January 28, 2007
Ending the string of top-notch shows of German art ranging from Dada at MoMA to the recently-closed Sigmar Polke "Bernstein-Amber" show at the Michael Werner Gallery, the extraordinary retrospective of Weimar-era Germany Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s at the Metropolitan Musuem runs for another three weeks and should not be missed.
Indeed, during the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement centered in tubulent Berlin, numerous artists imbued with the infectious pessimism of the post-World War I era painted hauntingly expressionist canvases, and "Glitter and Doom" features some of the finest paintings by Max Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Ludwig Meidner, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz, and Gert H. Wollheim. While the Weimar era of course had many multimedia offerings that also reflected such sentiments, ranging from the era's tremendous films (such "The Blue Angel" or "Kuhle Wampe") to drama (e.g. Erwin Piscator's "The Good Soldier Schweik"), this exhibit brilliantly encapsulates a number of leitmotifs of the era.
In the past two months I've returned a dozen times, on each occasion seeing something completely different: the heady influence of cabaret; of wacky doctors and modern medicine; of Neue Sachlichkeit and the tortuous realism of the Weimar Republic; and numerous other influences from the magic Realists to the demi-monde of prostitutes and their johns. Here sleek elegance meets tattered old whores, and scads of twisted and contorted figures underscore so much of the depravity and grotesqueness of the era. Early this morning, for example, I encountered a guard staring transfixed at George Grosz's "Pillars of Society" (1926); she offered the most prescient comment before the exhibition rooms began to fill up: "At first, it wasn't so crowded, but word of mouth spread like wildfire." And indeed, within 30 minutes once again the galleries were packed, with patrons examining the hideous figures, ominous scenes, and deeply insightful views on war. As with his "The Eclipse of the Sun" (1926, on loan from the Heckscher Museum in Huntington), Grosz deftly attacks the inept Hindenburg government, making no secret of his obvious detestation of the evil forces at work in Weimar society. Hideous, twisted veterans figure in various paintings, less prominently in Grosz's "Gray Day" (1921) than in Dix's utterly wrecked "Skat Players" (1920, photo above). With their nearly-innumerable prosthetic devices, one figure holds cards with a foot, another holds a card in his teeth.
Otto Dix's portraiture is also unforgiving of the aging figures of Berlin. Poet Iwar von Lücken (1926) is depicted in rumpled and shabby clothes, with huge, rake-like hands, a head with huge, bulging veins, craggy face and sunken eyes. Poor von Lücken starved in Paris during the first winter of World War II. Sadness seems transformed into rapaciousness in Dix's portrait of the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim (1926), whose enormous and similarly rake-like hands suggest the money-grubbing inherent to his art business; in addition to the enormous nose, tweed suit and Cubist (i.e. dated) painting on the wall, all the elements crudely and succinctly reduce Flechtheim to the archetypical greedy Jew. Dix had two years earlier painted the art dealer Johanna Ey, whose unflattering portrait features this enormous, full-bodied figure in a fur-trimmed purple dress, here appearing almost aristocratic with a tiara, ruby earrings, huge eyes and elongated chubby face. Rotundness also figures in a painting of Dr. Mayer-Hermann (1926), where the portly doctor's bulbousness seems magnified by the all cylindrical objects surrounding him. Dix's portrait of Dr. Heinrich Stadelmann (1922), meanwhile, reduces this patron of Dada to a possessed freak with Svengali-like, hypnotic eyes. In a sharp suit with flowing hair and a greenish-grayish face, the clenched hands of Stadelmann lend an additional otherworldly if not demonic demeanor. Twisted and contorted hands also figure prominently in Dix's cruel portrait of the Jeweler Karl Krall (1923), where vibrant tones highlight this dandy with a birdlike chest, standing in an effeminate pose, with reddish-gray cherubic face and hands splayed suggestively on his hips. Little wonder Krall quickly gave the portrait to the Nationalgalerie in Berlin!
