For someone so out of step with the times, Charles Burchfield is getting a good run at the Whitney Museum. Heatwaves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield, opened at the Whitney museum late last month and has been getting good reviews. (They may not be enough to solve the Whitney’s attendance problems, however.)
Organized by the Hammer Museum in LA and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo, where Burchfield spent much of his life, the exhibition has been praised by the Village Voice (“experience these visionary paintings before they return to the darkness”), The New Yorker (where Peter Schjeldahl prefers his less florid pieces, as do I), and The New York Times, where Holland Cotter hedged his bets saying “Burchfield’s intensities are not for all tastes.”
Why? Critics don’t feel moved to say that for more contemporary artists who certainly are not for all tastes… (Are some so timid that they don’t want to risk going against current fashion? Yes, indeed. As A.R. Gurney has Katharine Cornell say in his current show, The Grand Manner, it’s the minor critics who take risks. But I digress.)
To name one artist who’s not for everyone — Robert Gober, who co-curated the Burchfield exhibition.
Gober did a wonderful job here — and, as a matter of fact, seems to be eager to see more Burchfield. Kelly Crow writes about it on The Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy:
…there’s a mystery embedded in the title of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s current show…Sculptor and co-curator Robert Gober said “Heat Waves in a Swamp” is actually the title for a Burchfield painting that’s gone missing. Gober said he saw a black-and-white image of the work during his research, but he didn’t include it in the exhibit’s catalog. He’s hoping that the owner of the work might notice the title and reveal the piece’s whereabouts. “I’d love to see it,” he said, during a visit at the museum recently.
Crow says Speakeasy is all ears, if anyone has a tip, and so is Real Clear Arts. To borrow from a completely different context, if you see something, say something.
Photo Credit: Dandelion Seed Heads and the Moon, 1961-65, Courtesy Whitney Museum