FOREVER NOW: CONTEMPORARY PAINTING IN AN ATEMPORAL WORLD - Museum of Modern Art 1/23/15

Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1498

I went to see FOREVER NOW….. exhibition at MOMA - another one of those painting shows at Museum of Modern Art - (though it has been awhile since they focused on a survey of painting) that predicts the “future” of the medium…this time conflated with the digital age’s ease of finding sources on the internet - illustrations of artists’ works over the ages appear in a heartbeat - just go to Google or Bing Images and they come up with a click of a mouse - everything is equal - there is no historical timeline  - we just look, like and use what we need; we resample, appropriated images with abandon. That is the premise of this  examination of 17 artists in the show. I am not sure why these particular artists were selected…because so many painters have been working in a similar manner for years, but these are their “picks” .

Julie Mehretu, Oscar Murillo Amy Sillman and  Charline von Heyl - are the stars of the show! Why? Because they are aware of history and re contextualize works from the past with the intelligence and honesty that makes for a dialogue that is not just chewed and spit out - rather it is digested and becomes part of their own internal system. Mehretu’s new work deals with the overlapping space and mark-making that she has always used - but now feel like beautifully floating Chinese landscapes. 

I had heard a lot about Oscar Murillo - hot hot hot….and when I saw his paintings I knew from the sureness of his hand that he could paint. Despite the illusion of an artist with a  slap-dash attitude - this man knows what he is doing. He can dump paintings on the floor as if they were materials thrown away in a garage sale - discarded as if they were worthless and forgotten, but that belies a hand and eye that is “schooled” in looking and skilled to boot.

Charline von Heyl - references pop and comic art. The work is clear and has a presence that made me turn around to look at the paintings over and over from across the room; spinning around to “see” again the freshness and seeming simplicity and “lightweighted-ness” of what I felt were strongly structured abstractions that had an individuality missing from some of the other artists in the exhibition where pretension and the swagger of youth - a punk rock attitude prevails.

Any Sillman bringing up the ghosts of Philip Guston - a worthwhile apparition. Something about her quirkiness; forms butting up against each other conjured up the man with the cigars and shoes - brought back to life with delicacy dealing with the everyday-ness that we see around us.

Nicole Eisenman is a phenomena - an accomplished eccentric. These figurative  heads reference German Expressionist painters particularly Alexi Jawlensky - Literally a face "in your face" with tiny bits of personal/political information attached unto the painting including 2 American Silver Dollars  substituted for eyes in one work.  

By the way Institution don’t seem to want to use the label ACRYLIC anymore so “synthetic polymer” is the term and is the popular medium of choice for many of the artists. 

ihttp://artistmarketingresources.com/2012/06/18/artists-switch-from-labeling-their-paintings-acrylic-to-synthetic-polymer/

I found the same spirit of  wordplay and arrogance  in some other works in the show - a remix sensibility - the recklessness and feeling of unrestrained confidence evidenced by "I don’t need to look at anything beyond my own hermetic world because the free spirit reigns supreme”.

AMERICAN SNIPER 1/18/15

Two of my very favorite Clint Eastwood directed films are MYSTIC RIVER and MILLION DOLLAR BABY- one probed deeply into the corruption of the human psyche, and the  other celebrated the triumph of one woman’s will to succeed in a world ruled by men - so I always go out of my way to see his work and hope not to be disappointed.  This time I was disappointed because my heartstrings were not pulled, but on further reflection, I thought that the characterization of a “hero” had a complexity in the very lack of emotional “tugs” - which made sense telling the story of a man who is able to preserve his sanity being an official executioner, a job that needs him to be dispassionate and composed, and who becomes a champion of American values to his fellow compatriots. In war morality is abandoned.

AMERICAN SNIPER based on the true story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, considered the most lethal sniper in US military history - also nicknamed by his comrades “Legend” - served 4 tours of duty in Iraq and considered himself the quintessential American “patriot.” This movie is a portrait of a man who puts country above all else, a man who is steadfast in the “rightness” of his actions in protecting the honor and citizens of the United States of America; an exceptionally skilled marksman and  lover of guns, and a man who was not introspective and never understood that he was in an occupied land where the population was fighting the “invader/savior” whose culture was totally different from theirs. 

