Blog Hiatus

Taking a summer vacation is standard in most jobs, so considering how much time I sometimes spend blogging I'm giving myself a break. In case you were beginning to get jealous that I was sunning or adventuring somewhere fabulous, don't worry. I'm just taking some time to adjust to my new job and find a new apartment, hopefully ridding myself of a ghastly two hour commute in the near future.

The commute is very handy for tweeting, however, in case you want to look me up there. Until then, happy summer and happy arting!

Governor's Island: The Little Pleasure Island Next to Manhattan

It's not only because its a quirky little green spot of land looking over its sprawling lawns and old buildings toward Manhattan. One free ferry ride over and you arrived at a Pleasure Island, full of people picnicking, riding bikes, eating ice cream, and far stranger things: like dressing up as flappers and dancing to 1920s tunes or even taking trapeze classes.

Last summer's art festival was more prevalent, but this year they still had the artist-designed minigolf course (love) and on the lawn next to it a group of playful installations that adults as much as children seemed to enjoy. I especially loved the bright graphic birds of Flock to Living.

Priscila De Carvahlo: 2 NY Shows

New work from an artist  I saw at Praxis's Pulse art fair booth, who left me with a bright, urban impression that her website reinforces with playfulness. I thought to put both the Jamaica Center and the Museum of Contemporary Africa Diaspora Arts on my mental "go see" list, and wanted to share.

Oil Fields, Priscila De Carvahlo

St. John's Day, Priscila De Carvahlo

Jean-Michel Basquiat at Film Forum

For once a press release was sent to me that was topical and handy. Via my inbox, this was from Gagosian yesterday:

JEAN-MCHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD
PRODUCED and DIRECTED BY TAMRA DAVIS

Wednesday, July 21 – Tuesday, August 3 • Two Weeks
Showtimes: 1:15, 3:15, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00 • Tickets available online beginnning July 14


"Tamra Davis creates a dazzling sense of the '80s New York art scene."
– Caryn James, Newsweek

The meteoric rise and fall of Jean-Michel Basquiat, born 1960. In the crime-ridden NYC of the 1970s, he covers the city with the graffiti tag SAMO. In 1981 he puts paint on canvas for the first time, and by 1983 he is an artist with "rock star status." In 1985 he and Andy Warhol become close friends and painting collaborators, but they part ways and Warhol dies suddenly in 1987. Basquiat's heroin addiction worsens, and he dies of an overdose in 1988. The artist was 25 years old at the height of his career, and today his canvases sell for more than a million dollars. With compassion and insight, Tamra Davis details the mysteries that surround this charismatic young man, an artist of enormous talent whose fortunes mirrored the rollercoaster quality of the downtown scene he seemed to embody.

USA • 2010 • 90 MINS. • ARTHOUSE FILMS

• Q & A with Director Tamra Davis after the 8:00 show on Wednesday, July 21st and Thursday July 22nd
•Q&A with Fab 5 Freddy to follow the 8:00 show on Friday, July 23rd

To purchase tickets online: Film Forum | Box Office

Just in case you've developed a similar fascination with the odd cast of characters I wrote about yesterday.

Collaborators: Andy Warhol, Basquiat, and Clemente

Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is full of surprises for those who aren't familiar with Andy's later career, and while the work is far from consistently great, it does pack a few gens in and quite a few interesting moments (i.e. 80s music videos produced by and including cameos of Warhol).  The exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art is the first U.S. museum survey to examine Warhol's later work, a period marked by prolific experimentation.

In October 1982, the Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger introduced Warhol to a young painter of the Neo-Expressionist movement, Jean-Michel Basquiat. The two developed a close relationship that lasted nearly three years. The collaborated on paintings in the studio in the afternoon and went clubbing at night.

Relaxing the extraordinary potential of their collaboration, Bischoberger commissioned a series of works by Warhol, Basquiat and the Italian painter Francesco Clemente. The artists would send the canvas to each other's studio and work on it in turn. In Origin of Cotton, above, you can see Warhol's yellow flower, Clemente's painterly heads, and Basquiat's white screen printed lines and words. It's not my favorite work from any of the artist's oeuvres, but it is fascinating to think of these great artists from different generations and styles working together on pieces.

Contemporary Tibetan Artists Transform Tradition

Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond makes a strong case for the awesomeness of the Ruben Museum and the vibrancy of Himalayan art. Nine contemporary artists from Tibet created works who handle the Tibetan art traditions passed down to them with a knowledge, use, and comment on the West. The differences between the Western world where these artists practice and their Tibetan roots is a mjor theme, as one can see in one of Gonkar Gyatso's self portraits above. All the artists showed some very strong work, both in its own right and in conjunction with the rest of the Rubin museum, which provides such a great background on the tradition that these artists have inherited.

 Losang Gyatso has some beautiful work up, including my favorite, above. His latest digitally-manipulated prints glow with bright, unfocused colors. This image was inspired by a traditional piece in the permanent collection.

