Cy Twombly: Sculpture at the Chicago Museum of Art

I tend to think of Cy Twombly more as a painter than a sculptor, although the artist has created sculptures throughout his career, as can be seen in this intimate exhibition at the Art Institute. Twombly's sculptures tend to be composed of everyday found objects, put on a pedestal, and unified by a coat of white paint. This formalizes the objects as works of art, and gives them a timeless feel that is ethereal even while it is rough and tough. While the spare constructions are evocative of archaic relics, the presentation is absolutely modern. Their names of times and places suggest journal entries, sculptures of memories.

Untitled, Bassano in Teverina, 1989
Wood, plaster, nails, traces of red and blue paint, glue, and white paint

Untitled, New York, 1955
Wood, cloth, nails, and house paint

Untitled, Lexington, 1948
Wood, porcelain and metal knobs, cloth, and house paint

Radcliffe Bailey's Ships and Sea

In the Garden, 2008

Atlanta has this interesting past that makes you want to dig deeper and understand what was once there, even though it may be covered...Sherman burnt down the city. They say when you want to get rid of something, you burn it, but you don’t really get rid of it. I can look out my back door and see a lot -- Radcliffe Bailey via NY Times

Radcliffe Bailey's work Seven Steps, above, was on view at the Georgia Museum of Art when I went recently, and I love the layered colors and use of materials offset by the sepia photograph. It was recently part of an exhibition at the High Museum in Atalanta that I just missed, Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine, showcasing the Atlanta-based artist's work on its biggest level yet. Bailey uses a variety of materials to explore history both personal and collective, and he engages memory as a device to encourage healing through art.

Tricky, 2008

Bailey is maybe better know for a layering of imagery, culturally resonant materials, and text that began when he was given some old family photographs to work with. But looking at the images from the exhibition, I was really drawn to some of his more sculptural pieces, like Tricky, above. A textured black surface juxtaposed with the jaunty tilt of the hat encase a slave ship. In The Antelope, he again presents a black ship, this time encased in glass like a fossil and sailing over white cloth/paper. 

The Antelope, 2010

The large installation Windward Coast creates a rolling ocean of piano keys harvested from some 400 pianos, suggesting the oceans traversed in the slave trade and in their midst a lone black head, the same glittery texture as the ship in Tricky, appears.

Detail view of Windward Coast

The artist does not consider his work to be solely dark or only about slavery however (as you might not realize by the pieces I'm showing here). Regarding Windward Coast, he told the New York Times, “I think about all the music that was probably played on those keys. An ocean is something that divides people. Music is something that connects people. Duke Ellington or Thelonious Monk -- it’s a different sound that takes you somewhere else. It’s also about being at peace.”

Installation View, Memory as Medicine at the High Museum

More about the exhibition here and images of the artist's work here.

Regional Favorites from the Georgia Museum of Art

Horizons, Steinunn Þórarinsdóttir

My hometown, Athens, Georgia, doesn't always change much, but when I visited recently the Georgia Museum of Art was showing off its new renovation, which featured an extensive addition to show more of the permanent collection.  It's a beautiful renovation in general and it was fantastic to see the new galleries showing so much of the permanent collection. 

There is also a new sculpture garden, currently filled with bronze sculptures by Icelandic artist Steinunn Þórarinsdóttir (don't ask me how to pronounce that.) However, one of the noticeable features of the permanent collections was a regional focus in the works. It felt like home--and it also felt refreshingly different from so much of the work I see here in New York.

Some of my favorites:

Tallulah Falls, 1841, George Cooke

My Forebearers Were Pioneers, 1939, Philip Evergood

The White House, 1945, Georges Schreiber

Seven Steps, 1994, Radcliffe Bailey

Detail, Seven Steps

Georgia II, 2008, Leo Twiggs

American Favorites from the Art Institute

Woman (Elevation), 1927, Bronze, Gaston Lachaise in front of A Vision, 1925, Joseph Stella

Cow's Skull with a Calico Rose, 1931, Georgia O'Keefe

Bouy, 1941, Peter Blume

Head of Pavlova, 1924, Malvina Hoffman

Rich and vivid color: Chagall's America Window

Marc Chagall's America Windows were one of delightful surprises I encountered at the Art Institute this weekend in Chicago. Apparently recently re-installed after a long restoration, this large tripartite stained glass glows with the fantastic color you associate with Chagall.

Originally installed in 1977, Chagall created the windows as a gift to the city of Chicago. Stained glass was a medium he came to later in life - in his 70s - but he managed to create many notable works. Here he celebrates America's bicentennial with symbols of America as well as more idiosyncratic ones.

Chagall employed a stain glass artist to make the pieces according to his specifications. Then he painted the glass with metallic oxide paints that were heated to fuse the color and design permanently to the glass. The entire image glows with rich and vivid color.

Click on any of the images for a larger view.

Which one is the doppelganger?

The doppelganger is an always unsettling idea. While today you might use the word to refer to a double or lookalike, historically a doppelganger represented evil and misfortune in a paranormal form and seeing a doppelganger almost always conincided with an unfortunate event. Swiss artist Cornelia Hediger tackles the darker connotation in her current show up at Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn.

Hediger constructs complex narratives in this set of photos featuring two women posing together in different ways. These colorful and rich images suggest a narrative with a cast of two, or perhaps one, characters whose relationship is ambiguous and darkly suggestive.

2/15/08 

I love how she distorts perpective in these photos, so that above the woman in pink appears much small than the woman in black, and below the bed makes them both appear tiny.

12/03./07

I really enjoyed them, but as I viewed one after another I began to feel they were overly staged. There were so many props that the models enagaged with, when often their body language was the most telling and real part of the photo.

More images and exhibition details here. Cornelia Hediger is up at Klompching Gallery through October 21.

Caption Contest

"So close"

From my walk to work this morning, a lost half-mannequin on the street. Does anyone else want to play the "what is she thinking game"?

"I wonder if this is how Venus d'Milo got started."

"Well, my mother was right. She always said Steve had an obsession with that chain saw. And it was just one limb after another."

Cheryl Molnar's Landscape Collages

The Hamlet

Cheryl Molnar is a collage and multimedia artist, and in fact what I first thought were sharp-edged paintings are carefully composed and assembled landscapes. Unfortunately, my camera is adding the 70s yellowish cast to these photographs (and no, this is not an Instagram filter, just a bad photo). I liked how her landscapes captured the quintessence of places, even as the collage pieces fractured the space into geometric, almost abstract designs.

Detail of collage

The edges show just a bit at the end, and you can also see the transparency of the layers here.

Industrial Park

Voila--something not yellowed...! But I'll spare you and just show you some of the lovely images you can also find on her website: 

New Highway

American Dream

Park Homes