Picasso's Guernica

Picasso’s Guernica was sent to Madrid in 1981. Picasso had stipulated that it be returned to Spain after Franco’s death.I first saw it when I was about 12. My mom took me to MOMA a few times before I went to high school. The experience of seeing it was
disorienting. It was so big and visually out of control, the symbolism so incomprehensible, that it was a mysterious puzzle to me. I spent a lot of time looking at the studies for it . Matching the study to the larger painting , I liked examining the differences. When I would read the labels I couldn’t have cared less about the story line. I knew it was anti-war but Picasso’s motivation was by far less interesting than the raw visceral power of the painting itself. So impressive that the affection and memory of it still captures my imagination after not seeing it for 30 years. I realize now that the power of it comes from its formal qualities but also the immediacy of of Picasso painting in black and white made it feel like the painting was my own. As a young native New Yorker I felt the presence of the painting was such a part of MOMA and New York,I couldn’t understand why it should be sent back to Spain. In that myopic view of my youth I thought the day would never come when it would leave. Still in my mind’s eye it’s just been out on loan until its done traveling.
The power of the image is so strong that Rockefeller had a tapestry of it made and donated it to the UN. In 2003 when Colin Powell went to the UN to declare war against Iraq the Bush Administration had the tapestry covered with a blue drape so that the image wouldn’t appear behind him in photo’s of the event. That was some serious art power coming through Pablo.

John Bjerklie at Parkers Box

At Parkers Box I went to John Bjerklie’s Opening. His piece is a month long installation that he will change each day called “When a River Changes Course”. It will only be viewed on tv monitors on folding chairs placed in the front windows. There will be another time in January for the public to walk around inside. Once you go around the wall separating the monitors from the rest of the gallery,you’re confronted with 2 piles of debris 1 painted red , 1 painted blue with security video cameras embedded in them. On the walls behind each pile are drop cloths painted red and blue, dividing the space into the hot zone and the cool zone. The piles of debris are the remains of John’s most recent presentation of hi Hothead/Coolhead sculpture at UNC Greensboro in North Carolina.
I got to speak with John and a group of other people including an artist Michael (who was assisting him with the installation) and a Dutch woman who said she saw the piece as a political reference to the electoral politics. The message I took away with me
was that it reflected a culture divided, heads blown apart , over analyzed by technology.
I loved peering into the monitors to try to discover where I was in relationship to all the debris. I hope everyone has as much fun with it.

Chelsea Art Galleries27th-26th St 12/12/08

On Friday December 12 I planned to go to the opening of John Bjerklie at Parkers Box in Williamsburg. Being a friend and a fan of his work I wouldn’t miss it. The opening began at 6. I left work at 3 with time to go to Chelsea(as I like to do on occasion).
I’d seen an ad for an exhibit of Al Held’s paintings at Paul Kasmin Gallery. The paintings were done in the early 80’s. I was most impressed by the 2 largest: “Roberta’s Trip” and
“The First Circle”. They are geometric abstractions painted in very bright flat color, that become dimensional by the use of perspective and overlapping. The use of color generates a tremendous amount of light. The craftsmanship is so impeccable ! The vision they speak to is a crowded, complicated, layered world that lacks the mystery I
often see. I do feel a kinship and like them so much, I buy the catalog. I leave and go around to the annex to the Kasmin Gallery to see the Andy Warhol Polaroid’s. Deadpan images of objects on a white, flat background. Set up in grids, they are by turn saccharine and dangerous. It felt great to clearly see them as the building blocks for his larger pieces. When asked the young woman sitting at the desk said they were$11,000. a piece,unsigned but stamped by the Warhol Foundation. I quickly did the math and realized there was alot of money on those walls.
The next place I stopped in was the Nancy Hoffman Gallery to see the sculpture of Ilan Averbuch “Intimate Monuments”. They employ a combination of curved space, symbolism and mystery that I wish to employ in my own work. In the back room was a Don Eddy triptych, an airbrushed photo realist piece so flawless that I thought it was digitally printed. I do like the subject of nature as spiritual.
I walked further down 27th to Sundaram Tagore Gallery which is showing the paintings of Natvar Bhasar. They are big meditation inspired images. Painted with bright colored dry pigment in circular shapes they are too similar to Rothko for me to think they’re art historically important.They seem to have another function, in an interview he said ”I believe color is based on physical elements. It has a real physical entity and an impact on our psyches. I brought color with me from India. Our religion is imbued with color; it is a part of our daily lives. In America, color does not have the same significance... When I paint I am in a deeply meditative state. The viewer can also achieve a state of meditation.”
I walked around to 26th went into Mitchell-Innes & Nash, wasn’t with it so I went next door to Gallery LeLong(which I consistently like). They were showing Petah Coynes sculpture “Vermillion Fog”. Divided into black sections and white sections named “Dante’s Inferno” and “Unforgiven”. They are constructions of flowers,feathers,velvet and taxidermied birds (mallards on the black and doves on the white).They are so emotional, sickeningly beautiful. It brought to my mind a stanza
from a poem by Tennyson called “The Voyage of Maeldune”:

