Look, See

Today in Iraq 1-13

13. Today in Iraq

13. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Two killed and twenty injured in explosion in Umm Qasr), 2005, HTML, 520 x 602 pixels

Free Skull

12. Today in Iraq

12. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Dutch troops involved in firefight in Basra), 2005, HTML, 500 x 580 pixels

Thomas Gainsborough: How Modern?

Written after my visit to the Frick on May 20.

Thomas Gainsborough: How Modern?

Thomas Gainsborough's (1727–1788) The Mall in St James's Park (below) was painted around 1783, and is nearly four by five feet in size. As part of The Frick Collection it hangs in the dining room of the New York mansion built by Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) among a room of portraits. It is a striking and almost peculiar painting, in part precisely because it is very much a painting with very painterly qualities which are only barely at the service of its subject matter.

By this I mean that there is a tremendous contrast between Gainsborough's paintings and many others in the collection preceding it chronologically. For example, the contrast between Hans Holbein's painting of Thomas Moore (1527), also at The Frick, and The Mall in St James's Park tells one immediately that what might be expected in painting in the 16th century--a highly resolved image in which the paint's qualities are worked into a completely smooth and integrated enamel-like finish-- has opened up two hundred and fifty years later into a situation where the quality of paint is now an overtly active aspect of the painting. The Holbein is worked and built up into a fairly even surface, almost looking like one coat of paint. In Gainsborough, however, one is easily aware of his paint and brushstrokes, the artifice of painting as representation, and the kinds of license or cariacature that an artist may take with representation.

Another example at The Frick for comparison is El Greco's (1541-1614) St. Jerome (1590-1600), painted 180 years before The Mall in St James's Park. El Greco could of course be eccentrically, wickedly painterly, but in St. Jerome the paint is dense, drier, obviously pigmented-- it's material-- and though brushy is still even and present across the canvas, making the image rather seamless, sealed and full, closed in and integrated. There are no holes in St. Jerome; that is, there is no place that the viewer is always immediately and constantly aware of the canvas and materials of the painting.

Gainsborough's contemporary, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), isn't nearly as painterly; for example, see Reynolds' General John Burgoyne (ca. 1766), yet another painting at The Frick. And even just a few years before The Mall in St James's Park, in 1777, Gainsborough painted The Hon. Frances Duncombe (yet another from the Frick collection); the dress that the figure is wearing is painted with a much greater degree of resolution and finish than anything in The Mall in St James's Park. Of course, The Hon. Frances Duncombe is a portrait, and so the painter is at the service of those expecting a likeness, patrons and viewers who also likely have expectations for greater finish and conventional beauty. The Mall in St James's Park is a scene which doesn't focus on the individual, and so Gainsborough may have been free to have other goals in mind.

So, it's astonishing to stand in the dining room at The Frick and look at The Mall in St James's Park as slowly and as long as one wishes, and to see a painting of this time in which the paint quality itself-- brushy, thin, fast, showing the painter's hand-- is essential to the atmosphere of the painting. It's tempting to bring Fragonard into the discussion, but even any Fragonard with which I'm familiar isn't as painterly as this Gainsborough. Rather than elaborately using paint to create the illusion of fluttery leaves and the light and air under the trees, it is Gainsborough's application of paint itself, and all the brush work he shows, that contributes so much to the painting's atmosphere. This is expressionism, and it's quite radical painting.

The figures in the painting are odd; like clusters of porcelain mannequins in layers of fluffy clothing perched on tiny feet, they float like spirits, a parade of very young women all dressed up and on display. There is competition among the groups; clearly the three at the center of the painting think they are the main characters, but a figure just to the right with a red drape over her arm looks over her shoulder, her bright red cheek ablaze, and she thinks otherwise. These figures represent women of a certain age and class, young ladies of privilege and leisure. It is theorized that these were probably painted from an assembled scene of costumed dolls that Gainsborough sometimes worked from. This might explain the paint quality of this painting: without the need to worry about representing actual figures (though the faces may be of actual persons) Gainsborough was free to be as expressionist as he liked, quite a contrast with, for example, his Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748), or Queen Charlotte (1781). This painting is a strange drama, almost a diorama, where time is suspended. As a person two hundred years from this painting, someone nowhere close to belonging to the class of leisure depicted here, I am outside of and almost repelled from the subject. But as a viewer I am drawn in by the painting, and can know the air and light here, the sound through the trees, the soft movement of the branches and leaves.

