Jul 032023
 

There are currently two exhibitions in New York celebrating Richard Avedon’s photography. At The Metropolitan Museum of Art is Richard Avedon: Murals. Pictured above are two of the large murals included. The first is of Andy Warhol and members of The Factory and the other is of members of the Mission Council in Saigon.

From The Met’s website about the show-

In 1969, Richard Avedon was at a crossroads. After a five-year hiatus, the photographer started making portraits again, this time with a new camera and a new sense of scale. Trading his handheld Rolleiflex for a larger, tripod-mounted device, he reinvented his studio dynamic. Instead of dancing around his subjects from behind a viewfinder, as he had in his lively fashion pictures, he could now stand beside a stationary camera and meet them head-on. Facing down groups of the era’s preeminent artists, activists, and politicians, he made huge photomural portraits, befitting their outsized cultural influence. On the centennial of the photographer’s birth, Richard Avedon: MURALS will bring together three of these monumental works, some as wide as 35 feet. For Avedon, the murals expanded the artistic possibilities of photography, radically reorienting viewers and subjects in a subsuming, larger-than-life view.

The murals are society portraits. In them, Avedon assembles giants of the late twentieth century—members of Andy Warhol’s Factory, architects of the Vietnam war, and demonstrators against that war—who together shaped an extraordinarily turbulent era of American life. Presented in one gallery, their enormous portraits will stage an unlikely conversation among historically opposed camps, as well as contemporary viewers. The formal innovations of Avedon’s high style—of starkly lit bodies in an unsparing white surround—are best realized in these works, where subjects jostle and crowd the frame, and bright voids between them crackle with tension. Uniting the murals with session outtakes and contemporaneous projects, the exhibition will track Avedon’s evolving approach to group portraiture, through which he so transformed the conventions of the genre.

About Andy Warhol and members of The Factory

Avedon fantasized about throwing an annual fete for New York society and watching the group evolve over time. This mural is his downtown take on such a party, featuring a new “smart set” of sexual revolutionaries. They were affiliated with Andy Warhol’s Factory, the studio and gathering place for a coterie of avant-garde filmmakers, artists, and socialites. Avedon summoned them to his own studio, where they met over a series of weeks. Working in his most directorial mode, he arranged his subjects—including transgender actress Candy Darling and adult film star Joe Dallesandro—in a lateral frieze across adjoining frames, the fracture and repetition of their bodies in space suggesting the filmic passage of time.

The culmination of much trial and error, the mural’s composition took time to perfect, as evidenced by session outtakes displayed nearby. Avedon later praised the professionalism of his cast but joked, “You couldn’t keep the clothes on anybody in those years. . . . Before you could say ‘hello,’ they were nude and ready to ride.” If this unabashed undress tests gallery decorum, it is a provocation grounded in art history: in the central panel Avedon presents a male version of the “three graces,” riffing on a gendered tradition in allegorical painting with an ironic, Warholian wink.

About The Mission Council, Saigon, South Vietnam

Avedon knew he would have mere minutes to photograph the U.S. generals, ambassadors, and policy experts who ran the war in Vietnam—not the weeks he spent refining his first mural. Planning in advance, he requested the heights of the men known collectively as the Mission Council and mapped out their positions, with careful attention to rank and influence. He rigged a makeshift studio at the embassy in Saigon, and recalled that once assembled, they “lined up like high school boys. They all wanted to be in the picture.” This is true of all but Ted Shackley, the camera-averse CIA station chief known to colleagues as the Blond Ghost, who begged out of the sitting for “a meeting,” leaving a void in the rightmost panel.

As blunt and procedural as a police lineup, the mural recalls Avedon’s first photography gig as a teenager in the Merchant Marine, where he made mugshot-style portraits of new recruits. Here, scrutinizing the faces of the war’s top brass, Avedon invokes their unseen operatives and victims. When the work was later published, one critic deemed it “a terrifying picture of business as usual.”

This exhibition closes 10/1/23.

