Oct 8, 2012 | art history, museums, news, The Guggenheim, The Met
This weekend was a busy one. So much art in so little time wears me out, and I’m a firm supporter of the Put-More-Benches-In-Museums Movement, but the ones that the museums actually do have are never at great vantage points anyway. On Saturday we saw the Picasso Black and White exhibit at the Guggenheim and this morning it was the Met’s new Bernini: Sculpting in Clay show. I’m taking a whole class on the latter, which made it cool to actually be able to put all that tuition money to good use.
Picasso Black and White was a whole lot of the same, but not in a bad way – they almost saturate you in his shapes and forms till you feel like you have to shake it off to keep your face from getting out of whack. And although most of it was kept to the two shades listed, there were quite a few works that were colored everything from purple to blue to yellow, to the point where it might have been more appropriate to call it Picasso in Monochrome – although I suppose “black and white” sounds classier.
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Pablo Picasso, The Maids of Honor (Las Meninas, after Velazquez)
August 17, 1957 |
Most of the pieces were profiles of women or girls “seated” or “reclining,” and it was so interesting to see him move from beautiful realist portraits to skewed, geometricized, sexualized ones, as his interpretation of the human form grew into abstract shapes both two and three dimensional. The three dimensional ones were some of my favorite, where the profile was constructed as a grouping of deep shapes, stacked and hanging on top of each other, sometimes with little eyes peeping out from somewhere unexpected and usually an obvious nose protruding.
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| Diego de Velazquez, Las Meninas, c. 1656 |
There were also beautiful renditions of compositions taken from artists that came before him, like “Las Meninas” by Velasquez and the “Rape of the Sabines”story that so many artists have interpreted since Rome’s founding. So many of the pieces looked like the roughest of sketches too, and some were only completed on one half of the canvas. The whole time I couldn’t stop wondering what Picasso would think of this great triumph he’s been built up into; if he’d be proud or embarrassed that all of us were looking at something he made on an unconscious whim that was never intended as a finished product.
They do a pretty good job letting you know that in the exhibit, but it still feels like so much of it is prep work for masterpieces we can’t see.
Bernini: Sculpting in Clay was a whole different universe of art – although both exhibits are heavily idolizing one individual’s contribution to the scene. It could just be because his 17th century time period can’t help but leave him wrapped up in mystery, but I’d choose Bernini over Picasso when it comes to inherent talent. I wish he could’ve lived in a different era though, outside the pope’s reign of power, but maybe then it would’ve turned out much differently and he wouldn’t have had the resources he did to create all that he was able to.
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| Faun teased by putti |
This exhibit is the best you can do without actually going to Rome – on the wall are giant black and white photographs of the massive sculptural programs that actually made it into the palazzos and churches in Rome, out of the bozzetti planning stages on paper and in terracotta before you. The gallery is laid out underground, with two rows of lights above strategically pointed at each glass case containing a little red-brown masterpiece.
The curators did a really great job explaining everything to the viewer. You can see the thought process behind each piece as it develops from sketches to bozzetti to the giant black and white photographs on the walls. Because the sculptures are in the middle and the sketches are hung on the walls, the gallery ends up grouped into little clumps of the same character or type.
The angels that line the back aisle of the exhibit was one of my favorite groupings, since walking through these sculptural pairs that face each other and face you creates the greatest sense of environment, giving you one little glimpse of how it woulda-coulda-shoulda felt to see these pieces in all their finished-product marvelousness in Rome.
Sep 30, 2012 | Art Institute in Chicago, painting
Laocoön’s story comes from a lost play by Sophocles, that we know about through mentions by other Greek writers. He attempted to prove that the Trojan Horse was a trick by throwing his spear at it, but snakes were sent by Poseidon to stop him, and were thought by the Trojans to mean that the horse was sacred and not to be touched. Some versions of the story say that Athena blinded him first and then sent the snakes, but either way the gods were with the Greeks.
The sculpture of Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being strangled by the serpent is attributed by the Roman writer Pliny the Edler to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus.
I remember the first time I saw this sculpture in my introductory art history class, and it was one of those right-where-you-wanna-be-in-life moments, after spending two years chasing majors that didn’t click.
