RICHARD AVEDON, against black&white walls

He put his subjects against a white background and shot them. It’s one of the aspects that made Avedon what we know him from.

He started as art director for Harper’s Bazaar in 1945. He soon took on fashion photography for VOGUE. He had his models pose with elephants.

He shifted his attention to portraiture in more personal work. The list is long. Andy Warhol, Isabella Rossellini, The Beatles, Brigitte Bardot, Tina Turner, Barbra Streisand, Marilyn Monroe, Björk, Brooke Shields, even the Dalai Lama, they all stood in front of his lens. In the 1950 and 60′ies Audrey Hepburn was his undisputable muse.
But his attention did not only go out to celebrity. Miners, oil field workers, patients of mental hospitals and drifters were also his subjects. This fact earned him a lot of criticism: he showed a not very good image of the USA…

Set on an austere white backdrop his portraiture captures the soul of its subject. Avedon’s most personal style was minimalistic and sharp.
During shoots he would ask questions, not rarely of the most psychological kind. Thus he tried to dig deeper into his models’ personality. The result is that many a model, beit a celebrity or an every day person, shows an expression he or she was normally not known for, revealing an underlying aspect of their being.

The Gagosian Gallery, who represents Richard Avedon since 2011, exhibits four huge scale photographs, also called his murals, and related smaller size images.

The images represent four themes: 1/ Andy Warhol and The Factory, his work studio, and his Superstars, the people of his direct entourage. 2/ the beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his family. 3/ the Mission Council, Vietnam War officials and military. 4/ the Chicago Seven, political radicals accused of inciting riots at the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

A special mention goes to David Adjaye (Adjaye Associates) for the set-up of this exhibition. A narrow tunnel leads to the middle point of the gallery. From this position, the eye is led in four directions to the large size murals on white, allowing a spectacular view on each without any kind of obstruction or distraction.
V-shaped partitions make it feel like looking through a giant funnel. These partitions, opening up to the four corners of the hall, contain the related smaller portraits on the inside. Here the photographs are mounted on a black backdrop. Where the murals jump blatently and unwavering in your face, the black corners allow a more intimate, yes, maybe even voyeuristic view.

Gagosian Gallery
522 w 21st, New York City
Till July 6
www.gagosian.com

KAPOOR DOUBLE UP

Anish Kapoor can not be accused of mediocrity. For decades this Indian born London based artist has occupied his very own place in the contemporary art scene.

Wherever I come across one of his works (Cloud Gate “the bean” in Chicago, Turning The World Upside Down in Jerusalem), I make it a point to observe people looking on. There always seems to be a little or big crowd swarming around his sculptures. Fascination is the least that his work provokes. However deep you are into contemporary art, the sculptures of Kapoor make everyone stand still and watch. First you hold still, than you watch, and then you walk up closer, and closer. And get completely absorbed. In many cases, Kapoor’s work wraps you in, sucks you into a void.

The double exhibition brought by the Gladstone Gallery on two different locations shows different aspects of Kapoor’s art.

In one gallery some 20 sculptures are on view. As simple as they might look, they are not easy to describe. Concrete droppings, drippings, pourings… Some of them definitely look like stalagmites you might encounter in prehistoric caves. They look like formations created by the dripping of water and sedimentation of minerals during millions of years. Their organic forms seem to be the result of a natural phenomenon.

Others take more heaplike shapes, very organic too, like the structures of termites. The concrete is spurted in swirls and curls. Like a huge pile of boa constrictors, squirming and choking eachother. As static as the sculptures may be, they imply movement and formation, a clear action of creation.
Two rooms filled with these sculptures make it feel like walking through a landscape. And although made of hard and inert concrete, the sculptures look organic, soft, and alive.

The second gallery brings a complete different experience. There’s only one work, but it occupies the entire space. Because of its dimensions, it looks as if the gallery has been built around the sculpture.

Entering the gallery, there’s a moment of surprise. The sculpture has an overwhelming presence, because its size, sure. But also because its form. It’s like the sculpture has landed there and has bitten a huge chunk out of the gallery space. It’s balancing precariously on a metal beam.

