Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Enigmatic Per Kirkeby Gets A Show At the Phillips Collection

On Saturday, I took the train to Washington for a look at a couple of exhibitions — one being the retrospective for Danish artist Per Kirkeby at the Phillips Collection. I was not very familiar with his work, but I knew he is considered to be the best (“most highly acclaimed,” the Phillips says in its press release) Scandinavian artist working today. 

As I walked around the show, I couldn’t figure him out at all. Some paintings were colorful, almost decorative (like New Shadows V, right); others, muddy, indistinct (like Untitled, 1993, left). His bronzes seemed unrelated (not necessarily bad). The selection was very eclectic, and I wasn’t sure how representative these pieces are of his work. They are all said to be about nature, natural history, and sometimes a merger of “the beauty of landscape painting and the grandeur of history painting.” 

But almost everywhere I saw aspects of other artists better-known in the United States — Guston, Mitchell, Rauschenberg, Richter, Twombly, Salle even — and I tried to figure out from the dates who influenced whom. (One painting, Untitled 2009, which shows horses — a red one, a yellow one — seemed very related to art I’d seen in Iceland in 2011.) When I got home, still thinking about Kirkeby, I thought of the chart that MoMA’s curators and the Columbia University Business School have devised laying out social networks among artists for MoMA’s coming Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925, which will open in late December. (This was called to my attention by a recent article in ARTNews headlined “MoMA Makes A Facebook for Abstractionists.”) Here’s the link to the social network chart (be sure to magnify it, or you’ll strain your eyes), and you can see that Picasso, Kandinsky, Sonia Delaunay and others had the widest networks. 

Kirkeby, born in 1938, obviously wasn’t on it, but it made me wonder what his network would look like.  

I don’t think I’m the only one a bit mystified by Kirkeby. Notice that this review (which has a very good slide show), in Washingtonian, starts out quoting a British review: 

In a review of one show at Tate Modern, the London Guardian described his works as “rich, earthy, spearing, dynamic, fiercely inquiring, solemn droll, skeptical, and yet abundantly romantic; perhaps a portrait of the artist as much as his art.” 

I got hints as well from an interview with Kirkeby by Dorothy Kosinski, the director of the Phillips, in the catalogue. Such as:

  • “There’s this whole idea of being first with some kind of invention or someone being rare and so on. What does it all mean? Artists are there in their own time and they have different reactions, and essentially they are all good. Even the artists we do not like have done their very best, and you have to respect that.” 
  • On a trip to New York, he met George Maciunas, who asked him if he were part of Fluxus. “I don’t want to be a member, because basically I am a painter. I am attached to material and flamboyant things.” 
  • “In the painter community [in Europe], it was not so good to be an intellectual. But I couldn’t change the way I was and still am.” 
  • “It’s far too easy a conclusion, that I paint layer upon layer, therefore I’m a geologist. I wouldn’t emphasize geology too much.” 
  • “In painting, you have to invent, each time, a set of rules. …At a certain point, I know it’s finished and the painting kicks me out.” 
  • “[My wife sometimes] looks in [my studio] and says, ‘that’s beautiful,’ and then this painting is doomed.” 
  • “It’s very easy to be pessimistic about contemporary [art], because it’s all against my idea of art. There is something very didactic about it…”

 That’s enough to give you a feel for Kirkeby’s sentiments – you’ll have to read the catalogue (too bad that an excerpt of the interview isn’t online). Some of you may find him to be pretentious, but I didn’t. I not entirely convinced by his art, but having read parts of the catalogue I think he’s thought-provoking. Which is what an artist is supposed to be, right?

Good for the Phillips for introducing many of us to this artist.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Phillips Collection

Is The Corcoran Inching Toward A Solution?

It’s remarkable, in a way, that a three-sentence statement issued at 5 p.m. on Friday by the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design qualifies as good news — but it does. Here’s what it said:

The Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design is in conversation with both the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. These activities are in keeping with the Corcoran Board’s stewardship and commitment to explore and secure potential sustainable options for the future of both the gallery and the college. No further details will be released at this time.

Bland, huh? But I take it — inferring volumes, perhaps — that the board of Corcoran, which in June said the place was in such dire straits financially that it might sell its beautiful building and move to the suburbs, is coming to its senses and realizing that it just can’t treat the Corcoran like a chess piece, moved to a “better” location in Alexandria, Va., where the board has looked for space. Or taken to Maryland. Or mismanaged into oblivion. That statement, which came a bit out of the blue, was necessary only because the board and museum executives were inept at fundraising and management.

