Victory

Rocky statue, steps of Philadelphia Museum of Art

At least of the personal sort.

I've been awarded a Fulbright grant to research contemporary Hungarian art. Things are still up in the air (and contingent on getting medical clearance and visas and such) but it looks like I will be in Hungary September through May. I still can't quite believe the good news, but I feel sure once it sinks in I will be incredibly excited  thrilled over the moon.

If you have any contacts or suggestions for Budapest, or Hungary in general, send me a message! I'd love to know.

But now, back to trying to learn Hungarian...(an almost Quixotic pursuit).

Terracotta Warriors

Terracotta Warriors: Defenders of China's First Emperor opens today at Discovery Times Square. A collection of terracotta sculptures was buried with Qin Shi Huang, Emperor of China in 210–209 BC, and found again in 1974 when a farmer chanced upon the first of what archaeologists estimate are 8,000 warriors and other figures. Its's a small exhibit, tiny in comparison to the actual, only partially excavated site in China, but it might be your only chance to see these incredibly preserved terracotta warriors stateside. 

Pistoletto's "Lavoro" at Luhring Augustine

Perhaps photographing Michelangelo Pistoletto's work ought to be considered an art in its own right. In  photos of Pistoletto's show Lavoro, at Luhring Augustine Gallery through April 28, it is difficult to tell what is part of the artist's original composition, silkscreened onto mirror, and what is a reflection.

At least that's the case with my photos. The gallery website provides you with the works sans reflection. But maybe my photos show better what it is like to view the exhibition, and particularly the immersive quality with which Pistoletto draws the viewer and the temporal setting into play with the realistic scenes he creates. The ladies in the background above, and myself below, deserve such a prominent place when looking at and talking about the artist's work. Pistoletto begins to create them, but the works are complete when placed in a room and viewed by a person. 

Lavoro is Italian for work. The bright colors, hyperrealistic treatment of surfaces, and prosaic tools depicted here relate to the industrial kind of work done in warehouses and on construction sites. 

Pistoletto began painting on mirror as early as the 1960s. (I wrote about Pistoletto's early work and original mirror paintings here after visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art retrospective in 2010.) His cropped compositions and bold color are different here, looking much more like photographs and much less like the delicate portraits on tissue he used to paint. They look like their respective times in that way.

I especially like the sign here, telling the viewer: "Public forbidden to enter."
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Coned In

On the street near City Hall.

Cindy Sherman: Clothes Make the Woman

Still from Doll Clothes, 1975

Check out my new essay on the Cindy Sherman retrospective at MoMA up over on Escape Into Life. The big question: Do you find the path not taken in her work as tantalizing as I do?

Off-kilter Occult: Hernan Bas

I was excited to see that Hernan Bas's had a new show up at Lehmann Maupin after first seeing his work at their downtown location in 2009. Even if I hadn't, I would have been a sucker for the Baudelaire quote in the press release; “The loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist." The Miami-born, Detroit-based painter examines lore and legends of the devil in this new group of paintings.

Tartini's Dream (The Devil's Trill)

I really enjoy his dense compositions, like the one above where intersecting branches cover every part of the picture plane, as if they are trying to force their way out. His works tend to suggest complex narratives, suggested by the strange landscapes and dramatic little figures as much as their titles.

A Devil's Bridge

The rainbow of colors used here is representative of his work, and the very bright and light hues he uses manage to seem subsumed into his overall dark composition. I love the figure in the foreground looking out over the water, while a shadowy figure lurks under the bridge behind him. It's cliche, perhaps, but it exists in a vividly colored and slightly off-kilter alternate world.

Detail, A Devil's Bridge

Detail, A Devil's Bridge

Recently in a interview Bas said of his more recent work:

The best way that anyone has described the work so far was in an interview with Maurizio Cattelan titled “Something Off,” which really sums up these thoughts again on how I view the more successful aspects of the work—there’s always something off about them, and I strive towards that off-ness whenever I’m painting. It can come from how I render the figures or skewing the scale; something just always has to be a little wrong. I don’t want to make right painting. 

More from his interview with Art21 here.

A Satanist on a Tuesday

"Occult Contemporary" is up at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Chelsea through April 21.

