PICASSO and the Avant Garde in Paris 1915-1945, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

With one exception many years ago I have successfully avoided the museum Big Ticket Blockbuster Exhibitions, especially those with timed tickets. Whereas American museums were once considered teaching institutions, in the last few decades they have morphed into the cultural branch of the corporate stranglehold on American and now, rather than teaching, American museums are desperate to Make Money, they seem to have become adherents of Reagan Republican sleaze and greed. This exhibition is a good example of that change: Ticket prices are higher than the suggested contributions. Visitors are urged to buy their tickets in advance but if they do there is a three dollar surcharge if a credit card is used. Private tours of the exhibition can be arranged before the exhibition opens to the public at 11:00AM and those tickets are only $36.00. At the exit a wall sign announces that once you leave you may not reenter. And at the end of your circuit you are dumped into a site specifically built gift shop to impulsively buy the obligatory tourist souvenirs and mementos. The whole of this exhibition is tainted with the scuz of Money Money Money.

The recent Cheney Bush economic downturn the has left museums in the same financial difficulties as the rest of the population and one way museums have addressed the issue is to present exhibitions composed of works …from the permanent collection. It’s great to see works that are rarely on view but charging Blockbuster admission prices to see what’s in the back room comes off as a little cynical and a trifle overreaching; I feel as if I were being asked to help defray the cost of storage.

Despite my misgivings I decided to see this because I think this museum is one of the finest in the country and because I have been studying Picasso’s work these last few years. Had it been a good exhibition there might have been some redeeming values. Alas, it is not and there are none. One reason it is so uninteresting is that the title is misleading. In the announcement of the exhibition the word PICASSO stands in very large letters and beneath it in very small letters we can read: And the avant garde in Paris, 1915 -1945. Unfortunately the works shown seem weighted in favor of “the others” so that it is in reality …Picasso and the Avant Garde in Paris.

In addition, the scholarship seems wanting. It opens with the well known self portrait of Picasso that is attributed to his coming under the influence of early Iberian sculpture. Much is made of the fact that the man holds a palette but not a paint brush. Scant mention is made of the fact that he was trained in the academic style but that this painting is done with very loose and flowing brush work in contradistinction to the academic tradition. A painting is first and foremost about painting and how the paint is applied to the ground is what the painting is about. How and why Picasso made that change is one of the keys to understanding the development of modern art. Rather than concentrating on what was not there, the missing paintbrush, the museum could have been more informative by focusing on what was there …the paint on the ground.

It then segues into his work with Braque, cubism, with only the slightest mention of the influence of African Art. Les Demoiselle d’Avingon is mentioned but without showing that painting to the visitors who do not know it we cannot understand what Braque and Picasso were attempting to do…reconfigure picture space as an experience of expressive form. We are shown the sculpture, The Glass of Absinthe, but unless one knows that it references an African totemic/ritual object, it is merely bewildering. The standard conventional wisdom is repeated, that cubism was a technique showing the various aspects of an object all at once, but if diagrams had been provided to support that statement it would have been shown that that is not quite correct …cubism is much more than that.

No mention is made of Cezanne’s influence on Picasso’s work or on the work that Matisse was doing at that time, that Picasso felt himself in competition with Matisse, and that Braque shifted his allegiance from Matisse to Picasso, essentially from primarily color to primarily form. All of that motivated and powered the drive behind cubism.

There is a brief reference to a period after World War I which is denoted as A Return to Order, a classic revival, but for Picasso this was merely a period in which he measured his growth away from the tradition.

Although Picasso knew the people in the surrealism movement and associated with them personally he never considered himself a surrealist. However, the museum presents his work with those others as if indeed he was one of the pack. Picasso was never one of the pack: Picasso was always a pack unto himself!

Missing at this point is mention of his work with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes and the influence that had on his work. But much else is missing also. On any given day Picasso was likely to work in one style or another or all of them on the same day. We see his work, The Three Musicians, 1921, and we are left to figure for ourselves that it was done after the two cubist periods and the Return to Order period and in the midst of the so called surrealist period. The museum also claims that this painting, similar to the one at MOMA is the better of the two. I disagree. This one is a good, clear and straight forward example of synthetic cubism but the painting at MOMA is more brilliant and has the shimmer of exuberant life.

As for the others whom Picasso inspired, yes there are many and many of their works are shown …too many in fact. The point can be made with fewer works…more works here, especially the gallery of salon cubists, comes off as merely tiresome.

Finally, what is most noticeably absent is any mention of Picasso’s private life. Without that reference one cannot really understand Picasso’s work: Picasso’s life was very public, he set the trend in life as well as art and his work is very autobiographical, Picasso was the most personally revealing of any artist.

