Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Rashid Johnson, “Self Portrait in Homage to Barkley Hendricks,” 2005.

Why is Self Portrait in Homage to Barkley Hendricks not included in the MCA’s current Rashid Johnson retrospective, Message to Our Folks?  The photographic work is included in the exhibition catalogue, and MCA curator Julie Rodriguez Widholm writes that it is perhaps Johnson’s “most understood work.”  The work is an illustrative example of both Johnson’s “dialogue with black American creative and intellectual figures whose impact has transcended race” and his “dialogue with modern and contemporary art history, specifically abstraction and appropriation.”  Both these quotes are from the curatorial statement on the MCA’s website.  True, other self portraits (some of which engage in appropriation and cultural and intellectual figures) are in the exhibition, but they don’t compare in my opinion to the stark and confrontational Self Portrait in Homage to Barkley Hendricks.

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John Baldessari: Pure Beauty

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

No this isn’t the LACMA blog.

This is LACMA’s logo. It was designed by Baldessari. Now it is used as a font at LACMA for signs, brochures, and on their blog.  It is the same red as those Renzo accents on BCAM and the Resnick Pavilion, that’s called BRANDING people!  Baldessari has a history, and working relationship with LACMA. In 2006, he was invited by Michael Govan (genius) to do some exhibition for the Treachery of Images show.  In a Magritte-esque move Baldessari carpeted the galleries with clouds and wallpapered the ceilings with a knot of freeways.  Extra wall paper and carpeting from that collaboration ended up installed in both the board room and in Govan’s Office.

Baldessari turned the room upside-down.

From the small scale of a font, to the level of exhibition design, now to the large scale: LACMA presents a retrospective, Pure Beauty.  Co-organized by LACMA and the Tate (the show’s first venue) this show closes September 12^th, then heads to the Metropolitan of all places. The show is organized chronologically (obviously), but is curated effectively to show progressions and themes in Baldessari’s work; introducing imagery and concepts that appear over and over again, or sudden once again at the end of the show. The first room contains some rare early works (rare because Baldessari torched all the pre-1966 in his position work in 1970) Falling Cloud, 1965 (loaned by the Falckenberg Foundation) and God Nose, 1967 among them. The early works introduce the imagery of clouds and a decapitated nose which specifically appear again at the end of the show.

Make note of those clouds.

The next room is all about Baldessari’s famous text paintings.  A series of building and addresses paintings; the title work Pure Beauty, 1966 (loaned by Glenstone); the humorous Tips for Artists (from the Broad Art Foundation); and LACMA’s own Wrong, 1966 all share space with the massive (and continually growing) A Painting That Is Now Documentation, 1966 (from the collection of Norman and Norah Stone).  This room, other than being an impressive feet of loan negotiations, is visually mind numbing, but conceptually amazing.  The irony in the Broad Tips and the power in Painting showcase Baldessari’s daring experimentations as well as demonstrate how they still address very contemporary issues.

The last canvas added to Painting lists its showings at the Tate, its second stop at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, and its current showing at LACMA.  Damn this show gets around. There won’t be enough room for the show’s last venue; so another canvas will have to be added to the piece before it goes to the Met.  However it does look like  the previous older canvases all have six venues each.  The paragraphing on the most recent canvas is larger, and will only accommodate five venues.  I’m not saying this was intentional, so that they just had to add another canvas during the run of the show, but I’m not saying it wasn’t intentional either.  Yeah curators, I’m calling you on this.

Not enough room for the Met.

The third room was larger than the previous two and was full of photographic works and three video displays, clearly demonstrating Baldessari’s transition into exploration in those media.  Once again there was a work on loan from the Getty Research Institute (these pieces are everywhere in LA!), an artist book.  This work was housed in a vitrine alongside a “Proposal for Information,” a sketch that is directly relates to a very recent show that happened at Margo Leavin Gallery, both works utilize Han Holbein’s creepy Dead Christ(with erection).  Margo Leavin has another strategically-timed Baldessari show on going on until August 31, look I’m giving them some press, see strategic, yes I’m a PR student.

Now is not the time to be shy Baldessari.

The fourth room entered the 70s, and the work in these rooms exemplified Baldessari’s continual and evolving usage of photograph.  Portraits, and self portraits seemed numerous in this room, including LACMA’s own Portrait: Artist’s Identity Hidden with Various Hats, from 1974.  The work is a recent acquisition and LACMA’s only Baldessari from the 70s.  Dedicated, continual acquisition of an artist makes a retrospective of that artist’s work logical. Or, perhaps reverse that order of reasoning.

AHIS Terminology: "Conceptual" or "Institutional Critique?" Or both? Ooooooh.

Walltext in the west galleries proclaims that the 80s marked a “growth in complexity” for Baldessari.  I don’t know if complexity is the most accurate term, but larger pieces and pieces with multiple elements and layers certainly develop.  One “complex” work is On High and Low Virtues and Vices for Giotto from 1981, which utilizes the whole height of the galleries, with frames skimming the floor and poking the ceiling of the room.  This work, and its play with the gallery’s dimensions, might even be labeled in the genre of institutional critique.