How do you fight against the major power in the world? You use the new tactics of war - guerrilla hit and run bombings, employing sniper sharpshooters and even indoctrinating women and children into the great beyond of martyrdom. AMERICAN SNIPER also sets up a gunslinger/HIGH NOON mano a mano duel between two exceptional skilled assassins - each convinced that murdering for one’s country and protecting one’s brothers-in-arms is the ultimate reward.

Bradley Cooper - beefed up to look like Chris Kyle gives a fairly good performance as a stoic, stone-faced and hardened Kyle relishing doing his job; knowing he is the best at what he does and making sure that he protects his”family of brothers” his fellow Navy SEALS. We see him working out physically - his flesh thickening  and tightening up, as does his spirit and thirst for revenge. At what point does a job become something you cannot do without - falling in love with the “sandstorms” of war?

Eastwood also gives us flashbacks into Kyle’s childhood - a father who instills a sheep vs. wolf vs. sheepherder mentality into his boys. You protect your own  (sheepherder) - no matter what the cost in order to become a man. Sienna Miller plays  Chris Kyle’s wife - a stereotypical view of a woman taking care of the family, giving solace to her husband, and a mollifying device necessary to show the main character’s “soft” side, but still cliched and thinly drawn. She is background support.

Marines in Humvees their breadth filling the narrow roadways with skulls painted on them, disembarking and  knocking down doors where families are huddled; soldiers ill-equipped to communicate with the population that they are administering leads to strategic errors;  treating your enemy like the dusty dirt of the streets invites brutal retaliation. Both sides are heinous and savage in fighting the confused and demoralized battles that  were the mainstay of being in Iraq.  The “shock and awe” of this haphazardly planned war brought home thousands of veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and placed young men and women who volunteered in the name of their land into a future filled with struggle and tragedy. It was and is shameful.

SELMA 1/11/15

SELMA directed by Ava DuVernay is a powerful movie. A critical historical period in America, filmed as if we were there at the point in time when Martin Luther King was making crucial life and death decisions affecting future generations of black men and women and their legal right to vote without the restrictions that the state of Alabama put upon each African American citizen with the intention of depriving them of that inalienable right.  Dr. Martin Luther King had just received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, and comes home to Atlanta, Georgia, finding himself under constant surveillance by Edgar J. Hoover's FBI - disrespected and characterized as a "degenerate rabble rouser". The contrast is stunning.

SELMA brings to life Dr. King's  decision a year after the 1963 bombing murder of four young girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama drew national attention to the civil rights struggle  -  to march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, the state capitol where the racist Governor, George Wallace  (Tim Roth) sat, in order to challenge  a Governor who is determined to crush the legality of black people, who have the courage to stand up to his confederate fiefdom, and register to vote. The fire-power of the state  is called upon to mercilessly crush the marchers time and time again.

The road to victory involves a non-violent vision and heart piercing violence -  confronting hatred based solely on skin color. King's strategizing in his confrontations with Lyndon Baines Johnson, the President of the Unites States who is sympathetic, but prefers his own agenda in dealing with voting rights laws and initially plans to focus on his War on Poverty legacy. Martin Luther King' realizes that time is of the essence; his uncertainty in the face of great certainty; his tense yet sensual relationship with his delicately beautiful wife Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejoga) and David Oyelowo's dignified, humane performance as MLK had me hiding my face to wipe away tears. Innocent people demanding what is rightfully theirs and being bludgeoned in the process is difficult to watch, but this is history that must be revisited and imprinted upon every generation.

WHIPLASH 1/10/15

I teach painting, drawing and workshops in ‘public art,” and would never treat my students, let alone another human being the way Terence Fletcher, the intensely controlling jazz instructor in a prestigious Music Conservatory in NYC (eerily and wonderfully acted by J.C. Simmons) “hammers” his students to what Fletcher considers “perfection.”  WHIPLASH directed by Damien Chazelle is part psychodrama, horror story, case study in manipulation, naked ambition and teaching techniques - do results justify brutal means? OR as I have found to be true does it do the opposite - discourage students to such a degree that they drop out or break down.

