nude, John Santerineross’s Dream,
(108 pages, hardcover, Attis Publishing, New Jersey, 2004)
manages to go deeper than most in articulating the sensual
allure of this genre. Not for the faint of heart, these beautifully
reproduced images straddle the line between documentary photography,
and meticulously staged fantasy. The book offers an unflinching
look at razor cutting blood rituals and bondage sessions among
consenting adults, from the heightened awareness of a skilled
photographer. There are also images here that work mostly
on a symbolic level, without having to rely on explicit, graphic
depictions to achieve the erotic horror mood of the book.
This is what sets this work apart from the familiar offerings
of bondage pics that have become almost mainstream, since
the popular success of artists such as Nobuyoshi Araki and
Robert Mapplethorpe. Santerineross seems intent on going down
and around one more corner, however, wondering into places
from which there may be no return.
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Günter Knop
Günter Knop On Women
By Michael
MacInnis
German photographer, Gunter Knop, who moved to New York some
twenty-five years ago, has spent the past two decades pursuing
a singular obsession — photographing women. In particular,
Knop photographs the female nude, with all of the enthusiasm
that a sports car buff would marvel over the beauty of Porsche
944 Turbo or an Audi Quattro Coupe. This book, Günter
Knop On Women, (159 pages hardcover, Steffen Verlag, Germany,
2005), presents a highly stylized portrait of the species;
there is, a manner of speaking, an impressive selection of
year, model and color. To be sure, as is often the case with
photo books, less would have been more, but the gems hidden
in these pages are certainly worth looking for.
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