This rendition by Roy Lichtenstein is one hell of a take – at this point in his life, he’s developed a recognizable style that can be applied to almost anything. He turned all of art history into bright, cartoonified refinement, using
Ben-Day dots for shading and colors galore. This Laocoon evokes the struggle and aesthetic of the masterpiece that inspired it, but makes it more of a lighthearted reference to one of the most influential works of art of all time – sort of nodding at it in thanks for all it’s contributed to the craft of aesthetics and beautiful things.
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| Cubist Still Life, 1974 |
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Frolic, 1977
Channelling surrealism:) |
You can see the rest of the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective on the Art Institute’s website here.
And the rest of my pictures from the Art Institute in Chicago here.
Sep 25, 2012 | news
A new study done over the summer tries to prove that the jargon and language perpetuated in the art world has stepped over a threshold, and become its very own language termed International Art English. It’s still English, but includes a rejection of most nouns and remains limited to a small group of phrases and ideas.
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| Work by Jessica Krause Smith – photo by me:) |
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| Photo courtesy of Rory MacLeod on Flickr |
Alix Rule, a Columbian PhD candidate in Sociology, worked with New York artist David Levine to create the study that’s based on actual data and published by Triple Canopy, an online magazine that facilitates research projects like this outside the usual realms of academia.
A lot of the research is gathered from word counts and comparisons art journals and critiques in addition to collecting and examining 13 years worth of museum press releases and artist newsletters from e-flux, the online institution of the international art world.
IAE has come to be characterized as a mix of spacey terms like “parallel” and “void,” with abstract inconsistencies and prefixes; where words like “real” and “space” are used hundreds of times more often. There’s a distinct rhythm and vocabulary that’s recognizable immediately; it’s described in the study as having “pornographic” tendencies because you know it when you see it.
Words like radically, tension, and autonomy are used to describe art that serves to, functions to or seems to interrogate, transform, or displace something or other.
Although it is definitely a distinct subset of English, IAE shouldn’t necessarily be considered as worthy of having it’s very own language, especially given that everything it consists of actually is English, just arranged in a particular way and with similar words and meanings. Writing about art became such a difficult thing to do – attempting to grasp at what’s become an increasingly vague art world where everything is mostly “Untitled” and is open to millions of interpretations on purpose. What do you say about something like that?
Read more about the origins and spread of IAE in my new article on Artsia here!
All quotes come from the Triple Canopy study cited, which you can read in full here.
Sep 17, 2012 | art history, news
If you spend any time on the internet at all, you’ve probably noticed the swanky new features Google has been adding to their searches.
One of the coolest new features is the little drop-down artwork list that pops up whenever you search an artist’s name plus the word “artwork.” Google automatically arranges the pieces showcased here by search popularity, thus inspiring this new series, “Google, what’s my masterpiece?”
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| Screen shot from my iPad:) |
I think it’s so fascinating that the entire portfolio of an artist’s life and work can be stripped down to six pieces and a little blurb, and although some might consider this trivializing, I think it’s a great way to appeal to those outside the typical art community. It shows the basics in a really useful way, at the same time ranking the artist’s works by how many people know about them enough to search for them; how many people want to learn more.
Clicking on each work takes you to a Google search of that painting individually, including the right-hand breakdown of the work which gives you a background summary, year it was completed, artist’s name, dimensions of the work, genre, media, and artistic period during which it was made.
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| The Kiss, 1908 |
This week I’m starting with Gustav Klimt, the Austrian painter who used a collage-like sometimes called “symbolism” style to create lofty dream-scenes that are too beautiful to be real. Obviously his incredibly famous work “The Kiss” was the very first work listed on Google, although it was probably given a big boost the day Google chose to showcase this work in their logo as a way of honoring Klimt’s 150th birthday this past July.
Coming in second is Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, created in 1907. Klimt also made a second portrait of this woman that’s listed fourth on Google. Adele was the wife of a wealthy industrialist, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who was a patron of the arts and a supporter of Gustav Klimt.
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| Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907 |
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| Adele Bloch-Bauer II, 1912 |
Can you imagine what the artists would think if they knew we were arranging their works based on how SEO-friendly they’ve become? What do you think about the way technology is simplifying our art intake?
Sep 15, 2012 | Brooklyn Museum, features, news
Thanks to all the fabulous technology now available, GO Brooklyn Art’s Open Studios weekend was a huge success. It was hard to tell at first though, since everyone participating was spread out all over Brooklyn during two full days (well, from 11am-7pm), but judging from the statistics just released (you can see all of them at the end of this post), there were more visitors than artists which at first seemed a hard feat to accomplish.
