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March 10, 2008
Weekend roundup, Hassel Smith-style
Hassel Smith is one of the most under-appreciated American painters of the post-war era. A nice Ana Davis story recounts how the San Jose Museum of Art is remembering Smith's life and work. (He died late last year at age 91.) The SJMA has installed a memorial show and it has just acquired Bird Lover (1957).
Smith's paintings are in the collections of lots of museums you know and love, but they rarely make it out of storage. The Hirshhorn's No. 14 (1960) is a primo example.
Sadly Smith's legacy has foundered. Museums that should champion him, notably SFMOMA, haven't. (Stunner, eh?) Heck, you can't even view Smith's work in the collections portion of their website (or on LACMA's). That's too bad. Smith deserves better.
If Holland Cotter is going to write about the art market every time he writes about contemporary art, shouldn't he at least try to draw some link between his market-based ravings and the art on view? Or is he so market-obsessed that writing about contemporary art merely provides him an opportunity to grouse about money? (Is art with a "complicated back story" necessarily commercial, and therefore evil? Who knows.)
By contrast, Roberta Smith on color field art is smart, engaging and thoughtful.
In the Voice, RC Baker writes superbly about Jasper Johns at the Met. For fun, contrast Baker's take with Roberta Smith's.
Jen Graves of The Stranger says that a flurry of Seattle shows provide the opportunity to consider video art and its relation to painting, sculpture, etc.
The KC Star's Alice Thorson makes the Deb Sokolow presentation at the Kemper sound like fun. You can see all kinds of images/etc. of the narrative of Sokolow's installation at her website. (Think Mark Lombardi-meets-childhood.)
Posted March 10, 2008 8:15 AM
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