Manicured and lacquered claws also figure prominently in paintings of females; Dix paints Anita Berber (1925) as rather spent from years of drug use—she died three years later—in a wild red dress, tightly shaped around her otherwise supple body. Though the paunch of this aging starlet is obvious, her face is haunting, with pursed red lips, green eyes, outlandish mascara, thin penciled-in eyebrows and wild red hair. All these reds—as with Krall—seem additionally vampirish against the red background. Stated differently, the lady is a vamp? Similarly, Grosz's portraits are no less haunting: Max Herrmann-Neisse (1925) depicts the writer as wrinkled, with sagging features, an enormous skull, sunken eyes and huge protruding veins. A somewhat more gentle and less dramatic version from 1927 hangs inconspicuously in the rather hidden third-floor staircase at the Museum of Modern Art. The latter portrait nevertheless still depicts a grotesque and veiny skull, though sans enormous ruby ring that figures so prominently in the Mannheim painting.
There is no shortage of hideousness in the Weimar depiction of women, ranging from youngish whores to elderly whores. Dix's The Salon 1 (1921) prominently portrays one aging prostitute squeezing her right breast while the other three seated together at the table stare off into space. The wallpaper, drapery and white lace contrast sharply with these chalk-colored painted ladies. Indeed one could probably write a doctoral thesis comparing the milieu of this painting with that of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon fifteen years earlier. Christian Schad's "Two Girls" (1928) features a rather lush masturbation scene; his "Agosta, the Pigeon-Chested Man, and Rasha, the Black Dove" (1929) offers the contrasting sideshow freaks of a busty black woman at front and the hideously deformed Agosta at rear; and heady sexuality impregnate both "Baroness Vera Wassilko" (1926) and "Count St. Genois d'Anneaucourt" (1927). Do additionally inspect the female hands as portrayed in "The Old Actress" (1926) by Max Beckmann plus his portrait of Fridel Battenberg (1920). Then perhaps contrast these females with the wild decadence seen in Beckmann's "Self Portrait with Champagne Glass" (1919) and Dix's "To Beauty" (1922), wherein Dix poses next to a wild-looking black jazz musician. (Note Dix's clenched left fist on the telephone, right hand in pocket.) Coupled with Schad's dreamlike and hypersexual "Self-Portrait" (1927), it seems the artists' self-indulgence or wallowing in whoring allows them to depict these women as their accessories in a slightly more flattering milieu. Nevertheless, all three self-portraits show deeply conflicting emotions, the pain simultaneously felt with pleasure.
Perhaps it is appropriate that as you exit the exhibit you'll be confronted just outside on your left with Finelli's marble bust of the notorious Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1632). Nephew of Pope Paul V, Borghese wielded enormous power at a time of great corruption, in addition to being a quintessential patron of the arts—two themes all-too-familiar in Weimar Germany.
Finally, two upcoming events pertaining to the exhibit are of interest. On Sunday, February 4th, a lecture titled "Fearless Sitters" will examine the merciless portraits of glittering and rootless members of society painted by Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, and George Grosz, among others. It begins at 3 pm in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. And on Saturday, February 10th at 3 pm, John Angeline will give a gallery talk that meets at the Gallery Talk Stanchion in the Great Hall.
photo: Otto Dix "Skat Players" (1920), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Tags:
bernstein amber, blue angel, Christian Schad, dada, Georg Scholz, George Grosz, Gert Wollheim, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Karl Hubbuch, kuhle wampe, Ludwig Meidner, Max Beckmann, met, michael werner gallery, moma, neue sachlichkeit, Otto Dix, Rudolf Schlichter, scipione borghese, sigmar polke, weimar
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Posted on 1/28/2007
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January 26, 2007
Do not miss "Who's Afraid of Red Yellow and Blue³"; this fascinating work by the seminal abstract artist Robert Irwin remains on display through next Saturday at PaceWildenstein on West 22nd Street in Chelsea. While seemingly deceptively simple, the installation is clearly anything but. Consisting of six enormous aircraft honeycomb aluminum rectangles, each approximately 16 feet times 22 feet, three panels are suspended from the ceiling above the three on the floor. These panels in bright primary colors reflect light in most intriguing ways, and the visitor is again confronted with Irwin's hallmark trope, a fascination with space, light and environment.
