Happy Slow Art Day!

Happy Slow Art Day from Arts Without Borders! Here is a sculpture from the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, London entitled - get ready for it... "Rock on Top of Another Rock." I kid you not. As you can see, it is in the park, near the gallery (which, sadly, was closed when I was in London.) The artists are Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

How valuable is photography?

"Museums Are Still Wringing Their Hands Over Photography's Importance" is the heading for an interesting blog post. The subheading reveals the theme of the article: "Even in 2013, photography's place among the "fine arts" continues to be a topic of discussion—but why?"

It's worth reading. Do do so, click here.  

That article is a response to another, published in the New York Times, called "The Lens Rises in Stature." Also worth a look: click here.

© Flickr user eSeL.at

London's Tate Modern

The museum is imposing; a behemoth, like a whale brought in on the tide and beached on the riverbank. Approaching it on the Millennium Bridge from across the Thames, as we did, it looms larger and larger as we near. I am reminded of the Periclean plan for the Acropolis, with its forced perspective that increases the monumentality of the Parthenon. A former powerhouse, through sheer scale and austere symmetry it commands its riverside location with a massive form. Its single oversized chimney resembles a minaret. Though more fortress than temple, it is a layered symbol of the power of art.

First impressions are powerful. While subsequent experiences may rectify false notions created by them there is no doubt that first impressions have the potential to establish a lasting bias. Museums around the world, from Milwaukee to Bilbao, have created new architectural presences in order to cash in on this effect. Repurposing an old power station is perhaps a riskier if not bolder move than new construction. Its phenomenal collection is certainly a factor, but to the renowned Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron, who oversaw the renovation, goes much of the credit for its success (its own website claims that Tate Modern is one of the top three tourist attractions in the UK.)

The Tate’s interior is as imposing as its exterior. The famous Turbine Hall, 115 ft. tall and 500 ft. long, dwarfs all human sense of scale. Strangely enough, I find in the spectacle of its architecture and its spaciousness a connection with the National Gallery, two art museums that could not be much more dissimilar in nearly every other aspect.

There is one artist, at least, who also forms a connection between the two collections. For the most part, the Tate Modern picks up where the National Gallery leaves off. But here too I am struck by an evocative painting by none other than JMW Turner. That his work graces both museums leaves little doubt of his preeminent role in the history of Modern Art. This is not news to me, but a text panel next to the painting adds a revelation. Mark Rothko, it seems, claims to have been inspired by Turner.

Rothko, in turn, is well represented here at the Tate. I found the room full of wall-sized Rothko paintings to be every bit as spiritually alive and perhaps more moving than the overtly intentional ones at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, TX. Mark Rothko, the wall panel goes one to say, donated these paintings to the Tate in homage to Turner. OK, I’m impressed.

Turner and Rothko are both long-time favorites of mine. There are plenty of others, too, and it is fun to run across them in this new context. (There are whole rooms devoted to Lewis Baltz and Manuel Alvarez Bravo!) What I really enjoy, though, is when a museum enables the discovery of unfamiliar artists. The Tate provides such discoveries in spades.

British sculptor Cathy de Monchaux is represented by a small piece entitled Erase. With obvious reference to both male and female genetalia, a long steel bolt is enveloped in a red velvet-lined denim pouch studded with rivets and held together with a fly-like zipper. Erase is included in an extensive and excellent exhibit called “Poetry and Dream” that intends to “show how contemporary art grows from, reconnects with, and can provide fresh insights into the art of the past.” Monchaux, a contemporary artist, is shown in a context of surrealists. This is just one of several such unexpected juxtapositions that I find refreshing.

The Tate has a small gallery called Project Space that is devoted to “presenting contemporary art through a series of collaborations with cultural organisations around the world.” That in itself is worth noting. The current show of mixed media is called “Ruins in Reverse.” The theme revolves around fictive realities that mimic archeology. I feel a particular affinity for two photographers with connections to Peru, Pablo Hare and Eliana Otta.

There are two disappointments. The vast Turbine Hall is famous for its equally outsized installations, but today it is stark in it emptiness. The other disappointment is my own doing. We took advantage of the fact that the museum is open late on Fridays to spend the day outdoors, but by the time we reach the second floor jetlag kicks in. By the time we reach the third floor it is hard to appreciate the great art we continue to discover.

Minimalism gallery

It is only day one in London. We will have to return.

To read my post on London's National Gallery of Art, click here.

Images of Snow Storm by Turner, Black on Maroon by Rothko, and Erase by Monchaux courtesy Tate Modern website.

London's National Gallery of Art

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This is the second in a planned series of stories from my recent trip to London, where I had the great fortune to see great art--and to explore several remarkable urban parklands. My first installment, an introductory story called "How wild is London," is on my other blog, Urban Wilderness. As I've said before, I find the distinctions between my interests in art and nature to be arbitrary and confining. My experiences in London provided further weight to this view, which I hope to share in upcoming installments.

