Modern Kicks

teh bestest evar

It's that time: the year in review, with top ten lists everywhere, for everything.  Geoff Edgers is going a few steps farther, offering the first installment of his top 27, while Cate McQuaid gives the Globe's look at notable gallery shows of the past year.  Jacqueline Humphries makes McQuaid's list; I didn't see the show she describes, but I did see an exhibition of Humphries' work at Williams in 2006.  At that time her work struck me as immaculate, the curatorial presentation hit all the right critical notes, and the whole thing left me cold.  I don't know if that reaction would stand up to further exposure to her work, but at the time it looked to me as too perfect.

Elsewhere, Matt Nash takes stock and plans for a new year of building the arts scene in New England, while  Daniel Grant looks at the news stories revolving around museums in the past 12 months.  Both very much worth reading, though not always the happiest stories.  Tyler Green, meanwhile, is mixing it up by doing a series of posts on his ten favorite paintings (first post, second post.)  I must confess that I've never warmed up to Clyfford Still, but Tyler's still got a good story.  I'd try to do something similar,  just for fun, but I have no idea what I'd say.  I do know that this Stuart Davis would be on the list, though.

What would my top ten for the year look like?  I'm not sure I could muster a top five.  Howard Hodgkin at Yale would top the list, although given how little I saw in the past year, that judgment shouldn't be granted much weight (also the catalog wasn't very good, though my effort to write about the show was even worse.)  I can certainly say that the most anticipated event for me in the coming year is the re-opening of the Currier Museum of Art, tentatively scheduled for the spring.  I have missed it terribly and can't wait to see what exhibitions they'll do and how they'll install their collection in the new space.  The upcoming exhibition I'm most skeptical about has to be this one, right down to the media partner (what, no tie-in with Filene's Basement?).  Regular readers know how much I admire and enjoy the Peabody Essex, and I'm sure they'll manage to put a number of fine things in the galleries, but that looks like just too much of a gimmicky bit of tourist bait to be believed, at least at this point.  Beyond that, we'll see what 2008 brings.

how not to do things with words

The other day Roberta Smith touched on a depressing fact I've been lamenting for years: "Referencing — rather than referring to — is probably here to stay."  Too true, and very unfortunate, as there's no need for the grating tick of "referencing."  I'm not entirely sure its origin lies in academia, though it's certainly found there, as I've heard it used in business and the social services for a very long time (if it is originally an academic coinage, I wouldn't be surprised if it came out of business or administration schools, or professional training for social workers, for that matter, but that's just a guess.)  That said, it's deployed in artists' statements and critical writing just as frequently, and never fails to annoy.  Die, die, die.

As for Smith's other targets, I plead guilty to (mis)using "privileging" more times than I care to count, and I doubt I'll ever completely stop.  I make no claim for its attractiveness, but at the least it has a (distinctly academic) pedigree, if perhaps one that antagonizes in an inappropriate context (and I think using it to mystify criticism counts as one.)  I don't think I'd use it much here, or in most of what I'd write, but when occasionally deployed to signal in certain intellectual directions it doesn't bother me so much.  The real point of contention, though, at least judging by the divergent takes of Eva Lake and Regina Hackett, comes with "practice."

I'm with Regina on this one: "practice," when used to describe an artist's work, methods, etc., seems to me neither inaccurate nor linguistically bothersome.  I can even call upon its usage in poetry as support.  From Howard Nemerov's "The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar's House," these lines on Paul Klee:

For such a man, art is an act of faith:
Prayer the study of it, as Blake says,
And praise the practice; nor does he divide
Making from teaching or from theory.
The three are one, and in his hours of art
There shines a happiness through darkest themes,
As though spirit and sense were not at odds.

That practice connotes a form of discipline seems to me to make it even more appropriate.  But to look at the question in a way Nemerov's description perhaps suggests: isn't a debate over the propriety of using "practice" to describe artistic work really a conflict over different ideas of the relation of art to life?  Here's Roberta, arguing against practice:

Second is the implication that an artist, like a doctor, lawyer or dentist, is trained to fix some external problem. It depersonalizes the urgency of art making and gives it an aura of control, as if it is all planned out ahead of time. Art rarely succeeds when it sets out to fix anything beyond the artist’s own, subjective needs.

And here's Eva:

[The word "practice"] doesn’t describe at all what an artist is doing. Art is not something you do in your studio. It is not something I worked on yesterday afternoon from 2 to 6pm.

Perhaps my old neighbor said it best. We grew up together but I hadn’t seen her in years, decades. She had the great wisdom to define what I became better than I could. She was a nuclear physicist too! But she said: “When I leave my job, it’s over. But you are always an artist.”