Dan Govan's excellent essay about Irwin's work at Dia: Beacon is a useful starting point for confronting Irwin's startling and breathtaking designs. Because Irwin doesn't just pay homage to Barnett Newman's 1966 "Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue"; his three-dimensional representation here forces the visitor to confront the exhibit in space and in time. The environment created in "Who's Afraid of Red Yellow and Blue³" is most clever, and watching your fellow gallery-goers here (especially on a busy Saturday) makes for a engaging and contemplative experience.
photo credit: PaceWildenstein Gallery
Tags:
barnett newman, dan govan, dia beacon, pacewildenstein, robert irwin
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Posted on 1/26/2007
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January 07, 2007
The darker and lighthearted sides of contemporary culture as seen in new American paintings can be contemplated in an intriguing selection of current exhibits, beginning with an important show of John Currin's work at the Gagosian Madison Avenue. Painterly images of seemingly all-American figures interspersed with sexually suggestive symbols reveal Currin's cunningly and at times harsh commentary on existence. For example, the wan smile of "Anna" (2004), depicted behind a candelabra, features a rotting banana at lower right that suggests a decaying or troubled interior of the painting's protagonist, as do the puffy clouds behind her. "2070" (2005) features an elderly reader seated in a wicker chair intently reading, eyes closed, with hair blowing tempestuously and a teacup in right hand. The dapper bow tie suggests some form of chaste behavior, yet the wild hairdo and creepy green cardigan suggest anything but that. Whereas some of Currin's paintings only playfully serve forth sexual innuendo, others are far more overt in their exploration of sexuality, such as these four recent paintings: the lascivious tongues of the figures in "Kissers"; the 1970's references in the three-way sexual scene of "The Danes"; the contrived Victorian lesbiana of "The Dane"; or the full-frontal throttle of "Rotterdam" (2006). All four feature Currin hallmarks: elaborate hairdos that recall pulp fiction novels of decades past, women wearing creepy lace gloves, elaborate hosiery and high heels, as well as clever uses of gold in candlesticks, jewelry, and bedroom motifs. On the one hand, Currin elevates the average sexual act to a new level of heraldic imagery. Indeed, one of the more charming aspects of viewing this exhibit is watching your fellow gallery-goers struggle to look at the more erotic and evocative paintings, for the hugely talented Currin has a masterful way of manipulating emotional reactions in his audience. But on the other, some deeply sinister forces permeate his canvases, suggesting this world of lace and pearls is anything but—shall I use the familiar cliché—a bed of roses.
Three additional exhibits in Chelsea additionally offer wild imagery and sexually charged energy that collectively suggest the road ahead might be a bumpy ride. At Fredericks & Freiser, "The Bumsteads" presents a number of large canvases by John Wesley, featuring all-American icons Dagwood and Blondie in a variety of compromising situations. The nearly 80-year-old Wesley created more than a dozen paintings that delineate all manner of psychodrama, such as "Bumstead and Dead Geisha" (2006), wherein Dagwood contemplates the deceased Japanese beauty in his bed. Or "Bumstead Out the Window" (2000), a bit of an acid trip for Dagwood, depicted floating downwards against the exterior of an exceedingly pink house. A rather drugged Dagwood can be seen in two additional paintings, "Orange Wine" (2003), wherein multiple Dagwoods float behind a Geisha consuming this ambrosial beverage, as well as in "Dagwood Wave Dancer" (1991), wherein multiples of the man float tranquilly above the waves defying any notion of contrapposto. While the classic comic strip featured many rather unfortunate situations, Wesley goes a few steps further in "Bumstead in Bedlam" (1992), showing Dagwood howling in a straitjacket. The most haunting of all, perhaps, is "The Bumsteads" (1974), wherein Blondie lies prone on their bed, her face buried in a lace handkerchief, limbs akimbo. Dagwood's face is partially obscured by her red high-heeled shoes, his gaze rather transfixed on her bare derriere. All is clearly amiss in the Bumstead bedroom, in contrast to Wesley's 1990 canvas wherein a nude Blondie seems busy massaging Dagwood's foot, his head resting meditatively on a fluffy pillow. Finally, "First Kiss: Blondie Bumstead and Inez Sanchez" (1991) explores a darker side of Blondie, in the shower locked in a tight embrace with this brunette of similar proportions.
