If I had my druthers, I’d be Houston right now — and not just because it’s sunny and warm there, whereas just-ended March has been one of the rainiest ever in New York City.

I’d be there to see the Alice Neel exhibition that opened on Mar. 21 at the Museum of Fine Arts, its only venue in the U.S. That part makes me glad, in one sense: the exhibit will travel instead to Whitechapel Gallery in London and then to Moderna Museet in Malmo, Sweden, and if Neel deserves more appreciation in the U.S. — and she does — she merits international exposure even more.

Neel’s estate maintains a website for her, with a bio on its home page that labels her a pioneer, an apt description — for she was a brave painter. She went her own way, no matter what the rest of the art world did and no matter what the world said. 

The exhibition, called Alice Neel: Painted Truths, includes 68 paintings from throughout her career, with the curators simply picking her best works, mainly her portraits and cityscapes. Bravo. If greatest hits exhibits are out-of-fashion, so what?

The catalogue contains three artists’ appreciations: Frank Auerbach writes that “Alice does not need my encomium,” and concludes a few lines later saying she is one of his heroes. Chris Ofili is likewise short, writing a verse called “Thoughts On The Love That Forgives” referring to Neel’s acuity (I think). But leave it to Marlene Dumas to describe how Neel painted modern portraits, locating her subjects. Dumas writes:

…She painted people.

Most figurative painting is not about people and seldom about “characters.” Philip Guston painted cartoons. Warhol painted public images. Chuck Close uses portraiture to paint about painting; Alex Katz paints the cool; and Elizabeth Peyton paints dreams…

Dumas also notes that “the unflattering criticism she received about her nude self-portrait at age eighty [left] is unforgivably stupid.”

No matter. Alice Neel simply painted what she wanted, the way she wanted. As MFA director, Peter Marzio, says in his Preface, “This is genius, pure and simple.”

Interestingly, the market has caught on as well. As Art + Auction recently wrote, dealers are now selling her to contemporary collectors, rather than American art collectors. And when the Cleveland Museum of Art purchased her painting of Jackie Curtis and Rita Red last fall for $1.65 million, versus a presale estimate of $400,000 to $500,000, MFAH was the underbidder. 

Moderna Museet is billing Neel as a contemporary artist as well, though she was born in 1900 and died in 1984. There, she is the first artist in a new series of four exhibits per year called Moderna Museet Now. Love it.

Photo Credit: Last Sickness, 1953, Philadelphia Museum of Art (top); National Gallery of Art (bottom), both © Estate of Alice Neel.

 

Architectural bloggers are suddenly talking about the soon-to-be-opened Centre Pompidou-Metz, in Alsace-Lorraine. So naturally I went looking for pictures — a little eye candy. Here are a few:

The building looks “interesting,” shall we say? Early commentary insists that it will be fine as galleries, but the discussions so far have been larded with the adjective “incredible,” which leads me to believe that some press release somewhere used that description and bloggers/writers are going along.

Three long, adjoining galleries that provide 54,000 sq ft of exhibition space sit under that spired roof, which some have compared to a Chinese hat. They are situated at slightly different levels, but are bridged somehow. Each one juts out through the roof via a glass-walled window, providing different views of the city. At the center of the building, which will be surrounded by a terrace and sculpture gardens, is an atrium. The building also incorporates an auditorium, gift shop, resource center, cafe and restaurant.

Centre Pompidou-Metz opens in May with the exhibition, Chefs d-Ouevre?, described as follows:

Chefs-d’Å“uvre? looks at the notion of the masterpiece, past, present and future. Is this notion still relevant today? Who decides what is a masterpiece and what isn’t? Once a masterpiece, always a masterpiece?

…Of the 780 works on show, 700 have been loaned to the Centre Pompidou-Metz by the Centre Pompidou. Some have rarely been loaned before, such as Calder’s Josephine Baker IV, Klein’s Grande anthropophagie bleue (ANT 76), and Picasso’s Woman with Red Head. The exhibition also includes specially-commissioned pieces by contemporary artists.

More information at the website.

Photo Credits: Courtesy Centre Pompidou-Metz

 

Art Historian Francis V. O’Connor has published his book, The Mural in America: Wall Painting in the United State from Prehistory to the Present, online — free, usable by all. It’s not an e-book. It’s a book in the form of a website.

O’Connor, you’ll recall, wrote the catalogue raisonne for Jackson Pollock, along with Eugene V. Thaw, among other books. He has been working on this mural book for 30 years and, as he explains on the website for it, he could not get a publisher for a book of this size and scope, and decided instead to put the whole thing up online.

The Mural in America website is probably not what most people envision as online publishing — it’s too traditional. You can go to a tab called Table of Contents, and choose from chapters and topics with the chapters, just as you can flip to a page in a paper book. When you choose a chapter, or topic, you turn the page by clicking on “Next” at the bottom of the text (or “Previous” if you want to go back). The website/book is searchable. 