For a more comprehensive look at Avedon’s career, Gagosian’s Chelsea location is showing Avedon 100, “a collection of Avedon photographs was selected by more than 150 people—including prominent artists, designers, musicians, writers, curators, and fashion world representatives—who elaborate on the impact of the photographer’s work today.”

The gallery’s website has a video of the installation that is well worth checking out, especially if you can’t see the exhibition in person.

This exhibition will close on Friday, 7/7/23.

Jun 252023
 

Frederic Leighton’s 1895 painting Flaming June is currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is on loan from Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, which is currently undergoing earthquake-related renovations.

From The Met’s website about the work-

According to Leighton, the composition was inspired by the posture of a tired model. He elaborated her sinuous pose and then added sheer orange draperies. Her skin flushed by the sun, she is transformed into a personification of summer heat. The image reflects Leighton’s allegiance to artistic ideals that emphasized harmonious color and form over narrative.

This and Lachrymae (hanging nearby) were the last great pair of paintings he exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, in 1895. Critics raved, but tastes soon changed; Flaming June did not regain its fame until the Museo de Arte de Ponce acquired it in the 196os. The frame is a reconstruction of the lost original designed by the artist.

This work will be on view until February of 2024.

Mar 292023
 

Hew Locke, “Listening to the Land” room view

“The Relic”, 2022

“The Relic” 2022 (another side)

“Raw Materials 3”, 2022

“Raw Materials 3”, 2022 (detail)

“Raw Materials 3”, 2022 (detail)

“Jumbie House 2”, 2022

“Jumbie House 2”, 2022

For Hew Locke’s exhibition, Listening to the Land, at P.P.O.W. he has created intricate sculptures and paintings that are fascinating in person.

From the press release-

Locke is known for exploring the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, and the symbols through which different cultures assume and assert identity. Furthering the themes explored in his celebrated commission The Procession at Tate Britain, and his concurrent installation Gilt on the façade of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, this exhibit engages with contemporary and historical inequities while reflecting on the landscape and history of the Caribbean. The exhibition draws its title from a poem by Guyanese political activist and poet Martin Carter which situates itself between two opposing forces of the landscape – sea and forest. Locke’s show features new sculptures and wall works with recurring motifs of stilt-houses, boats, memento mori, and share certificates referencing tensions between the land, the sea, and economic power. Reflecting on these links, Locke notes, “The land was created to generate money for colonial power, now the sea wants it back.”

Translating to ‘land of many waters,’ Guyana and its physical, economic, and political landscape serve as one of the primary sources for Locke’s work. Having spent his childhood in this newly independent nation, the artist witnessed first-hand an era of radical transformation. Now, the country teeters on the precipice of an oil boom and is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Juxtaposing personal meditations on the climate crisis with political commentary on the history of a globalized world, Locke contemplates the ways in which colonies were exploited to accumulate capital, and observes how Guyana’s economic future lies in the exploitation of its waters. Locke’s new boat sculptures The Relic and The Survivor embody this broad worldview as the two battered wrecks drift through time and history. Evoking the fragmented and diverse legacies of the global diaspora, the boats’ patchwork sails are interspersed with photo transfers of 19th Century cane cutters and banana boat loaders, while their decks are loaded with cargo that could allude to colonial plunder, trade goods or personal belongings.

Based on an abandoned plantation house, Locke’s newest sculpture Jumbie House 2 features layered images that unveil the spirits that haunt this colonial vestige. Presented alongside are a series of painted photographs of dilapidated vernacular architecture across Georgetown and rural Guyana. Constantly under threat of being washed away by storms or rising sea levels, these crumbling structures echo anxieties surrounding climate change and historical erasure. A new series of mixed media wall works, Raw Materials, is derived from antique share certificates and bonds. Locke richly decorates the appliques with acrylic, beads, and patchwork to draw attention to the complex ways in which the past shapes the present. The image of an 1898 Chinese Imperial Gold Loan behind painted Congolese figures connects the global economy at the height of Empire to current Sino-African trade networks. In another work, a painted representation of a Nigerian Ife mask, alongside an image of David Livingstone, is layered on a French-African Mortgage Bond from 1923, connecting exploration and exploitation of African land, to current conversations surrounding the repatriation of artifacts. Taken together, the works in Locke’s Listening to the Land echo William Faulkner’s adage “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

This exhibition closes 4/1/23.