We first meet Andrew (Miles Teller) in a movie theater sharing popcorn with a companion - who happens to be his father. Andrew, though socially awkward, is a young  man who single-mindedly knows what he wants from life - to be as great a drummer as the legendary American jazz drummer Buddy Rich and in an almost Faustian bargain willingly succumbs to the spell of an abusive teacher who he believes can deliver him his goal. Fletcher’s modus operandi is one of debasement coupled with an occasional affirmation all in the name of precision and superiority; a frighteningly dictatorial approach to the evolution of creativity.

The exchange between student/teacher can be a tender one - growth develops out of sensitive and genuine respect for a pupil’s intelligence and capacity, or one that is fraught with anxiety and sadistic motivational techniques. In WHIPLASH - the apt title comes from a Hank Levy (American jazz composer and saxophonist) tune that the school band is rehearsing  over and over again; blood is psychologically and  literally spilled under the “master’s” pummeling - the repetitive practice drilling into one’s psyche - the audience becomes as tense as the pounding  sounds emanating from the tautly stretched membranes which are struck with sticks know as “beaters.”  

Personalities and events are not always anticipated which made the movie compelling. Characterizations are slowly revealed through frenzied musical performances; audacious hunger for success taking precedence over one’s personal life and human contact. Between the two lead characters, there are shifts in domination like a wire which coils and uncoils pulling their mentor/disciple relationship together and apart, spawning a tarnished creative union.

BIG EYES 12/27/14

A short synopsis of what I thought of BIG EYES - Tim Burton's new film about Walter Keane and the paintings that made him the Thomas Kincade of his generation.

This is a strange movie - mixture of parody and feminism with an over the top Christoph Waltz whose performance as Walter Keane annoyed me to no end. As the movie trotted along I began to change my view, and thought that perhaps this was a quizzical and circuitous characterization of a wily, conniving huckster complete with Chaplin-esque rubbery movement. In Waltz's gestural extremes I detected Tim Burton's direction.

The movie portrays the role of women in the 1950's and '60's and how badly they were treated by men who use economic power to control them - particularly the single/divorced woman with a child - the stay-at-home wife, and the women in the workplace - many sacrificing and erasing their own identities for monetary survival. Amy Adams with her blonde wig-like hairdo - the 1950's Doris Day look - conveyed a mixture of goodness and innocence wrestling with betrayal and fraud.

Cliches abound - the artist, the "creative"process, the romantic reasons for making art, the market manipulations - all stereotyped and feeding into a superficial fairy tale view of artists. The audience for the paintings were as flat and dead as those strange repetitive paintings oozing sentimentality and nostalgia (with a few tears thrown in) reflected in those oversized black holes for eyes. AND to give the film a legitimacy and documentary feel, Andy Warhol and John Canaday were thrown into the mix.

EGON SCHIELE: PORTRAITS 12/18/14

Walking into the Egon Schiele (1890-1918) exhibition at the Neue Galerie, curated by Dr. Alessandra Comini brought me back to the past, when I was an art student drawing all day from the figure, carrying a really tattered Schiele book somewhere on my person - a source of inspiration.  I was intense, learning to see anew and drawing was the key to self awareness and into an odyssey of immutable possibilities that I knew instinctively would transport me into a future, embracing beauty, theoretical concepts, and struggle. I could do this for the rest of my life.

That feeling returned as soon as I stepped off the Neue Galerie’s elevator, but now, many years later, I saw the range of Egon Schiele’s oeuvre - a range that was revelatory - that I did not know existed. To speak of early Schiele’s, mid-career Schiele’s and late Schiele’s is compacting a young man’s passage of time; a young man who died from influenza when he was only 28 years old - but his art, from the early delicately realistic studies which penetrated the psyche of his subjects with a maturity that belied a 16 year old to the late works which were more stylized and experimental - color and forms break up, spidery lines invading the face, shapes splitting apart, finished and unfinished fields of paint abutting one another. 

The horror of being unjustly incarcerated - a traumatic incident  in 1912 - had a momentous impact on Egon Schiele. In 1963, Dr. Comini visited and took photographs of the prison where he was locked up for 24 days - a crucially essential component in understanding his prospective artwork. We access a small room - the area of confinement, where we are privy to documents such as arrest records, photographs of his cell, and Schiele’s beautifully descriptive drawings of the space - drawing becomes a cloak of sanity vital in order to endure this harrowing experience.

