Reflections on Ostalgia

First let's do away with the problem of the name: "Ostalgia" might mean a nostalgia for East German Communist times, but it is not the proven thrust of the fascinating and diverse melting pot of works housed in the 5 floors of the New Museum through September 25. The works are more ambivalent than that. Similarly, "ost" refers most directly to East Germany, but these works come from artists all over the former Eastern Bloc.

 Three Capacity Men, 2005, by Thomas Schutte with photographs from U-NI-TY, 1991-94 by Michael Schmidt’s 

If one ever thought if was possible to synthesize the works and experiences of artists from the 1940s to now from all of the countries into a coherent narrative without a didactism that overrules the complexity of the situation...well, clearly that is a tall order. Maybe it's best to leave it as Massimiliano Gioni, curator at the New Museum, says here:

“I had no ambition to tell the truth about the Soviet Bloc. Memory is never reliable, but it’s all we’ve got and this exhibition is about remembering a time and place that is quickly going away.”

Like Younger than Jesus, another show of Gioni's, the curation somehow sidesteps any guidance. However, in the sprawling, exhausting, bewildering expanse of works that make up Ostalgia, there is certainly a lot of worthwhile art to see.

No. 14 in the 'Relationship' series, 1989, Nicolay Bakharev

Bakharev has many photographs in the this show that, like this one, ignored the official ban on nudity.

No. 22 from 'Ogonyok' series, 2001 by Sergey Zarva

The artist paints the covers of a formerly popular Soviet magazine, although for him these are relics found in parent's and friend's houses as he was born later, transforming the covers into negative, demonic masks.

Julius Koller, U.F.O.-NAUT J.K. a (U.F.O.), 1987

Koller's work is part of a series called UFO, standing for Universal-Cultural Futurological Operations, among other things, and dealing with a new approach to Anti-Happenings and the Anti-Images. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. (It baffles me; I just really like the plate.)

The hundreds of works are fascinating overall, both as artworks and in their strong relation to life in the former Eastern Bloc. Each of them and their creators have distinct stories worthy of being told. The best way to get a sense of the many threads is to start on the 5th floor, where a room-sized mural acts as a visual history charting communism's rise and fall in the Eastern Bloc. Cotter of the New York Times was right to say that what could have been an amateurish survey turned into something more. I honestly can't wait to go back and have a second chance to delve into these works. And that is the first time I've thought that this summer.

The Disappointment That Was Skin Fruit

Chris Ofili, Charles Ray, Kara Walker, Paul McCarthy, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Tino Seghal, Seth Price, Janine Antoni, Richard Price, Urs Fischer. It's a roll call of blue chip artists and by that very merit ought to have more resonance than Skin Fruit, the exhibition currently up at the New Museum, does.

A lot has been made, justly, of the museum using the collection of Dakis Joannou to create a show. After all he is a Trustee of the New Museum--creating a bit of a conflict of interests. Conflict number one being whether to show so much unappealing work; conflict two being whether the show benefits more himself and his cohorts rather than the public. The show is curated by Jeff Koons, who just so happens to be collected by Dakis Joannou, and just so happened to include himself--via the basketball--in the show.

One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank, 1985

But let's put that aside and move on to the fact that between Dakis Joannou and Jeff Koons the worst taste ever demonstrated is on display. Judgment call? Yes, but how they can make artists I like (Chris Ofili, Charles Ray, Cindy Sherman) look so bad is beyond me. It takes a special sort of taste: one that prefers feral humanoids liberally sprinkled with fur and confuses brash ugliness with boldness.

To compound the problem, the works were stuffed in together so that it was hard to "appreciate" any of them. If anything, it seemed like a Nouveau Riche Victorian households where costly bric-a-brac crowd the mantle. I mean, if you are watching somebody climb up a crucifix (Pawel Althamer's Schedule of the Crucifixion), you don't want to have to weave your way through glass and chocolate structures to get an unobstructed view of the performance. The show was certainly not the best choice for my first art experience back in NYC. I left generally disgusted and more than a bit enraged that the New Museum continues to disappoint. On the bright side, the show ends June 6.