The Procession, mentioned above, can now be seen at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, in Gateshead, England until June 11th, 2023.

Gilt, also mentioned above, is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until May 30th, 2023.

 

Jan 302023
 

Thomas Couture’s Soap Bubbles, ca. 1859, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

From the museum’s website about the work-

A schoolboy, identifiable by the books on the desk, contemplates soap bubbles, traditional symbols of the transience of life. A wilting laurel wreath on the wall behind him suggests the fleeting nature of praise and honors. The word “immortalité,” inscribed on the paper inserted in the mirror, reinforces the painting’s allegorical content.

Couture was an influential teacher known for his opposition to strict academic instruction. Among his pupils was Manet, who in 1867 painted his own, more naturalistic, version of this subject (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon).

Interestingly, there is a very similar painting to this one, Daydreams, 1859, also by Couture, that is on view at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

This time the writing on the paper in the mirror reads “Le Parasseux indigne de vivre”- the lazy one unworthy of living.

Jan 052023
 

Héctor Zamora’s site-specific installation, Lattice Detour, located on the roof of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2020. It opened at the end of August of that year after being delayed when the museum shut down due to the pandemic.

The installation’s curved wall of terra cotta bricks measured at 100 feet long and 11 feet high. The bricks were not solid, as they first appeared, but hollow so viewers could see through to the other side. Throughout the day light would pass through the wall creating different patterns and shadows.

Zamora discusses the work in the video below from The Met’s website

 

Jul 202021
 

Hartley, 1966.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently showing Alice Neel: The People Come First, the first museum retrospective of the artist’s work in twenty years. It’s an impressive body of work covering a wide range of subjects, focused predominantly on her portraits.

From the museum’s website-

Alice Neel: People Come First presents Alice Neel (1900–1984) as one of the twentieth century’s most radical artists, a champion of social justice whose long-standing commitment to humanist principles inspired her life as well as her art. “For me, people come first,” Neel declared in 1950. “I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.” In keeping with the ethical foundations of humanism, Neel dedicated herself to painting what she called “pictures of people.” The artist focused especially on individuals who had experienced injustice as a result of sexism, racism, and capitalism as well as those who combated it. Democratic and inclusive, Neel painted people from many different backgrounds and walks of life.

New York was Neel’s greatest muse and the stage for a human drama she began capturing in the early 1930s. Neel’s life and art were inflected by the tumultuous events of the twentieth century, including the Great Depression, the rise of Communism, and the feminist and civil rights movements. For this reason, she described her work as a kind of history painting. Mindful of the formal and sensuous possibilities of paint, Neel applied her incisive eye to all her subjects, whether people, urban landscapes, or still lifes. Her riveting portrayals of life in New York, whose gritty beauty persists even in precarious times, make Neel’s art even more relevant in 2021.

Below are a few selections from the exhibition, but it’s worth going to the museum’s website (even if you see the show), where all the paintings and their descriptions can be found.

 

Robert Smithson, 1962

This painting of artist Robert Smithson is worth noting for the detail Neel put into depicting Smithson’s skin condition, and her decision not to shy away from showing these aspects in her portraits.

The Black Boys, 1967

The New York Times has an interesting story about Jeff and Toby Neal, the boys from the picture above, and the search for the painting they sat for so many years ago.

Jackie Curtis and Ritta Red, 1970

Ginny, 1984

This moving portrait is one of her last paintings, and captures Neel’s daughter-in-law Ginny’s grief after her mother’s passing.

107th and Broadway, 1976

Black Bottles, 1977

This exhibition closes August 1st, 2021.

May 292020
 

Pictured above is David Hockney’s Rubber Ring Floating in a Swimming Pool (1971), from his excellent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018.

