Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

ArtPrize: The People And the Jury Pick Same Winner

-1e78abae0ca8f699In a remarkable development, the Grand, No. 1 ArtPrize–the open, two-track competition in Grand Rapids–went to the same artist: Anila Quayyum Agha’s entry was chosen by both the public and a jury of art experts. Her piece, called Intersections, uses light to project Islamic imagery in shadows.  Or as she wrote:

…the geometrical patterning in Islamic sacred spaces, associated with certitude is explored in a way that reveals it fluidity. The viewer is invited to confront the contradictory nature of all intersections, while simultaneously exploring boundaries. My goal is to explore the binaries of public and private, light and shadow, and static and dynamic by relying on the purity and inner symmetry of geometric design, and the interpretation of the cast shadows. The form of the design and its layered, multidimensional variations will depend both on the space in which it is installed, the arrangement of the installation, and the various paths that individuals take while experiencing the space. The Intersections project takes the seminal experience of exclusion as a woman from a space of community and creativity such as a Mosque and translates the complex expressions of both wonder and exclusion that have been my experience while growing up in Pakistan. The wooden frieze emulates a pattern from the Alhambra, which was poised at the intersection of history, culture and art and was a place where Islamic and Western discourses, met and co-existed in harmony and served as a testament to the symbiosis of difference….

Alltold, ArtPrize winner this year were awarded $540,000. and Agha, who teaches drawing in Indianapolis, took home $300,000 of that. There’s asterisk, however, because the experts–Susan Sollins, Leonardo Drew, and Katharina Grosse–split their Juried Grand Prizem and gave half the $200,000 prize money to a piece called The Haircraft Project by Sonya Clark.

-7d3bf733b3cecf88When ArtPrize announced a change in this year’s contest, namely that the public prize and the expert prize would be equal in size, it also said “ArtPrize hopes to amplify and expand the conversation about the differences and similarities in the public’s and experts’ opinions.” I thought that was a good thing. I did not anticipate that the two would be decide the same, but that is far from a bad thing.

More than 41,000 individuals cast votes in this year’s contest.

The Grand Rapids Press has the story, with slides, and also a series of about 30 photos of Intersections, and it’s well worth a look. Interstingly, Michigan Gov., Republican Rick Snyder, who after months of suspense thankfully helped save the Detroit Institute of Arts during the ongoing Detroit bankruptcy case, showed up at the ArtPrize awards in Grand Rapids. Of course, he is in a race to continue as governor, and it was a good place to campaign. Still, there were probably other good places to campaign last week, when the prize was announced.

Here’s a list of all winners.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Grand Rapids Press

 

 

 

 

A Participatory Exhibit I Can Applaud (I Think)

WPhillipsContrary to some belief out there, I’m not against all participatory, experiential activities in art museums. (I don’t believe museums should be as quiet as cathedrals, either, but that’s another post.) Here’s a participartory program that sounds, in advance, without my being there, like a good one.

It’s at the Freer-Sackler Galleries* in Washington: in conjunction with the opening on Saturday of Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips and “International Archaeology Day” on Oct. 18, the museum has scheduled a slew of special events running from Oct. 12-18.

For example, on the 18th, in a family-day activity, visitors can:

…discover what it’s like to work on an archaeological dig in the remote deserts of Arabia. At 1:15 pm, join docents in the exhibition to read original records and see treasures from an actual expedition in the 1950s. At 2 pm, families are invited to explore the exhibition and then participate in a hands-on learning project in the ImaginAsia classroom. At 3:15 pm, meet archaeologist Zaydoon Zaid, who has led expeditions in Yemen and was an advisor for Unearthing Arabia.

I love that they are looking at original handwritten notebooks, photographs,  and film clips from these excavations in Yemen, where Phillips (pictured at right) dug during a massive expedition in the 1950s.

Outside the museum–try envisioning this–the Freer-Sackler has created:

…Washington’s first interactive scratch-off billboards, featuring images of Yemeni sand dunes that can be “excavated” to reveal treasures and images from the exhibition…[thus giving]…Washington commuters a chance to play the archaeologist in everyday life. The advertisements will go up Oct. 13 in bus shelters at 11th and E streets N.W. and Seventh and H streets N.W. and will remain on view during the initial weeks of the exhibition. A limited edition of postcard-sized versions will be available at the Sackler for budding expedition leaders to take home as a complimentary memento.

Lion=TimnaThat’s an experiment–and I’m not sure it’ll work, but hey, why not? At least it is about the excavated artifacts.