One can look at examples of Gainsborough's oeurve and see how painterly he can be. But the painting in the leaves and trees of The Mall in St James's Park-- brushy, layered, thin, directional, the way the branches seem to sway and hang-- is to my eye a painting where Gainsborough extends himself in expression, paint, and artifice farther than in any other work. And it is because of this painting that I am better able to assess in other Gainsborough paintings areas where he is painterly or where he holds back in an effort towards a more expected realism. As I stood at the Frick looking at this painting not long ago I was quite enchanted by being able to see into Gainsborough's technique, and surprised that this painting, with a subject seemingly a trifle, could engage me in looking so closely, where I could see how even over two hundred years ago painters were painters in ways to which the modern era cannot lay sole claim.

Screenfool

NY seen

20050518- Awesome El Greco at the Met- look at that green:

*

20050518- Serendipity on the way to the Met: Doug Ohlson (l) and Ray Parker (r) in the lobby of Hunter College, spotted coming right up out of the subway:

*

20050518: Clyfford Still on denim at the Met:

*

20050519- MoMA atrium (t), view of Monet in the artium (b)

*

20050519- Blinky Palermo's screenprint Flipper at MoMA:

*

20050519- Donald Judd at MoMA

*

20050519- James Ensor at MoMA

*

20050521- Terrific Alan Saret, bad picture, hanging in the back room at James Cohan

*

20050521- Margaret Thatcher unpacking Frank Badur drawings:

*

20050521- Jenny Walty going through the flat files at Pierogi, Williamsburg- I think this was Vanessa Conte:

*

20050520- Charles Browning at Jack the Pelican, Williamsburg:

*

20050521- Megan Foster at Black and White, Williamsburg:

11. Today in Iraq

11. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Two Iraqi soldiers killed in attack in Baghdad.), 2005, HTML, 580 x 500 pixels

At the Met and in Chelsea

May 18, 2005

I want to say something about Manet's painting in The Dead Christ and the Angels (1864), particularly the hands, but it's kind of difficult. And these images with my cheap camera aren't so hot. I'm a little bit at a loss about what to say other than he painted so directly. It's just something you go up and you see, and you look at his other paintings, and in some ways, if you read the paint, he's telling you pretty directly that painting is a means to representation and that there are lots of shortcuts to it. The paint is like tempera- you know when pre-schooler's stand at their llittle easels and cover sheets of paper with tempera paint, and it just goes on and covers and colors and has this strong presence, very direct? That's the paint in this painting. It's just such a straight shot from his brush. There isn't a lot of messing around; well, there probably is some fussiness, but it doesn't show. And to get even more direct, look at the dark outlines around the hands- he's really drawing with the brush with such confidence, just like our young pre-schooler would outline an object. The hand on the left (the right hand) is brighter, more open, painted "better." The hand on the right (the left hand) is darker, muddier, more closed. Jesus looks pretty darn mortal, and the angels seem like his contemporaries. This feels like such a modern painting.

Huge Stuart Davis at the Met. I didn't know he'd even painted this large. Stuart Davis is this grand, mid-century, fully modernist pre-pop American painter who borrowed cubist design and made it his own with vernacular subject matter and eye-smacking color. These three paintings were terrific.

May 21, 2005

Jennifer Steinkamp video projection at Lehman Maupin. The flowers and branches sway and loop; quite beautiful.

Neo Rauch at David Zwirner. Ambitious show, big paintings, very popular, an aura of East Germany, the residue of pre-Wall fall, faded film color, indecipherable impulses.