The illustrations are way too few and too small, like this on, at right, for Brumidi’s Capitol rotunda (Chapter 13) for a book about murals.

But then again, O’Connor warns that he didn’t write a picture book.

He provides a helpful “How to Read This Book” on the site, and even explains how he wants it footnoted.

In his announcement of the book, O’Connor wrote:

The purpose of this electronic publication is to make available to scholars, students, muralists, artists and the general public – at no charge – the text of a book that fills a gap in our understanding of the development of American art and culture. Being readable, citable, searchable and augmentable, my ambition is that this book shall grow over the years – and inspire more scholarly research in the field of the American mural that this book opens up for the first time.

That’s a real service.

 

Well, now I know: in January, when Red, the play about Mark Rothko, was playing in London, and possibly coming to New York, I posted what the guides and reviewers there were saying about the play (mostly positive things), ending with the line: “the critics said the play goes on about art, too. I’ m eager to hear exactly what…”

I saw Red, which is in previews, over the weekend. I agree with London’s critics that the play, starring Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his assistant, Ken, is brilliantly acted — they shine on Broadway, too. The play, by John Logan, is more talk than action, except for one fabulous scene in which the two prime a canvas with blood red in a frenzied bit of choreography, but it never drags.

And Rothko does give a few art lessons, praising Caravaggio, van Gogh and Matisse (specifically his Red Studio at MoMA), referring approvingly to Velazques and Monet, and dissing Pollock.

“Don’t think you understand them,” he says at one point, advising Ken to spend a lifetime with the great painters he cites.

And although he takes pride in helping to kill Cubism, Rothko is upset that the young artists (this is the late 1950s) Johns, Rauschenberg, Stella and Lichtenstein are “out to murder me.” Let alone Warhol. To Rothko, they’re not serious artists; they are making “zeitgeist art.”  “Art shouldn’t only be popular,” Rothko advises. “I’m here to stop your heart. I’m not here to make pretty pictures.”

A few more choice bits:

• “Where’s the discernment that separates what I like from what I respect?”
• “You can not be an artist until you are civilized.”
• “Most of painting is thinking; 10% is putting paint on canvas.”

Ken lands some comments, too, of course. Most particularly, he asks, after listening and listening, “Who is good enough to own your art, or even to see your art?”

Good stuff. I liked the play a lot. The audience did too. It opens on Apr. 1. Will it attract people from outside the visual arts, yes. Will it get them interested in the visual arts? Some, I’d venture, yes. Others, maybe.

Photo Credit: Photo by Johan Persson, Courtesy of Red

 

My mind is divided over an initiative in Virginia called “Minds Wide Open,” which is under the financial aegis of the Virginians for the Arts Foundation. Between March and June, Virginia, through MWO, is celebrating “Women in the Arts” statewide, in a series of events planned by various groups and venues.

The celebration is apparently an outgrowth of roundtable meetings among 22 Virginia large arts groups in 2007: They decided to collaborate to raise the visibility of the arts. They chose women for their first attempt, this year, because it was “the most engaging and accessible theme” discussed.

So, for example, the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk is showing Women of the Chrysler: A 400-Year Celebration of the Arts, which it calls

an extraordinary new exhibition dedicated to the works of women artists – all of them drawn from our permanent collection. The exhibition traces the course of women’s ever-expanding contributions to the arts in Europe, America, and eventually the world through four chronological sections and three centerpiece installations, which are on view from March 24 to July 18.

It includes works by Harriet Cany Peale, Mary Cassatt, Käthe Kollwitz, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Louise Nevelson, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Cappy Thompson. That’s Ilse Bing’s New York, the Elevated, and Me, from 1936, above.

As the MWO literature says, “Any individual or group can participate by presenting at least one public program–including plays, choreography, compositions, and exhibitions of paintings, photography or films that have been created by women or feature women as the primary focus.” More than 4,500 performances, exhibitions and other “opportunities” have been registered — everything from an after-school performing arts program for teenage girls in Roanoke to fiber arts event at a community center in Richmond.

 

So what’s my problem with this? I’ve often advocated for regional collaboration among arts groups.  

 

On the other hand, I don’t believe in ghettoizing women artists. Does this celebration raise their profile, or patronize them? Unclear. And it doesn’t help that the theme for next year is “Virginia Celebrates Children And the Arts.” Some people are going to read right over the difference between “In” and “And.” Can you imagine a celebration of men in the arts?

 

In the end, it all depends on the execution, which is likely to be inconsistent.

 

I do commend Virginia for trying to raise the profile of the arts, and making much of its thinking available to others. Minds Wide Open has a website with helpful guidelines, templates, logos, and other resources. And you can read a couple of press releases here and here.

 

Photo Credits: Courtesy the Chrysler Museum (top); Minds Wide Open (bottom).