I feel I have to be very carefull describing this work in words. That is because I am afraid to compare the sculpture to some specific other form that we more easily can recognize. Describing the object itself, and only the object, is like missing out on the essence and the complete experience of the sculpture. And the space! Anish Kapoor not only creates form that stands on its own; it alters and reshapes the space around it.
Inside and outside are two components that mould the space. The outside holds the inside in its grasp. The inside expands in the outside. It’s like breathing in and out.

On entry, this work is a blow in the face. The space is pregnant with the form of the sculpture. This is the outer approach. Walking around it, its true form starts to show itself, and it changes as you change your point of view. From symmetrical it turns to a more organic shape, like a softer mass.
Walking behind it, it completely closes up. Then it opens up like the mouth of a whale. Then you go closer and this amorph creature swallows you up, from your head down to your knees.
And then there is nothing. Then there is darkness. Here is one of the things, or maybe thé thing, Kapoor undoubtedly does best. He lets you see the inside of nothing. Looking into this womb, there is only blackness. Empty space. Void.

There is nothing as confronting as an empty space. Selfconfronting! The outside exists no longer. You don’t see it anymore. You even don’t hear it anymore. Every contact with the outside is cut off. Suddenly you hear yourself. A little cough. A word. An ah. And it speaks back to you.

When I had finished my three tours around this friendly monster, one young man walked up to the gaping mouth and started whistling. The monster whistled back. Some other people walked in, turned around and walked out. They must have missed it. They must have only seen the “nothing”.

Gladstone Gallery, NYC
515 W 24th
530 W 21st
Till June 9
gladstonegallery.com

Tàpies, master of symbols

Spanish painter Antoni Tàpies is not that well known in the US. I got to know his work when I was living in Madrid. And I’ve been a fan ever since.

He passed away last February at the age of 88. The Instituto Cervantes in New York screened a documentary on Tàpies by the Spanish filmmaker Eusebio Lázaro (also known from television: Cuéntame Cómo Pasó).

The documentary is from 2009 and was shot only about a week after Tàpies got a pacemaker. It brings a very intimate portrait of the painter, who at that time was clearly still weak. He says that the operation, as minor and routine it is, always means a traumatic intervention.
The film is not a question and answer interview. Not at all. It’s a conversation and flow of thoughts with renowned art critic Dore Ashton. It allows plenty of silent moments and close-ups of the artist.

Tàpies is a master of symbols, of images from deep within, connected to the earth, very raw and authentic.
He describes himself as very sentimental. We see a vulnerable person, for whom words are not enough, for whom words are often unnecessary. In this sense he puts everything in his paintings, his paintings being the message that he wants to bring.

He says that with his works he wants to achieve a change in the viewer, which can be a very difficult thing to do.
When asked what he exactly means with a specific work, he sometimes admits that he just doesn’t remember, that it has been made some time ago.

His symbols and messages are never ironic, a big difference with most American artists. Religious symbols are not used as critical observations of the religion itself, but embody the more universal and mystical meaning of the same.

Tàpies says that his painting is not left to chance or coincidence. Every line or graphic form is well intended and never randomly put on the canvas. Their place is always well thought about.

Antoni Tàpies had a long and fructuous career. Good for us.
I think his work will be timeless.

lost&found : after the tsunami

It’s been more than a year since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The full extent of the consequences is still not very clear. There’s again big concern about the danger at the nuclear plants.

We all remember it very well. The images that went all around the world were devastating. People died, people survived, people were left behind.

Japan is trying to look towards the future. But sometimes the past is necessary to be able to move forward. People who have lost everything, their family, their home, how can they forget the past? We are our past. We need our past to hold on to.

That’s maybe why we all take pictures. To make memories visible and tangible. To look back on what we did, on what we were, on what we had.