That’s why I suggested a merger/takeover right then and there in June. Since then, there’ve been other developments, including the formation of a group called “Save the Corcoran,” which last Tuesday sent a nine-page letter (Letter_to_Corcoran_from_Gibson_Dunn) written by its lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher citing, in the group’s own words, “leadership failures including potential charter violations, corporate waste, potential conflicts of interest and fundraising collapse.” The letter demanded:

1. The Corcoran will end all corporate waste associated with an unlawful move outside of Washington, D.C., and publicly announce that the Corcoran will not move outside of the District;
2. The Corcoran will fill the three current vacancies on its Board of Trustees with nominees selected from the Save the Corcoran Coalition’s Advisory Committee (response requested by October 19).

Seems to me that the group, like the Corcoran board, is overplaying its hand, at least on #2.

On the other hand, a takeover of the Corcoran’s school by GW could be a good thing, especially if GWtakes full responsibility for managing the school and raising money for it. Make it like IFA at NYU.

The Gallery is another matter, and neither the Corcoran nor the NGA are talking about the content or dimensions of their discussions. The Corcoran gallery also needs better leadership and more funds, which the NGA can supply. And the NGA believes it needs more space. It could be a good match, even though the NGA may undergo its own transition in the not-too-distant future: Earl A. (Rusty) Powell III — the director since 1992 — turns 70 in 2013. 

Still, at this point, I’m still with my initial gut reaction — the Corcoran needs new hands at its helm. A merger with the NGA would be less disruptive than hiring a new director, sweeping out the in-over-their-heads Corcoran trustees, and finding many new deep-pocketed board members for the Corcoran.

 

 

Why Else Denver’s Van Gogh Exhibit Merits Attention

The Denver Art Museum may kill me for doing this — I didn’t ask permission or tell them in advance — but I want to share with you some of the Learning Moments (I think that’s what they are calling them) the museum’s staff has developed for Becoming van Gogh, the exhibition I wrote about yesterday. I couldn’t fit them into my article. But like the wall about terracotta at the Met’s current Bernini exhibition, I think they are models of what museum-goers should be able to see. And I’d like to see them posted online as well — so people can go back to them.

The Denver exhibit is, remember, a scholarly show — it explains how van Gogh became van Gogh.

One of the large panels talks about Charles Bargue’s Drawing Course, “a three volume do-it-yourself manual with an emphasis on drawing the human figure. Van Gogh got hold of the set and within six months he diligently copied all 197 plates at least once and all sixty of the nude poses at least three times.”

Later, we learn in the same panel that only two of his Bargue drawings survive — because van Gogh’s mother threw the rest away! What child or parent isn’t going to relate to that?

Timothy J. Standring, the curator, could not borrow either of the two surviving drawings, but he was able to find a copy of the Barque book — at Oberlin College, which agreed to lend it to the exhibition.

A second panel is about color. Van Gogh said “A good understanding of [color] is worth more than seventy different shades of paint.” He wrote to his brother, Theo, explaining his ideas about color and saying he was preoccupied by color. The panel goes on:

Somehow Van Gogh hit upon a way to experiment with color by winding different colors of yarn together. This astonishingly simple, cheap, and yet effective method kept the colors separate, just as Van Gogh kept his colors separate on the canvas in short, side-by-side brushstrokes of unmixed paint.

Van Gogh’s original balls of yarn are in the collection of the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

A third panel is about the perspective frame he built for himself, which he used throughout his career.

And a fourth is about his episodes at a drawing class that used plaster casts, which he hated. But why are his figure drawings from these classes of a woman’s backside? “Van Gogh and his new friend, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, were assigned seats typically reserved for the weaker students: looking at the sculpture’s backside.”

These tidbits qualify as what some editors refer to as “cocktail party conversation” — which is to say that they are memorable, fodder for casual conversation, buzzy — yet they are enlightening about van Gogh. Even if you knew about these facts before, they’re worth being reminded about.

When I started this post, I intended to upload the panels for you to view. But, it turns out, they are too big for this website.

