Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Exhibitions

PST’s Performance Art Festival Now Available On Videos — UPDATED

I haven’t yet managed to get myself to Los Angeles and environs for Pacific Standard Time, so I was pleased to receive an email offering a chance, via videos, to see some of the happenings that took place a few days ago, during the “Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival.” There is now a YouTube channel for these events.

Here’s the link. 

As of this writing, 14 videos have been uploaded, documenting the 11-day romp, which included contemporary re-enactments of some iconic works. Among them are John White’s restaging of his 1971 performance piece “Preparation F,” featuring players from the Pomona College football team exploring issues of masculinity and gender; Judy Chicago’s “A Butterfly for Pomona,” a new pyrotechnic performance on the Pomona College football field inspired by one of her earlier works;  and James Turrell’s recreation of his 1971 “Burning Bridges,” a performance utilizing highway flares, plus pieces by Suzanne Lacy, Robert Wilhite and others.

I’m not much of a video-on-the-computer watcher, but these are short — just a few minutes each — and sometimes entertaining. So far, I like Judy Chicago’s “A Butterfly for Pomona” and Lita Alburquerque’s “Spine of the Earth” best (at right). But the most popular one, so far, is Chicago’s “Sublime Environments” (top left).

More may be added — the press reps say. It’s not clear yet.  UPDATE: Four more videos were just added, including “Three Weeks in January” by Suzanne Lacy and “The Ball of Artists at the Greystone Mansion.”

I can hear groans — is this art? With Performa now an expected part of the visual arts scene, I don’t see how one can deny that it is, however ephemeral.

But I will give the last word to Lucas Samaras, who was part of the happenings scene that begain in 1959 in New York. As he recently told The New York Times:

It was a short period, and it was terrific. It was like you had a tribe, a group of entertainers going from village to village with a tambourine. But then you get to a point where you say, “I’m not getting enough out of this.” Everything has a beginning, middle and end, even if you don’t want it to.

Photo Credits: Courtesy Arrested Development (top) and USC Annenberg School (bottom) 

 

 

 

Off In Attribution By 100 Years? Turn The Piece Into An Exhibition

What to do if you are a museum that, for decades, has shown a work of art that was misattributed and incorrectly dated by decades? You ‘fess up, of course, and make an exhibition out of the experience.

The public will get to see exactly that come Feb. 11, when the Minneapolis Institute of Arts puts on view a marble statue of St. Paul the Hermit.

Ever since it acquired the piece in 1973, the MIA had attributed it to Francesco Mochi (1580-1654), an early Baroque sculptor who worked mostly in Rome and Orvieto. The huge piece, a semi-nude, muscular, aged man, had hung above a staircase, as if he were about to jump off a base of rocks in a dive — as at the right here.

Then the MIA decided to restore the piece and in the process re-examine its authorship, because stylistically, it didn’t seem to relate to Mochi’s other works.

As Eike S. Schmidt, the MIA’s curator of decorative arts and sculpture, relates in an article in the MIA’s members’ magazine, a handwritten note on the index card catalogue for the piece noted that John Pope-Hennessy had attributed the piece to Andrea Bergondi.

That was the critical clue. Research ensued, and the museum now says the piece is by Bergondi and was executed in 1775. It represents St. Paul the Hermit, and was originally made for a church dedicated to him in Rome and placed in a setting representing his desert cave. When the church was deconsecrated in 1873, it moved to another church in Rome in 1885. It was torn down in 1888. The statue then disappeared until 1965 when it reappeared on the London art market.

When the MIA had the piece cleaned and  restored last year, several pieces — especially those rocks — that were not part of the original were removed, which gave the MIA the proper positioning for the piece, seen at left, with the saint back on his knees.

An excellent story that I think will attract art-lovers. You can read more about the exhibition here, and the MIA has graciously provided me (us) with an article about it from the forthcoming members’ magazine. Click on MIA-ARTS-St_Paul.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the MIA

 

 

 

 

The van Gogh Exhibit: Where’s The App? A Lost Opportunity

A comment, from MarkCC in Austin, on The New York Times website, following Roberta Smith’s review of van Gogh Up Close at the Philadelphia Art Museum:

Fabulous! Where’s the app? I probably won’t make it to Philly to see the exhibition but if it was an app it would be the next best thing. I could see the paintings on my flat screen, I could zoom in on them almost as close as I want. I’d even be willing to pay an “admission” price.

You see a lot of uninformed and sometimes stupid comments on the web, following many articles and reviews, and this occasion was no exception. Take a look at the comments for yourself.

But MarkCC — from more than 1,400 miles away, afterall — has a point. PaulCommetX also chimed in with this:

How sad it is that painting and sculpture are still in the dark ages when it comes to the internet. We should be able to “rent” art on iTunes or Amazon – the works displayed on large HD flat screens in great detail. It’s ironic that we can enjoy music in the most technologically advanced way but the visual arts are closed to us except for mousy little pictures that do no justice to the original works.