The Lost and Found Project is exactly trying to do this: give people back a part of their past. After the tsunami had swept away everything and the clean-up started, thousands and thousands of family photos were salvaged. Unnecessary to say that great part of them was damaged beyond recognition. Images were completely or partially destroyed because of the water. Nevertheless Lost and Found has painstakingly cleaned and dried all the photos they found. Then the images were digitized and organized in a database. This has allowed people to get their photos back. Photos of survivors, but also photos of lost relatives and friends.

A picture cannot undo the suffering. But it can mean a lot to people who have lost everything. It can at least bring back some good old memories from before the devastation.

[this exhibition, at the Aperture Foundation in New York City, is traveling the world to raise funds. You may want to check out www.lostandfound311.jp for upcoming locations]

FRIEZE-ing in NY!!!

The London based Frieze Art Fair has crossed the pond!
Created in 2003, Frieze has put up its temporary tent on Randall’s Island, New York City. I was invited by a friend to join her at the opening day.

Frieze comes as a fresh wind from over the Atlantic. This much anticipated first time in New York fair only brings art from living artists. A free water taxi takes you from Manhattan over the East River to Randall’s Island. A patch of land no-one hardly ever goes. The boatride only adds to the excitement and offers a free skyline tour.

A fair is still a fair, but this one tries to be different. The tent construction allows plenty of daylight to seep through. So no bad lighting here to make some works look awkwardly bad. The hallways are open and wide. And instead of making the most of the available wall space, galleries are sparcely showing works of sometimes only one artist. It is impossible to get an overdose on one wall. The art is given room to breathe, in this way allowing it to be appreciated at the fullest.

Art is art, and will always be subject to the most subjective criteria. Nevertheless, I think that any contemporary art lover will have the same overall impression: this is damn good! The art, or better: the galleries and artists, have been well picked. Frieze is only 9 years running, and it still feels young and surprisingly refreshing. It surely brings a welcome new vibe to the New York art fair world.

MADE OF DUST AND DIRT

Ask a bunch of artists to work with dust, dirt and other filthy stuff and you’ll get a different looking exhibition. Like “Swept Away” at the MAD (Museum of Art and Design, NY). Instead of working with traditional media, like paint, they used materials and substances which are normally considered as detritus.

Smoke and its residue are the discarded products of other materials consumed by flames. Here smoke becomes the medium for refined and elaborate drawings in empty bottles (which are usually also discarded). (see image)
Or smoke is used to make patterns and drawings in the sky. The drawings being as ephemeral as the smoke itself. (see image of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang’ s explosive gunpowder art)

When we dust our rooms, all we do is collect pollution, our own dead skin particles and dead or living insects. Here a dirty duster is changed into a sculpture of a human skull.

Or pollution becomes image when you leave your table and chinaware too long outside. (see image)

What you find in a vacuum cleaner becomes the velvety surface of classical wallpaper.(see image)

The dryer lint, the soft stuff you find in your clothes dryer, and hair of all the persons who use the machine; it combines beautifully in the patchwork of a quilt. (see image)

A bouquet in unbaked terracotta; its flowers as brittle and transient as the real thing. Of earth it is made. To earth it will return. (see image)

The ashes of burnt books in hourglasslike receptacles; the stories are there, albeit in a different form. But they can never be read again. (see image)

An elegant and intricate carpet of sugar, waiting to be swept away by the swirling moves of waltzers. (see image)

This exhibition didn’t get the media attention nor set-up as any Moma show. But the Museum of Art and Design is never disappointing. Never.

Here we have an exhibition with a different approach, to say the least. It makes you think, from the moment you walk in, till hours after you’ve walked out.
It’s about matter gone by. It’s beautiful things turned into dirt. And dirt into beautiful things.
It’s a different look upon fleetingness. On how things we thought were gone are sticking around. It’s about life and death.

In a society where handsanitizers can be found at every entrance, this exhibition comes as a filthy cold shower. It makes us realize what we seemed to have forgotten: that we cannot escape from our own dirt. That everything we discard stays around. And that one day we, too, will become dirt, ash, trash, smoke, detritus, …call it what you want.

Dries van noten : “I like ugly things”

The Alliance Française organised this fashion talk with renowned Belgian designer Dries Van Noten.

