Three New York Exhibitions to Catch Over the Holidays

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Linnea

In New York over Thanksgiving, I saw so many great shows, much of which I want to write about in more depth, and missed so many that I wanted to see. To save you from a similar fate of missing shows in the holiday chaos, allow me to point out three exhibition that will be closing soon after the New Year. Of the shows that I did see, these three stuck out as being well-worth the effort of seeing over the holidays.

Chris Offili at the New Museum, through January 25

Chris Offili: Night and Day was the biggest (pleasant) surprise for me. I was familiar with the British artist’s work, from his original controversial dung paintings to his red, green, and black makeover at the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, but I hadn’t realized how lush and sensuous his large, detailed paintings could be. This gorgeous visual quality was apparent overall, and highlighted by the way they were installed in the museum. Especially in his most recent blue paintings, the viewer gets the rather rare experience of painting as one would with Rothko: an intense bodily confrontation and visual experience that grows over time. However, the subject matter quickly pulls it away from the sublime and into the lyrical.

Robert Gober at MoMA, through January 18

I, being an ignoramous, or perhaps merely too young, was not familiar with Gober’s work and wasn’t sure what I would make of the artist’s sinks and other examples of warped domesticity at Robert Gober: The Heart Is A Metaphor. What I found was pleasantly tactile work whose logic proceeded like that of dreams, intuitively making sense. It was odd, touching, bizarre–and images of it stick. I only wish I could walk through it again.

Egon Schiele at Neue Galerie, through January 19

Finally, Egon Schiele: Portraits is a beautiful and thorough show of this Viennese Expressionist painter’s work. The collection overall makes clear the stark break a young Schiele made with Gustav Klimt’s decorative style in favor of the psychological, in a city where Freud was doing his pioneering work in psychoanalysis. Remaining stylized, Schiele veered toward an expression of the inner mind, in ways that feel freshly startling. Similarly, his drawings, sometimes conventional, show his precocious skill as a draftsman.

Little Grand Canyon Yellow: Earth Pigments from Places

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Linnea

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Called Little Grand Canyon Yellow, this 1964 painting by Howard Thomas is hung next to a vitrine of small, re-purposed glass jars at the Georgia Museum of Art. The title of the work was intended literally. The artist made the yellow pigment from earth from the Grand Canyon. Perhaps it is not coincidental this painting preceded the earthworks of Robert Smithson and Ana Mendieta of the 1970s. Although still on canvas, Thomas engages with site through the locally sourced pigment that are referenced in the title. The style of the work, however, rather than being a fragmented areal view, seems to me more like formalist play because of the centered shapes bounded by the canvas, suggesting no expansive horizon, and the disjointed layerings that creates a tone-on-tone sense of motion or depth.

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The glass jars showing Thomas’s pigments have fascinating labels, like the one below labelled “Frat House.” What kind of painting might that have been used in versus the one above, I wonder.

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Around Asheville, North Carolina: Black Mountain College

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Linnea

There were signs of Black Mountain College, such as the one above and the nearby Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, all around Asheville. Black Mountain College was a small experimental liberal arts school from 1933 to 1956, which it closed due to lack of funds. It left a legacy in the arts, through the works of artists like Joseph and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly, who all taught or studied there. Something must have been in the air of the North Carolina mountains, or in the open curriculum, or in the conglomeration of different minds and talents. Arguably, the first Happening occurred here, in a performance under John Cage’s direction, long before the story of it, among other things, inspired Allan Kaprow to initiate his first Happening.

Not far from Asheville is the site of the former school, whose buildings were largely constructed by the teachers and students themselves. Now given over partially to guesthouses and partially to a summer camp for children, you can still walk around the old grounds. More pictures of it from a beautifully sunny day are below. I think the outdoor frescoes were painted by Joseph Albers, but I’d love to hear if anyone knows for sure.