temporary blog weirdness

...I'm trying to figure out a way to post summaries of my longer posts so that the gentle folks who don't want to read 3000 words about Louise Bourgeois don't have to, so there may be some oddness going on here for the next hour.

EDIT: Success! It took some finagling with Javascript and CSS, but we're all set now with the expandable post summaries.

Robert Rauschenberg makes my brain hurt

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953; traces of ink and crayon; Collection SFMOMA, purchased through a gift of Phyllis Wattis; © Robert Rauschenberg / Licensed by VAGA, New York

I'm not entirely sure if I actively dislike Robert Rauschenberg's work or not because I can't get past phrases like, "...the transformation of the de Kooning into what Rauschenberg called a 'monochrome no-image' can be understood from a Bergonsonian perspective as the evacuation of intentional imagery and individual expression (i.e., 'art') in favor of a receptivity to contingent visual sensations (i.e., 'life')."*

Ow.

Video that helps explain the above drawing:


In other news, I'm in love with this song.

*from Brandon Joseph, "White on White," in Random Order: Robert Rasuchenberg and the Neo-Avantgarde (MIT, 2007), p. 63.

Louise Bourgeois at the Guggenheim

WARNING! Long-winded exhibition review dead ahead...

At the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, we are greeted at the entrance by a large metal spider and what look to be two victims suspended in shiny bright cocoons from above. As Nancy Spector, the curator of the exhibition and the Guggenheim’s chief curator, acknowledges in the introductory text, the spiral of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim at 88th Street is a uniquely fitting venue in which to present a retrospective of this ever-avant-garde artist who has returned to themes and motifs throughout her career. Bourgeois’ work functions in a world of unstable, opposing binaries: open/closed, young/old, gravity/attenuation, benign/threatening, human/building, soft/hard, spiral/linear. Works cluster along the walls in chronological groupings; the architectural scale (and color) of the winding path at the Guggenheim lends itself felicitously to the presentation of these objects, and the narrowness of the presentation space focuses the attention by permitting only a few works in the viewer’s field of vision at any one time. Though the spiral ramp forces a linear narrative, its great benefit is its ability to disrupt this strict chronology: by merely peering across the vertigo-inducing open center, the visitor sees works that came before and glimpses of what will follow. In fact, it is largely by virtue of Lloyd Wright’s whorl of an exhibition space that the show coheres—one might almost hope that all retrospectives be shown here, for nowhere else is there the ability to experience both a linear (that is to say, chronological) progression as well as a cross-section of an artist’s oeuvre.

After the opening salvo of the spider and a brief introduction to her paintings, we are launched into Bourgeois’ career in 1940s New York while married to art historian Robert Goldwater—a more propitious time and place (and husband) is hard to imagine. It was during this time in the late 1940s and early 50s that Bourgeois created the sculptural series known as “Personages,” (left) whose totemesque, vaguely anthropomorphic wood and metal forms, notably “Portrait of C.V.” (1947-49; wood, paint, metal wire), “Persistent Antagonism” (1946-48; wood, paint, metal wire), “The Winged Figure” (1948; wood, paint, nails), and “Sleeping Figure” (1950, bronze), have their relatives in the sculptural art of central equatorial Africa (as the exhibition “Eternal Ancestors: Art of the Central African Reliquary” at the Metropolitan Museum so effectively demonstrated last winter). The slightly later wooden stacked sculptures, whose attenuation recalls Giacommetti’s emaciated figures, often present an escarpment near or at the top, frustrating the ascension to the topmost level and recalling Bourgeois’ quote that “Skyscrapers reflect the human condition. They do not touch.”

After a decade of absence, Bourgeois emerged in the 1960s to create an odd topsy-turvy world where phallic buds derive from clouds and breasts emerge from the earth to become “cumuls.” Extraordinarily adept at segmenting and de-humanizing the human body, she others it, rendering it insectlike and, by so doing, reinforcing its messy actuality and the earthy humor of human existence. Biomorphic forms (like “Lair,” 1962), which occupy one section look nothing so much as sculpted excremental blobs, have something of the honeycomb—or, in the case of “Fee Couturiere” (1963), the wasps’ nest—about them. Who—or what—lives in these funny little dwellings? What is hidden inside?

Though the uncircumcised penile tips—or are they preternaturally perky breast buds? Or are they fingertips?—poking their heads hopefully through drapery in “Cumul I” (1969; above) is enough to horrify one’s conservative relatives (one dare not say grandmother in this context), Bourgeois has a mastery of texture and form that renders these things all rather beautiful. Beautiful in the way that earthworms, or giving birth, or the relief of a long-awaited bodily function is beautiful. Or, in the case of “Sleeper” (1967; left)—a “cumul” wrapped protectively in a turtleneck and sitting atop two rough wooden timbers—the way a pig in a blanket carved out of marble is beautiful.

