What's interesting is that in a few days there have been two art reviews published where the critic was less than impressed with the ostentatious presentation and content of exhibitions. They both note that this is a less than opportune time to be flashy, blockbuster, and self-congratulating, given that the markets are spinning out of control and millions of Americans are on their way to losing their jobs if they haven't already. This call for somberness and solidarity with the struggle of many Americans could be perceived by the cynics as just an act, but I find it fascinating that the social narrative we're all a part of shapes our perceptions of art, new and old. I find these two instances interesting because art, particularly modern and contemporary art, has the luxury of being self-involved...except when the atmosphere of the country (...and of the world) shuns those bursts of opulence.
Damien Hirst's auction is a whole other matter. I will be the first to admit that I do not know nearly enough about how art is bought and sold. My naive impression is that most of those buyers were not British or American.
In a Faceoff, the Masters Trump Picasso
Gems:
PARIS — No show in Europe at the moment bids to be more spectacular, or ends up being more exasperating, than “Picasso and the Masters,” sprawling here through the Grand Palais. If there’s good news to the financial meltdown, it’s that maybe bloated blockbusters like this one should become harder to organize.
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I lingered in the last room, watching visitors stumble a bit bleary-eyed from the earlier galleries to find Manet’s “Olympia,” Rembrandt’s painting of Hendrickje Stoffels bathing in a brook, Ingres’s grisaille “Odalisque” and Goya’s “Naked Maja” vying with a slew of late, mostly slapdash nudes by the great matador of Modernism. The whole ensemble of pictures was dazzling and fatuous. “Overkill” doesn’t adequately describe the effect.
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Perhaps it’s as the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once put it, talking about Picasso’s failure to appreciate Bonnard. “Picasso had no heart,” he said. That’s pretty harsh.
On the other hand, there are his copies of Velazquez’s “Méninas.” From the 1950s, they tinker with variations on his familiar devices — the fractured, faux-childish faces; the swift, sketchy brushwork; the primary colors set often against black; the clattery scaffolding of faceted planes and accordion space — to produce what looks clever but finally cartoonish when considered against the grave dignity and humanity of the original. Granted, comparing anything with “Las Méninas” is unfair, but then, Picasso invited the comparison, and from it one gets Cartier-Bresson’s point.
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Picasso’s later career, you might say, was a one-man wrestling match with the limits of his own enormous genius in relation to history, and his failures were, humanly speaking, as compelling as his accomplishments, but that interpretation requires from an exhibition not blind hero worship but, as Delacroix had it, a little humility. The show here lacks this altogether, substituting swagger for judgment, bluster for nuance, and in art, as in politics and finance, we’ve had enough of that approach already.
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We tend to judge exhibitions as we do one another, according to their regard for individuals. We’re awed by flash and fame. But we’re really looking to make some deeper connection, even just one, beyond the bluster and hype, that feels lasting and true.
It was those almond eyes, I realized later on the street outside, thinking back on that portrait. They were hollow
I will come clean and admit that Picasso's work has never touched me. There are a few of his paintings here and there that interest me or pull me in, but I would not cite him as one of the artists who has shaped me as an art historian, much less as a person. Cartier Bresson's quote is spot on. We do seek a deeper connection with art. Why do we look at it if it isn't to gain something from it? Something as intangible as a simple experience where everything feels as if it falls into place. Perhaps during this financial crises we need that something, art or not, that can give us a similar comfort. Something that makes sense and has heart.
The other art review is for this art complex in the middle of Central Park commissioned by Chanel. I would call the review for Mobile Art scathing.
Art and Commerce Canoodling in Central Park
Gems:
The wild, delirious ride that architecture has been on for the last decade looks as if it’s finally coming to an end. And after a visit to the Chanel Pavilion that opened Monday in Central Park, you may think it hasn’t come soon enough.
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Yet if devoting so much intellectual effort to such a dubious undertaking might have seemed indulgent a year ago, today it looks delusional.
It’s not just that New York and much of the rest of the world are preoccupied by economic turmoil, although the timing could hardly be worse. It’s that the pavilion sets out to drape an aura of refinement over a cynical marketing gimmick. Surveying its self-important exhibits, you can’t help but hope that the era of exploiting the so-called intersection of architecture, art and fashion is finally over.
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But traumatic events have a way of making you see things more clearly. When Rem Koolhaas’s Prada shop opened in SoHo three months after the World Trade Center attacks, it was immediately lampooned as a symbol of the fashion world’s clueless self-absorption. The shop was dominated by a swooping stage that was conceived as a great communal theater, a kind of melding of shopping and civic life. Instead, it conjured Champagne-swilling fashionistas parading across a stage, oblivious to the suffering around them.
The Chanel Pavilion may be less convoluted in its aims, but its message is no less noxious...
Opening the pavilion in Central Park only aggravates the wince factor. Frederick Law Olmsted planned the park as a great democratic experiment, an immense social mixing place as well as an instrument of psychological healing for the weary. The Chanel project reminds us how far we have traveled from those ideals by dismantling the boundary between the civic realm and corporate interests.
The pavilion’s coiled form, in which visitors spiral ever deeper into a black hole of bad art and superficial temptations, straying farther and farther from the real world outside, is an elaborate mousetrap for consumers...
One would hope that our economic crisis leads us to a new level of introspection and that architects will feel compelled to devote their talents to more worthwhile — dare I say idealistic? — causes.
Told you, scathing. Loved the mention of Olmsted. A hero.
All of this brings me to what I originally wanted to write about, the African textile show, "The Essential Art of African Textiles" at the Met. It's show is wonderful in its scale and in its contents. The Met has paired select pieces from its permanent collection with more contemporary works that reference or use African textiles. I do not know very much about this subject, but after walking around taking in the show piece by piece, I felt more informed about this important art form and its place in African society. There were two pieces in particular that amazed me.
This is a steel sculpture of an African woman textile shopping. Sokari Douglas Camp uses negative space so wonderfully. I was amazed by how soft the woman's dress looks, despite the fact that it's made of steel. Also, it's such a bold choice to depict fabric through a hard metal.
I am disappointed that there aren't better photographs of this amazing piece. It is a protective tunic that has every inch inscribed with passages from the Koran. The power of words are used to protect the soldier. The Met used the phrase, "mystical body armor" where the words are more symbolically used as a barrier, rather than meant to be read. While I was looking at this I felt very emotional and was reminded of the overwhelmingly power and beauty of the remaining Moorish architecture in Spain. In some sense, the inscribed walls of the Alhambra sought to do the same as the tunic.
That entire day at the Met was pretty amazing. I even saw a man playing the accordion in a Central Park nook and a dad and daughter dancing...while the dad was smoking a pipe. Heartwarming. I also walked from 80th to 45th, so I was pretty exhausted by the end.