More than 1,800 artists in Brooklyn (can you believe there are that many artists in one borough?) opened their studio doors last weekend to whoever wanted to come by. And thanks to an awesome website set up by GO Brooklyn Art, visitors could peruse the works of participating artists and set up an itinerary of people and pieces they wanted to see for themselves. A neat little accompanying app let you take your profile on the go so that all the info you needed was right there in your pocket. You could register as a Voter online, and after checking into at least five studios with unique check-in numbers posted at each studio, you’re able to vote for your three favorites – and the three artists with the most votes win a spot at an exhibition hosted by the Brooklyn Museum.
Each studio was marked with a little “GO Brooklyn Art” sign, making them easy to pick out, plus specific instructions on what apartment number to buzz and which artists were in the building. Mostly there was an uncomfortable feeling of walking into someone’s home, but the spaces where multiple artists worked together and lived somewhere else were my absolute favorite.
What I didn’t realize when first looking at a map of Brooklyn, is that the place is actually gigantic, and venturing from one specifically chosen studio to the next required either a lot of walking or subway rides that added up. After checking in to the first studio on my itinerary and finding the next closest at least two subway stops away, I opted for proximity over itinerary, moving to the space on the map with the most studios in one place.
Once I had the strategy of it down, getting to meet the artists in person was actually a really great experience. They really wanted first-viewer opinons of their work, and listened to what I had to say. They wanted to know where I went to school and why I came all the way out to Brooklyn by myself. I was able to hear from the artists themselves why they created what they did and what it meant to them.
Now I’ll just give a little synopsis of each of the six studios I was able to visit (before the time constraints of weekend homework set in):
1. Chadwick Augustine: sculpture, mixed media, installation
Kind of like sculpture for a giant, Chadwick’s work was simplified large-scale shapes that looked impressive when gathered altogether.
>GO Brooklyn Art profile
2. Clark Goolsby: painting, sculpture, mixed media
Clark’s paintings were my favorite, like an explosive collage made from bright colors and shapes, every once in a while a recognizable animal or image.
>GO Brooklyn Art profile
3. Jessica Krause Smith: painting, photography
Her paintings were whimsical chaotic canvases and her photographs were organized compositions, so it made sense when she said “the fulfill completely different purposes in my life.”
>GO Brooklyn Art profile
4. Ian Pawelec: painting
His work was inspired by the “spiritual search we all experience,” striving to “illustrate the energy of life within the universe” through abstract painting, which usually I don’t buy, but all his pieces looked like abstract planets exploding with color.
>GO Brooklyn Art profile
5. Peter Daverington: painting, video/film/sound
Using his canvases as a silly interpretation of propaganda, Peter’s pieces combined stylistic themes and recognizable images to bombard the viewer with a colorful joke.
>GO Brooklyn Art profile
6. Sepideh Salehi: video/film/sound, mixed media, drawing
Her studio was tiny, and so was a lot of her work. She paints individual frames of a film and pieces them together, as if the canvas could move, letting the whole image swim in the color of paint. The image below is a picture from the film, where a girl in a cape is running and running.
>GO Brooklyn Art profile
Open Studios Statistics: (from GOBrooklynArt site)
- Estimated visitors: 18,000
- Estimated studio visits: 147,000
- Total participating artists: 1,708
- Total neighborhoods with participating artists: 44
- Total registered voters: 10,319
- Total voters who checked in to at least 1 studio: 6,106
- Total voters who checked in to at least 5 studios and are therefore eligible to nominate: 4,929
- Total studio check ins: 48,918
- Average number of studios visited per participant: 8
See all the pictures of these artists’ work, plus some really cool Brooklyn street art in my new Flickr set here!
This weekend was a busy one. So much art in so little time wears me out, and I’m a firm supporter of the Put-More-Benches-In-Museums Movement, but the ones that the museums actually do have are never at great vantage points anyway. On Saturday we saw the Picasso Black and White exhibit at the Guggenheim and this morning it was the Met’s new Bernini: Sculpting in Clay show. I’m taking a whole class on the latter, which made it cool to actually be able to put all that tuition money to good use.