I can see what both of them are saying, though I'm not sure all artists feel exactly the same, or at least to the point of objecting to describing their "practice."  One can point to artists, such as our patron saint Mondrian, whose work--whatever its profound internal impulse--found its mature expression in a very externalized, formalized set of, well, practices, in which different aesthetic ends were demonstrated by experimentation within imposed limits.  The connotation of legal practice or business practices may seem dreary to many, and hence discredit the word; but I'm not sure there haven't been many artists who haven't thought of their work as akin to scientific practice.

To conclude with a more obvious point, one that Nemerov foregrounds in his analogy above: we quite easily speak of someone practicing religion, and I don't think that when we do we are denying that their faith stands as a very personal and important part of who they are and their relation to the world.  Quite the opposite (the connection between practice and discipline again seems relevant.)  That they are a practicing Buddhist, Christian, what-have-you, is a central part of their identity and being.  And so it may be with artistic practice, at least in those happy moments when spirit and sense are not at odds.

the loot

Not a bad haul at all, not at all.  Told people I wanted books and they came through.  New additions to the library:

Look at all the colors, children!

Used to be funny.

"Had people ever been as nasty, as self-indulgent, as dull, as miserable, as cocksure, as bad at art, as dismally ludicrous, or as wrong as they'd been in the Middle Age?"

A gold light.

Dance, 1, 2, 3, 4!

I must confess that I feel a little nervous (though excited) about the last group.  I barely read a novel a year--what possessed me to say I wanted a series of 12 novels split into four fat volumes?  I know what: like Laura, I was entranced by the University of Chicago edition when it came out a little over a decade ago, though I didn't buy it then.  I remember wandering the aisles of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, a heady enough experience, seeing the poster with the title painting on the wall and thinking that this was it, the thing to do was to read and study with François Furet and throw oneself into works of literature of Proustian range.  I did the former, but not the latter, and now those four big books sit before me, offering their challenge.  It's not so much the length--I've read the Decline and Fall more than once, after all, and these are no longer than that (and, truth be told, for all of Gibbon's great stuff, there's a lot of interminable parts  about monks and various heresies in his book, not to mention the long slog through the later Byzantine empire--it's not easy.)  It's the whole novel thing--I tend to resist, and sometimes resent, narratives.  I'm hoping that the range of the works will put me in a mind like I get from reading Balzac, where the sheer scope of ambition in rendering an entire society carries me along.  What I really can't decide, though, is whether to read my other, shorter, new acquisitions before diving in.  I don't want to put them off--I'm eager to read them all, and they promise to be far easier commitments to keep that the novels.  But each time I think of starting one of them, I feel like I'm keeping my eyes from the elephant in the room--and that the elephant is mocking me.  Oh well; I think the problem calls for another helping of leftover trifle, and perhaps some chocolate.  Regular posting to resume soon.

i am lame

I won't even try to deny it.  So, anyway, some links:

- I probably knew this already, but was reminded of it today: Sarah Hromack, who wrote (writes?) at Forward Retreat, the earlier incarnation of which was a friend of this site back in the day when an art blog seemed fresh and new, is now the editor of Curbed SF.  Belated congrats are in order.

- Now, to turn to stealing Sarah's links: an interview with Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne in which he rails against LEED certification for lack of flexibility and "tacking on green features."  I suppose there's always a conflict between a programmatic approach like LEED and the architect's creative impulse, but at least in this country I think we're still in the stage where a didactic approach (which Mayne admits LEED can properly serve) has value.  In this context I would include the Boston Children's Museum as an appropriate example.

- caa.reviews recently ran an essay by Elizabeth Rodini of Johns Hopkins University on "The Ivory Tower and the Crystal Palace: Universities, Museums, and the Potential of Public Art History."  Sounds interesting, and it is--I hope to post an excerpt and write about it soon.  But please remember, the essay concerns the potential of public art history, not the actual thing; like all the other content of caa.reviews, it's not actually available to the public.  On a tangent, I took a class with Dr. Rodini many years ago when she was just starting out, so I'm happy to see the essay.

- Darwinism in arts funding!  And it's coming to our area.  Given the "rich get richer, poor get poorer" dynamic our society and, along with it, our arts financing seem to be following, I can't say I'm enthusiastic.

- I have to say that this sounds like my kind of exhibition.

- I'm sure everyone's seen it already, but here's Jerry Saltz's "Year in Art" overview.  The bit on Matthew Barney may read as parody, but no disagreement here with the importance of the High Times/Hard Times exhibition, even if I only know it from the catalog.  The show this past year I most wish had received a New England venue.

- Current reading.  Good, if dry.  I don't feel any warmer toward the art than I did before, but it's interesting to see new writing making its way around it.

