In 2005 The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the Gilman Collection of over 1350 photographs and photographic albums, a collection remarkable for its depth of examples in the history of early photography put together from 1974 to 1998 by Richard Gilman of the Gilman Paper Company. In some cases, such as in the works of Fox Talbot, these photographs are one of a kind. Others duplicated works already owned by the museum and so the two collections were studied closely and where possible, owing to limits made by other bequests, etc, some of the works were placed for auction in 2006. The Sotheby’s Catalogue for that auction carries this full story as well as reproductions of the prints that were offered to the public.
Two years ago when I was making efforts to understand why photography is an art form I was fortunate to buy a copy of that catalogue from a local bookseller. Seeing that the museum had mounted this present exhibit incorporating some of those works, I was very determined to see it.
While we have come to expect that each painter will paint in a style uniquely his own, with his own palette and brush work, that each will have his distinctive penmanship, and, especially in modern art, create his own signature image or images, it is always a revelation to me that a number of men and women limited to using a simple machine can make such distinctively different images and suggest such individual responses to the life in front of that machine.
This exhibition has abundant examples to illustrate my wonder. Perhaps most specifically in this exhibition I can compare the works of Atget, Marville, and Baldus, each of whom worked in Paris at approximately the same time but who made images that are so very different that they hardly seem to have been made in the same city or in the same historic era.
This exhibit shows a very marked contrast of the technical limits of early photography and the visual appeal of the works produced. Giving my attention to this art form these past several years I have come to define photography as being a luminous experience on a fragile ground. Not only are the results exhibited here wonders of technical innovation but almost without exception each is a visual experience well within my definition.
The oldest works in this exhibit, and perhaps in photography itself, are those made by William Fox Talbot. One photograph is dated 1840. Many of these very early works are so fragile and light sensitive that only facsimiles can be shown. Some are what we now refer to as photograms, objects placed over treated paper. Concerned with the fugitive quality of his prints, Fox Talbot experimented endlessly to create a system through which the prints could be made more permanent, hoping to find a way in which they could be made with inks. In one example, the seeds of a dandelion were placed on a sheet of copper treated with the light sensitive chemicals. Whatever the results of that method were, that it could or could not produce multiple prints, this is the only known print of that effort.
Because most of the works in this exhibit are large format contact prints, many of them have the quality of seeming to be very fine engravings, especially the Marville “Imperial Louvre Library”, a photograph he made to illustrate the ability of the medium to convey detail with great specificity and the value of photography to the study of architecture. And there is enough here to define the difference between the pictorialists and the purists. But with pictures as excellent as these that old argument is indeed moot. What is more readily apparent is that using the large format and working from a tripod, each of these compositions is carefully framed, the photographer has waited until the light is “just right”, and there is a sense in all of them of time as an eternal present.
Many of these early works were made from paper or glass negatives and it is brought home to us in this exhibit that some of the very earliest glass negatives were very large: there being no electricity and no light bulbs, there were as well no enlargers. The works of Carleton Watkins and Julia Margaret Cameron are 18 by 24 inches. Because she made portraits so large a negative could no doubt be worked with somewhat easily in a studio, but in Watkins case, his results are phenomenal. Watkins was an early champion of Yosemite; he was an inspiration for Ansel Adams’ work. He packed not only his camera and these very large sheets of glass for his trips up into the wilderness areas, but his portable darkroom as well…the negatives having to be developed while the plates were still wet. Doing some further research I have learned that he traveled with a team of twelve mules!
As most of us are aware that 19th Century houses have rippled glass windows, that glass of that time had other imperfections, having to do with the difference between rolled and sheet glass, I also began to wonder where the photographers were able to find “museum” quality glass to make these distortion free images.
Watkins’ views of the mountains he loved are radiant. Unlike the very similar work of Adams, who often seems overly involved in the technical aspects of the making of the photograph, Watkins used his mastery of the technology to make photographs that are a joyous sharing of the visions that met his eyes.
In the exhibition, the big change of tempo comes with the work of Henri Cartier Bresson. Bresson was the first, in this exhibit, to use the 35 mm camera, a Lieca. His photographs by contrast are extremely animated and lively. His images were captured moments within a movement. And from this and seeing how close he came to missing or not getting what he saw, we can deduce that he was a man of quick intelligence, quick decision, and quick action….and that he had a complete and innate understanding of the possibilities of his medium. And it is remarkable that his small images, compared to the 18 by 24 of the others, have so much more energy within their smaller format.
