Gerhard Richter at the Met Breuer

The Gerhard Richter show will be the last of the Met's in the Breuer building. Next time your'e there it will be part of the Frick, a giant pop up now to different large neighboring institutions.  It is a retrospective, yes, but I had trouble finding the 'there-there' . There are indeed some important works, more of the recent than earlier. but one sees a career that like Picasso's with its many style changes and different families takes some complementary narrative. Mysterious horizontal brush work is a unifying theme. Wall labels are all important as the show seems organized both by subject matter and period. It's impossible to get Florian Von Donnersmarck’s film Never Look Away out of your head which was the biopic that Richter cooperated with and then rejected but which did give some context to the life. There's a video on the Met website that is very good. These are my favorites. Go to the Met website for more images as the show is alas now closed.

Photos courtesy Met Breuer.

Noah Davis and Betye Saar, two lights shining on the black experience

Roberts Projects at Felix Fair in Los Angeles was the simultaneous sight of two pleasures. First: a tiny but lovely Noah Davis painting. Davis, who died tragically at 32, was a co-founder of the now defunct LA Underground Museum and a converted New Yorker. Collector Dean Valentine, co-founder of Felix, was one of his first collectors. He liked black architect Paul Williams (I once squatted for a few years in a classic Hollywood Williams manse) and was a cheerleader in general for the LA black artistic community. Another member of that cohort, 93 year old Betye Saar, came in and held my hand for at least two minutes while she warmly engaged in conversation about her recent show at MoMA, and how she still loves her work. (Zadie Smith has an excellent story about Kara Walker in the NYRB that speaks to some of this world) The juxtaposition of these two artists, one dead at 32, the other thriving at 93, was a tale in and of itself.

The mysteries behind Man Ray's Les Mysteres Du Chateau de De

In 1929 artist, photographer,filmmaker extraordinaire Man Ray was invited by one of his ardent patrons, the Vicomte de Noailles, and his infamous wife and partner in outlandishness, Marie-Laure, to their Robert Mallet-Stevens designed chateau in Hyeres, in the South of France, to shoot the house and its varying, dynamic collections as well as “make some of shots of his guests disporting themselves in the gymnasium and swimming pool,” according to Man Ray. As with many Surrealists who favored automatic writing, Man Ray favored a kind of automatic filmmaking.  He looked upon film as another tool in his poetic, playful bag of tricks innovated with light but he had grown disenchanted as reality in the form of sound had begun to impose itself on the medium: improvisation was his preferred metier. Nevertheless, the Vicomte assured the artist that the film would be a documentary for their private viewing pleasure only, so Man Ray made an exception for the wealthy and generous man.  Reminded of a Mallarme poem, “A throw of the Dice can Never do Away with Chance”, Man Ray decided to make, ‘chance’ the theme of the film. He brought with him two pairs of dice and six pairs of silk stockings which he intended to “pull over the heads of any persons that appeared in the film to help create mystery and anonymity.” Things being what they were at the Chateau, that is to say, already capricious with the beau mode in attendance, the film did not follow a neatly proscribed narrative.

Man Ray began shooting when he left Paris. Two men throw the dice, and leave for the south, arriving at the angular chateau—which is as much a character as anyone in the film. A couple throws the dice and decides to stay, then just as enigmatically to leave after another toss. Man Ray captured the right angles of the Mallet-Stevens modernist house, the painting archives, and eventually the frolicking guests shrouded in stockings and striped bathing suits as if in a phantasm. (Indoor gyms and exercise were all the rage in the late twenties; somehow the late nights and flamboyance had found a counterweight). The Vicomtesse appears in an underwater sequence with oranges in the glass-covered pool, a surreal Esther Williams; a stocking almost actually choked the Vicomte.

Les Mysteres du Chateau de De film also contains negative images akin to his signature Rayographs. This film was his last complete film. (By way of reference, the same year, Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou was released).

The Gagosian Gallery in San Francisco has a very engaging show with good quality prints of Les Mysteres and two other films and numerous objets and stills drawn from the films as well as a short history of the house, now the Villa Noailles, an artists retreat. In a time when most films are literal-minded, these instead make the viewer a participant who is obliged to connect the dots—and the dice. 