You will just have to visit the Denver show yourself. Or get the catalogue.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum (Canal with Women Washing)

 

At Last: Denver Gets A van Gogh Show, Six Years In the Making

People on the coasts, especially the East coast, are spoiled when it comes to the art they can see. During the summer, I was astonished to learn from Timothy J. Standring (pictured), a curator at the Denver Art Museum whom I have known for years, that his mile-high city has never been home to exhibition focused on Vincent van Gogh. Of course, the museum had mounted exhibitions with a van Gogh or two — but never one centered on this most revered and popular artist.

Standring told me about his efforts to remedy that, with the result being an exhibition set to open on Oct. 21 titled Becoming van Gogh. It includes nearly 70 paintings and drawings by van Gogh and 20 by other artists, like William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Sir Hubert von Herkomer, Jules Dupre and Emile Bernard, that van Gogh studied.

In organizing, Standring had a big handicap: the Denver museum doesn’t own a single work by van Gogh. He had to borrow everything. It was not an easy feat, and I lay out more about the challenges and how he overcame them in an article in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal titled Becoming van Gogh: A Show Built Stroke by Stroke.

Yet one of the best things about this exhibition is its theme: far from being a greatest hits, it unfolds a theme that has not been explored here in depth before. “We wanted to draw away from the focus on his craziness and instead focus on his internal process of artistic decisions,” Standring says.

Or, as the press release put it:

By focusing on the stages of Van Gogh’s artistic development, Becoming Van Gogh illustrates the artist’s initial foray into mastering draftsmanship, understanding the limitations and challenges of materials and techniques, learning to incorporate color theory and folding a myriad of influences, including the work of other artists, into his artistic vocabulary. No other exhibition has focused so intensely on Van Gogh’s personal growth and progression as he developed his own personal style.

Along the way, people doubted that Standring could pull this off — even his own museum directors and, at some points, the Van Gogh Museum, which pretty much has to approve all van Gogh exhibits. But it cooperated with Denver, providing curatorial assistance, despite the long odds, because part of its mission it to take van Gogh to places where he is not well known.

The show won’t, can’t, travel — it’s in Denver only. That’s another reason why, aside from the curators’ scholarship and creativity, this exhibit, well, exhibits the good fellowship that is evident among many European painting curators. I know some of them went to bat for Standring.

That’s it for tonight, but I will return to this show — there’s another reason why it’s notable.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum 

Hurrah: Dallas Inventories Texas Art. What Will It Find?

Most museums — in my opinion — should have their own special identity, something different that makes visitors want to visit them, instead of simply going to a universal, encyclopedic museum like the Met. When I visited Cincinnati, I loved seeing the regional Ohio art on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and when I visited the Milwaukee Art Museum, I headed straight for its German collections — not just the Expressionism, but the earlier genre paintings, too. Even though I live in New York, I can’t see those kinds of works on display here. Then, I see the rest of their permanent collections.

But especially in contemporary collections, we see a lot of cookie-cutter approaches to buying art since the 1960s, at least.

So I both applaud the Dallas Museum of Art and chastise it, a bit, for an effort it is making regarding Texas art. The bad first: why did I have to find out about it on my own, instead of receiving a press release — as I do for the museum’s exhibitions, staff changes, etc.? I’d rather know about this effort, which is unique, than the press release I received recently about a grant to research visitor engagement.

NOTE: Dallas tells me it did send me the press release on Friday, though I never received it. We have to blame email gremlins…

Now the praise: Dallas has unveiled on its website something called the “Texas Exhibition History” — a  complete list of titles and dates for exhibitions of Texas art presented at the Museum since 1909, and part of its Texas Art section of its website.  This project apparently began two years ago when the museum was awarded a grant by the University of Texas at Dallas Texas Fund for Curatorial Research, to continue studying the Texas art acquired before the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts merged with the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Art in 1963 to form DMA — which now owns those Texas works. 

Here’s the link to the project, where you’ll learn more about Texas artists. 

There’s more to come:

Coming in spring 2013, the DMA website will add another new section to “Texas Art” detailing the evolution of the Dallas art community after 1963. “Dallasites: Charting Contemporary Art, 1963 to Present,” also funded by the Texas Fund for Curatorial Research, will establish the DMA as the primary archive in North Texas for contemporary art.

I can’t say whether any of the artists in the database deserve national attention, but if they do, they would make the DMA distinctive. And wouldn’t it be great if the museum discovered some underappreciated talent?

Above is a painting, picked at random, by Everett Spruce (1908-2002) called Swollen Stream.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the DMA