The work of Walker Evans has that eternal, monumental character of the larger format works although in the sense of the classical as opposed to the academic. His photograph of the Bedford A and P rigidly adheres to the Greek dictates of classical balance. While he might have worked at times with a 35mm camera I am more inclined to think the photographs here were made with an 8 by 10 view camera.
One of the insights I’ve had regarding photography is that the paper on which the photograph appears is often of very great importance to the photographer. In the earliest of these works I could not discern that the paper had any particular quality that had been chosen specifically for these prints. This reminded me that at that time there were no corner camera shops or wholesale art supply stores with ready supplies of printing papers and other materials. Pressing as close to the glass as I was able to do in the museum, I believe I could see that the paper was rather bland, similar to Bristol vellum, that it had been mounted to another paper backing, whether by the photographer or collector I do not know, and that it had then been matted and framed with the edge of the photograph visible inside the matte. In the later works, specifically Walker Evans’ and Bresson’s, the paper is noticeably a better quality paper but still rather anonymous and without distinctive character…but they are clearly not Kodak or HP Printing Papers.
While this exhibit has a wonderful range of interesting pictorial works, as a survey of one hundred years of photography, in the end it raised more question than it attempted to answer.
It would have been very informative to have been told or to have been shown what the cameras were like that each of these photographers used…the cameras, the lenses, the lens sizes, and the mechanical options available to them…i.e. f-stops, bellows, etc. In almost all of these photographs there is a very noticeable lack of convergence in the parallel lines; is that because of the placement of the camera or the bellows, lenses, etc.?
I was also curious to know how, if there were no enlargers and no electric light bulbs, how these prints had been made. I assume each was a contact print but I do not know what source was used to transmit light through the negative to make the print.
It would have been very interesting, if there were no light meters or range finders, to know how the exposures and the focus had been determined. The Carleton Watkins photographs have such distinct areas of different tonal values one might almost think he had invented Adams’ Zone System. In the notes to the Cameron portraits it was stated that she made very long exposures, sometimes of many minutes duration. It would have been very interesting to know how she came to make that decision.
The Museum has scheduled two gallery talks regarding this exhibition and there are films about two of the photographers that will be shown, but I would have preferred having all of that information made available to the visitor’s within the exhibition. For the general public to understand why photography is a fine art, museums need to do more to make the process understandable to the museum going public: just to look at old pretty pictures should not be the sole reason to invite visitors to museum exhibitions. Photography is first a craft and without an understanding of that craft there can be only a poor understanding of the art.
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/framing/century_images.asp
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Anatomy of a Masterpiece: How to Read Chinese Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The larger American museums are so eager to be all inclusive that many of their collections appear so obligatory and so minor as to seem hardly worth the time needed to create galleries for them or to visit them. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art this appears to be especially true in The Chinese Collection. Compared to the Chicago Art Institute with it magnificent collection of Tang Dynasty tomb figures and Chinese ceramics, or the Minneapolis Art Institute’s Asian ceramics, or the Portland Museum’s Han Dynasty tomb figures and stellar Asian Ceramics, the Metropolitan shows us merely a sampler.
Furthermore, not all of those samples are shown to their best advantage: the Asian Ceramics are displayed in virtines on two sides of the mezzanine of the Great Hall, on only three or four shelves, up against the wall and but one thin aisle distant from the tables and chairs that have been crowded into that space for a makeshift lunchroom. They continue on the other two sides of the mezzanine in passageways from other collections to other collections. The great open space of this floor is filled with the hubbub from the visitor’s entry on the main floor. This seems to me a rather disrespectful and indifferent presentation.
There are likely any number of reasons for this, the lack of space being one of them, but another conclusion that can be made is that the management of the Met has little interest in the Asian Arts and would like visitors to share their indifference.
Having given some time and study to China these past few years I have been absolutely perplexed that calligraphy is considered the highest Chinese art form. I do know that for the Chinese calligraphy is understood to be not just the making of ideograms, but any drawing done by hand. While I can appreciate the drawing, I do not understand why a sheet of characters has the high esteem it enjoys. Seeing this exhibition listed, “Anatomy of a Masterpiece”, I was hoping that it would enlighten me.
