Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

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Should Museums Compare and Contrast Cultures?

It seems to be a trend these days for art museums (and some galleries) to mix and match cultures and, sometimes, time periods. Sometimes, this is about breaking down so-called false hierarchies in art history (I do not believe they are always false), sometimes it’s about appealing to new audiences, and sometimes it’s simply about trying something new and keeping things interesting.

Two come immediately to mind: a few years ago, the Brooklyn Museum devoted a central first-floor gallery to a mix of objects from many departments, meant as an introduction to the museum’s collections. Nice try, but I think it was confusing and a failure. Then there was Unfinished at the Met Breuer–to some a success and to some a failure.

Now the Bode Museum in Berlin is taking advantage of a reshuffling of museum spaces to present Beyond Compare: Art from Africa in the Bode Museum.  Opening in October, it is one of a few exhibitions organized as dialogues, gathered under the rubric “On the Way to Humboldt Forum.”

From the press release:

For the first time the sculptural traditions of Africa and Europe will come together in a ‘conversation of the continents’ on the Museumsinsel Berlin. Beginning in October 2017 over 70 major works of African sculpture from the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum) will go on display in the Bode Museum. Art from western and central Africa meets masterpieces from Byzantium, Italy, and central Europe. Never before have the sculptural traditions of these two continents been compared so extensively.

The Bode plans to make about 20 juxtapositions, some in its permanent galleries and some in a special gallery. They will “address major themes of human experience, such as power, death, beauty, memory, aesthetics, and identity.” For example, a putti by Donatello will be side-by-side with a Benin princess. A Romanesque figure of Christ will be side-by-side with a large Ngil mask from the Fang region of Gabon or Cameroon–“both present awe-inspiring images of judges.” Here are those two–you can see a few more juxtapositions at the link above.

Quoting from the organizers: First. Michael Eissenhauer, Director-General of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Director of the Sculpture Collection and Museum of Byzantine Art:

The preparations for the move to the Humboldt Forum offer us a unique opportunity to place the non-European holdings of the Staatliche Museen in dialogue with other works, reaching across the boundaries that traditionally divide the collections.

And Julien Chapuis, director of the two:

The stimulating interplay between the African sculptures and our own collection not only promises to be a feast for the senses, but will also lead to fundamentally new insights.

I can’t tell, without seeing more, whether this exhibit will be enlightening or a gimmick (here are a few more Bode_Afrika Images). I think you have to be there. But I agree that an opportunity has arisen and shouldn’t be lost.

Photo Credits: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Antje Voigt

How To Create An Art-Lover

While at the Guggenheim Museum yesterday, seeing Visionaries: Creating A Modern Guggenheim, I witnessed an awesome sight–but it wasn’t the art. It was a little girl, still in a stroller, with a sketchbook in hand, attempting to copy a painting by Bonnard. Her mother (presumably) was sitting nearby, but the girl was working on her picture alone.

Initially, though charmed by the pair, I walked by.

But I could not let it pass: I got out my cell phone and snapped a couple of shots. One shows the scene pretty well. Not wanting to invade their privacy–or spoil their moment–I shot it from the back.

I had planned only to share the picture with my Facebook friends. But there it was been liked a lot, and generally brought agreement. One friend wrote that she used to take her kids to the Met  and inform that “they would have to pick one picture in each gallery that they wished they could have, and they had to look at it very closely and tell me what it was about it that made them want it. This could take 5 or even 10 minutes.”

I then wrote about studies I know of in music that have determined that people who learned to play a musical instrument as a child are far more likely to grow up and go to classical music performances than kids who did not. Exposure itself–i.e., going a a concert with a parent–had little or no impact. But playing a musical instrument did. I’d put sketching, as this child is, or being asked to articulate the wonders of an art work, in the same category. Both involve participation.

Taking school groups to museums is laudatory, and welcome, but imho it’s not enough to create lasting art-lovers and lifelong museum-goers.

This mother and child are a great inspiration. And they were having a good time, too!

And, of course, the art was pretty awesome, too.

UPDATE: A friend, just returned from London, snapped this shot at the Tate Britain. Not quite as good as sketching, but looking nonetheless. There is hope!

 

 

 

 

Kusama Exhibit Is A Wow–And More

Yayoi Kusama is one of those artists whose work is easy to love. Although she made it (or much of it) as therapy for herself–beset from early on with mental health issues and thoughts of suicide–her works come across to viewers as exuberant and bedazzling. And in many cases, fun–even as they are thought-provoking.

Last week, I was lucky enough to arrive in Seattle (on an unrelated business trip) just as her show at the Seattle Art Museum, Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, was about to open. I got a press preview, which means that the galleries were mostly empty when I was there. That’ll be in distinct contrast to the experiences of many: advance ticket sales for the exhibit are completely sold out, despite the steep cost of $34.95. A limited number of tickets are available now only on a first-come, first-served daily basis. And the museum has added Sunday night tickets for members only.

This exhibit was organized and appeared first at the Hirshhorn Museum and focuses, at Kusama’s request, on her mirrored rooms, according to the Seattle Times review. (The Times also made the show front page news on the day before the review (at right), for which all art-lovers must be grateful.)