As he said himself, he doesn’t do this kind of event very often. At some moments I had the impression he didn’t feel too comfortable on that empty stage in front of a big crowd and under a Super Trouper spotlight. But nevertheless the evening had a certain feel of intimacy to it. It must be his personality. A soft spoken voice, humble and seemingly very honest. That’s how I would describe him.
His status of famous and glamorous fashion icon is certainly not sustained by himself.

Known as one of “the Antwerp 6″, he is not only the designer of his brand, but also the CEO of the whole company. He says to be a perfectionist in the sense that he wants to control everything. Not only for the sake of control, but also because he happens to like the business side too.
Van Noten still lives in Antwerp, not in fashion meccas like Paris or Milan. He says it’s good to be able to see things from a distance. And Antwerp is also where he has to attend to his garden!

To create a collection, he always starts with a “story”. It can be a painting, a smell, a movie or any other specific element that seems to grab his attention and inspire him. Then the story is translated to a person. And little by little a series of restrictions are taken in account, like the place and climate where his garments will be worn.

Van Noten thinks that beauty is boring. He likes ugly things. It sounds very strange from a person who creates such beautiful clothes.

Dries Van Noten has always been independent and his company completely self-financed. The company always makes its own fabrics and prints. He says fast fashion is a good thing for the client, but he could never give up his independence to draw for large scale chains, like for example Zara or H&M. But his garments should not be mistaken for haute couture neither. His work is perfectly wearable.

Van Noten does not do licences (for example sunglasses) because he simply prefers to design clothes, but also because those accessories can not be made in time to go with his collection.

Dries Van Noten does not advertise! He wants people to buy his clothes because they really like them, and not because it’s a well known brand.
But if Dries Van Noten does not advertise, how comes Dries Van Noten is so well known?

explicit haring in the water closet

It doesn’t happen very often that, in order to see art, you have to go to the restrooms. It’s very much the case though if you want to see the freshly restored mural by the iconic Keith Haring.

Anno 1989.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, several artists were invited to do their thing at the LGTB Center on west 13th Street in New York City. Haring chose the men’s room on the second floor. His black on white mural covers the complete walls above the white subway tiles. The room, completely stripped of the toilets and partitions, now has an almost sterile clinical feel to it.

Nevertheless, Haring’s mural is an unbridled celebration, explicit and raw, of gay sex.

Keith Haring died of aids only months after finishing this work. It might make an eyebrow raise. It may be ironic that he died of celebrating life.

That’s it maybe: the irony of life.
Nothing more.

THE ARMORY SHOW….and side effects

March in New York comes with more sunshine and an overdose of contemporary art. In just a couple of days one has to try and take it all in.

It was The Big Apple’s turn to show to the world that global recession doesn’t affect the art market. Or so it seems. Could it be that in times of crisis people become more creative? Is it a fact that people trust the arts more than the banks to invest their money? Whatever the case, there was plenty to see and spend your money on at the Armory Show. And even if you didn’t bring your hard earned cash or platinum credit card, the show remains a feast for the senses.

The layout of Piers 92 and 94 make it an easy walk up and down the booths of all the galleries that show off their resident artists’ work. But finding your way through the immense offer can be a drag sometimes. As an avid devourer of art you try not to miss out on anything. Also because you think that every work of art, every expression of an artist is worth a minute, a couple of seconds or at least a glance. Soon enough you realize that this pace is impossible to keep up with. So you try to concentrate on what really appeals to you. It’s the only way to make it through. Not only do your legs start to protest, your head can only take this much of impressions. Watching and feeling art is a demanding brain activity.