I would think that the western and the eastern art lovers look at these works from a completely different perspective. I know, in fact, that while we look at these objects in museum settings wherein we glide by without stopping too long in order to get through the gallery and on to the next, for the Chinese, and especially in the earlier periods, these objects were contemplated in the silence and privacy of the home: the Philadelphia Museum has a beautiful reconstructed Scholars Study that creates the perfect imagine for us of that environment. And rather than seeing them spread in a vitrine they were studied and enjoyed on a desk top or in a special installation, such as Frank Lloyd Wright made for himself at Taliesin. But aside from the how they are viewed, I am more interested in the way, in the sense of the cultural way, they are viewed: how does the Chinese scholar begin to read these works?
There are thirty six works shown in this exhibition and there are photographic blow ups of details from almost all of them bringing our attention to particular passages. There is ample discussion about the details and subject matter within the works, but from the anecdotal and western rather than the eastern point of view.
There is some explanation as to how these were made and how the tools and materials were manipulated to achieve various effects. But despite the fine scholarship of the interpretation this seemed to have a focus on the trees but not the forest. Most disappointing for me was that there was no interpretation of why the Chinese have maintained their high regard for these works for over a thousand years.
Some of these works are spectacular. “Shining White Light” is a magnificent example of form, the horse, used as expressive form. “Leaves and Finches” is pure visual delight. And in a long scroll, “16 Lohans”, there is a marvel of vegetation surrounding the activities of very thinly drawn persons. I especially like it that the Chinese calligraphers generally isolate the subject on the ground and dispense with a suggested or minutely depicted surround. But most impressive is the display of a profound mastery of draftsmanship: it seems incredible that a person with a pen or a brush can sit before a sheet of blank paper or silk and freely draw out something so expressive of his profound interest…especially when that drawing sometimes continues along a route that is ultimately 30 feet long! There is no sense in these works that the artist periodically stepped back to assess the progress of his work: this drawing appears to flow in one continuous movement from his pen.
While I admire what we would consider the drawing, as it regards the sheets of ideograms the works have little if any power to move me, even though some Asians have attempted to broaden my understanding. But show me a Sung dynasty bowl with a rabbit fur glaze and I can go into a rapture.
Many of the works in this exhibition display wonderful charm, wit, and an ebullient good humor. The sense of using what is seen to make two dimensional designs is inspiring.
I was hoping that this exhibition would be a seminal moment in that it would give me an even greater understanding and appreciation of this culture. It did not. While I might have a better understanding of certain passages, I continue to not understand calligraphy and the mind that esteems it. I continue to feel that I stand outside a tradition I will never understand.
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={9870D849-9235-4458-BC8C-E9C74CB7D18A}
Furthermore, not all of those samples are shown to their best advantage: the Asian Ceramics are displayed in virtines on two sides of the mezzanine of the Great Hall, on only three or four shelves, up against the wall and but one thin aisle distant from the tables and chairs that have been crowded into that space for a makeshift lunchroom. They continue on the other two sides of the mezzanine in passageways from other collections to other collections. The great open space of this floor is filled with the hubbub from the visitor’s entry on the main floor. This seems to me a rather disrespectful and indifferent presentation.
There are likely any number of reasons for this, the lack of space being one of them, but another conclusion that can be made is that the management of the Met has little interest in the Asian Arts and would like visitors to share their indifference.
Having given some time and study to China these past few years I have been absolutely perplexed that calligraphy is considered the highest Chinese art form. I do know that for the Chinese calligraphy is understood to be not just the making of ideograms, but any drawing done by hand. While I can appreciate the drawing, I do not understand why a sheet of characters has the high esteem it enjoys. Seeing this exhibition listed, “Anatomy of a Masterpiece”, I was hoping that it would enlighten me.
I would think that the western and the eastern art lovers look at these works from a completely different perspective. I know, in fact, that while we look at these objects in museum settings wherein we glide by without stopping too long in order to get through the gallery and on to the next, for the Chinese, and especially in the earlier periods, these objects were contemplated in the silence and privacy of the home: the Philadelphia Museum has a beautiful reconstructed Scholars Study that creates the perfect imagine for us of that environment. And rather than seeing them spread in a vitrine they were studied and enjoyed on a desk top or in a special installation, such as Frank Lloyd Wright made for himself at Taliesin. But aside from the how they are viewed, I am more interested in the way, in the sense of the cultural way, they are viewed: how does the Chinese scholar begin to read these works?
There are thirty six works shown in this exhibition and there are photographic blow ups of details from almost all of them bringing our attention to particular passages. There is ample discussion about the details and subject matter within the works, but from the anecdotal and western rather than the eastern point of view.
There is some explanation as to how these were made and how the tools and materials were manipulated to achieve various effects. But despite the fine scholarship of the interpretation this seemed to have a focus on the trees but not the forest. Most disappointing for me was that there was no interpretation of why the Chinese have maintained their high regard for these works for over a thousand years.