Sara Thustra, Xylor Jane, Amy Rathbone & Kamau Amu Patton at Rare Gallery. I wrote about Amy Rathbone recently. Color, shape, counting- I had no idea where one person's work began and another ended, excpet for Rathbone's. Not a lot of time- I had to catch a plane.

10. Today in Iraq

10. Today in Iraq (May 12, 2005: Large explosions heard near Japanese base in Samara), 2005, HTML, 420 x 700 pixels

Newman and Warhol: Duet at the Met

Left: Andy Warhol, Last Self Portrait, 1986, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas
Right: Barnett Newman, Shimmer Bright, 1968, acrylic on canvas
Each approximately 72" high; photo: May 18, 2005, Metropolitan Museum

Who knows how intentional the placement is of two paintings hung directly across from and facing each other just before going down the stairs into the contemporary gallery at the Metropolitan Museum? Initially, Barnett Newman's Shimmer Bright (1968), and Andy Warhol's Last Self Portrait, (1986), would seem to have little if nothing to do with each other. But the intersection between these two paintings sparks a brilliant moment in which the recognition of a quiet and vulnerable humanity is possible. The juxtapostiion of these two paintings is very surprising and striking.

Both paintings are made with relatively mechanical means. Shimmer Bright is a field of white with two blue vertical stripes (or zips) at the left that Newman has painted using tape as a mask; these zips are quite flat and even with little nuance. To make Last Self Portrait Warhol appears to have exclusively used silkscreen; the camouflage ground is screened first, and then the head is screened on top of that. Neither of these paintings shows much of the artist's hand.

Mechanical means of production supposedly lead to precision. There is, however, imperfection in these supposed mechanical processes. One can plainly see that Newman has used tape to draw an area to paint in, but he doesn't bother using the tape to achieve a precise edge. Instead, he allowed the paint to bleed under the edges of the tape in places, making for slightly fuzzy rather than perfectly crips edges.Warhol's screening process is fast and unfussy; different colors that make up the camouflage, each separately screened, don't quite line up or completely fit together. In printmaking, multiple plates or blocks are used for a single image, care must be taken so that each plate's print area is aligned with its intended area on the paper; this is called registration. Newman's and Warhol's paintings both contain types of misregistration; this is where some equivalent of the artist's hand lies, making for a human presence, a tremulousness.

Newman wanted a painting to have rhythm and a sense of time, and he wanted to use color and line to create a kind space before which the viewer experiences a heightened self-awareness. He said, "I hope that my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality." When one reads the literature of the late 40's and early 50's about and by the artists eventually known as Abstract Expressionists- and Newman, Rothko, and Still in particular- words like tragic and terror and abyss frequently appear, but this usage does not necessarily refer to a real threat, danger, or fear, although in an era immediately after Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was concern for what modern life might become. The idea of the tragic or terror in painting was more connected to ideas of an awakening primitive individual unencumbered by or wishing to be freed from a modern burden, possible through solitude, confrontation, and heroism. The size of Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis at MoMA (7' 11 3/8" x 17' 9 1/4") is a key characteristic in the painting's ability to provoke in the viewer this kind experience as the viewer walks before its expanse, pausing at zips and empty spaces along the way. Serveral photos suggest that Newman wanted the viewer to stand close to his paintings, and to be enveloped by them in a way that makes the viewer alone and self conscious.

In Shimmer Bright, the painting being discussed here, the format is just beyond human size, and at once the painting does two things. At first it seems to have two blue zips on the left hand side and an empty field on the right standing veritical, bright and bold. Take another look, though, and the painting is a blue field with a white field forcefully moving across from right to left, leaving two narrow blue spaced exposed and peeking out from below. This movement back and forth is kind of shimmer, and the fuzzy taped edges is another kind of shimmer.