Beginning in the 1980s, Bourgeois became more willing to incorporate explicitly representational and figural elements into her work, referring more explicitly than before to memory. It was during this time that she began producing “Cells.” As individual installations in their own rights, what the “Cells” lose in efficiency they gain in narrative force. Dealing with surveillance, confinement, memory, and the interrelationships between physical and psychological pain, the range of sizes and media of these installations allowed Bourgeois to incorporate (and in some cases revisit) motifs and materials from different phases of her career. The often spiral configurations of doors that encircle the central spaces of many of the cells act as walls: as she does with that of glass windows, which are often so dirty as to preclude gazing through them to the luminous sculptural elements within, Bourgeois has perverted their natural function.

“Cell IV,” whose doors enclose a very finely carved pink marble ear across from a wood block with a large clock-like disk leaning against the wall, evokes a psychiatrist’s office, inviting the viewer to lean into the scene and whisper her secrets to the aural vessel. One of the largest and most sinister pieces in the retrospective, “Cell (Choisy)” (1990-93), encloses a marble scale model of the artist’s childhood home in a cage with dirty windows; a guillotine is poised above the only entry to the structure. Embedded in the structure of this cage and other cells, mirrors fracture the scene inside, imposing fractured, partial views on the visitor.

The soft sculptures, at the end of an arduous climb to the topmost level of the Guggenheim, have something of the taxidermy form to them. Not only are textile heads and bodies on display (as though hunting trophies, scientific specimens, or cadavers ready for autopsy), but certain stacked wood sculptures are reincarnated in quilted fabric blocks. The patchwork nature of the soft sculpture is an effective proxy for the nature of memory and the rediscovery of earlier forms and themes. The familiar textures of cloth, coupled with the explicit representations of human bodies, renders these sculptures perhaps the most viscerally disturbing pieces in the show. “Three Horizontals” (1998; fabric and steel), shows three pinkly patchworked figures coming apart at the seams and prepared for dissection on metal slabs. As they contract in size, their recognizability as human forms diminishes until the final, smallest figure is nothing more than a plucked chicken carcass with vestigial arm, leg, neck, and breast buds.

To be sure, Bourgeois maintains her sense of humor throughout—witness the last work of the show, “Couple IV” (1997): two headless and footless black fabric figures, one with a 19th century-era prosthetic leg, fornicate in a glass box. The overstuffed squeezability of these figures, sewn out of familiar, comfortable thermal waffle knit, is disturbingly at odds with the foreignness of the prosthesis and leaves one unprepared for the waffle-fabric scrotum nestled between the figures’ legs.

One gets the sense of exhaustion at the end of the show—not from the artist, but from the curators. Though Bourgeois has been making fabric sculptures for the past decade, the selection of cloth “soft” sculpture seems much more meager than other sections (the “cells” for example). The physical properties of weight and gravity seen in the stacked sculptures are certainly emphasized by the trek up the Guggenheim rotunda—the exhausting effort of that climb becomes conflated with the works at and near the summit (one is forcibly reminded, too, of Breugel’s spiral Tower of Babel, another favorite of Bourgeois’). The late work (what is discussed in Linda Nochlin’s catalogue entry as perhaps Bourgeois’ “Old-Age style”) almost seems a sparsely populated curatorial afterthought. After becoming steadily more massive over the course of decades—those huge multivalent cells!—that Bourgeois’ objects shrink in size should not, however, be seen as a diminishment of her capabilities.

One gets the sense, too, that Bourgeois arrived fully formed as an artist—there are very few fits and starts and no failures in evidence at this show, and there is a lack of artistic context that leaves this visitor dissatisfied. On a different note, the well-written and judiciously placed wall labels perform their function admirably—explanatory text for selected items whets the reader’s appetite (and wallet) for the oddly organized yet informative exhibition catalogue (though, styled as a glossary, good luck trying to find anything in it).

Overall, in surveying Bourgeois’ mastery of many different media, styles of presentation, and artistic reinvention, one must appreciate her chameleon-like nature, the best parallel for which is most certainly Madonna (or should we instead be saying that Madonna is pop culture’s Louise Bourgeois?). Though the presentation of the show, with all phases of Bourgeois’ long career represented, supports this reading, Bourgeois might as well have already cocked up her toes for all that the Guggenheim enshrines these different incarnations. Whereas the J.M.W. Turner show at the Metropolitan Museum down the street suffers from too much of a good thing, the Bourgeois show strikes this viewer as almost a little superficial; the arachnid in the center foyer notwithstanding, the absence of the spider series is a serious oversight. But perhaps, like a good actor, that is the mark of a good artist’s retrospective: leave them panting for more.

the antidote

I bring you an antidote for the perniciously catchy "Jesus is my Friend" (my original post below): silly rude boys. Many thanks, yet again, to Rex Parker. Were it not for his quick thinking, I'd still be caught in a chirpy 1970s vortex.


Another surefire way of ridding yourself of the desire to skank for Jesus is the following equally catchy submission from Devendra Banhart (and yes, that is Natalie Portman):

Now I just want to Bollywood dance for Shiva. My most extreme gratitude goes to Blythe for bringing this video in all its absurd glory to my attention.

And to whoever it was that emailed my post to his/her friends—thus increasing my blog hits sixfold (not hard when you get 5 hits a day)—a hearty thank you.