From the show’s wall caption-

Hockney was impressed with how a photograph he had taken of a red pool toy floating in the water in Cadaqués, Spain looked nearly abstract, “like a Max Ernst,” he said. “I thought, it’s marvelous, I could just paint it.” He pointed out later that while the picture may look completely abstract at first glance, once the viewer reads its title, the work changes completely.

The Met has a lot of great online programming due to the closures for COVID-19, including virtual tours of iconic spaces in the museum and their current exhibitions; talks, performances, and concerts; over 500 free books; art instructions; six seasons of The Artist Project- short videos from contemporary artists discussing art that inspires them; coloring pages; a full length feature documentary film on Gerhard Richter (he has an exhibition currently at The Met Breuer) and more.

 

 

Mar 022019
 

What are the webs within our own lives? How are we connected to others? What is seen and not seen in our world? How do we function within our environment? What is created without our even noticing?

Tomás Saraceno’s current exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Hollywood, his first ever solo exhibition in Los Angeles, explores these ideas through the intersection of science and art. In one room, balloons drag pens to create drawings from the air and movements of those who wander through. Spider webs (displayed without the spiders) play an important part in weaving together the themes of the exhibition. Made by different species of spider and dyed with carbon ink, they are in frames against the wall. Presented in another part of the gallery, in a dark room, they are spot lit creating beautiful three dimensional sculptures. In another room, in full darkness, they are lit by a slowly moving laser which highlights in red various sections of the webs as others fade away.

In the front room of the gallery is a sculpture that continues the artist’s Cloud Cities body of work (pictured below). Cloud Cities was shown on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2012.

 

From the press release-

… Conceived and inspired by the geometries of soap bubbles, the cluster-like artworks are composed of a number of interconnected modules, some with web-like structures set within them, which form geometric constellations inspired by the Weaire-Phelan structure. The Cloud Cities project is intimately tied to and embodied in the Aerocene Foundation, a community that proposes an epoch free from fossil fuel emissions, which challenges socio-political atmospheres by trespassing and weaving new, much needed, aerographies.

Cloud Cities are fictional urban and socioscapes in such imagined post-Anthropocenic future. These sculptural assemblages whose interplay between being tethered to the Earth whilst inviting our gaze to the sky, are devoted to reimagining life in tune and in collaboration with the atmosphere. Indeed, with 102,465 planes and about 8.3 million people traversing the atmosphere every day, swarms of particulate matter crossing borders and billions of pounds of carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel aerial transportation, there is an entire metropolis up in the air already, coming with a huge cost and carbon print. The elemental imaginaries of Cloud Cities and Aerocene epoch call to open up the boundaries of the Earth toward a new interplanetary ecology of practice. We can reconnect with elemental sources of energy and form a new set of values that would overcome the extractive economies of the fossil fuel regime – a new stratigraphy of the future.

This exhibition closes 3/2/19.

 

 

May 282018
 

William Eggleston, Tennesee (image via Metropolitan Museum of Art)

There are two great photography exhibitions happening in New York. William Eggleston’s Los Alamos, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is comprised of seventy-five of his dye transfer prints from color negatives made between 1965 and 1974. The color in these images is incredible as is his ability to evoke feeling from work that is deceptive in its simplicity.  Enhancing the exhibition are a series of quotes from the artist located on various walls, which offer a glimpse into his process and philosophy.

 

The Museum of Modern Art’s Stephen Shore exhibition includes work from his entire career- his start as a teenager meeting with Edward Steichen, time spent with Andy Warhol at The Factory, his large format images from around America, and finally his work in Israel and his current Instagram.  The body of work is impressive and where Eggleston’s work feels like it’s creating a dreamworld from the mundane, Shore’s work seems to present things as they are in true documentary form. Pictures of meals and hotel rooms force the viewer to look at things they usually take for granted in a new way. Not to say that there aren’t images like the large format work, that present an idealistic beauty. Also included, and especially charming, are his stereographs- presented at a small table the images become three dimensional as you peer through the viewer.

 

Stephen Shore, Amarillo, Texas, July 1972 (1972) Image courtesy 303 Gallery

 

Stephen Shore, Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979 1979. image courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art

Both of these exhibitions close 5/28/18.