June 19, 2006
It's a loving tribute to Susan Sontag and her brilliant writings about photography currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In a smallish space not far from the grand staircase on the second floor, a generous selection of quotations from her seminal work, On Photography, along with 40 photographs from the Met's permanent collection shed light on a fair cross-section of her writings. While the show at times seems a bit of a hodgepodge (replete with requisite works by Diane Arbus, August Sander, Edward Weston et al.) it seems only proper that one of the great thinkers about this important medium deserves a proper and thought-provoking tribute at our largest museum. Pity though that with so many important shows on now at the Met—including the new Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings which I also found impressive yet odd in layout—that Sontag is relegated to a rather obscure corner of the museum. Such it goes with photography, perhaps.
Tags:
august sander, diane arbus, edward weston, met, on photography, susan sontag
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Posted on 6/19/2006
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June 18, 2006
Over at the Museum of Modern Art, a wonderful retrospective on Dada opens today. Out of the chaos of the first World War came a movement rich in artwork, an enormous hodgepodge of collage, photomontage, media pranks, readymades, performances, manifestos, typography, silly poems, and so much more. From Berlin to New York, Paris to Zürich and a handful of other cities, artists produced some of the 20th century's most fascinating work during the crazy years of the Weimar Republic.
I was thrilled to see some of my old favorites, starting with Hannah Höch's Cut with the Kitchen Knife ("Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands"), a stunning collage that synthesizes so many aspects of Dada, from orthography to political instability to use of found objects. The MoMA curators obviously strove to recreate the thrilling 1920 Dada convention in Berlin, wherein works in diverse media were hung in close proximity to each other, a nice photo of which can be seen here depicting Hannah Höch with Raoul Hausmann. Kurt Schwitters collages from his Merz movement are to be found, as well as pieces by Sophie Täuber, Francis Picabia and other lesser-known Dadaists.
Theo van Doesburg's "Kleine Dada Soirée" (photo reproduced above) gives a sense of the expressionist joy of typography, sense of sound of funny and phony words strung together, of verbal circumlocutions created for aspirational pleasure. One recalls the poetry for example from a Raoul Hausmann manifesto that has words such as "kilikilikoum" "correyiosou" and "IRRIDADOUMTH" that roll (dare I say) trippingly off the tongue.
And there are the haunting Otto Dix and George Grosz paintings, such as Grosz's "The Convict," one of his many brilliant compositions depicting war veterans as hideously creepy, twisted men with screwed-up features. Interspersed throughout the show are some great El Lissitzky, Jean Arp and Man Ray pieces, and obviously the show would not be complete without the requisite Marcel Duchamp readymade urinal.
The show arrived here from the Pompidou in Paris via the National Gallery of Art, and if you are unable to visit MoMA, some of the more curious multimedia pieces can be viewed online here.
Tags:
dada, el lissitzky, george grosz, hannah hoech, jean arp, kurt schwitters, man ray, marcel duchamp, moma, museum of modern art, national gallery, otto dix, pompidou, raoul hausmann
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Posted on 6/18/2006
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June 16, 2006
Three fascinating shows in Chelsea—one closing tomorrow—deserve your attention. The first, Ashley Bickerton at the Sonnabend Gallery, offers a brilliant cross-sampling of Bickerton's sculpture and recent painting. In particular, "Extradition with Computer" (seen above) seems a synecdoche for a number of current fads ranging from cross-cultural chaos and multimedia monomania to tattooing. Bickerton's lush paintings evoke a rush of emotion on such a variety of topics that to attempt to explicate here would do them injustice.
Second of course is the Richard Serra show at the Gagosian, a splendid collection of somewhat less monumental pieces than you would see at Dia: Beacon. In particular, the large room containing 16 of his mammoth metal plates provokes and fascinates, a seemingly deceptively simple yet stellar composition.
Finally, before the Jenny Holzer show closes tomorrow at Cheim and Read you will want to want to examine her quite illuminating take on detention and documentation as pertains to our pervasive political embroglio.
Tags:
ashley bickerton, chelsea, galleries, jenny holzer, richard serra
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Posted on 6/16/2006
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