The National Gallery

From our long list of London’s museums and galleries we start at the top. As one of the premier encyclopedic institutions of its kind, the National Gallery has not only a little of everything, but many of the specific works of art that inevitably appear in the art history textbooks. We are far from alone. The National Gallery is the fourth most visited art museum in the world (after the Louvre, the Met, and the British Museum, just blocks from this one.)

My first impression is not of the paintings on the walls, however, but the grandeur of the rooms themselves. Contemporary museum design leans to minimalist interior spaces with color schemes in a narrow range of white. Not here.

courtesy Wikipedia

In fact, at first glance the paintings seem incidental, under high domed ceilings, surrounded by richly colored wallpapers and ornate Neo-Classical architectural detailing. (This museum, like so many, eschews photography by the masses and so I am resorting to wiki-images in the public domain, as noted.)

courtesy WikiPaintings

My architectural reverie is interrupted; my attention arrested by a painting so familiar I quickly realize I’ve seen it much more recently than whenever it was I last studied art history. The Fighting Temeraire had a cameo appearance in Skyfall, the latest Bond movie. Bond sat down in front of it to meet Q, his tech handler. The two characters even bantered briefly about the image’s metaphorical significance. Art imitating art. Life observing same. And popular culture clothing itself in references to high culture, to the extent that term retains currency in a museum as crowded as this is. Next to the frame is a plaque that informs us that this is the most popular painting in England. Typically ironic. Like so many ground-breaking artists, Turner stirred controversy in his day with an atmospheric style that prefigured Impressionism. How fickle is public opinion!

Now alert to the splendor of the selections on the walls, I begin to quiz myself. Upon entering I scan each room and try to identify the artists before closing in on them, always on the lookout for particular favorites. Constable and Gainsborough, Ingres and Degas. It gets easier as I reach the more modern galleries where I find glorious Monets and, of course, Van Gogh and Cezanne.

courtesy Wikipedia

I’ll mention two more highlights, both notable for the surprisingly diminutive scale of the paintings as well as their brilliance and historical relevance. In fact, I almost miss a tiny version of Ingres’s Oedipus and the Sphinx. Only a few inches tall, it is hiding in a corner amongst larger works. Peering closely at it I am struck by the curious compulsion of contemporary artists to make their work gigantic.

courtesy Wikipedia

Watching the time, we consult our gallery map so as not to miss another famous masterpiece, Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage Portrait. We thread our way through the galleries, across a connecting bridge and into the Sainsbury Wing extension of the museum. Still early afternoon, little did we know how short on time we were. No sooner did we arrive in front of it and with barely enough time to admire the meticulously rendered detail when the museum guard, responding to some cue in his ear bud, curtly began herding everyone out of the gallery. We join a startled and muttering throng converging on the connecting bridge as we realize the entire wing is being summarily evacuated. The reason is never explained.

As counterpoint to what we’ve just seen, outside the museum Trafalgar Square offers up street arts, from the political to the entertaining to the crassly commercial. Not that these are mutually exclusive, mind you!

Jan van Eyck was innovative enough with oil paint that his work is considered revolutionary and the Arnolfini double portrait has been analyzed to death by innumerable art history undergrads. Still, his work was commercial in the sense that he depended for his livelihood on commissions, as did most artists before the advent of modernism.

The chalked flags below included audience participation. In addition to soliciting donations, the "artist" invited anyone who wished to add a flag to the matrix. Chalked in the center it reads, "Peace + Love" and "Welcome to London." Amen to that!

But wait, there's more! To read my post about the Tate Modern, click here.

Social practice art

"Tania Bruguera, a New York artist who is known for helping immigrants and has been supported by the Queens Museum and Creative Time, sometimes explains social-practice art with an anti-Modernist call to arms: 'It’s time to restore Marcel Duchamp’s urinal to the bathroom.'"

That is a quote from an article in yesterday's New York Times that I assume to be considered deliberately provocative. The article, titled "Outside the Citadel, Art that Nurtures," is about art that is being called social practice. Its practitioners are artists whose work straddles the fence of aesthetics and activism. According to some prominent critics, it even falls over to the side of activism more often than not. Along the way the familiar question is raised--the one that usually is generated by purely aesthetic or conceptual avant-garde artists: Is it art?

I was delighted to read this and to hear the question raised in this context because it resonates so strongly with my own motivations as an artist and activist.

I spent 30+ years teaching art and I can explain Modernism and Conceptualism and everything in between. (I'm particularly fond of introducing DuChamp to newbies.) I'm grateful for the grounding and the vocabulary this has provided me. But I've long been uncomfortable with the continued perpetuation of some ideas that, frankly, in my opinion, have had their day, particularly the apparently endless desire for novelty--often of a self-indulgent bent.

I get Conceptual Art. (I actually consider my work conceptual, though not perhaps in the pure way that the capitalized term usually denotes. In fact I question whether art is art--as opposed to craft--if there is no conceptual component to it.) I also certainly understand and value the importance of aesthetics. But when I am making art, my motivation extends to, as it is put in the article, making "a difference in the world that is more than aesthetic."