Deeply passionate lesbian cri de coeur as imagined by male artists can be, of course, more than just the proverbial schoolboy fantasy or Penthouse cartoon. While Currin and Wesley utilize this American leitmotif in the usual ways, Leah Tinari also explores it in her fascinating exhibit "We Could Definitely Run for the Presidency" at Mixed Greens. Tinari admits, "The imagery in my paintings is based on photographs that I take of family and friends, disparate objects, and patterns from fabrics that I like." Her images are playful, amusing, and at times haunting, showing bad girls on wild rides, having good times and drinking heavily. Indeed the title of the exhibit doesn't make one just think of the Bush twins run amok, but also that your average partygoer can simply rise to any occasion, even higher office, given a bottle (or several). "Good Times Tampa" (pictured above) nicely symbolizes this party gone out of bounds, with the rocker gesticulations, hair flying amok, two half-nude men, and that tilted flag painting featuring burgers with obviously human buns. Indeed, this particular Tinari painting seems uniquely all-American, with its self-referential denim-clad figures, augmented by two nearly-empty bottles of imported beer and a rather classical sculpture facing this motley crew. Similar motifs can be seen in "Chug-a-Lug"—disshelved hair, fingers inserted into drinks, ice cubes melting all over the canvas, ruddy complexions, a wide-open mouth and tears of joy (one assumes) at this state of inebriation. Drunkenness continues in "Red Stripe in Flight," featuring two males in the water, one throwing a bottle of this now-ubiquitous Jamaican beer. A series of three paintings beautifully explores this theme, "Tequila & Blue Jeans Make for a Good Composition": various women splayed on the floor, gasping and giggling at their drunkenness, while green, purple or yellow splotches, respectively, serve as a visual counterpoint to their wild-eyed state. The paint splotches and flows in little puddles, vibrantly reflecting the the drunken state of the Tequila drinkers.
Finally, Sam Gibbons' work in "Cakehead" at Clair Oliver Gallery might be seen as the evolution of the hypersexualized image, perhaps a factorial in the above series of progression. For while Currin depicts sexual intercourse with an imagined, stylized, Scandinavian eloquence, Wesley depicts it with a cartoonish psychotrope, and Tinari fuels it with alcohol, Gibbons takes the Id to another dimension. As Gibbons' gallery explicates it: "Sam Gibbons' paintings are fascinating renderings of cartoons perversely entwined in spasms of death and candy-colored imitations of sex. Gibbons' work is a painterly convergence of figuration and abstraction; resembling a Rorschach test, one side of the canvas mirrors the other, lending symmetry and precision to fluid and spontaneous bursts of color and form." Fantasies, hallucinations, fears, and dreams run amok, particularly in a painting like "Cake Head," topped with provocative female figures with cupcakes for heads, surrounded by innumerable and rather inexplicable phantasmagoric images. Think Takashi Murakami meets Shepard Fairey in the psychodrome. Gibbons' dystopic images are a savage commentary on today's society.
photo: Leah Tinari, "Good Times Tampa"
Tags:
Claire Oliver, Dagwood, Fredericks Freiser, Gagosian, John Currin, John Wesley, Leah Tinari, Mixed Greens, Sam Gibbons, Shepard Fairey, Takashi Murakami
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Posted on 1/7/2007
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January 02, 2007
Despite ongoing renovations through Spring 2007 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's galleries for the arts of Oceania, a fascinating exhibit from the Papuan Gulf will remain in place through September. Five dozen stunning sculptures and around 30 rare photographs—some on display for the first time—further underscore the Met's deep commitment to Oceania as well as raise fascinating questions about the history of ethnographic displays of material from this little-known region of the world.
Late 19th-century missionaries to the Papuan Gulf certainly made their mark, and their impact cannot be underestimated, for without their work we would likely have no pictorial record of indigenous practices or photographic records of the original contexts of their sculpture. Yet given that explorers re-enacted or recreated scenes for the camera, this additionally complicates explication of the astounding photographs now on display. For more on that subject, Catherine Lutz's fascinating book Reading National Geographic (1993) explores how highly subjective color, pose, framing, and vantage point are in modern ethnographic photography, and need not be further discussed here.