The two zips are like a pair of erect figures, and being a pair they are twins, two things alike. Their binary status mirrors our own somewhat symmetrical nature, and are slots into which, if we face them directly, each of our eyes enters, left to left, and right to right. And the funny thing is that the two white vertical bars on the left, roughly the same size as the two blue zips, become zips also, and we can encounter them the same way we do the blue zips, flipping back and forth between the blue pair and the white pair. And so while we are off-balance hanging out on the left side of the painting experiencing these two white and blue pairs, off to our right is the empty white field, pulling us back to openness and emptiness. We experience the tension of extreme vertical consciousness on the left with the zips, and on the right we experience the extreme release of tension and enter the horizontal unconsciousness on the right. In going back and forth we experience the primitiveness (terror) of moving between thought and feeling, of being in control and of letting go. This vulnerable exposure of the self, which pulls us out of ourself and into ourself, is the human subject matter of Newman. And this experience of looking at the painting makes us see ourselves in a kind of reflective activity which in some ways isn't that far from looking at ourselves.

Warhol's Last Self Portrait is also about terror and vulnerability, and he does this by presenting us with himself. But his approach is somewhat different from Newman's. Although silkscreen is a mechanical process, it is still often done by hand. Warhol's silkscreens show the mark of the hand in the various pressures on the scraper as it pushes ink through the screen, and in how sections are registered. Despite seeing the dots of the screens, the paintings can still be called hand-painted. They never feel machine-made or mass produced. Warhol talked about being able to make as many of anything as he wanted to make, and how in the age of mass production there was a democratic element in how, for example, the first object produced on the assembly line was as good as the thousandth. But this was not the case with objects produced in Warhol's factory because each work, even when "identical," was unique. This is confirmed by seeing the paintings in person and is obsfucated by seeing the paintings in reproduction. This is an interesting contradiction between what Warhold said and what he actually made.

A little biography may be helpful when looking at Last Self Portrait : a not terribly publicly-open gay man who achieved fame at an early age, Warhol remained relatively shy and closeted all of his life. He wasn't terribly attractive, had bad skin and, later wore silver wigs with hair spouting in all directions. He hid behind the wigs and the dark glasses he constantly wore, a layering which serves as a mask or camouflage. Warhol shows his face, but he can't completely expose himself.

But the camouflage actually works against Warhol's impulse to cover. We know that camouflage is intended to make an object fit into the background, but in a painting on a white wall there is no environment to fit into. The camouflage actually calls attention to Warhol, and in some cases even makes him look exotic. The swirl of cream and green across his nose gives it a kind of rich volume that the black screenprinting only hints at. And the hard-edged bottom of a section of cream across his forehead on the left of the painting may flatten the top of his head, but it makes the rest of his face pop out from beneath it. The swirls of camouflage on his face work like the plumage on a bird: eccentrically shaped, sculptural, fluttery.

Warhol's head is isolated; perhaps it's floating in a black void, but it feels more like gravity is pulling his chin down to rest at the bottom edge of the painting. It's heavy and tired, and Warhol is finally completely exposed and vulnerable: the camouflage can't disguise him, his face is huge and disembodied, he feels the effect of time on earth, and there is no hiding anymore. Despite the image in this painting which superficially suggests the contrary-- camouflage and a flat black, printed face-- perhaps for the first time Warhol is fully present, human, and vulnerable, telling us his version of the story of who he is: older, experienced, alone, fearful, uncertain, yet knowing who he is, what he is capable of, where's he's been and where he might be going. He says, "Here I am, look at me, remember me, I'm just like you." This is something we don't often think we can know about someone who resides at his level of fame. The aura of his fame, and the knowledge of his death not long after the making it, surround this painting; it could be any of us.

As much as Newman's Shimmer Bright is a painting with experiential and metaphoric possibilities, and a kind of portrait, Warhol's Last Self Portrait is a specific portrait that also is experiential and metaphoric. In Shimmer Bright the experience of turning from consciousness to unconsciousness can be one of moving from awake to asleep, from life to death and back again. Warhol's Last Self Portrait moves the viewer from the hidden private self to the public vulnerable self. The turning point between these kinds of opposites in each painting is sharp and precise. To experience in each painting a shifting of consciousness from that of an individual to one of something greater than ourselves, and then back again to our indviduality, and to also experience that in the space between these two paintings as one stands in between them and looks back and forth, is a powerful moment of painting, situation, and life.