Some of these works are spectacular. “Shining White Light” is a magnificent example of form, the horse, used as expressive form. “Leaves and Finches” is pure visual delight. And in a long scroll, “16 Lohans”, there is a marvel of vegetation surrounding the activities of very thinly drawn persons. I especially like it that the Chinese calligraphers generally isolate the subject on the ground and dispense with a suggested or minutely depicted surround. But most impressive is the display of a profound mastery of draftsmanship: it seems incredible that a person with a pen or a brush can sit before a sheet of blank paper or silk and freely draw out something so expressive of his profound interest…especially when that drawing sometimes continues along a route that is ultimately 30 feet long! There is no sense in these works that the artist periodically stepped back to assess the progress of his work: this drawing appears to flow in one continuous movement from his pen.
While I admire what we would consider the drawing, as it regards the sheets of ideograms the works have little if any power to move me, even though some Asians have attempted to broaden my understanding. But show me a Sung dynasty bowl with a rabbit fur glaze and I can go into a rapture.
Many of the works in this exhibition display wonderful charm, wit, and an ebullient good humor. The sense of using what is seen to make two dimensional designs is inspiring.
I was hoping that this exhibition would be a seminal moment in that it would give me an even greater understanding and appreciation of this culture. It did not. While I might have a better understanding of certain passages, I continue to not understand calligraphy and the mind that esteems it. I continue to feel that I stand outside a tradition I will never understand.
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={9870D849-9235-4458-BC8C-E9C74CB7D18A}
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Louise Bourgeois at The Guggenheim Museum, New York City
The Guggenheim was designed so that the works on view would be seen beginning from the top. One takes the elevator up and then walks down. Frank Lloyd Wright is a master of directing the foot traffic and this long ramp is especially assertive. For this exhibit, however, the chronology begins at the bottom: one is expected to climb to the top. In a sense I suspect this is symbolic: these are works that require one to slog his way through the career. As a creature of habit I rode up and walked down. I then walked back up and back down. In the end it really did not matter which way was chosen: there is little sense of development over the many long years of this career, there is a sameness of achievement overall.
While I recognize the artist’s name as one among the Twentieth Century American artists with name recognition there is no image in my mind that connotes her work. And while I have seen her work in other museums, especially over the last several years, I cannot remember exactly which of her works I have seen: she has created neither a signature image nor have the works she has created created a lingering iconic image in my memory.
While giving these works my attention two things became apparent to me: finish and celebrity.
Near the top there is a series of works, “Cells”, from the 1990’s, which have been made from discarded doors of various descriptions found, I assume, on the streets of New York. In the 1960’s it was common to see doors like these fronting construction sites in the city. Tableaux have been created inside these cells and there are windows or small openings through which we can look inside. There we see various items that look, to be perfectly honest, as if they were things that had also been found on the street or purchased at flea markets. Although the interpretation rhapsodized about the intensity of the emotional experience within these cells, as a viewer I felt that they never rose above the reality of being a collection of found objects. Perhaps I am too successfully a Buddhist and accept life as too obviously maya and know that a thing is only what it is and that any color we give it is only the color that we give it. While this collection of objects might have profound meaning for the artist, that concern was not presented in such a way as to communicate a shared experience. Trained as a set designer I did not sense that the design of these Cells expressed the essence of the artist’s intention.
The doors, or in one case the panels to circuit boxes, had an apparent “as found” finish, but on some of them I wondered if a seemingly casual over painting might not have been the artist’s rather than as found. I wondered if there might not have been a little more scenic manipulation here than we were supposed to notice. I had an uncomfortable feeling that not all of this revelatory autobiography was as honest as it was stated to be. So let me be honest: I am suggesting that these cells read as being rather contrived: they were not really intended as an expression of the artist’s angst but as contemporary art works made for gallery consumption.
At the bottom of the ramp, at the beginning of the career, there are several paintings from the 1940’s. The drawing is poor, the limited colors are poor, and they are placed in the center of prevailing twentieth century “style”. The craftsmanship is emphatically nonexistent. On the whole they have the look: these are of interest because I made them. They are very bad paintings and the artist was well advised to turn her interest to sculpture. That they had been publicly exhibited at the time they were made brought to my mind an awareness of what I believe is commonly understood as “art world darlings”: those insiders whose social networking has secured a recognition for their work in the commercial venues of contemporary art. This was augmented by references in the museum literature to her marriage to the American art critic Robert Goldwater. I wondered: if she had not been married to that person, would her works have been taken on by an art gallery?