I looked on the Philadelphia Museum website to see what is available. There’s a good range of programs, and a place for discussion of the exhibit, but that’s about it.

I’m going to get to Philadelphia to see this exhibit, but I wish Mark CC could access the catalogue, or something, with an app. I went to Amazon to see if the catalogue is available on Kindle — nope.  How about the Barnes and Noble Nook? Nope.

I know museums are stretched, but here’s a case where reaching out to the public via technology could really have been worth it.

 

 

Forbidden Territory: British Museum Hajj Exhibition

The reopening of the new and improved Islamic art galleries at the Metropolitan Museum* last fall is just one of many recent initiatives to expose us all to Islamic culture — so many that they all cannot be chronicled here. But I was intrigued by the focus of an exhibition at the British Museum, which opened last week and runs until Apr. 15: it’s called “Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam.” It’s forbidden territory, since only Muslims may enter Mecca, the destination of the hajj. How was this to be depicted? This is the first exhibition to try, according to the press release.

The British Museum needed help, despite its giant collection — and got it from the King Abdulaziz Public Library in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Together they organized the show around three major strands: the journey, especially the major routes used by pilgrims over time from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East; the contemporary hajj today, including the rituals involved and the meaning of the experience; and Mecca itself, namely the origins and importance of a place that is forbidden to most of the viewers.

The BM borrowed much of the material on view, including a seetanah, which covers the door of the Ka’ba (the black cube Muslims believe was built by Abraham and his son Ishmael), from Saudi Arabia, and many objects from public and private collections around the world, including the British Library and 45 objects from the Islamic collection of  the Khalili Family Trust (which, at some 20,000 objects, claims to be the largest and most comprehensive Islamic collection in the world).  Says the BM:

Together these objects will evoke and document the long and perilous journey associated with the pilgrimage, gifts offered to the sanctuary as acts of devotion and the souvenirs that are brought back from Hajj. They include archaeological material, manuscripts, textiles, historic photographs and contemporary art. The Hajj has a deep emotional and spiritual significance for Muslims, and continues to inspire a wide range of personal, literary and artistic responses, many of which will be explored throughout the exhibition.

I have no plans to visit Britain during the show, unfortunately, but I was able to see some of this on line from press materials and the BM’s site.   

So, here is “Panoramic view of Mecca,” by Muhammad ‘Abdullah, the Delhi cartographer, Probably Mecca, c. 1845:

And here is “View of the sanctuary at Mecca,” 17th or 18th century. 

 It’s hard to tell, from here, exactly what we are missing, and this show doesn’t seem to be traveling. But BM helps a little – this is expected nowadays — it has placed some material about the exhibit on its website, including a little video and “Hajj stories” from contributors. 

Not like being there, of course.  

Photo Credits:  Courtesy of the Khalili Family Trust

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Met

The Art Institute Of Chicago Links Up With India

In some art circles, as in economic circles, Asia looms very large — as competition.  Some worry aloud that the West may lose its influence over culture to China and India, that someday we’ll all be gazing at and buying art from contemporary Asian artists rather than American and European ones. And worse, that tourists will be prowling all over new Asian museums rather than our own. Bye, bye, the 5 million visitors at the Metropolitan Museum and the 8 million at the Louvre.
 
Untitled, 1934. Courtesy of the AIC

I’ve always thought the hand-wringing was overdone, at least for my lifetime.

And this weekend, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted a delegation from India that is all about cooperation, rather than competition; it’s a welcome development. Although no dollar figure was disclosed, the AIC said that it had received “a major grant” from the government of India — the first grant ever made by the Indian government to an American art museum. In return, via the four-year Vivekananda Memorial Program for Museum Excellence, the AIC “will serve as a resource center regarding best museum practices for museum professionals in India; will create fellowships across many different museum departments for colleagues from India; and will send a group of Art Institute staff regularly to India to conduct workshops, seminars, lectures, and courses.”

Now, some may see this as selling our competitors the rope to hang ourselves with, as the old Soviet-era axiom went. I don’t — and the AIC certainly does not. It traces its relationship with India to September 11, 1893, when Swami Vivekananda spoke about religious tolerance at what is now the Art Institute at the first World’s Parliament of Religions, held in conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition. And it’s thrilled with the lasting nature of it.

“It is a supreme honor to be recognized by the Government of India as a partner in the preservation, exhibition, and promotion of India’s cultural heritage,” said Douglas Druick, the director. 

On Saturday, the Art Institute also opened as exhibition loaned directly by the Government of India, The Last Harvest: Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore (1861–1941) – novelist, poet, musician, philosopher and the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1913) — was also a painter. Sixty-one of them are on view in Chicago, offering “a glimpse into the visionary mind of this influential thinker.”

One picture, all that’s up on the AIC website, is not enough to tell anything, and I haven’t found a review of the exhibition yet. But  I’m looking forward to seeing more of his work.

And as I look around the exhibition schedules of U.S. museums for the coming months, I see more and more shows about distant cultures, which makes the life of art museums a lot more interesting. Â