9. Today in Iraq

Warhol at Shafrazi

May 17, 2005: Terrific, huge show of Warhol portraits at Tony Shafrazi:

If I could place the face of the guy with his back to the camera I'd add this picture to my post of gallery sightings; ultimately, I'm sure this guy is "somebody" but I can't come up with a name.	Nice Hitchcock
This portrait of Basquiat is fascinating. This is a variation on Warhol's Piss paintings- a metallic paint is on the ground and urine is poured and splashed on it, resulting in oxidation. And on top of this is Basquiat, who died young and troubled. It's quite a moving painting.	The foursome on the right are photobooth shots of the late great pianist and singer Bobby Short.

NY seen

New York, May 17, 2005: the audience gathers at the Rhizome-sponsored Blogging and the Arts panel at the New Museum, May 17, 2005. That's Tom Moody up front in the blue shirt, Jenny Walty in red at his left, and right behind Jenny is former Berkeley colleague and lapsed weblogger Karin Kusuda.

* * *

May 17, 2005: Basquiat in the backroom seen through an ajar door at Anina Nosei. Kind of shabby in there with typical office furniture, but the painting is tops:

* * *

May 21, 2005: Old news, in the sense that this has been going on for some time and I've been aware of it but the first time I've seen the actual thing- Eric Doeringer selling bootlegs (on W. 26th?):

* * *

May 21, 2005: Dan Walsh in a group show at the Paula Cooper annex; even more loosely painted than I expected- they're weird paintings, geometric but handmade, and such thin acrylic:

* * *

May 21, 2005: An artist shows love and caring for the plight of fellow artists (Lazaro Gomez Carriles, I think):

* * *

May 21, 2005: Sean Scully at Galerie Lelong; this one large painting was pretty good, but the rest were, I don't know, more of the same? solid, but... lots of gray.. I want to give Scully his due; I think I was overwhelmed by the Chelsea scene and couldn't still myself enough to go with the work:

Chuck Close at Pace Wildenstein

New York, May 21, 2005: can't go wrong with Chuck Close at Pace Wildenstein.

Gallery sightings

New York, May 17, 2005 afternoon:

I don't know why I know these things.

I go into Marianne Boesky to see Sarah Sze and there's a guy who comes in right after me who looks me right in the eye and I think, "That's Jerry Saltz." Why do I know this? But maybe it's not him. So a younger couple comes in and the guy says, "Hey, Jerry," and the Jerry introduces himself, "Hi, Jerry Saltz." The shorter silhouhette on the left is Mr. Saltz. I should've said something like "Come hear this panel I'm on," and given him my URL. I chicken out. But here's a picture:

A few minutes later I'm in Matthew Marks looking at Jasper Johns with the masses and in walks a guy and I think, that's Mike Kelley. His black T-shirt says in white ink, "Sodomy by the Sea," so I figure, "Yeah, that's him." He's short. Well, shorter than me. The woman he's with is wearing boutique biker chick garb. Worth a picture:

As I go into the following galleries down the street Kelley and the woman follow me, but as they enter the gallery the woman looks at me like I've been following them. So I take their picture again. This is in Brent Sikkema; Hans Bellmer drawings and Pierre Molinier photographs were in the next room:

Just a few minutes later I'm walking on W. 22nd, I think, towards 11th Ave. and I see a guy walking with some people. It looks like painter Joe Marioni to me, so grab another shot:

And then another shot. He has a funny fuzzy ball of hair like a rabbit tail pony tail at the base of his otherwise shorn head.

OK, enough of that. Moral: you never know who is lurking with a camera and will post pictures of you to a weblog when you're doing... who knows what.

8. Today in Iraq