There are two areas where a number of her drawings were displayed as a group. Near the top of the ramp there were many drawings of what looked like loosely woven cheesecloth and others of free form spirals. It was apparent to me that she was also not a draftsman. Initially I was curious if she was referencing Chinese calligraphy. Chinese calligraphy is a very proscribed discipline with very rigid rules. In my reading I have been made familiar with the work of a Chinese artist, whose name I have forgotten, probably in the 800’s C.E., who took the stance of an anti-artist and whose works are valued for their fluency and spontaneity. Were the Louise Bourgeois drawings referencing that anti-art esthetic? Because there was no other reference to Chinese art, I decided that there wasn’t. They are simply not very good drawings. They are made on not very good paper. They were probably nothing more than working drawings for sculptures she intended to make
The only interesting drawings were nine engravings. These were made to illustrate some of the artist’s personal anecdotes. They are very good drawings. If there are more of these somewhere I would much rather have seen them than the working drawings we were shown. But these drawings showed high finish, a compliance with the standards of excellence in the arts, and I wondered if they might not have been included to show us that, yes, she can, when she wants to.
Her real talent is in sculpture and there are some very good pieces in the show. After the first paintings we find the first group of sculpture, Personages, carved wood, again wood as found in the street. But this discarded American wood has been made into African sculpture. I have no quarrel with an artist expanding his or her horizons by working within a foreign cultural tradition. But these are so obvious that I do have a problem with something like this that is only a studio exploration presented in a museum setting. Personages was followed by a series, Lair, again primitive, derivative, and again studio exploration. And the same can be said for a series of vertical assemblages of small pieces of wood, Mortise, Memling Dawn, et al. A large assemblage of half round shapes of wood, “Partial Recall”, painted white, looked like an exercise: how can I make something of this without referencing Nevelson? The answer was to make it horizontal and to paint it white. But that did not disguise the reference.
It was not until she began to work in bronze and marble, creating small intimate pieces that evoked a strong visceral response that the work began to be interesting. Again, if there is more of this somewhere I would much rather have seen it than those made from found wood…there is more than enough of that kind of thing around.
Among the best of these is Spiral Woman, the body of a woman hanging out of a spiral of “something” cast in bronze and finished in a polished gold. It is very tactile, it is very visceral and it has an extremely pleasant sense of form. Two larger spirals, in shiny silver, hanging above the lobby from the high ceiling, have the look of mere decoration. They are instantly forgettable.
“One and Others” a group of painted wood shapes, was somewhat interesting but it felt overworked because of the really fine and careful finish.
I was very favorably impressed with “Rabbit”, what looked to be the carcass of a partially gutted creature hanging by a foot from a nail, the skin of the back splayed out creating a diamond shape behind the spine. I suspect a mold was made of the real object and that it was then cast in bronze. It created an immediate remembrance of the 16th Century French ceramicist, Palissy. As both an object and as an art world and cultural reference I thought this was one of the most successful works in the exhibition.
I was very impressed by the works in marble. Moderately sized, each had a very monumental quality. These for the most part refer to body parts…breast, penises, and vaginas. Most of them were placed on large single blocks of wood serving as pedestals. It was a lovely contrast of materials and a lovely sensual subject matter. All of these marble works had the highest finish and in most the polished surface was contrasted to areas that were left rough cut. But this series was also marred by a number of works of forearms and hands, clasped or opened, that looked to have been life casts and cast in plaster and painted to resemble the marble. There was something really “off” about them in what seemed but more contrivance.
Late works are made in fabric and the most successful of these were those made from remnants of tapestries. These had wonderful colors and texture. This material was intended to reference the artist’s early years and her family. Whereas the interpretation makes much of a childhood trauma inspired by her father, because there is so constant a reference to the mother I think there is a stronger case for an unresolved mother/daughter separation anxiety. This is not to say that an artist cannot take that reference and turn it into a major art work: O’Neill gave us some major masterpieces using his family history. But as art works the remnants of tapestry were more interesting than what was made of them.
On the floor of the lobby stands a large sculptural work of two spiders about eight feet high. Bourgeois has said that she wants to rehabilitate the reputation of the spider. And she has. These are silly but fun.
“Don’t Swallow Me” a flat and framed work incorporating a petticoat laid out in a flat circle, two long red arms painted on the paper ground and some other markings was also interesting because of the composition and the contrast of textures.