Art Intrusion at the New Museum

When a banner appears on the New Museum downtown on Bowery from an unnamed artist begging for his work to be shown, there's going to be some talk. Especially when it is unveiled at a press preview for a new exhibition of young artists. James Kalm has a short video of April 10 detailing the mystery:

Yesterday Hrag Vartanian's blog posted the supposed identity of the theif, a French artist Marc-Antoine Léval who calls himself The immaterial art emperor and has created such art "intrusions" in the past. As the post explains, Léval claims not to have put the painting there, only the banner. So I have the obvious question: whose painting is it? and another one, has Leval succeeded in his objective? That is, was the intrusion itself art? The New Museum has not commented on the banner, nor have they offered to show the artist's work.

New York City Art Museums on the Cheap

I can claim expertise in few things, but how to view art on the cheap is something at which I excel. With the right timing and a flexible schedule, you don't need to pay oodles to see the museums of New York City.

Below are the how-tos to seeing some of the greatest works of art in the world. Whatever your taste, these eight New York City museums are easy and fun to visit on the cheap. Note that listed prices are for adults; admission for students, seniors, and children often has a discounted price.

First, let's hit the "majors," which should be part of any cultural enthusiast's outings in New York City.

1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue)
The Met lists a suggested ticket price of $20 dollars. A suggestion is not a price. They accept as little as a dollar, and then you're in to see this behemoth's grand cultural offerings, ranging from Egyptian pyramids to African reed boats to European portraits. They also have constantly changing exhibitions, which are included with the price of admission.

2. The Museum of Modern Art (11 West 53 Street)
MoMA will cost you $20 as well, unless you go on Friday nights. On Fridays between 4 pm and 8 pm, Target hosts a free night at the preeminent museum of modern and contemporary art. An additional great secret: movie tickets are free with admission. I've picked up tickets for an 8:30 film, and seen everything from John Waters' Pink Flamingos to classics of German avant-garde cinema. Beware the crowds, however.

3. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth Avenue)
Is seeing the interior of the newly-restored Frank Lloyd Wright building worth $18? The Guggenheim certainly has great exhibitions of contemporary art right now. However, this private museum is not cheapskate-friendly. If you're going to pay, you should check their events calendar to make sure you time your trip to coincide with one of their lectures or, even better, go to their Art after Dark program where they have DJs until 1 am.

These big stars are definitely worth a visit, but the city has other outstanding art museums that are well worth your time.

4. Whitney Museum of American Art (945 Madison Avenue)
Fifteen dollars will give you access to the Whitney's collection of 20th century American art and exhibitions of American artists past and present, such as Kara Walker and William Eggleston. Like so many on this list, the Whitney also has a Friday night pay-what-you-wish program from 6 to 9 pm. The Whitney goes a step beyond the other museums by making the free night a fun event with live music and other innovative performance arts.

5. The Frick Collection (1 E. 70th St.)
Admittedly a narrow time slot, but from 11 am to 1 pm on Sundays, you can visit the Frick for free instead of for $15. Often overlooked compared to bigger museums, this little jewel of a collection has remained in the mansion of turn-of the century business tycoon Henry Frick since he bequeathed it to the public. It contains masterpieces of Western painting and sculpture.

6. New Musuem (235 Bowery)
The New Museum houses contemporary art in a brand new building downtown, making it a great stop if you're in the area. At $12, this is a relatively cheap dose of contemporary culture. However, if you're in the the area on a Thursday night, stop in between 7 and 10 pm to mingle with a young, hipster crowd and see the works of artists artists such as Elizabeth Peyton and Mary Hielman.