Image from Idolator.

On a side note, for those dorks like me who are curious about the whole "Sonseed" phenomenon, Dougspoiltation originally broke the story—and he actually interviewed Sal, the lead singer. All I have to say is: Wow.

new header

Check out the new header! Most of the images are courtesy of Rex Parker's Pop Sensation, which also sports a header designed by yours truly. Thanks, Rex!

punch and judaism

In light of our society's impending doom, I forward you a message of hope:

There are SO MANY wonderful things in this video, I don't know where to begin.

Is the lead singer made of plastic? How much makeup is he wearing?
The singers are just...wow.
Check out the guitar player getting down--the best moves on all of YouTube, in the words of one commenter.
"He touched me down inside"--I think this might be illegal.
He's like a mountie, is he? Minus the horse, and the snazzy red outfit, and the Canadian citizenship, perhaps.
Also, I didn't realize that mounties "zapped" people.
ZAP!
That he loves you despite this song is really, well--he must love you A. LOT.
J-J-J-JeSUS!
It's just so damn catchy!

Also: Sonseed? As in son seed? Like seed of the Son of God? That's kind of really creepy.

And also also: Christian ska???

no, really, what you should be looking at: Adam Stennett

Adam Stennett. Four Mice in Diagonal Pipe. 2003. Oil on linen, 36 x 36 inches

Adam Stennett. Where Are You When You Aren't Here?. 2002. Oil on linen, 36 x 36 inches

Adam Stennett. Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans). 2008. Acrylic on paper, 30 x 44 inches

I wrote about Adam Stennett almost a year ago and I still think his art is fabulous. It doesn't hurt that he's a nice guy, too.

Above we've got two older paintings, which are both square and would go very well together as pendants. In the years since these two [early] mouse paintings, he's definitely mastered his technique better (see here and here), but there's something about their hopeful little black eyes that I really enjoy. So friendly. I think my cats would really enjoy the paintings (and the vaguely industrial impressionist vibe I get from them), too... I mean, we don't call him Learned Claw for nothing, do we?

The last one is a very recent painting, which is a great combination of Dutch still-life and grisaille; I'd buy it myself, if I could. ...Well, I'd buy them all if I could, I'm not going to lie to you. I'd put the last one in my kitchen. Ha! What an excellent commentary on my cooking skills.


P.S. I'm writing about these paintings in particular because they're all still available, which fact allows me to nurture the vain dream of them living in my apartment despite my lack of cash.

I am obsessed

I know I'm supposed to be writing about art and whatnot, but I cannot stop fixating on the economy. I mean, I know only the bare bones about what's going on, but it all makes me anxious. There's not even much reason for me to BE anxious; even if the gallery I work at were to go under, I still have my meager little stipend (for the next year, at least). But anxious I am. I see pictures of the Great Depression (come on, you were thinking it, too) and wonder how people lived through it. Am I going to have to put on a coat and hat and wait in a huge line for a handful of soup? Am I going to have to go to California and pick peas with my seven children (2 cats, 5 pairs of shoes)? WILL I HAVE TO SELL MY BOOKS?! Ahhh.

But it wasn't a dream—it was a place. And you—and you—and you—and you were there.

Let's try, this time around, to be proper about this. First, the facts about myself that I am happy to share:

I am at a fabulous graduate school for art history.
I am female.
I own two fabulous cats.
I live in New York City with a fabulous roommate who works at a museum.
I work part-time at a fabulous art gallery.
I am fabulous (check the header).
I am a huge dork.

Though my audience hasn't exactly changed, I need to be constantly aware that the following people may look at any of my posts:

Parents
Professors who write recommendations for jobs and internships
Potential employers at museums, galleries, and universities
Roommates
Friends of friends

...While I don't think this means I have to be positive about everything, it does mean that anything I'm negative about should be extremely well reasoned. It also means I will not be writing about--and shall endeavor to avoid entirely--the following things:

Dating
Drinking
General stupidity
Things about people/jobs/work/etc that piss me off

Okay, NO, that does NOT get rid of 90% of my posts. Don't worry! That still leaves me (us?) with:

Random absurdity
Art
Cats
Movies/music/etc (all that culture besides art)
Things that I think are fabulous about people/jobs/work/etc

...I'm still moving some of the older posts on to this blog. Bear with me.

surgery = fun!

Originally posted July 7, 2007.

Documentation of wrist surgery to correct my gimpy Triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC):

Yay! Won't surgery be fun?! I've only been waiting for them to get to me for 3 hours and it hasn't made me more nervous or anything! *weak laughter*

I can't wait.

It's now 6pm and I haven't eaten since midnight the night before. GET IN MY MOUTH, SALTINES!

*stretch... streeeeeeetch*

...fuck. I can't reach the saltines because of the IV in my wrist. I try to activate my latent telekinesis, willing the salty crackery goodness into my mouth...

I am unsuccessful.

Back in fifth grade, I thought getting a cast would be really cool.
Other than making you look like a really weeny boxer, however, it sucks.
Also, buttering toast is a real problem.