Unearthing Arabia is showing some wonderful artifacts from the dig, of course. There will be “a pair of striding Hellenistic bronze lions surmounted by a boyish rider… known as the ‘Lions of Timna,’” (at left) as well as an alabaster head of a young woman whose eyebrows are made of lapis lazuli, a gold necklace, carved incense burners, funerary sculpture and so on.

In an email to the press, the Freer calls the exhibit “multisensory,” and so I asked what that meant. I learned from the press office that it meant they were going beyond traditional wall labels:

…we wanted to rely more on video and sound [to] recreate the dramatic mood of Wendell’s memoirs and some of the sights/sounds of the expedition. (Lots of video is very unusual for us, we’re normally highly object-based).  The walls in the galleries are used for large-scale, almost floor-to-ceiling projections that combine quotes, original video, soundtrack, animated lines from his field diaries and telegrams, and B&W and color photographs in a moving, shifting cinematic video.

On the programming side, our educational team will set up an occasional station with sand and sherds from the museum’s study collections,  so that visitors can use real archaeological tools and get their hands a little dirty.

Wendell’s dime-store novel, Sheba’s Buried City, is also part of the mix.

What makes this better than some so-called experiential or participatory exhibits? The art, it seems to me, is at the center here; the rest is designed to engage people with the art.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Freer-Sackler

* I consult to a foundation that supports the Freer-Sackler

 

 

Anselm Kiefer Talks About Beauty In Art

I’d wager that most people don’t think of “beauty” when they think of the art of Anselm Kiefer. So when Janne Siren, the director of the Alrbight-Knox Art Gallery, and I met last week, I was surprised by the catalogue he gave me for the Kiefer exhibition that, alas, closed there on Sunday. It was titled Beyond Landscape, and here’s part of its description:

Anselm Kiefer: Beyond Landscape explores the interplay of history, identity, and landscape in the work of one of the most important artists of our time. Several major works by Kiefer (German, born 1945) form the core of the exhibition. These include the Albright-Knox’s newly acquired der Morgenthau Plan (The Morgenthau Plan), 2012, a monumental panorama inundated with wildflowers that proliferate in the landscape surrounding the artist’s studio complex in Barjac, France…

The Morgenthau Plan is indeed a beautiful piece (see below); it was on view at Gagosian in 2013. I cite it here because in the Beyond Landscape catalogue, in an interview Siren conducted with Kiefer in Croissy, France, Kiefer tells how that work came about:

I had these wonderful photographs of Barjac, of flowers, fields of poppies, all kinds of flowers, like those you find in Monet’s paintings. I liked these photographs very much.

Then here, in Croissy [near Paris, where he also has a studio], I started to paint the flowers because I wasn’t there, in Southern France, anymore. And I thought, “Ugh, flowers! What can I do with this? This is nonsense–flowers!” And I realized I needed to combine them with a negative or cynical element, and I said to myself, “Oh, I can make a Morgenthau series. And in this series Germany will be covered with beautiful flowers, will be wonderful, because as a result of the Morgenthau Plan there will be no more industry, no more highways, just flowers.” This was a cynical idea. And sometimes artists have cynical ideas–well, they feel guilty. So I felt guilty for doing these nice things, for painting pretty flowers. And then I saw how other people reacted to the paintings–they liked them so much, and I thought, “Oh!”

So Kiefer felt he could paint beauty if it were not about beauty–the Morgenthau Plan, bruited in 1944 by Henry Morgenthau, exerted revenge on Germany; it was squelched by FDR but used by Hitler as propaganda. (It’s posted online in this PDF.)

TheMorgenthauPlan

The Albright-Knox placed wall texts explaining the “cynicism” behind the work, and Siren, in the catalogue, then says “And yet I see people experiencing beauty in front of your work, and, quite frankly, I think it is okay….because for many years in Europe the art establishment regarded the very notion of beauty as something distasteful or something to be shunned….”

Not just Europe, I would add, but in the U.S. too–and it’s not over. In fact, his comments above prove that–he reacted with horror to his beautiful work because it lacked negativity.

Kiefer had a response, though:

I think beauty is first. And then comes the counterpoint. I always say that Matisse was the most desperate person. He did these wonderful paintings, just fantastic. He was not doing well at the end of his life. He was ill. He was not a pleasant man. And he was not photogenic like Picasso. But he did works that are more beautiful than those of Picasso. Beauty needs a foundation. Beauty needs a foundation.

To a certain extent, he’s right. And to a certain extent, that’s sad.

Additionally, it’s something to think about at a moment when MoMA is about to open an exhibit of Matisse cut-outs, the, yes, beautiful works he made at the end of his life.

As for Kiefer, he has a big show at White Cube in London this fall and both The Telegraph and the Financial Times have done interviews that touch further on his views of beauty.