And we came to the Isle of Flowers; their breath met us out on the seas,
For the Spring and the middle Summer sat each on the lap of the breeze;
And the red passion-flower to the cliffs, and the dark blue clematis, clung,
And starr’d with a myriad blossom the long convulvulus hung;
And the topmost spire of the mountain was lilies in lieu of snow,
And the lilies like glaciers winded down, running out below
Thro’ the fire of the tulip and poppy, the blaze of gorse, and the blush;
And the whole isle-side flashing down from the peak without ever a tree
Swept like a torrent of gems from the sky to the blue of the sea;
And we rolled upon capes crocus vaunted our kith and kin,
And we wallowed in beds of lilies and chanted the triumph of Finn,
Till each like a golden image was pollened from head to feet
And each was as dry as a cricket, with thirst in the middle-day heat.
Blossom and blossom, and promise of blossom, but never a fruit!
And we hated the Flowering Isle like we hated the isle that was mute,
And we tore up the flowers by the million and flung them in bight and bay,
And we left but a naked rock, and in anger we sailed away.
I went a few buildings further to the Robert Miller Gallery to a show of small scale Ab Ex paintings called “Beyond the Canon”.It wasn’t much beyond the canon; Pollock,De Kooning, Kline,Krasner, Elaine Dekooning, Hoffman, Gorky; they were all there. I liked a Jimmy Ernst the best. The show is the stuff dreams are made of.
By now it’s getting dark out,I walked further east and could see the lights in Pace Editions 4 stories up. Like iron to a magnet, I crossed the street and up I went to see the Francesco Clemente show. I’m not a fan of his larger figurative pieces ,so I wandered to the back of the gallery where they had a print by Ryan McGinnis I had fun staring at. The print was of a grid of varying size mandalas. Each ring was made of losenge shapes. So when you focused on one mandala the ones in your peripheral vision started spinning. i was entertained for a while sorting out the relationship of which ones spun when you looked at which mandala. Eventually the spell broke and I went to leave but I noticed a small glass room with pages of a book displayed .It’s called “ Alcuni Telefonini” Each page is set up side by side a watercolor by Clemente and a poem by Vincent Katz. I was resistant at first but then they washed over me like a wave at the beach. From Katz’ website:
“Katz and Francesco Clemente have a book of poems and watercolors, entitled Alcuni Telefonini, just out from Granary Books. Katz has contributed translations and poems to two of Clemente's exhibition catalogues, and they have done a series of prints together.”
“Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, art critic, editor, and curator. He is the author of nine books of poetry, including Cabal of Zealots (1988, Hanuman Books), Understanding Objects (2000, Hard Press), and Rapid Departures (2005, Ateliê Editorial). He won the 2005 National Translation Award, given by the American Literary Translators Association, for his book of translations from Latin, The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (2004, Princeton University Press). He was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship in Literature at the American Academy in Rome for 2001-2002. He had a one-month residency at the American Academy in Berlin in Spring, 2006. He is the editor of the poetry and arts journal VANITAS and of Libellum books.”
Realiizing it was time I walked back to the A train, went down to Union Square; past the Tom Otterness funny bronzes and on to the L train to Williamsburg.