MAN RAY
Film Still from Le mystère du Château du Dé, 1929
Gelatin silver print
11 13/16 x 14 9/16 inches
30 x 37 cm 
© May Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris 2019

Image courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Charles Burchfield's landscapes still contemporary

Charles Burchfield was an artist who made lush, evocative, dare I say it, pretty paintings. But why are they so resonant? It feels like something is pulling at his trees from the bottom and top of the canvas, stretching them, that the colors he chose were not on the nose, that the scenes he depicted were drawn from reality and yet other-worldly. My mother, who was a Sunday-ish but accomplished painter did some work mostly influenced by him, and she was able to carry over this attenuated sensation. The retrospective I saw at the Hammer some years ago has stayed with me. I often see Burchfields for sale at tony art fairs as they do belong oddly enough on Park Avenue as much as Main Street, so elegant are his renderings.

The former home of a Pasadena collector goes Op

USC's Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena has a more narrow focus than some of its other art venues. Yet Grace Nicholson, in whose 1924 home it now exists, was a kind of west coast version of Edith Halpert (Jewish Museum) collecting artifacts from Asia and the East and so its grounded in its collecting mandate. However: like many other institutions, USC is trying to draw online eyeballs. In turn, they have given Oscar Oiwa and four SC students 120 Sharpies to make a black and white grammable space. It looks very cool, cave-like, a bit sixties psychedelic and I look forward to seeing it. 

Radical Women at the Wende Museum

Christine Schlegel is one of the artists in the Wende Museum’s (of the Cold War) current
exhibition The Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain, drawn from the Dresden Albertinum’s more expansive show. While they remind of our own radical feminist artists of the earlier 70’s decade, these artists were living under more restrictive regimes in the still repressive Eastern bloc countries in the 80’s and appear in a delayed rebelliousness that was finally allowed to flourish. Schlegel’s practice was not just painting but extended to performance and postcards and the bonds that she formed with fellow East German artists gave heft to their individual work. This 1984 painting is of one of her dance collaborators Fine Kwiatkowski. The Wende is such an anomaly in LA where huge museums are constantly going up. Instead it surprises in the middle of Culver City with its tight focus and elegant gardens in the diminutive former home of the National Guard set up to fight Russia.

Lola Picasso at Sotheby's

Having worked as a producer on a PBS documentary on Picasso in conjunction with the grand Bill Rubin curated MoMA retrospective after his death I thought I had seen so many of the early Picassos. But this beautiful one of 1901 of his younger sister Lola was new to me. It's provenance shows that it was first owned by Olivier Sainsere, one of Picasso's earliest collectors and later, by Paul Mellon. Her glance, which is both sober and haunting, is but one view of this very beautiful woman but Picasso was still suffering from the death of his best friend Casagemas and was gradually working his way into his full-on blue period. Here the background is more muted and her left eye is almost drifting, looking towards something she too is possibly concerned about. Auctions sometimes give us the chance for a glimpse of things we would never get to see otherwise and this jewel of a painting is a prime example of that.

Lola Picasso at Sotheby's

Having worked as a producer on a PBS documentary on Picasso in conjunction with the grand Bill Rubin curated MoMA retrospective after his death, I thought I had seen so many of the early Picassos. But this beautiful one of 1901 of his younger sister Lola was new to me. Its provenance shows that it was first owned by Olivier Sainsere, one of Picasso's earliest collectors and later, by Paul Mellon. Her glance, which is both sober and haunting, is but one view of this very beautiful woman, but Picasso was still suffering from the death of his best friend Casagemas and was gradually working his way into his full-on blue period. Here the background is more muted and her left eye is almost drifting, looking towards something she too is possibly concerned about. But he image of her in her traditional black mantilla is ambiguous on that point.

I checked with Marilyn McCully, who had been an advisor on our film and who is considered the expert on Picasso's early Spanish years. She said, "Picasso was always close to his sister, and he kept up with her children later in life, when two of her sons left Spain at the end of the Civil War for France. She was married to a doctor called Juan Vilató and they had seven children: Fin and Xavier, both became artists. Lola and her husband eventually settled in Barcelona, and she became the “head” of the family, in a sense, after their mother died in 1939. As a girl, Lola was Picasso’s principal model, and she also did drawings in the late 1890s.This suggests that Picasso painted the little panel in Barcelona and then took it with him to Paris (there were other small works he brought with him) in the spring of 1901. There is no evidence this painting was in the Vollard show (the first 'big show’ which Sotheby's suggests it was). Auctions sometimes give us the chance for a glimpse of things we would never get to see otherwise, and this jewel of a painting is a prime example of that. It goes under the hammer tomorrow night.