Some of the most striking photographs include those of Albert Buell Lewis (1912), of several boys posing with a spirit board that Lewis purchased. Lewis collected objects for Chicago's Field Museum, and his photographs offer an astounding insight into this vanished society. For several photographs of similar surroundings show how these villages progressed over long periods of time. For example, nearly 40 years earlier in 1874, William Lawes established the London Missionary Society's station at Port Moresby. Between 1881-89 he photographed young men with Maiva shields, one of the first images we have available of that period, taken at "a clearing near the mission station." This breathtaking image is interesting for how the subjects are framed, for the terrific contrasts of light and dark, and also for its exotic and otherworldly qualities. With the subjects' feet firmly planted on the ground and faces staring directly at the camera, one has to wonder about the background activity in the distant waters. It's a rather sad commentary that now 100 years after Lawes' death, Port Moresby is arguably one of the most unstable and troubled cities in the world.
Other photographs feature dancers—a perennial subject in ethnographic photography—such as photos of masked dancers by Paul Baron de Rauterfeld (1925), Francis Edgar Williams (1931), and by far the most extraordinary, those of James Francis Hurley, an Australian who caused much controversy with his work. Both his Two Basketry Figures in front of Daima (Longhouse) at Tovei, Urama (1921) and Four Keveke Dancers in front of the Longhouse (Daima) at Kinomere Village (1923) capture the spirit and excitement of these events. With many spectators present, these images seems all the more convincing and realisitic, despite that Hurley obviously took great care to pose his subjects. Although these images depict two different villages on Urama island during two different years, these kanipu and keveke masks and basketry figures are thrilling to observe during performances. Indeed, Hurley's revelations of this remote culture seen over 80 years ago are further augmented by two short clips, truly astonishing film footage totaling a mere 78 seconds in duration. Surprisingly impressive, Hurley's footage provides us one of the few glimpses into this world of the longhouse. On the one hand, Hurley played the subjective National Geographic archetype by rearranging interiors, posing or overdressing people, and behaving poorly, later causing controversy in his native Australia. Yet without Hurley, we would have no visual record of these images, for this village no longer exists, and "many of the masks Hurley photographed were destroyed soon after they were performed." Perhaps insights into ephemeral culture come at a high price, but these clips may well be "our only record of the pictured objects' existence."
Over time, this world of the longhouse was well-documented, and other images by Lewis of a longhouse in Maipua village (1912) as well as one by Ernest Sterne Usher (1914-6) reinforce how frequent a subject of photography as well as "locus of artistic and ceremonial life" these longhouses were. Throughout this exhibition, the Met judiciously and fortuitously presents objects from these longhouses in vitrines above the framed photographs. These encased objects, presented in a neutral setting in front of a pastel background, succeed where the rather ethnographically questionable new Musée du quai Branly in Paris struggles. For example, de Rauterfeld's Irivake Figure in the Longhouse (1925) seems truly astonishing even without the subdued lighting or fetishism of the exotic so prevalent at the Musée du quai Branly. Even San Francisco's relatively new de Young museum falls plague to this fetishism in its Oceanic galleries, showing a fair number of John Friede's hundreds of donated pieces in a slightly exaggerated context. The message seems a bit forced, perhaps, though audiences surely love it. Of course, the museum does remind us that this exhibition "marks the first time that Rautenfeld's photograph and the actual irivake sculpture are exhibited together." We see how this object photographed 80 years ago looked in its actual context, contrasted nicely with how it looks now on a neutral background behind plexiglas, leaving the imagination to do a bit of legwork. By adroitly showing both object and photograph together, the Met offers a perspicacious cultural context without any forced pageantry. "Coaxing the Spirits to Dance" eagerly foreshadows the re-opening of these monumental galleries in the coming months.
photo: James Francis Hurley, Four Keveke Dancers in front of the Longhouse (Daima) at Kinomere Village (1923), Papuan Gulf, Urama Island, Kinomere Village, Courtesy of the Australian Museum, Sydney.
Tags:
albert buell lewis, catherine lutz, de young, ernest sterne usher, francis edgar williams, james francis hurley, john friede, met, musee du quai branly, oceania, papuan gulf, paul baron de rauterfeld, reading national geographic, william lawes
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Posted on 1/2/2007
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