At the exit there are three Picasso Lithographs: Black Figure, 1948, Girl with Hairnet, 1949, and Bust with Starry Background, 1949. These are three of the best works in the exhibition. They are clearly stated, they are masterfully executed, each is a self contained visual experience, and each brims with the artist’s joy of discovery, a discovery of the art within himself…the hallmark of all of Picasso’s work. It is curious that all three of these are beyond the 1945 cut off date of the exhibition, but considering those dates, it can be seen that these are the works of a man who had been living and painting in Paris for fifty years working day in and day out …and many nights as well …and who would continue to paint and draw at the top of his game for another twenty five years. What is missing most of all in this exhibition is an emphasis on Picasso’s protean energy, his constant joy of the discovery of the art within himself, and his superior creativity that lifted him heads and shoulders above those who swam in his wake. Yes: it was a wake, not a school.

The museum web site has an over view of the exhibition that I find better than the exhibition. There is just not enough PICASSO in this exhibition to justify the effort to see it and it is certainly not worth the money. The moral of this story: Avoid museum blockbuster timed ticket exhibitions, especially those with works from the storage room…in too many we can see that they’re in storage for obvious reason.

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/354.html?page=2#gallery2

Picasso in Context.

This exhibition in a long hallway outside the PICASSO exhibit is a representative sample of the work of artists from the Alfred Stieglitz gallery. Stieglitz was the first gallery owner in the United States to show the work of Matisse and Picasso and the European moderns. The American artists he represented had been to Paris and Munich and had returned to this country determined to create an American modern art. Whereas the artists in the Parisian avant garde turned their attention to creating derivative works in the Matisse/Picasso/Braque manner, these young American artists seem to have been liberated and inspired. In this large group, given to the museum by Georgia O’Keefe in 1949, there are seven Marsden Hartley’s, two Arthur Doves, an early Stuart Davis, a Georgia O’Keefe, and a Charles Sheeler. (In my notes I did not indicate that there were any John Marin’s, another Stieglitz artist.) There are a number of Paul Strand photographs, portraits of Picasso and Braque, et al. as well.

Some of these works are excellent …the two Doves are among his best. The Hartley’s are excellent as well.

I confess that my positive response to this work might very well have been overly subjective. I have been focused on the Stieglitz artists for the past few years and so it is always wonderful to come across a group of them on view. The more I see of their work the more I find that I agree with Stieglitz: these are the best early twentieth century American painters. In fact I am inclined to say that Marsden Hartley is the very best twentieth century American Artist. He left major works in all of the various styles that he explored, he eventually created a very personal and poetic idiom, and he has more depth, more autobiographical content, and more sincerity than any other American artist of this century. His work is a record of his life experience and his responses to those experiences.

And he also has a sense of humor. In his large painting, Winter Chaos, Blizzard 1909, the mountain forest in a snowstorm, one can imagine him resuming his work after a night of rest, looking at the canvas, and saying to himself: “Now let me see, where did I leave off?” And then there’s Our Lady of the Melon.

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/392.html

The Platinum Process: Photographs from the 19th to the 21st Century, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

After I had been in this gallery some while I nodded as I passed the young woman attendant working there. She smiled and said: “You must really like photography.” “And why do you say that”, I asked. “Because you been in here a long time and you’ve looked at just about everything. Everyone else just looks at a few pictures and then they leave.” “That’s because they can’t see anything,” I said. “When you stand in front of the photographs, the only things you see are the reflections of the lights up on the ceiling.”

She turned and looked at the nearest photograph. “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.” Now if she could see that, granted …with prompting, why couldn’t the people who designed this installation see that? Does it have to do with selective vision wherein we have an area of interest and we see only those things that fall within the scope of that interest but none of the details of the things beyond it? I can imagine this installation being planned; I can imagine thought being given to the placement of the photographs by subject or by the dates they were made, etc. But for some reason the most important part of this installation, the lighting, (without light there is no photograph), was unseen by anyone on the design team, or, if it was, it was acceptable to them.

The gallery is in the Perelman Building, an annex across the street from the main building of the Museum. A standard issue art deco/classic revival building that looks to have been a place of government offices, it was taken over by the museum and when I was here two years ago it had just been opened. A jitney transports the museum visitors to and fro. On the ground floor the building has been converted to three small and one larger exhibition spaces, it has an entry and a café, and beyond and above there are offices for museum staff.