 Tsherin Sherpa, Untitled, 2010

Sherpa's work, above, reminded me strongly of the recent Takashi Murakami exhibition at Gagosian. Murakami also includes a plethora of brightly colored skulls in this large scale painting that references Japanese Bhuddist tradition (detail left). It is not uncommon to see dancing and smiling
skulls in traditional Tibetan Bhuddist art, although perhaps not in neon hues. While in Sherpa's work, each tiny skull is painted, Gonkar Gyatsu often uses skull stickers and others to create images based on traditional presentations of the Bhudda.


If you haven't made it to the Rubin Museum yet, try to check it out while Tradition Transformed is still on view through October 18.

Colorful Morning in Brighton Beach

As I told you my new habitat is Brighton Beach, just a stretch of boardwalk down from Coney Island (home of the infamous 4th of July hot dog eating contest). To take advantage of my new surroundings, and because I feel compelled to do uncomfortable things that are good for me, I have started jogging.

Howl says the circus poster. I felt like howling myself, if I had the breath to, but luckily it's an interesting stretch of boardwalk to torture yourself on: full of joggers and sunbathers and swimmers. Even at 7 AM on a Saturday morning, the old people had made their way down to the shore line for sunbathing and calisthenics.

Barnum and Bailey circus has set up their tents just past Coney Island and before a gorgeous old landmark that is now a roller rink. The man in front was sporting a very chipper boating outfit complete with ship's captain hat.

Then, just as I was starting to feel really proud of my panting and puffing, I came across what appeared to be hundreds of  penguins. It turns out they were triathletes in wetsuits. It was a little demoralizing, but not as much as seeing people three times my age jogging past me.

At this point you might be wondering whatever happened to that art blog I had been writing--me too. I can't think why I'm dribbling on about my morning run except that all my mental space is currently occupied by my new job. Yesterday was my first day, and I left quite excited about some of the projects I will be working on. If you'll bear with me a bit though, I have some lovely interesting art posts that I'm working on as well.

Life Is Beautiful (on Twitter)

Beautiful images from the photography blog Life is Beautiful, which you might have delighted in already if you followed me on Twitter @linnea_west.

I'm not saying twitter is the best or only way to learn things; I'm just saying you should check out the dynamic spread of awesome information. I've totally been sucked in.

But with peaches like that, how can you resist biting in?

g

Standing In: Me and Pistoletto's Standing Couple

Michaelangelo Pistoletto, Standing Man, Standing Woman with Hat, 1980

The contagion of self-portraiture carried on, from the mirrors of the Kiki Smith exhibition (reviewed here) to the mirrors of the contemporary art galleries at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Pistoletto's two figures on mirror seem to be facing me and the red wall installation behind me. It looks like we are carrying on an awkward conversation, perhaps because I am in color while they are stuck in black and white.

If one is going to look at art, and think about art, and write about art, after a bit shouldn't that person join the art? Oscar Wilde said that “One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art." Surely with a little smoke and mirrors, or maybe just mirrors, I can get past this silly division of art and life and do both.

"All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life." -Oscar Wilde 

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall...

Maybe, just maybe, I spent a little too much time on this...

But the mirrors in Kiki Smith: Sojourn exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art were just calling to me.

In a way, it's rather appropriate to insert another women in her work,

even if I couldn't quite capture the perfect self-portrait I had imagined.

Kiki Smith: Sojourn at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

As a part of the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Kiki Smith: Sojourn exhibition is nearly perfect in how it compliments the collection and the space. It arcs, or triangulates rather, around Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in a series of small rooms. The choice of using rooms was designed by the artist to mimic the traditional sphere of woman.

This exhibition view of the first room suggests the interaction between the varied pieces. It places Smith's works, of woman, birds, light bulbs, chairs, and sticks, in delightful relation with each other, making the entire effect of each room greater than the sum of its parts. Overall, one gets an impression of pale, fragile, fluttering, glittering movement that feels ethereal while a sort of earthy honesty in her drawings and the rough materials she often uses keeps the work grounded in the real.

The woman of these pale images are scratched out as portraits rather than archetypes. The figures are presented large, full length, and often with serious or reflective expressions that suggest a gravitas at contrast with the light, crumpled paper they are drawn on. On the other hand, her sturdy sculptures take on the monolithic cast of ancient goddesses, and also serve to ground work that might float with with glitter and light. Interspersed with these representation of women are sculptural installations of glitter light bulbs and flowers painted on glass.

The final room of the exhibition centers around a pine casket opened slightly to reveal glass flowers springing up. The mix of solidity and delicateness is in line with the other works, but here seems much more pointed and affecting. 

In ending the show with this work, Smith also hearkens back to the 18th C. needlework by Prudence Punderson placed near the beginning of the exhibition, which illustrates a women's journey from birth to death. Some things never change.

 Prudence Punderson, The First, Second and Last Scene of Mortality,1776-1783

Kiki Smith: Sojourn is up through September 12 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.