The Rare Graffiti Tree and Other Urban Species from photographer Mitch Epstein

Photographer Mitch Epstein's work at up Sikkema Jenkins through this past weekend couldn't come at a better time. Outside, the first really Spring (or perhaps Summer?) weather had set the trees in bloom, and inside Epstein's homage to New York was similarly alush.

Epstein spent a year photographing the great trees of New York city (as you can see in the detail below NYC boasts the rare urban Graffiti Tree species). The trees, rather than people or buildings, become the focus of the shots.

Unfortunately the trees seem to be trying to kill me right now. All the blooming means seasonal allergies are here, and I am sneezing my head off. Find more information about the show here and more information about Epstein on his website http://www.mitchepstein.net/.

Cloud Maker Berndnaut Smilde

Nimbus II, 2012

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde has been creating clouds! (This gets a exclamation point because I love these in a very geeky way.) These temporary, artfully lighted bits of smoke and moisture are installations that the artist produced first in 2010 and earlier this year. In an statement about Nimbus (2010), the artist said: 

On the one hand I wanted to create an ominous situation. You could see the cloud as a sign of misfortune. You could also read it as an element out of the Dutch landscape paintings in a physical form in a classical museum hall. At the same time I wanted to make (for once) a very clear image, an almost cliché and cartoon like visualisation of having bad luck: “Indeed, there nothing here and bullocks, it’s starting to rain!” -Interview with Smilde.

Watch Nimbus II in action in this video to see how the artist prepares and sets off the cloud in the above photo. More of the Smilde's work can be found on his website.

Nimbus, 2010

On the Streets of Red Hook

I saw this this past weekend by IKEA. Otherwise, not a lot of captains of industry in Red Hook.

Sunflower in the Hall: Dorothea Tanning

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1943, Dorothea Tanning 

It has been years since I've been to the Tate Modern, but I remember coming home afterward and trying to google a painting featuring little girls in a hallways with what seemed like a very dangerous and large sunflower. I couldn't find anything about it.

Recently I happened across the image in a blog post about Dorothea Tanning, and all mysteries were revealed. Dorothea Tanning was speaking about her painting (my mystery image) when she said:

At night one imagines all sorts of happenings in the shadows of the darkness. A hotel bedroom is both intimate and unfamiliar, almost alienation, and this can conjure a feeling of menace and unknown forces at play. But these unknown forces are a projection of our own imaginations: our own private nightmares.
     —Dorothea Tanning in an interview with Victoria Carruthers, Art, History and the Senses: 1830 to the Present, 2010, p. 112.

Well, perhaps not all mysteries.

For the benefit of all future mes, I added "girls in hallway" and "sunflower" as tags to this post.

Northern Star: Ylva Ogland and Karl Holmquvist

This installation from Ylva Ogland and Karl Holmquvist formed an immersive environment at the Fruit and Flower Deli booth at the Armory Show. The Stockholm gallery was part of the Armory Focus: The Nordic Countries section. The pelts, tents, and star made me think of the nomadic Sami people of Lapland. (I wish I could find more information instead of just supplying my conjecture, but there is not much on the internet about this and I've lost my papers from the show.) Juxtaposed against these element were traditional "fine art" on the easel and the walls. Two large facing canvases mirror each other, and creating a dialogue between the naked woman and her twin.

Better image of the installation here. 

Hey, I went to Philadelphia! (Medieval style)

Yep, this is Philadelphia. I went to see the Van Gogh exhibition - completely sold out - and ended up browsing the Medieval section of the museum. Atmospheric, no?

I made a friend a few inches tall carved in ivory. She seems nice and devout. I quite like her.

But there's another side to her - a darker side reminding one of death as much Medieval art does. 

There were some extraordinary works of art. There were also sea monsters.

Of course the sea monster here is a woman. Just like blaming Eve for that whole apple incident. I feel sure that there are an equal number of male and female seamonsters, but when do you ever see the male portrayed?

This picture depicts a typical angel crowning going on in the main room (you know how it is). 

However, who is the mystery man in boxer shorts at the door? Why is he included in this picture of St. Veronica and her husband being crowned by angels when he seems to be delivering wood? That's what I like about these Medieval artists: You know they are going be absolute fanatics about details, so you get a sense of what it was truly like the day Veronica was crowned.

Dragon.

I also enjoyed the portraits of highly unattractive people.

Outside the museum, a fog hung low over the city.