Owned by LACMA / Owned by the Bank

The next few rooms show more developments in the late 80s and into the 90s: Baldessari’s usage of filmstills and his own photography, as well his new usage of colored dots, to simultaneously “protect” the identities of the people in the photographs and turn them into personalities or characters.  Some of the works in these rooms include the LACMA-owned Heel, 86 (that means LACMA has one work from the 60s, one from the 70, and one from 90s); a work from the Fissures and Ribbons cycle, a large work on loan from the Deutsche Bank; and Hope, 1991 from the Tate.

Something old and something new: paint colors and isolated body parts.

The last room of the exhibition, shows continued exploration, mostly with color, and mostly in a very ironic, and definitely “conceptual way.” This room also shows Baldessari’s continual usage with certain imagery.  Recent works with isolated body parts, duh a nose, are direct descendants of work from the first room—God Nose.  The other imagery employed at the beginning and at the end is clouds.  Falling Cloud, 1966 was one of the earliest works in this retrospective and Brain/Cloud, 2009 is one of Baldessari’s most recent works.

Brain/Cloud hurts my brain it’s so conceptual.

The work’s full title is Brain/Cloud (Two Views): with Palm Tree and Seascapes.  The work occupies its own gallery: a photo of a palm tree is plastered on one wall and a gargantuan, grotesque white brain is mounted on another.  On a third wall a live video feed is projected, of what you ask?—Why a video you of course!  The camera is hard to find at first; you find it by orienting yourself to the camera angle in the video. Creepy, conceptual, and contemporary.

But the show doesn’t end in this last room, oh no.  First you have to walk past a little annex of a gift shop, chalk full of Baldessari-oriented products including clever, Baldessari-designed erasers.  You know I hate gift shops, but I guess LACMA has got to make some money to pay for this show.  LACMA has also upgraded the banners that hang outside BCAM on its Wilshire-facing façade.  The originals were getting real dirty, and Baldessari was nice enough to design another round of them.  And LACMA fulfills its promise to continually change the banners with new art.

Upgrade: LACMA is all ears.

Oh god that was a corny caption on that picture. Don’t read it again!

– H.I.

The Spectacular Art of Jean-Leon Gérôme

Getty Center

This spectacle is the first retrospective of Gérôme’s work in forty years, which means this is the first time a generation has been exposed to Gérôme like this.   The Getty’s reasons for the show are questionable since the Getty only has two works by Gérôme in its collection.  Whatever the reasons, this show is an amazing spectacle of oriental color and classical characters.  Gladiators, Vestal Virgins, residents of Pompeii, and even Caesar are all here.  This show might even have been appropriately displayed over at the Getty Villa in Malibu instead of the Center.

Look! Some naked women! It’s okay though cause they’re Greek, so we’re not objectifying them.

Other than a major retrospective of French academic painter, the show is an exploration of the gross commoditization of Orientalism in art, showcasing the hypocrisy of European society’s fascination with Eastern culture with its harems and bath houses.  Dialogues on race and culture whether intentional or not, are a major part of this show, from naked little boys to polychrome statues of naked (or is it nude) women.

I mean, come on…

The exhibition rooms are painted in an appropriate “oriental” palette, ruby maroons, and deep aquamarines are as decadent as some of the scenes in Gérôme’s paintings.  The only problem I had with the color scheme was in just one particular instance where The Snake Charmer (1870) was displayed on a aquamarine blue, the clash of the mosaic wall in the painting against the wall it hung on was visual agony.

Not painted from memory, painted from travel photos.

The exhibition runs the length of two large halls, at the end of the first hall in a small separated space of photographs from the Getty Research Institute’s library.  The selection of photographs are ones taken of the during Gérôme’s travels to the Middle East and the Orient.  Some of them directly relate to paintings in the exhibition, a photo of a tiled wall is the background in The Snake Charmer, another one shows the obvious inspiration for The Carpet Merchants (1887).  The Getty Research Institute has been doing a great job at displaying its special collection of photographs, both at the Getty and elsewhere.  There are some photos from the Getty’ collection in the current Eakins’s exhibition going on at LACMA (keep your eyes out for a post on that soon).

Just imagine this crazy thing in his livingroom!

Down the second hall, full of more classical and Eastern scenes, one comes to the last room of the exhibition, which Christopher Knight of the LA times has rightly pointed out as particularly interesting.  The room showcases Gérôme’s later transition to sculpture.  Gérôme’s fascination with the artistic power of sculpture can be seen in his painting of Pygmalion and Galatea (1890).  The myth serves as a theme for the room, which contains some of Gérôme’s sculptures. One of the sculptures is the awkwardly sticking polychrome Corinth (1903-04), from the collection of a certain J. Nicholson.