Interesting. Interesting is the most that I get from this exhibition. Except for Arch of Hysteria, a polished gold headless male torso, sans genitals (?), bent backward and hanging at eye level from the naval, none of the images elicited a shock of recognition or the sense of a confrontation with something deeply buried in the collective unconscious. However, while there are no masterpieces neither was there an overload of signature images that look to have been manufactured for the many hundreds of museums in America. Instead, there is a constant sense of an ongoing exploration for… “something”. That’s fine.
One image that does stand out in many of these works is the spiral. Initially when I saw it in the series of the drawings I responded to it as if it were a contrived effort to create a universal image: the spiral is the most universal of all symbols and has been found in every early culture. At first I assumed that we were being directed to the works of Jung and Joseph Campbell. But next to those drawings was a work which included a skein of linen and so I came to understand the fascination of the spiral as referencing that: the spiral is the skein from which the creativity flows.
A second image which was almost as commonly used was the dress maker’s or tailor’s sausage or gourd. But because the interpretation never identified it, for most viewers it was probably simply an odd object. But knowing what it was did not invest it with any deeper meaning for me. As I have said, I’m a Buddhist and a gourd is a gourd is a gourd.
Despite the well known fact that Louise Bourgeois is a celebrity, an insider of the New York art world, her work, as presented here, seems not worthy of museum attention. Does that have to do with her work or with this selection of her works? From the early to the late works there is a vacillation between a too fine finish and an indifference to finish; I sense that a decision had never been made one way or the other. Thus overall the approach to the work seems unfocused and…casual. I’m not sure that I would even consider all of this minor or of secondary importance. At the end of the day it is really just the stuff of art world galleries. The most powerful experience here was reading the artist’s comments about her works that merge human form with buildings. (Which are also …interesting.) She is reputed to have written: “Skyscrapers reflect the human condition. They do not touch.” Nothing else I saw here had so strong an impact, nothing else so succinctly spoke to me from the depths of the artist’s being or told me so much about her. Ironically it was not a visual experience, it was a verbal communication. Painting, sculpture, and photography are visual experiences. There is no reason for an artist to spend his, or her, time making an image of something that can be more powerfully said.
Postscript: Museums would do the arts a great service if they would curtail the hyperbole in their guides and interpretations. The interpretation for this exhibit is printed as a brochure and available at the entrance, as well as on the web site. It is an okay accompaniment to the exhibit but with a few too many histrionic utterances. For example: “the fraught dynamic between…”, “unprecedented emotional intensity…” “these troubling connotations…”, “sinister traps”, and “fraught (yes, fraught again) with the suggestion of life concealed…” It presents, overall, the image of a woman who has lived her life as the victim of her childhood traumas and her adult gender anomie. As described in this document, in the whole wide universe it is all about her. Because I do not know her personally my experience of the universe has been otherwise. As so many of us have grown weary of the professional victim, I’m sure many observers other than myself wondered why she simply didn’t chuck it all and go to a therapist.
I am suggesting that with a less breathy guide we might have more readily felt what the artist was attempting to express. I certainly did not buy into this rhetoric: for the most part what it described was not evident in the work. Eventually the emotional high pitch of that document had the effect of creating in me a feeling of resistance. I know that’s what it was because I have been to the therapist.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/06/26/arts/0627-BOUR_index.html
While I recognize the artist’s name as one among the Twentieth Century American artists with name recognition there is no image in my mind that connotes her work. And while I have seen her work in other museums, especially over the last several years, I cannot remember exactly which of her works I have seen: she has created neither a signature image nor have the works she has created created a lingering iconic image in my memory.
While giving these works my attention two things became apparent to me: finish and celebrity.
Near the top there is a series of works, “Cells”, from the 1990’s, which have been made from discarded doors of various descriptions found, I assume, on the streets of New York. In the 1960’s it was common to see doors like these fronting construction sites in the city. Tableaux have been created inside these cells and there are windows or small openings through which we can look inside. There we see various items that look, to be perfectly honest, as if they were things that had also been found on the street or purchased at flea markets. Although the interpretation rhapsodized about the intensity of the emotional experience within these cells, as a viewer I felt that they never rose above the reality of being a collection of found objects. Perhaps I am too successfully a Buddhist and accept life as too obviously maya and know that a thing is only what it is and that any color we give it is only the color that we give it. While this collection of objects might have profound meaning for the artist, that concern was not presented in such a way as to communicate a shared experience. Trained as a set designer I did not sense that the design of these Cells expressed the essence of the artist’s intention.
