William Kentridge’s drawing style is so bold and lively that it hardly needs animation to bring it to life. And yet his animated films crackle with energy, just like anything he creates, despite the fact that it is nearly entirely done with rare, hence extremely effective, daubs of color. A survey of his work is at MOMA through May 17, entitled William Kentridge: Five Themes, covering major themes and periods in his oeuvre—Ubu, Soho Eckstein/Felix Teitlebaum, in the studio, and his operas. The artist appears frequently as subject matter as well.
The installation’s flow and layout work well with the material at hand. Videos are screened on full walls in cube-shaped rooms with wide doors, integrating them into the larger installation, rather than ghetto-izing them, as often happens with curtained video projection spaces. read more
My visit to the 2010 Whitney Biennial coincided with reading Don Delillo’s brief novel, Point Omega. Moving through the Biennial’s many galleries, I couldn’t stop thinking about the author’s descriptions of watching Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho (the film Psycho slowed down to run over 24 hours) or the protagonist’s interactions with other gallery viewers, or even the presence of the security guards in the museum. The current Biennial has a large number of videos necessitating the protocol involved in video watching en masse. In quantity like this, it takes on its own quasi-performative aspects that—due to their repetition and for better or worse—become an aspect of seeing the show, curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari. A choreographed performance in and of itself, by the viewers.
Personal performances aside, the 2010 Biennial (through May 30) feels like a good cross-section of what’s being seen in galleries today, without the more sensational big-name artists sucking the air from the place. read more
Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity at MoMA doesn’t knock you over with huge masterworks (despite the presence of some big name painters), or with pop culture bribes, like the Tim Burton exhibition elsewhere in the building (recently reviewed for the SundayArts blog here). What this kind of sprawling survey does convey is how that design movement—which officially lasted just the duration of Germany’s Weimar Republic—has insinuated itself into our lives so much so that it’s frequently taken for granted. This may be the highest compliment to pay the artists and designers, many of whom worked in applied arts. The exhibition, which runs through January 25, was organized by Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman.
The movement’s influence is pretty much unavoidable in our daily lives. Boxy glass and metal skyscrapers, industrial furniture design, streamlined designs of functional items. (And perhaps foremost of importance around holiday gift buying time, the MoMA and Muji stores.) It was begun by Walter Gropius in 1919 in a period that was reacting to emotionally wrought expressionism by pursuing rational objectivity, and moved from Weimar to Dessau to Berlin under the subsequent directorships of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, before it was closed by the Nationalist Socialists in 1933. read more
Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, at the Whitney through January 24, 2010, doesn’t feel like a museum exhibition. It feels more like several gallery shows in one place at the same time—in a good way. Many solo museum shows can be overwhelming, or hinge around some giant work/s that skew the scale of the rest of the exhibition, often diminishing the intimate stuff. But Horn’s show, on two floors, is delicate, textured, multi-layered, and politely demands that viewers pay very close attention.
That’s not to say that Horn, born in 1955, doesn’t go quietly monumental here, as she does in a set of cast glass geometric shapes whose transparency and glossiness contradict their tonnage. read more
Artist Bill Viola has a show of work from two decades titled Bodies of Light, at James Cohan Gallery, through Dec 19. He sat down to talk about his work last week.
You had a residency at WNET a long time ago?
The first time I did something at WNET was in 1976; I did a piece called Four Songs that had to do with the passage of time, death, resurrection, but in a slightly different way than I deal with those topics now. It was broadcast on television. The first time my work was seen by large numbers of people, it was not in a museum, it was on NET, then it got syndicated and went to other public TV stations. I was involved with the TV Lab from around ‘75 thru maybe ‘81. That’s how I learned how to edit with high end professional equipment.
So many people have large format HD screens at home now… it’s a readymade format for your work.
I totally agree. The advent of flat screens have reconnected video to the art forms that since the beginning of video I’ve felt it was connected to. The flat screen confirmed all that, and the connection between the moving image and painting. That’s what plasma screens have allowed. And people like Jim and Jane Cohan (of James Cohan Gallery) get artists’ work on a wall in a portable format, which is what the original notion of painting was—frescoes, or cave paintings. People in the late middle ages were able to travel much farther than ever before, and they wanted to take their little icons with them. So artists painted icons, and the paintings started to grow, and eventually it eclipsed fresco. read more
To be trapped in Soho in a hellish, multi-room environment that has been, or is, inhabited by mutants or delinquents—this might occur once in a blue moon, but twice in one week? Yup. (And I’m not talkin’ about Topshop.) Once at Here Arts Center, where Los Grumildos was on view last week, and again at Deitch Projects’ Wooster Street space, where Jonah Freeman/Justin Lowe’s Black Acid Co-op is up through August 15.
“Grotesque. Charming. Sordid. Tiny.,” is how the installation by Peruvian artist Ety Fefer is concisely described on the postcard for Los Grumildos, part of Here’s puppetry program. Foot-tall puppets—hybrids of humans and crustaceans, with lobster claws, scorpion tails, and extra limbs—in individual terrariums “play” various instruments, their herky-jerky movements driven by small motors. read more
In the summer, the art world reverts to a kind of school semester mentality. Galleries shut on Saturdays if they’re even open to the public (and even then, close altogether in August), and often mount group shows based on whimsical themes. Museums, however, are obliged to stay open and service the hordes of visitors, but even they may tend to show art of a less academic nature, such as photography, or graphic or industrial design. With featured installations by two artists, the New Museum has managed to strike a balance between preferred summer art mediums and a historically and politically relevant conscience. David Goldblatt’s photographs of apartheid/post-apartheid South Africa occupy two floors, and Emory Douglas’ graphic designs for the Black Panthers fill another. read more
It seems fitting that an exhibition of Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare’s work is being shown at the Brooklyn Museum, located in a borough where more cultures meet daily in the Atlantic/Pacific subway station than in high season in a trading port of call.
A signature of Shonibare’s work is the use of Dutch wax fabric, African-inspired, vibrantly colored and patterned yardage goods produced in Europe and sold in Africa and elsewhere. The fabric is a rich and effective symbol for the intersection of cultures, from a sociological standpoint and commerce-wise. Shonibare (who, not insignificantly, uses the honorary title MBE after his name) creates elaborate colonial costumes with the prints, boldly mixing them and sparing no detail. read more
There’s a lot happening on Museum Mile these days. Among many highlights, the Met just opened their new American Wing, with a cascade of period rooms and galleries of decorative and functional objects orbiting around the huge Charles Engelhard Court, an atrium showcasing sculpture and stained glass. And up the street, the Guggenheim is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an overview of work by its dad, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).
At first glance, the two seemed only tangentially related, tied by opening date and only the broadest of tags. The Met’s new American atrium holds some familiar sculpture and stained glass, but the sparse installation also served as a reminder of how Euro-centric the museum’s holdings are. The many cases of household items—pewter, porcelain, silver—are now sandwiched in a relatively glamourous mezzanine between the court and Central Park. read more
If Francis Bacon’s (1909-1992) artwork were a movie, it would no doubt captivate that mythical “ideal” demographic—males 18-49. His work is scary, brutal, graphic, hallucinogenic, and muscular, like so many blockbuster films nowadays. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. That’s partly why the Met’s retrospective of the British artist seems in tune with the moment. The exhibition, on view through August 16, was curated by Gary Tinterow of the Met, and Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens of the Tate Britain, London.
Walking through Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective, it’s striking how many of Bacon’s 66 paintings on view seem very familiar already. Perhaps it has something to do with how accurately he portrayed nightmares of the subconscious, or how quickly those images immediately shot into the part of the brain that files fear. read more
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