The gallery used for photography exhibitions is a rectangle about three times longer than it is wide. There are permanent tracks in the ceiling for the standard canister lighting fixtures. The canister lamps throw a light that illuminates a general area with only the slightest ability, apparently, to focus that light in a specific place. Looking into each photograph one sees the reflection of that one light source obliquely overhead as well as the other light fixtures near it. One also sees the reflections of himself and the photographs on the other side of the room. The photographs on the end walls reflect the length of the room and all of the overhead lighting fixtures. In some of the photographs this creates wonderful patterns of little lights ….but I doubt that that was the intention of the exhibition designers.

Platinum prints are something of a rarity. They were first made in the latter part of the nineteenth century up to the period of World War I when the materials became scarce because of their need for the war effort. Just before that time the silver gelatin print was introduced and as it had a faster developing time it became the preferred standard print. Eventually the platinum print was abandoned. In the 1960’s Irving Penn researched the process and working with DuPont Chemical was able to revive it. (Only one of his photographs is shown. Alas, it is at the long end of the room, it is horizontal, and it presents not a photograph but a dazzle of lights.) At the present there are a few photographers who continue to use the process.

Unlike the silver gelatin print in which the solution deposits the silver on the surface of the paper, so that those photographs are all surface, the chemicals used in the platinum process penetrate the fibers of the paper. By treating the paper with successive layers of the chemical and repeating the printing process, the photographer can make photographs with the deepest and richest tonal values. Because the chemicals can be brushed onto the paper, either once or in successive passages, effects can be obtained that cannot be obtained in any other process. Platinum prints can only be contact printed. Although they are more stable than silver gelatin prints, they are more susceptible to atmospheric pollutants which cause an acid reaction in the paper.

A vitrine in the center of the room holds three copies of Paul Strand’s iconic photograph, Wall Street. One is a recent, 1976, platinum print, one is a silver gelatin print, and one is a photogravure. Paul Strand’s original platinum print, one of only two, is on a facing wall. As these prints are placed on the bottom of the display case one has to lean over the glass in order the see them. Unfortunately, leaning over the case is a blinding experience as the only thing that can then be seen is the bright glare of the light pointing straight down from directly over head. Whereas an opportunity has been presented for the public to educate its eye, under these poor conditions the objects presented might as well be pages ripped out of old copies of Life Magazine.

On this blog I attempt to write only positive responses to the exhibitions and artworks that I see. It would seem to me that negative commentary loses an audience rather than builds one and I certainly would like to build an audience for discussions of the fine arts. But because poor museum lighting is beginning to be more and more common I think something needs to be said …as in the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

This exhibition is a waste of time all around: for the staff that spent time putting it together and for the public that came here and, as per the attendant, walked in and then walked right back out. As I know people who make their living designing lighting installations for various upscale venues, and as I know that there are a very wide variety of lighting fixtures on the market that serve the needs of those venues, and as I have seen exhibitions with lighting successfully designed using those fixtures at the International Center for Photography in New York, I can say with complete confidence that the lighting in this exhibition, as well as that of exhibitions I have seen recently at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,( Harry Callahan, Yousef Karsh), and The National Gallery in Washington, (In the Darkroom), see below, is unacceptable and should not be tolerated by a museum or the public.

It’s possible the upper echelon of the museum management thinks that photography is not really one of the fine arts and that well designed lighting using the correct instruments is an unwise expenditure of time and money. For a corporation the first priority is to increase profits. The quality of the product or service produced is no longer of any importance. The mission statement for customer relations now reads: “Damn the customer”. Whatever the reason for this poor lighting, I could not help but suspect that it was just another example of the corporate take over of the fine arts institutions in this country.

As I was one of three visitors in this annex of the museum, perhaps the public, a public that walks in and then walks right back out, has spoken: attendance in the photography galleries is low because the public will not accept the poor quality of the exhibitions here. Considering that the public’s standards are pretty low to begin with, that should be doubly embarrassing to the museum.

One last consideration: if the staff thinks that this presentation is “OK”, (and should museum exhibitions be just “OK”?), perhaps the museum management should consider getting a new staff.

Despite not being able to see the photographs well I was aware that among these early works the subject matter of photography …landscape, portrait, and still life, followed the precedent set in the field of painting. In early photography there were the pictorialists who used the camera to create works “like painting”. Later there were the purists, Paul Strand among them, who attempted to make works with the camera that only the camera could make, although with his focus on the common and mundane I am too often reminded of Dutch genre painting.

That makes you aware that for many years all photographs were very much alike and that the differences between them were in the camera angle and in the kind of prints made from the negatives. Seeing all of that in these older photographs helps me to understand the photographers who came along in the late 1950’s who were itching to do “something more”. It also helps me to better understand more recent photographers who do things now that I’m not sure I understand at all. But since I think I understand why they want to go there, perhaps there is hope for me yet.

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/362.html