7. Brooklyn Museum of Art (200 Eastern Parkway)
This museum has a diverse collection and is easily accessible from Manhattan. The suggested donation price is $8. As I mentioned in regard to the Met, a suggestion means you can pay what you wish. In addition, on the first Saturday of the month, BMA hosts a free night of art and entertainment, which often includes dancing to live music in its atrium. It exhibits art from across the globe, and has an excellent center of feminist art that features Judith Chicago's Dinner Party.

8. American Folk Art Museum (45 West 53rd Street)
Admission is a reasonable $9 to see this under-visited museum's collection of paintings and textiles from America's earliest days to the present. However, if you visit on Friday evenings between 5:30 and 7:30 pm you can listen to live music in the atrium and explore the galleries for free.

If you want your culture fix cheap, New York City offers many options at its museums. In addition, galleries have openings throughout the year, where new works of an artists are shown on an intimate scale. These free openings are fun not only because you can see new works, but because of free drinks and great people-watching. Artcards is a great site to check for new openings and events. With a little forethought, you can see all the art you want on a reasonable budget.

(Originally published December 07, 2008 in Blogcritics Magazine)

Portraitist Elizabeth Peyton is no Warhol (and not as fun as C.L.U.E. either)

The New Museum of Contemporary Art of Bowery is hosting Live Forever, works by portraitist Elizabeth Peyton, and so I took my excited little butt there last night, after a long day of work. (Not coincidentally, the New Museum is free on Thursdays from 7 to 10 p.m.)

I had only seen Peyton's images online, but thought they used color well and that it was exciting to see something as traditional as figurative portraiture make a splash on the contemporary art scene. Peyton paints friends and also cultural icons in her remarkably cohesive oeuvre. As it was her paintings of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of grunge band Nirvana who committed suicide in the 90s, that brought Peyton into the limelight, I thought I would be encountering something Warhol-esque, where the confluence of the individual and pop culture become huge statements about our cultural identity.
My expectations were confounded. Peyton perhaps gives us an intimate glance into her interior world, but I wouldn't even go so far as to say she's making a statement about herself. And yet, she manages to say nothing about the people she portrays at the same time. Remarkable.

Peyton's works are small and intimate, consequently seeming overwhelmed by the whiteness of the New Museum's gallery space, and painterly in a broad way. Miniatures are often exquisitely detailed, but these approximately 10" x 12" works were broadly sketched out like watercolors. They were unlike traditional portraiture in that, instead of taking the subject in a formal pose, these were composed like Polaroids as if the subjects were caught unawares at extreme angles. They were well-painted and pleasant. Unfortunately, I can't say much more in their favor.

While Peyton is a figurative portraitist, she does have a distinctive style that colonizes her subjects as her own. All her subjects become triangular faces with bright red mouths and slanty eyes, and she seems to prefer fey males. The works are stylized enough to be distinctly hers, and are more revealing of her than the subject. Perhaps that itself is the difference between her work and traditional portraiture.

Seeing her oeuvre at once, I had the idea of that this was her interior world in which the works were snapshots of memory.Peyton's style does not seem to have evolved--any of the portraits could have been painted at any point in her career. Overall, it was a little...boring.

However, I insist you stop the New Museum anyhow, for a very small and very fun installation. Wedged into the interior staircase between the third and fourth floors, an installation called "C.L.U.E." will entertain you better than clowns and acrobats at the big top. According to its press release, "C.L.U.E. (color location ultimate experience) is a collaboration between artists A.L. Steiner and robbinschilds (Layla Childs and Sonya Robbins), AJ Blandford, and Kinski. Like a living organism, C.L.U.E. adapts to the space it temporarily occupies. In this manifestation at the New Museum, it takes the form of site-specific performance, multichannel video installation, and video projection."

What does that mean? It means that, once you put on the headphones, you can't help but bob your head in time as the matching pair of girls do funny dances across parking lots, deserts and redwood forests, all via projector through the window onto the building across the way. A blast.