I was lucky enough to get in before the crowds. But slowly the halls were filling up. And soon there was always someone standing in front of exactly the painting I wanted to look at. So, after I had my fill of art, I started to shift my attention to the onlooking masses. I think that for an artist it is always interesting to see the reactions of other people. When someone is holding still in front of a work, focussing on one particular point, almost zen-like meditating on a canvas, you can’t help but wondering what it is they see. What is going on there? I don’t want to miss out on it neither.
There’s these two young ladies watching this painting, from a safe distance. “What is this? What are they doing? Is this possible?” They are commenting on an overtly erotic painting where more than four legs are involved.
It’s always funny to see people react in front of more than life size breasts on canvas or photo. The connoisseur will approach. The girl will lead her boyfriend to the opposite booth. The boyfriend will peep back. And genitals, especially the male ones, are again a completely different story. Children. They are the best! They watch everything with the open-mindness that we, smart adults, have lost somewhere along the way. I saw a dad with his child talking about some paintings: “What do we see here?” And a woman with three kids and she asked them: “What painting do you like most in this room?” I think it was wonderful. And come to think of it, it’s a pity that not more children were there.

After a while, I again tried to focus on the art itself. This time around, it was the most simple works that won my attention. In an ocean of overwhelming color and form, it was a relief to rest my eyes on more modest work. It’s a straining exercise to try and overlook the paintings that are crying for attention by means of flashing color, shocking content or dazzling form. I zoomed in on the smaller frames, the natural colored canvases or works on paper. Delicate minimal drawings with colors used in their most subtle hues, those were the ones I was inevitably drawn to at the end.

As if the Armory Show were not enough, some side events are organised on different locations. Like VOLTA, a much smaller hall with, let’s say, the less established galleries. But nonetheless also here there was great work te be seen and discovered.My last stop during this art filled weekend was at THE INDEPENDENT, three floors of gallery space in the Chelsea district. No big names to be mentioned here neither, but the quality was outstanding. Is it the smaller scale venue? Is it the smaller doses? Or was it the art itself afterall that made that I enjoyed the Armory Show’s side effects the most?

Les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas!

THE BRUCENNIAL – and Bruce said: let there be chaos

Going against the main stream is what The Bruce High Quality Foundation does best.

Bruce High Quality was an imaginary artist who supposedly died in the 9/11 attacks. The board members of the foundation keep a very low profile and stand for everything that has nothing to do with the established art scene in New York. To make the contrast even harder, they hold their Brucennial exactly at the same time as the Whitney Biennial and the New Museum Triennial.

This year’s edition of the Brucennial is held in an old theater on Bleecker Street in the West Village. Anyone can participate. All entries are included.
The result is chaos. This is a far cry from the Chelsea galleries where art is sparsely scattered upon big white walls. At the Brucennial the works are all over the place, covering the entire walls. It looks more like an art market where as much pieces as possible have been brought together, one competing with the other. They have all been put up randomly, first the bigger pieces, and then the smaller pieces between to fill up the gaps. The names of the artists are written directly on the wall.

The vast majority of the artists are unknown (certainly to me). But then all of a sudden there’s Damien Hirst, Basquiat and Keith Haring. You don’t expect to see those here. That Hirst must have been at the Gagosian ’till yesterday! (see my Previous post The Dotted Line)

The famous artists don’t have their names written on the wall. Hirst’s dots and Haring’s little men were not difficult to spot. Those artists have become so overwhelmingly famous that you easily recognize their work within the chaos that this exhibition is.On the otherhand, I didn’t see the Cindy Sherman! I must have overlooked it. It must have disappeared in the crowd.

The exhibition is an exercise in trying to find the needle in the haystack. It’s not easy to look at a delicate little drawing when there is a bold red oversized canvas hanging next to it, screaming for attention. I also had to keep going back and forth constantly to appreciate the big work from a distance and the smaller ones from up close.A huge array of style and medium is represented, making it even more hazardous to find your way through the exhibition.

And then there’s the quality. Sure, taste and color are things that cannot be discussed. But the overall feel of this exhibition is one of low quality. Oh yes, there’s a good number of very great and fine work, but it vanishes in a sea of smudge. The principle of opening up the Brucennial to all artists is very noble. But a humble selection policy would only do good to the entire experience.

(BRUCENNIAL, Harderer, Betterer, Fasterer, Strongerer. Runs through April 20, 2012 at 159 Bleecker street, NYC)