Poogy Bjerklie's opening at The Phatory

I went down to the East Village. Poogy’s opening started at 7. I was a little early so I stopped and had an espresso on Thompkins Square Park (perfect). I was the only customer and the barista was playing Janis Joplin. I rocked out until 7 o’clock came. I walked over to The Phatory and a small bunch of people were there. I got to say Hi to Poogy and checkout the paintings. They were all about the same size approximately 9”x12” oil on board landscapes with a cream color shadow box frame. They all were soft focus images of trees and fields in a rural area with no evidence of human presence (a combination of Albert Pinkham Ryder, George Inniss and Gerhard Richter). The paint is applied thinly to enhance the surface texture of the under-painting( some what thickly applied). My favorite had an area of crackle.
The gallery is a small intimate store front. Poogy had painted the gallery walls with a green/ gray iridescent glaze which she had stenciled a pattern of 4” tall topiary trees( very soft and elegant). She arranged the paintings in small groupings, some horizontal, some over/ under.
For me the concept of putting the framed paintings of pastoral, rural visions on
walls with topiary trees seemed to suggest we are looking at the rural landscape from the point of view of the urban civilized garden.
I had some fun conversations with Poogy’s decorative artist friends (Poogy’s a
member of DC9 decorative painters) especially with Katie Kelmsley who helped Poogy stencil the walls ( along with Poogy’s husband John).
I went home feeling richer for my experience there, visually satisfied.

MOMA Epiphany

So, on the 4th floor at MOMA is their late 20th C. collection. After leaving the Beuys area
I wandered and came upon De Kooning's Woman. Hanging next to it was a painting by Lee Krasner. I was stopped dead in my tracks, overcome with the pink and the gray. I recalled the time I went to see the Pollock/Krasner show at Robert Miller Gallery. On the very back wall of the gallery was a huge pink painting (at least 15'H x30'W) and a little girl of 3 was there with her Mom.
The girl was dressed in a beautiful mint green flowery dress and she broke free of her Mom's grasp and ran full tilt at the huge pink painting, giggling all the way until she stopped, enthralled just 6" from the painting. For me Lee Krasner became a giant in that moment and next to De Kooning's 'Woman' at MOMA her painting delivered just as big.

MOMA P. Rist Projections

Next thing I wanted to see was a projection piece in the giant room on the second floor. At work we fabricated the projector covers for this piece, a Pipolotti Rist video installation The covers are 14' diameter circular bubbles protruding from the wall. The video projections take up the entire wall surface and were filmed through a convex lens so the images are mind-bendingly close up images of flowers and people. There is a large circular sofa/bed sculpture so everyone can lay down and experience the overpowering vision. It's some what psychedelic and some what ecological. The color is so liberating that at a certain point there were young women leaping in front of the walls so they could have their picture taken flying on the field of color.

MOMA / Beuys

On Thurs. December 4 I went to MOMA in the late afternoon to fill time before Poogie Bjerklie's Opening at The Phatory on E.9 between B and C.
At MOMA I knew what I wanted to see, being a Beuys fan. First I wanted checkout the re-hanging of the permanent collection by the new curator of Painting and Sculpture Ann Temkin. She wrote a book on Beuys' drawings called "Thinking is Form" and has curated a room called Focus Beuys, exhibiting his work. The exhibit includes the video of his 1974 performance 'I like America, America Likes Me'. This video chronicles Beuys' stay in the Rene Block Gallery for a week with a coyote. It begins with him being delivered from the airport to the gallery in an ambulance with a sheet over him (dying to be reborn when he arrives at the gallery). Also in the room are 4 vitrines filled with his small sculptures, recently acquired by the museum, a chalkboard drawing featuring a stag and his hanging glass piece, 'Iphegenia/Titus Andronicus'. Around the corner in an adjacent room was a Robert Morris floor full of felt/string with a William Tucker wall hanging and a piece by Eva Hesse of fiberglass cylinders. My blood was all in my brain.