And apropos of my recent post on the Albright-Knox’s need for expansion, the museum is buying The Morgenthau Plan (2012).  It’s a big work–more than 9 ft by more than 18 ft.  Where’s it going to go?

Photo Credit: Courtesy the Gagosian Gallery, photograph by Charles Duprat, via the Albright-Knox.

 

Clyfford Still Museum Revisited

PH-613, 1942Life is constricted, to some extent, for all single-artist museums–and more than most at the Clyfford Still Museum. As decreed by the artist, it can never exhibit works by any other artist and it can’t have a restaurant or auditorium, among other things. Yet almost about three years ago, in November, 2011, it opened in Denver.

When I received a press release a while back announcing its tenth special exhibition, opening this coming Friday–The War Begins: Clyfford Still’s Paths to Abstraction–I thought it was time to check in and see how it is doing. The answer is pretty well, thanks.

As I report for an article published yesterday on The Art Newspaper website:

…the museum has received 38,562 visitors in 2014—already close to the 40,000 the museum originally projected for an entire year and likely to surpass last year’s total of 42,685. In 2012, its first full year, the museum attracted 61,204 visitors.

More impressive, to me, are those 10 shows, all but one curated by director Dean Sobel, consulting curator David Anfam, or the two of them together. The lone exception was organized by the chief conservator,  James Squires. They include, aside from two inaugural survey exhibitions:

…“Vincent/Clyfford”, featuring paintings and works on paper created during Still’s early years, when his subjects and palette echoed van Gogh’s (timed to coincide with the Denver Art Museum’s “Becoming van Gogh”; “Memory, Myth & Magic”, which exhibited Still’s works that allude to ancient cultures, artistic traditions and his memories; “The Art of Conservation: Understanding Clyfford Still”, which explained Still’s materials and working methods plus the ways conservators are striving to preserve his works; and “1959: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery Exhibition Recreated”, which mimicked one of the few museum exhibitions of his work in his lifetime.

More details at the above link, including some of Sobel’s plans for next year. He has plenty to work, as about half of the 825 paintings the museum owns haven’t yet been unrolled since their shipment from art storage in Maryland. And very few people are familiar with Still’s drawings–many didn’t even know they existed–which number about 2,350.

PH-620, 1942The exhibit opening Friday, the museum said in a press release, “highlights the previously unknown dialogue between Still’s work in war industries and his early breakthrough into abstraction.” I’ve provided two paintings from it here (both from 1942), and here’s the museum’s web description.

In fact, because Still’s work remains largely unknown, Sobel has had to change tactics for his special shows: He had learned that he shouldn’t clear out all nine of the museum’s galleries, but rather that special shows are best implanted in the chronology the museum presents. Visitors want to learn Still’s narrative.

The permanent collection narrative changes anyway: in a rotation that starts this month, 53 works on paper will be hung, 40 of which have never been exhibited publicly.

If there has been a disappointment, Sobel says, it’s the lack of national critical review, except perhaps for its opening. Granted, not many critics are traveling beyond the coasts  very often, but it would be great if they weighed in on these special exhibits. As for the museum world, Sobel said, “a lot of my colleagues have only been visiting recently.”

His neighbor, director Christoph Heinrich of the Denver Art Museum, says the Still museum is “part of the conversation here in town,” and not least because of the special exhibits. But also, he said, because “it’s an incredibly in-depth look at the work of one really influential artist. Every artist knew him, but the public didn’t because he exerted so much control.”

Photo Credits: © City and County of Denver

Metropolitan Museum Rescues Egyptian Antiquities

TreasureHeregehLast week, as Bonhams in London was preparing to auction a lot of second millennium B.C. Egyptian antiquities consigned by the St. Louis Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the Metropolitan Museum of Art* stepped in. Bonhams withdrew the lot, estimated at £80,000 – 120,000 (US$ 130,000 – 190,000), and the Met purchased the Treasure of Harageh items (one pictured at left).

There’s no word on what the Met paid.

I tell the whole tale, tipped off by an item by the Associated Press, in an item on Art-Antiques-Design. That’s a website based in the U.K. for which I began writing twice-monthly items back in July.

Among the topics covered on that site, in addition to the Met rescue, are dealer opportunities at the Crystal Bridges State of the Art exhibition, a new auction site called Bidquare and deaccessioning ethics for dealers.

I don’t plan to call your attention to everything I write for AAD, though, so I hope you will go there on your own from time to time.

Meanwhile, the site Looting Matters has published an item on another item withdrawn from Bonhams Oct. 2 sale–a Roman marble herm whose collecting history seems amiss.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Bonhams

*I consult to a Foundation that supports the Met.