Black Power at The Broad

This 1965 painting by Norman Lewis opens the install of the Black Power show at The Broad. Its title, Processional, evokes the Selma marches but it also has an unusual affinity with Italian Futurism as if Boccioni or Balla had catapulted further into the 20th century. The galleries were filled with a processional of African American clusters of friends and parents showing their children the rich artistic history which paralleled the Civil Rights movement. It was as if the artists were speaking directly to future generations- so a futurism of a different, but very moving sort.

Anni Albers: A Visionary

Anni Albers was first known as her husband Joseph’s wife. The Bauhaus was purportedly egalitarian however and though textiles largely a female ghetto, the many exhibitions of her innovative work since then prove her intrinsic worth as a designer. A new exhibition at David Zwirner gallery tells the tale. Photo courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery.

Kader Attia at Berkeley

Kader Attia’s work asks: How do individuals and social bodies enact a process of healing after having suffered both physically and psychologically during major political conflicts? A new exhibition at Berkeley Arts Studio explores the French Algerian artist’s work.

Lari Pittman

It's with particular pride that Angelenos who have known of Lari Pittman both as a painter of consummate skill and intelligence as well as a professor at UCLA who has launched so many other careers can now point to the Hammer Museum's coming retrospective of his work. Pittman's work was social media clickbait long before social media even existed and in this and many other ways he presaged so many different strands of the current artistic climate. MoCA's coming Pattern and Decoration show will complement this one, so it's a good time to visit.

Calder's Circus at the Whitney: A personal history

Alexander Calder, or Sandy as he was known to his many friends, was a tinkerer as well as one of the signature artists of the 20th century. A recent show of work side by side with Picasso at the Picasso Museum in Paris made his canonization complete. The first artist to make a genre out of mobiles and stabiles and subsequent author of monumental works had, however, a much different--even miniature--beginning.

Calder’s Circus, now newly installed in the Whitney Museum, was actually the first expression of Calder’s playful artistic genius and came out of an assignment as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette at the age of 27.  He was sent to the Ringling Bros Circus to sketch circus scenes and fell in love with the world of circus.  The following year, in Paris, he created Calder’s Circus, an assemblage of miniature wire figures—walkers, clowns, trapeze artists, acrobats and animals and the like--that he packed into 5 trunks which he carried around with him and performed for lucky friends and avant garde circles.  It gave him fame—and money to eat. It also began his exploration into the mechanics of wire work and balance he would need for his later, groundbreaking sculpture.

As an intern at the Museum of Modern Art, I was familiar with Calder’s work because MoMA had done a salute to him in 1970.  MoMA’s collection was deep but the Whitney got the prize of the Circus.   Designed by Marcel Breuer, the Whitney seemed to me a formidable, cold structure. Now I adore it, but then, it was imposing and I was intimidated, not fully understanding the Brutalist impulse.

Somehow the circus was a light, magical oasis amidst the heavy concrete.  A companion film showed how he manipulated his mini figures and I was enthralled—as most people still are today by the ingenuity and humor of the works.

 Around the same time, my college boyfriend’s father died and we were invited to the Martha’s Vineyard home of his law partner who was a major Calder patron. It was the first time I was able to see Calder’s work in a light and airy domestic setting and in fact the first time I ever saw important art in someone’s house—right near the kitchen. My mother had been a skilled amateur painter, but this was something else entirely. 

 In 1976, Calder attended the opening of a major retrospective of his work at the Whitney.  At that point, his circus was moved to the lobby.  Somehow, I was invited to the opening and Calder himself was there in a wheel chair circumnavigating his earliest successful creation.  He was kind enough to interact with viewers and even to autograph my invitation.  It was not the first time I had seen a famous artist up close but it was certainly the first time that one felt he could have been a friend.  Just a few weeks later he was dead.

Installation designed for the lobby of Whitney Museum of American Art and use in 1976 exhibition. Calder’s Universe (Oct. 14, 1976—Feb. 6, 1977).  Designed by Art Clark, exhibition designer for Calder’s Universe.   Photograph  Jerry L. Thompson.  Remained on view in the lobby from 1977-1997 approximately. 