The doors, or in one case the panels to circuit boxes, had an apparent “as found” finish, but on some of them I wondered if a seemingly casual over painting might not have been the artist’s rather than as found. I wondered if there might not have been a little more scenic manipulation here than we were supposed to notice. I had an uncomfortable feeling that not all of this revelatory autobiography was as honest as it was stated to be. So let me be honest: I am suggesting that these cells read as being rather contrived: they were not really intended as an expression of the artist’s angst but as contemporary art works made for gallery consumption.
At the bottom of the ramp, at the beginning of the career, there are several paintings from the 1940’s. The drawing is poor, the limited colors are poor, and they are placed in the center of prevailing twentieth century “style”. The craftsmanship is emphatically nonexistent. On the whole they have the look: these are of interest because I made them. They are very bad paintings and the artist was well advised to turn her interest to sculpture. That they had been publicly exhibited at the time they were made brought to my mind an awareness of what I believe is commonly understood as “art world darlings”: those insiders whose social networking has secured a recognition for their work in the commercial venues of contemporary art. This was augmented by references in the museum literature to her marriage to the American art critic Robert Goldwater. I wondered: if she had not been married to that person, would her works have been taken on by an art gallery?
There are two areas where a number of her drawings were displayed as a group. Near the top of the ramp there were many drawings of what looked like loosely woven cheesecloth and others of free form spirals. It was apparent to me that she was also not a draftsman. Initially I was curious if she was referencing Chinese calligraphy. Chinese calligraphy is a very proscribed discipline with very rigid rules. In my reading I have been made familiar with the work of a Chinese artist, whose name I have forgotten, probably in the 800’s C.E., who took the stance of an anti-artist and whose works are valued for their fluency and spontaneity. Were the Louise Bourgeois drawings referencing that anti-art esthetic? Because there was no other reference to Chinese art, I decided that there wasn’t. They are simply not very good drawings. They are made on not very good paper. They were probably nothing more than working drawings for sculptures she intended to make
The only interesting drawings were nine engravings. These were made to illustrate some of the artist’s personal anecdotes. They are very good drawings. If there are more of these somewhere I would much rather have seen them than the working drawings we were shown. But these drawings showed high finish, a compliance with the standards of excellence in the arts, and I wondered if they might not have been included to show us that, yes, she can, when she wants to.
Her real talent is in sculpture and there are some very good pieces in the show. After the first paintings we find the first group of sculpture, Personages, carved wood, again wood as found in the street. But this discarded American wood has been made into African sculpture. I have no quarrel with an artist expanding his or her horizons by working within a foreign cultural tradition. But these are so obvious that I do have a problem with something like this that is only a studio exploration presented in a museum setting. Personages was followed by a series, Lair, again primitive, derivative, and again studio exploration. And the same can be said for a series of vertical assemblages of small pieces of wood, Mortise, Memling Dawn, et al. A large assemblage of half round shapes of wood, “Partial Recall”, painted white, looked like an exercise: how can I make something of this without referencing Nevelson? The answer was to make it horizontal and to paint it white. But that did not disguise the reference.
It was not until she began to work in bronze and marble, creating small intimate pieces that evoked a strong visceral response that the work began to be interesting. Again, if there is more of this somewhere I would much rather have seen it than those made from found wood…there is more than enough of that kind of thing around.
Among the best of these is Spiral Woman, the body of a woman hanging out of a spiral of “something” cast in bronze and finished in a polished gold. It is very tactile, it is very visceral and it has an extremely pleasant sense of form. Two larger spirals, in shiny silver, hanging above the lobby from the high ceiling, have the look of mere decoration. They are instantly forgettable.
“One and Others” a group of painted wood shapes, was somewhat interesting but it felt overworked because of the really fine and careful finish.
I was very favorably impressed with “Rabbit”, what looked to be the carcass of a partially gutted creature hanging by a foot from a nail, the skin of the back splayed out creating a diamond shape behind the spine. I suspect a mold was made of the real object and that it was then cast in bronze. It created an immediate remembrance of the 16th Century French ceramicist, Palissy. As both an object and as an art world and cultural reference I thought this was one of the most successful works in the exhibition.