These rooms are important to her. Here’s an explanation from WSJ. Magazine:

Kusama conceived of these installations in part as an opportunity to savor the supreme vanity of regarding one’s likeness reflected endlessly.

“I’ve always been interested in the mystique that a mirrored surface presents,” says Kusama. “In my mirror rooms, you see yourself as an individual reflected in an expansive space. But they also give you the sensation of cloistering yourself in another world.” Often lit up by myriad multicolored LED lights (earlier iterations of the rooms from the ’60s were simpler affairs, filled with polka-dot patterns and phallic, tuberlike soft sculptures), the rooms are meant to evoke a cosmic feeling of being an individual within a multitude—as planet Earth is “like one little polka dot, among millions of other celestial bodies.”

Still, as the Seattle review noted,

There are [also] surrealistic paintings from the 1950s, soft sculptures from the 1960s, Joseph Cornell-inspired collages from the 1970s, very recent work, and documentary photos and ephemera, all of which gloriously establish Kusama’s unique place in contemporary art history.

Agreed, and I loved it all! I had not seen her watercolors and gouaches before, and they are intriguing. (I’d post one, but the only one I took did not come out clearly enough to be useful as an illustration.)

Seattle is trying hard to prevent any incidents of damage, as happened at the Hirshhorn, when a pumpkin was broken by someone taking a selfie in the room called “All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” (above left). At SAM, visitors enter that room along with a staff member. This will slow things down, adding to the waits at the rooms, but it’s necessary.

A few more pictures:

detail

One aspect has gotten less attention than I would have expected, given today’s emphasis on participatory art. Near the end of the Seattle show, there’s an “obliteration room.” It began as an all-white room, filled with furniture, and each visitor is given polka-dot stickers to place anywhere in the room–floor, walls, goblets on the dining table, etc. (label at right). Again, quoting the Seattle Times,

Kusama has said that her repetitive processes — covering everything with dots or sewing hundreds of fabric forms, for example — are acts of “self-obliteration.” She has described her labor-intensive methods as “art-medicine.”

I disagree, strenuously, with those who cannot consider this art, who think it is art for children, who say it lacks meaning, who say it is mere spectacle. Several pieces are, for me, quite eloquent. Maybe a trying a little harder to understand Kusama’s art is in order. Art can be enjoyed and consumed on many levels, and sometimes its impact is not clear until long after one leaves an exhibition.

 

What A Way To Go! Fantasy Coffins from Africa

It may be summer, but it’s school days at Jack Shainman Gallery in Kinderhook, and the revelation this year is–fantasy coffins. These fascinating works, three made by a Ghanaian artist named Paa Joe, are unlike most you’ve ever seen. They’re the centerpiece of The School‘s summer exhibition, which opened Saturday (June 24).

Called abebuu adekai, the coffins are a national tradition, a celebration of death and the afterlife of those who have died–thus, the sarcophagi represent the interests of the deceased. Through they are made for a purpose, they can ascend into the realm of folk art and perhaps beyond, depending on the eye of the beholder. The gallery’s press release says that the coffins, which used to be used only for chiefs and priests, have grown in popularity and are now attracting the attention of contemporary art museums and galleries.

Here’s one:

Shainman’s biggest find, perhaps, was El Anasui, and he had a piece on view at The School as well:

And there were plenty of other artists to see there. Shainman mixed contemporary works with older art.

But,  mainly, I am writing about The School because, like Magazzino in my last post, it adds to the art attractions in the Hudson Valley, and therefore likely expands the interest in art–it certainly gives art more exposure.

Here are two more views:

A New American Home for Italian Contemporary Art

There’s a new kid on the art block in the Hudson River Valley–Magazzino, in Cold Spring, about an hour and 45 minutes north of New York City. I went up to attend its opening on Saturday and made a trip, too, to Jack Shainman Gallery’s The School, further up the Hudson Valley in Kinderhook. The School just began its fourth season, more about which later.

Magazzino features postwar and contemporary Italian art; this private warehouse space, which is free and open to the public by appointment capable of being booked on its website, is the creation of collectors Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu. It was built with a disused dairy distribution center, then computer factory, as a base, then expanded by architect Miguel Quismondo. It’s a quite a handsome building from the outside, as you can see in the picture at left, and the spaces inside are very good for art. As Spanu said at the opening, “the protagonist was the art. We wanted a container to contain the art, and not the opposite.” Bravo for those sentiments!

The first exhibition, drawn from the couple’s collection, pays homage to Margherita Stein, whose gallery in Turin helped launch the Arte Povera movement. Among the artists whose work is on display are Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto (that’s one of his sculptures in the foreground of top picture) and Jannis Kounellis.  This is an area that I, and I suspect many other potential visitors, are not totally familiar with–and Magazzino has helpfully provided a booklet illustrating each work on display and an explanation that would be a wall label–if the gallery had labels, which it does not. This, much like  then one I was given, and which I praised, at the National Gallery’s Michelangelo/Sebastiano exhibit, is better.

Magazzino will also have a library, with 4,000 to 5,000 books about Italian art, open to scholars and researchers. Eventually, they’ll all be digitized for online access.

Che meraviglia!

A few more pictures, including–in the top one–three of the artists (L to R), Domenico Bianchi, Spanu, Marco Bagnoli, Remo Salvatori, his wife, Olnick (and other guests).