April 4, 2009

I love obsessional, memory-haunted artists and Louise Bourgeois is in the first rank thereof. For 75 years she has mined the detritus of her childhood to make powerful, often frightening, sometimes horrifying art. The huge spiders are meant to evoke the spirit of her mother, a master weaver and tapestry maker whom she apparently saw as the protector against her father. The cells or rooms are enclosed installations that create worlds.

parents' red room

Child's red room

John Aaron molests the big spider

April 3, 2009

I visited an amazing place today – a private museum in the horsiest of horsy suburbs that is the home to a collection of the bluest of blue-chip post-WWII art amassed by the richest of rich 1980’s/90’s corporate takeover specialists. I will not mention the name of the place (call it The Manse) or the man (call him Mr. X) because visitors are requested not to write anything about their “experience” at the Manse. Not anything. I, of course, do not intend to give up my first amendment rights but I will make this effort to conceal the specifics because I do not relish the idea of being pursued by lawyers and I hope this will keep me off the google radar, anyway.
Let it be said from the outset; if there were no very very rich men, (and they were pretty much all men until the last 10 years, Isabella Stuart Gardner excepted) there would be no American art museums. Whatever the motives that move them, from pure public-spirited virtue to raging egomania and every shade in-between, their donations of art to public institutions over the past 200 years have formed our national patrimony.
So, what is it about this particular place that sets my teeth on edge? You reach it after driving through about 5 miles of Faux Chateaux territory. And I do mean chateaux; these places look like motels in Dubai. Eventually, you encounter a modernist guardhouse and a Truman Show -friendly guard who opens the gate if your name is on the list. You then enter the most manicured 125 acres you will ever see – the land has been contoured and each tree and bush placed in the most thoughtful possible way. It is beautiful and nothing about it is natural. On the left as you drive is a Richard Serra wall that looks like it has found the place it always wanted to be. Finally, you go over a bridge and into the cobbled courtyard of the white stone, glass and teak modernist Manse. Another Serra, this one one of the torqued ellipses that are scary/oppressive/moving to walk through. Very very impressive.
Visitors must make an appointment to see the Manse; it is open only on Fridays and parties are limited in size to a group small enough to be managed by the two curators who accompany you through the rooms like lovely black-clad highly-educated shepherds. We saw the second show that has been mounted, this one including art from the late 60’s and 70’s, a lot of three-dimensional work that plays with all kinds of materials and a good dollop of photography.
I’m not going to talk about individual pieces because that might cause them to try to discipline me. I will just say that this is all Important Art by Important Artists that has been assembled into an Important Collection. All men except for one terrific Eva Hesse piece. With the exception of a couple of great David Hammons pieces, there is nothing surprising. It all feels like lots and lots of money and I find it strangely cold and, with some exceptions like the aforementoned, largely un-moving. And then there's the part about trying to prohibit visitors from any public discussion of their "experience." That's just plain uber-control freak and I react very badly to it. But maybe that’s just me.




 

March 25, 2009

Ain't those dancers cute?

March  24, 2009

To my eye, Tory Wright’s durotrans cutouts are the most beguiling pieces in the show at Civilian Art Projects that opened Friday night and that features the work of four female artists for Women’s History Month. I’ll talk about them in a bit. Meanwhile, let me get this digression out of the way up front: can we talk about Women’s History Month? The older I get, the more irritated I grow about ghettoization, balkanization, categorization, classification, typification and otherwise creating groups according to some immutable characteristic of birth. I just read today that the government will no longer require schools to identify students as black, white, non-white Hispanic,  Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, etc. We are now officially permitted to check all the boxes we want. The primary opposition to acceptance of the obvious reality of what we see all around us apparently comes from the educational industrial complex, which needs to demonstrate numerical progress in each individual arbitrary ethnic category and pigmentation tint in order to satisfy the No Child Left Behind regulations. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

Jayme, my friend at Civilian, please don’t think for a moment that I hold you responsible for the source of my grumpy digression – on the contrary, you’ve got a rewarding show up, so let’s turn to art.

Tory Wright's work

Hadieh Shafie's work

Hadieh Shafie

March 16, 2009

Lustine Before

Lustine After

Jesse seems to be excited about something

Pete Duvall at the opening - is he cute or what?

auto nostalgia in the artspace

one of the photos - a coincidence?

March 13, 2009

Alasktic #2

Alasktic, #6

March 8, 2009

Hillyer Art Space, a newish addition to the DC scene, is a project of International Arts and Artists. That sounds like some remote multinational mega-enterprise, but is a much more user-friendly non-profit. Located in the alley between the Phillips Collection and the Cosmos Club, Hillyer programs two series of exhibitions, alternating international with regional artists. The local programming is guided by a group of artists and curators who form its Artists Advisory Committee.

Gregory Ferrand

It's Hereditary, My Dear

Judit Varga

more Varga

Note to Hillyer: It would be terrific for you to use your ties to artists in other parts of the world to foster some more true collaboration with local artists.