Distracting pun

The last work in the show is hung by itself: Gérôme’s non-high-art piece, the advertisement Opticien (1902).  The visual pun for “little dog,” in French “petit chien,” being devised here for commercial purposes.  This work, while highly enjoyable and a much needed relief from the much heavier preceding paintings, is problematic for me.  I don’t know how to resolve the fact that I think a retrospective should be a sincere display of the whole range of a single artist, but at the same time this work is soooo out there.  I might have approved of this work had it been snuck into the exhibition somewhere in the middle.  But as it stands at the very end of the exhibition, it draws too much attention to itself, and seems like an insincere inclusion when compared to the tone of the rest of the exhibition.

Museé de Orsay, you are EVERWHERE!

Other noteworthy remarks:  Where did all of these works come from? A major contributor of works was the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Metropolitan loaned several works, some from personal collections (i.e. J. Nicholson), and of course work from the Museé de Orsay!  As mentioned in the posts about the de Young’s exhibition of works from the Museé de Orsay, congrats once again Museé for effectively getting your pieces out there on display during your construction!

– H.I.

The Tulip Folly (1882), how gay!

And a completely gratuitous additional painting, only because I have an obsession with tulips.

Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire

Getty Villa

It’s the first exhibition of neither Greek nor Roman art at the Getty Villa.  So why is there an exhibition of Aztec art on display next to rooms full or red-figure amphorae and marble portrait busts?—The Getty curators rationalize that when the Old World met the New World, European explorers rationalized the new civilizations they came in contact with by referencing what they already knew something about: the Greek and Roman civilizations.  Or as stated by the Getty:  “The premise of The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire is a unique one: that just as classical antiquity colored Spanish perceptions of Mesoamerica, the experience of Aztec civilization piqued curiosity about Renaissance Europe’s own ancient heritage”.  I’m not going to discuss whether I was convinced of this after seeing the show, but will discuss the display of this idea.

Traveled 1,589 miles, from Mexico City

There are mere weeks remaining to go see Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire at the Getty Villa, and if you are not planning on going to Mexico City anytime soon, I would suggest you go.  The artworks on display are on loan from the collections of the National Museum of Anthropology and the Templo Mayor Museum.  Monumental, multi-ton, stone sculptures and delicate votive figurines have traveled from Mexico to Los Angeles as a way to celebrate the bicentennial of the Mexican Revolution.

1-uped: Traveled 6,121 miles, from Florence

Another star attraction is the Florentine Codex, which has traveled even farther, from the Medici Library in Florence, Italy.  This is the first time the codex has been in the Americas since it was brought to Europe centuries ago.  These loans are displayed alongside objects from the Getty’s collection (mostly small figurines) as well as documents from the special collection of the Getty Research Institute.

The temporary exhibition space at the Getty Villa is an awkward space.  The row of adjacent, small-sized galleries combined with the large scale works on loan from Mexico could have been disastrous, but the exhibition designers and curators did a successful job stuffing the herd of Mexican elephants into these small rooms. (Click here to see what it took to display these elephants.)

Some elephants: Xochipilli & Cihuacoatl.

The exhibition space is also odd because of the hallway that links the rooms; it is architecturally unavoidable because it circumvents the inner peristyle garden of the Villa.  The wall title of the exhibition and several large-scale works were placed in this window-lined hallway and lure visitors into the rest of the exhibition.

The rooms were organized thematically: Tenochtitlan, First Encounters, The Florentine Codex, Parallel Pantheons, and Art and Empire.  This was predictable technique, but the content of the rooms was not.  Seeing Aztec objects displayed next to European objects, like a painted screen depicting the Spanish conquest, was a totally new and unprecedented exploration of history and art.

What a lovely piece of domestic furniture depicting the Spanish conquest!

Located in the center of the room, the looming terracotta Tzitzimitl (Demon) sculpture dominated the first space.  The surrounding walls had a variety of objects, maps, scrolls, and other documents.  This was simultaneously a display of masterpieces of Aztec art and also a subtle (and possibly unappreciated) display of the impressive collections of the Getty Research Institute.

No that’s not a flower coming out of his chest, it’s his liver.

At the end of the exhibition was my favorite room.  On one wall was a painted reproduction of sketch of the Templo Mayor.  It was a light element of the exhibition design that was sophisticated and smart.  In this room was another looming figure: the unavoidably menacing sculpture of a warrior in an eagle costume.  This theme of the Imperial Eagle (Imperial for both the Roman and Aztec civilizations) was continued by two other objects in the room.  A massive stone eagle from the Templo Mayor was placed literally face to face with a Bronze statue of an imperial Roman eagle.   This confrontation of cultures was direct and beautiful.

Eagle v. Eagle

As stated before, you should go see this exhibition because the works on loan are rarely seen outside of Mexico.  But you should also go see the exhibition because never again will you see these objects like this; in dialogue with objects from the Getty.  And finally you should go see this exhibition because contained in it is a brief peek into the extensive collection of the Getty Research Institute, which is a hushed but vital portion of this show.

Traveled 13.4 Miles, from the Getty Research Institute.

– H.I.