The exhibition is divided into other rooms that focus on periods of his life i.e. Family and Academy; Fellow Artists; Sitters and Patrons; Lovers; Eros; Self-Portraits and Allegorical Self-Portraits. In all of them HANDS become a vehicle of expression. I noticed a large photograph of Egon Schiele on the Museum’s stairway - his long, thin, delicate fingers splayed apart a gesture of exquisite communication both fervent and impassioned. In many of his portraits we see elongated hands as if Schiele had grafted an indispensable part of his own limb onto his subjects, literally melding into them.

The Eros room displays drawings, some delineated with gouache, pencil and watercolor - the dominant color red blaring as opposed to many of the later, darker mysterious paintings where the palette is denser and more subdued - light is inhibited from penetrating.  Vaginas peek out unrestrained like butterflies inviting your gaze. They are vibrant and so are the women in the drawings - women in embrace, other’s on their knees; in-your-face seductive portraits -  a counterpoint to Schiele’s “masturbation” drawings which convey pain, pleasure and guilt - arms without the ever present hands cut off - severed….

This exhibition is relentlessly contemporary, as well as being a reflection of Viennese society in the beginning of the 20th century. Portraits are both fragile and obdurate; often images are outlined in black - the body imprisoned - the encasing shell hard against the pliable intimacy of the visceral self. Heads with elongated arms and hair wildly breaking up space; diagonals creating a stretching tension; unpainted areas - the white of the canvas/paper background encroaching on the figure but never overwhelming it. A synthesis of the contradictory Apollonian and Dionysian balance and disproportion, Egon Schiele’s “presence” is always present.

“Egon Schiele: Portraits” runs through Jan. 19 at the Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue, at 86th Street; 212-628-6200, neuegalerie.org.

HENRI MATISSE AND ROBERT GOBER AT MOMA 12/9/14

 I decided to go to MOMA to see the Matisse show and then wandered over to what I consider one of the most beautiful and poetic exhibitions of the year - not Matisse - but Robert Gober's gut wrenching paintings, objects and installations entitled THE HEART IS NOT A METAPHOR. His works transported me to tears, as I contemplated the tensile fragility of an artist who juxtaposes everyday objects into worlds of extreme delicacy and frailty – chronicling personal history tied to memory and a narrative of pain and injustice, so lovingly crafted that I could feel his touch on everything that I saw. Distance is bridged and we are confronted with an acute sensitivity, evident in the caress of his brushwork in an early painting that we first encounter upon entering the exhibition, when he was still a young man. Robert Gober is an artist whose work reveals his innermost self; his being is nakedly divulged and that rare authenticity is what so moves us.

Matisse made me smile; I really enjoyed watching a short film of the great man cutting shapes out of paper - a certain vocabulary of forms kept repeating over and over - with VERY large scissors. For ten years I did cutouts - totally different of course, with none of Henri Matisse's lightness of being but using small scissors and razor blades, so I was fascinated watching the “master” at work.  He constructs a world in his apartment that is sunny and bright  - colorful contours floating on the walls, doors, cutout remnants piled up on the floor; having been pared down to their essence – flat and simplified with the external beauty of gorgeous design and dare I say celebrating the "bourgeois" spirit. I also giggled to myself watching his assistant, a lovely young woman with bright red lipstick dressed in a gown, in high heels helping the elderly artist cut and snip away - delicately holding the paper for him - her fingers long and thin a replica of the slivers of paper curling onto the floor. Many of the pieces seen in the movie were on the walls of the Museum – a rich trove of Matisse’s work – including models for major commissions, studies, etc. I was also intrigued that some of his commissions were from collectors living in California often arranged by his son Pierre – a valuable ally.

I felt fortunate to see two artists – Matisse who died in 1954, and Robert Gober who was born that same year - exhibiting together at the Museum of Modern Art; one disbursing the cloudless luminosity of daylight, and the other the tender mysteries of the night complete with stars and the infinite range of human experience.