That's it for now, unless I finally get my planned Pro Bowl post out.  Look, I told you, I'm lame.

boston to basel

I had been planning on writing about two stories, but Geoff Edgers has already done so, leaving me free to link to him: it's happy birthday time for the new ICA and our old friend Christoph Büchel  had work related to his cancelled MASS MoCA exhibit for sale at Art Basel Miami Beach.

The first item links to Geoff's story in the Globe that highlights both the successes and some disappointments for the museum since opening (it also links to Greg Cook's overview as well.)  I tend to agree with those quoted who discount the quibble, especially regarding the museum's initial exhibition.  It's almost unheard-of for the first show in a new space to be a really innovative one, too much works against it: the distraction of the staff as they prepare for the opening, the lack of any real experience as to how the space will work, the reluctance of lenders to contribute to an exhibition in a space without a track record in terms of security and environmental controls, and so on.  Now as the opening fades into history, it's a better time to see what the ICA will bring to the table (and an Anish Kapoor retrospective scheduled for next May sounds promising.)

One other point in the article bears thinking about: the problem with the ICA's programming, in the eyes of some of the quoted critics, is that it's been too conservative, too same-old, same-0ld contemporary art that one sees everywhere.  There's some truth to that.  It's also the case, though, that a lot of this sort of work has been read about more than seen by the New Englander, like me, who doesn't travel so much.  So while in theory I could have seen work by Cecily Brown or Paul Pfeiffer if I went to New York more often, in point of fact I saw them both for the first time at the (old) ICA.  So there's a role for bringing work that may be more familiar to some to local audiences.  Of course, it's also true that the MFA not too long after did a big show of Brown's work, highlighting the issue for the ICA that Greg raises: other institutions in the area are devoting more resources to contemporary art.  How will the museum that has, through its name, location, and building, positioned itself as the local leader, react and what will its role be?  This is a particularly interesting question as the one thing that Boston and New England has, thanks to the many academic galleries and the like in the area, is a pretty good range of spaces open to showing a certain range of experimental or non-commercial work.  How the ICA distinguishes itself in its new location will be an interesting process to watch.

As for Büchel, there's little more to be said at this late date.  Here's a description of what two galleries had by him, first Michele Maccarone, which showed an "array of documents from the harrowing legal battle between the artist Christoph Büchel and Mass MoCA," then Hauser & Wirth's installation:

The display of unflattering e-mail messages between that museum’s director and staff members about Mr. Büchel, who worked on a vast installation at Mass MoCA but then walked off last January, is raising eyebrows here. But it has attracted less attention than Mr. Büchel’s installation at Hauser & Wirth’s booth. There, his “Training Ground for Training Ground for Democracy” offers a capsule version of the notoriously unfinished artwork, with a trash-filled alley leading to a room cluttered with voting booths and children’s drawings. For now, Mr. Büchel has the last word.

I don't know, and will leave it to those who actually saw the works in question, but I can't help but think that the artist would be better served at this point by doing the same thing MASS MoCA has done: moving on.  That he'd use the material from MASS MoCA, as well as the ideas for the exhibit planned for there, isn't surprising.  And I'm sure the work attracted curiosity, though probably much of it of a morbid sort, and even sales.  But whatever one's view of the whole affair, there's plenty of evidence of petulance on the artist's part in those emails (the ones that have been made public, at least) as well.  Reading of the displays reminds me more of that than anything else.

 

(p)reviewing Sean Scully?

I was pleased to learn via a review in the new December/January issue of Art New England, sadly not online, that there will be a Sean Scully exhibition at Dartmouth from January 12 through March 9 next year.  Yes, a review published in early December (meaning it was written, when, late November?  Before Thanksgiving?) of a show that won't open until next month.  Perhaps I've misunderstood something, but that seems . . . odd.  As far as I can tell, the exhibition, which was organized by Dartmouth's Hood Museum, has not appeared elsewhere, nor does the review indicate it was written based on seeing the show at another venue.  And just to be clear, there's no deception as to what is being reviewed--the article clearly gives the dates of the exhibition.  So it seems to me that, barring some other venue, the show is actually installed and the writer had a chance to see it (a long shot, given the dates, but not impossible--I've known other university museums which have had "official" openings of exhibitions dictated by the academic calendar despite the fact that the work was on site and open to the public well before that time), or the review was written based on some sort of second-hand knowledge of the show (.jpegs, a catalog, what-have-you.)  It is an odd little article, I have to say, spending a lot of time talking about general issues related to Scully (his views of Morandi and the exhibition he had at the Met recently, for instance), while not really describing the exhibition's installation or many specific works.

If the exhibition is installed and open, after all, I'd have liked to know that.  I might want to go, and the only thing worse than a trip to northern New Hampshire in December is one in January, February, or March.  If the show isn't installed yet, though, and an article was needed, would it have been too much to call it a preview?

i hadn't heard that about Lance

Look at the photograph.  Then scroll down and read the last paragraph.  I mean, I knew he had surgery, but still.

seen on the internets

Links:

- Terry Teachout on Peter Gay's new Modernism: The Lure of Heresy.  I can too easily believe that the Freud stuff gets old quick, but it sounds good.  As for a return of the "cult of the difficult," I have my doubts as well.