Black is Beautiful at the Skirball

The photographs and activism of Kwame Brathwaite are an excellent companion to the Rudi Gernreich show at the Skirball Center. Brathwaite was a photographer, an activist, a jazz promoter in the sixties and a believer that natural hair and African inspired fashion was necessary to supplant an exclusively white energy (eg Gernreich and the other white designers) however forward thinking they might be. He helped debunk the straightened hair and lighter skin models who had given black women largely unattainable role models.

Carrington on Madison: an exhibition of fantastical Surrealism

When you entered the recent Gallery Di Donna show of Surrealist artists, it was as if entering a museum. A companion exhibition of Leonora Carrington’s work at a Wendi Norris Gallery pop up makes Madison Avenue into a rare corridor of very special art instead of the latest overpriced shoe. 

Carrington had a retrospective last year in Mexico but it did not travel to the US so this is a chance to see a selection of her work. Carrington was mad for Max Ernst, as was Dorothea Tanning (I had just seen her recent retrospective at the Tate, which also did not come to the US) Peggy Guggenheim, Gala Dali and assorted others. Carrington was not even 20 when she met the older artist but he was clearly catnip and they moved in together in Paris as part of the flourishing Surrealist circle. A later relationship with artist Remedios Varo in Mexico, her ultimate home, was also very productive. A lifetime of her work exploring nature, women, magic and domesticity replete with imagery of animals, humans and hybrids is both ethereal and powerful.  

The Lobster Phone in Edinburgh

This lobster phone in the National Gallery of Modern Art, a wonderful place, in Edinburgh, (7 are white, 4 are red; this my first white) by Dali and James gives a little thrill no matter how many times you’ve seen an image. How impoverished an iPhone seems by comparison.  

Cecile Walton, a modern Millie artist in Glasgow of the 1920s

This self portrait riff by Cecile Walton on Manet’s Olympia replete with not very PC black Sambo doll instead of black cat and nurse instead of maid and baby standing in for flowers from 1920 shows just how screwed up referencing the masters can get. Walton was part of the Edinburgh group which prized symbolist motifs. That said, the title, Romance belies it’s matter-of-fact treatment of her two children as she gets her foot massage. Having just re-seen the actual Olympia at the Musee d’Orsay, one of their most respected paintings, I am hard pressed to even make the comparison. Yet I like this painting and wonder about the very forward thinking woman who painted it who has more or less disappeared into obscurity. She lived for a time in a menage a trois with her husband, Eric Robertson, also an artist, and alcoholic—obviously a problem of the period—and another artist Dorothy Johnstone when this work was painted. Hmmm……

William McCance, an anti war activist Scottish painter

After being imprisoned for conscientious objection during WW1, William McCance still refused to conform.  McCance rejected the more conventional art which flourished in Scotland in the 1920’s like Cecile Walton. Instead, influenced by the Cubist elements wafting over the Channel, he began a series of paintings which reflected his anti-war stance. This painting at the Kelvingrove Gallery, Glasgow, from 1922 called ‘Conflict’ offers aggressive shapes which appear to be almost Guernica-derived.  An outlier in the largely Art Deco decorative environment, he turned to book design and teaching in London and Wales. He had a small touring retrospective in the UK in the 70s but has largely been lost to history.

The Ladies Waldegrave

Uncle Horace (Walpole) commissioned Joshua Reynolds to paint his nieces, the ladies Waldegrave, in 1780. Though they look to be purely Three Gracelike in their white dresses, making lace and spinning silk, the portrait was actually a come-hither to potential suitors for Charlotte, Elizabeth and Anna who were still single. It was the 18th century version of Tinder. 

Luchita Hurtado, now 98, at the Serpentine

I first saw Luchita Hurtado’s work in LA a few years ago when a tiny alternative gallery owner was desperately trying to keep control of her archive. Hauser and Wirth swooped in and now there is an exquisite show at the Serpentine Sackler (what will they do about this appellation?) in London, in an early Zaha Hadid building. The exhibition cements recognition for Hurtado’s expressive and unique vision. Her husband Lee Mullican was the more recognized figure as was often the case with married artists of the time. All that has changed. This work painted just recently: she’s 98.