I was very impressed by the works in marble. Moderately sized, each had a very monumental quality. These for the most part refer to body parts…breast, penises, and vaginas. Most of them were placed on large single blocks of wood serving as pedestals. It was a lovely contrast of materials and a lovely sensual subject matter. All of these marble works had the highest finish and in most the polished surface was contrasted to areas that were left rough cut. But this series was also marred by a number of works of forearms and hands, clasped or opened, that looked to have been life casts and cast in plaster and painted to resemble the marble. There was something really “off” about them in what seemed but more contrivance.
Late works are made in fabric and the most successful of these were those made from remnants of tapestries. These had wonderful colors and texture. This material was intended to reference the artist’s early years and her family. Whereas the interpretation makes much of a childhood trauma inspired by her father, because there is so constant a reference to the mother I think there is a stronger case for an unresolved mother/daughter separation anxiety. This is not to say that an artist cannot take that reference and turn it into a major art work: O’Neill gave us some major masterpieces using his family history. But as art works the remnants of tapestry were more interesting than what was made of them.
On the floor of the lobby stands a large sculptural work of two spiders about eight feet high. Bourgeois has said that she wants to rehabilitate the reputation of the spider. And she has. These are silly but fun.
“Don’t Swallow Me” a flat and framed work incorporating a petticoat laid out in a flat circle, two long red arms painted on the paper ground and some other markings was also interesting because of the composition and the contrast of textures.
Interesting. Interesting is the most that I get from this exhibition. Except for Arch of Hysteria, a polished gold headless male torso, sans genitals (?), bent backward and hanging at eye level from the naval, none of the images elicited a shock of recognition or the sense of a confrontation with something deeply buried in the collective unconscious. However, while there are no masterpieces neither was there an overload of signature images that look to have been manufactured for the many hundreds of museums in America. Instead, there is a constant sense of an ongoing exploration for… “something”. That’s fine.
One image that does stand out in many of these works is the spiral. Initially when I saw it in the series of the drawings I responded to it as if it were a contrived effort to create a universal image: the spiral is the most universal of all symbols and has been found in every early culture. At first I assumed that we were being directed to the works of Jung and Joseph Campbell. But next to those drawings was a work which included a skein of linen and so I came to understand the fascination of the spiral as referencing that: the spiral is the skein from which the creativity flows.
A second image which was almost as commonly used was the dress maker’s or tailor’s sausage or gourd. But because the interpretation never identified it, for most viewers it was probably simply an odd object. But knowing what it was did not invest it with any deeper meaning for me. As I have said, I’m a Buddhist and a gourd is a gourd is a gourd.
Despite the well known fact that Louise Bourgeois is a celebrity, an insider of the New York art world, her work, as presented here, seems not worthy of museum attention. Does that have to do with her work or with this selection of her works? From the early to the late works there is a vacillation between a too fine finish and an indifference to finish; I sense that a decision had never been made one way or the other. Thus overall the approach to the work seems unfocused and…casual. I’m not sure that I would even consider all of this minor or of secondary importance. At the end of the day it is really just the stuff of art world galleries. The most powerful experience here was reading the artist’s comments about her works that merge human form with buildings. (Which are also …interesting.) She is reputed to have written: “Skyscrapers reflect the human condition. They do not touch.” Nothing else I saw here had so strong an impact, nothing else so succinctly spoke to me from the depths of the artist’s being or told me so much about her. Ironically it was not a visual experience, it was a verbal communication. Painting, sculpture, and photography are visual experiences. There is no reason for an artist to spend his, or her, time making an image of something that can be more powerfully said.
Postscript: Museums would do the arts a great service if they would curtail the hyperbole in their guides and interpretations. The interpretation for this exhibit is printed as a brochure and available at the entrance, as well as on the web site. It is an okay accompaniment to the exhibit but with a few too many histrionic utterances. For example: “the fraught dynamic between…”, “unprecedented emotional intensity…” “these troubling connotations…”, “sinister traps”, and “fraught (yes, fraught again) with the suggestion of life concealed…” It presents, overall, the image of a woman who has lived her life as the victim of her childhood traumas and her adult gender anomie. As described in this document, in the whole wide universe it is all about her. Because I do not know her personally my experience of the universe has been otherwise. As so many of us have grown weary of the professional victim, I’m sure many observers other than myself wondered why she simply didn’t chuck it all and go to a therapist.
I am suggesting that with a less breathy guide we might have more readily felt what the artist was attempting to express. I certainly did not buy into this rhetoric: for the most part what it described was not evident in the work. Eventually the emotional high pitch of that document had the effect of creating in me a feeling of resistance. I know that’s what it was because I have been to the therapist.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/06/26/arts/0627-BOUR_index.html
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