- Oh, this should be fun: Matthew Collings will be updating Kenneth Clark's Civilization for British television.  I don't much go for art on tv, but I'd make an exception for this one.

- James Panero looks at Tom Wolfe and Classical Realism (the latter not for the first time.)  James' enthusiasm is distinctly qualified, but I still don't think Wolfe's on base when he says that they'll triumph by 2020.  There's whole worlds of problems with this stuff.

- Regina Hackett is not pleased with Peter Schjeldahl.

- In the spirit of the season: LED mini-menorahs (via.)

also on point

When I mentioned below that early nineteenth century French Romantic painting had gotten a lot of attention from the new art history in recent years, I linked back to a book that can be seen as kicking of a great deal of that focus, or so it seems to me.  It's a minor point, but I should note that the latest issue of Nineteenth-Century Art WorldWide has a review of a newish book on Baron Gros that adds even more to the literature.  It appears to be focused on the paintings he did for Napoleon as opposed to the sort of mythological work I was referring to, but the review covers some of the same ground and gives some of the more recent titles in the area.  It's perhaps also worth mentioning the Boston MFA's current exhibition, Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815, but I've not seen it or its catalog, so I really can't comment on its approach.

luuuuv

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I went to see the Fragonard exhibit now at the Clark Art Institute.  The New Criterion now has a review in what happens to be the magazine's annual art issue (the review requires registration, but several other items don't, so check it out--looks like a lot of good stuff there.)  I was delighted to learn, I think from reading something by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, that Fragonard was said to have once remarked "I would paint with my ass"--that's the spirit, and who wouldn't agree?  Pierre Rosenberg had that quote in the giant Fragonard exhibition catalog of a couple of decades ago, but it was translated in a more decorous fashion, a terrible decision.  There's nothing decorous about the sentiment, and that's what makes it great--that's what makes Fragonard great.

Sadly, the exhibition at the Clark, while admirably done, is not so great.  It is, in fact, a most decorous Fragonard that the museum is highlighting, working sentiment out of allegories, surely a mode of expression very distant from today, and not one that can summon a lot of sympathy.  The curators rightly point to certain traces of Neoclassicism in Fragonard's paintings of the 1780's, which is interesting but doesn't improve them--far from it.  The shallow picture plane, more frieze-like and simplified compositions, classical costumes, and emotion expressed through highly formalized poses and expressions only make the paintings more stilted (you can see a number of images at the Clark's website, if you'd like a better idea of what I mean.)  The catalog links the themes and sentiments of the paintings to the influence of Rousseau, and it would be hard to overstate how influential he was in the France of the 1780's.  What's not said is how weird that influence was, and I don't just mean in the old arguments linking Jean-Jacques to the upheavals of the Revolution that came soon after the paintings in the exhibition.  You really have to read this book to get the full, deeply bizarre, flavor of  how Rousseau's ideas affected not only politics but family roles, the idea of childhood, education, you name it.  It's a truly alien picture, and while connecting Fragonard's late paintings to it may be accurate, it doesn't warm one to them.  The exhibition also argues that the works should be seen as anticipating the sort of classicizing Romantic painting of the early nineteenth century as done by Prud'hon, Gros, and others.  That kind of work has gotten a lot of scholarly attention in the last decade or so (for instance, but there's much more), not least for the facts that it hadn't always received respect, and that the combination of a heavy dependence on mythology for subject matter combined with barely-sublimated sexuality matter made it ripe for the new art history.  But it still needs to pointed out that a lot of it isn't very good, and that the worst of it occurs right in the line that Fragonard seems to have been developing.

So the Clark (and the Getty, which actually organized the exhibition) seems to have been trying to turn the weaknesses of the work displayed into strengths; certainly defensible from a historical point of view, and it could well be argued that my own failure to appreciate the work shows a lack of historical imagination.  I don't think it does.  I think the work is a mixed bag created by a significant artist working away from his strengths.  Sentimentalism is one of the pitfalls of eighteenth century art, one mostly avoided by Fragonard through his good humor and exuberance.  Thankfully, those qualities, missing in most of the allegorical work, are seen elsewhere in the exhibition, which has a section devoted to his earlier work.  There's also a highly entertaining companion show, Painted Love, that offers prints from the Clark's collection to set Fragonard's work in context, one that's by turns sexy, raucous, and moralizing, and sometimes all at once.  It's good fun.  If the Allegories of Love in the main exhibition aren't as enjoyable, it must be admitted that they aim a little higher.