My social practice and activism generally relates to environmental issues (although not exclusively.) If you are familiar with my work at all my use of the term "Urban Wilderness" comes as no surprise. I have long recognized that not everyone is comfortable with the marriage of these disciplines, something that is mentioned in the article. "Leading museums have largely ignored it," for example, referring to social practice art. In fact, as many of my readers know, I write two blogs, one about the arts (this one) and one about the environment (Urban Wilderness.)

The two blogs, in my perspective, are not separate disciplines but an acknowledgment of the usually distinct audiences that they attract. It is a dichotomy, like the term urban wilderness itself, that embodies the paradox of mutuality. I invite you to read the rationale for keeping two blogs that I have posted on my website: click here.

I also invite you to check out the rest of the story about social practice art: Outside the Citadel, Art that Nurtures

Commanding the View

 A recent addition to my ongoing Icon Series, more of which can be seen on my website.

A tribute to O'Keeffe at the Domes?

The sign on the bottom left corner of the frame in the photo above reads as follows:
"Happy Birthday, Georgia O'Keefe. Look through this frame to view a tribute to her painting, 'Cow's Skull with Calico Roses' 1932."

I went to the Mitchell Park Domes today. The "tribute" was placed in the desert dome, of course. A little farther along and up the ramp was another picture frame. That one (see below) was placed in front of the artificial sandstone that helps create the illusion (sort of) of being in the desert right here in Milwaukee. I know: one needs a huge dose of suspension-of-disbelief, what with the omnipresent grid of reinforced concrete looming overhead. But, hey, we all need a little help getting through the winter around here!

I must admit I love the Domes! I've always found the experience a bit on the surreal side, especially at times like now when the snow is piled up in drifts outside. Unlike the zoo, where the unreality has a melancholy air to it, I actually enjoy the absurdity of the Domes. It's lovely to take off my coat and wander through the desert, the tropics, and the aromatic floral displays in the three domes.

As followers of Arts Without Borders know, I also love art, of course. And, as the title suggests, I'm catholic in my tastes. I don't mind a mix of low brow, high brow, or no brow. There are many good reasons to make art and there is room in the world for all kinds of the stuff! I've particularly enjoyed the few times I've been there when the Domes has invited artists to install their work in amongst the flowers. Susan Falkman's sensuous marble sculptures come to mind. (Long time ago.)

I'm particularly fond of Georgia O'Keeffe, too. In fact, when I was a student studying art education at U.W.--Madison (even longer ago!), I purchased and framed a reproduction of--I kid you not--'Cow's Skull with Calico Roses' (right) at the Art Institute of Chicago, which owns the original. It followed me for many years as I moved and hung on many walls in the places where I lived.

So, you might think I'd have enjoyed seeing this small tribute to her in the Domes.

Not so. I cringed. I couldn't help wondering how O'Keeffe would have reacted if she saw this "tribute" herself. Being familiar with some of the peculiarities of her sensibilities--she was famously reclusive and persnickety--I imagine her throwing a fit.

I fully expect that whoever was responsible for this had the best of intentions. How big a leap is it, after all, between this and the Art Institute cashing in on reproductions of her work? (Along with T-shirts, coffee mugs, and refrigerator magnets!) On the other hand, I don't think it would be too much to ask of anyone with the temerity to pay tribute to her, at the very least, to spell O'Keeffe's name correctly?

I do love the Domes, but I don't go very often and I don't know how long this "tribute" has been there. Since O'Keeffe's birthday was in November, I'm guessing maybe at least that long. Perhaps it's time to retire the tribute. I suggest another collaboration with a real, live artist.

The sign on this frame reads, "Happy Birthday, Georgia O'Keefe. Look through this frame to view a tribute to her painting, 'My Red Hills' 1938." Sigh.

What is Synecdoche? My photo exhibit at BBFA

Transmission

First, mark your calendar: my upcoming solo show, entitled Synecdoche: The Fragment that Represents the Whole, runs from March 15 - 30 at Blutstein Brondino Fine Art, which is in Suite 212 of the Marshall Building at 207 E. Buffalo St., Milwaukee, WI. (Gallery hours listed below.)

Second, mark your calendar again: the reception is on March 22, 5-8 pm.

So, with that out of the way, let's tackle this funny title: Synecdoche.

Synecdoche is a literary device in which the part represents the whole. ("All hands on deck!" refers to the whole sailor, not just the hands.) My images are meant to be visual examples of synecdoche, which I use metaphorically. My subjects are the complex and often paradoxical relationships that I perceive between nature and architecture, or natural and human features in the landscape. My approach, using the part to represent the whole, symbolizes the fragmentation we experience in our everyday environment.

Live Oaks

How do we reconstruct a definition of nature at a time when our traditional understanding has eroded and nature seems increasingly reduced, manufactured and abstracted? How does being human relate to our notions about nature? These are not landscapes in the usual sense, but symbols of how we construct meaning and interpret our place in a fast-changing world.

For additional examples from my Synecdoche Series check out my website.

Gallery hours: Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., and by appointment.