Just yesterday we were at the MoMA prefab show, which we found underwhelming (more on that later this week). By contrast, Nicolai Ouroussoff at the New York Times heaps on the praise for the show's curator, Barry Bergdoll. Whereas, Justin Davidson at New York Magazine has some issues. We also had the pleasure last week of attending the "After Nature" opening at the New Museum (thanks, Niknaz!). I mainly agree with Ken Johnson on praise for the better bits, although I haven't have a chance to explore everything in detail. Review of the Week goes to Thomas Hoving, former Met director, who is writing again for ArtNet. It's a bit bizarre. He starts by thanking the exhibit's sponsors and takes time to dis the Met's Web site (in my view, the design's bad, but the image library is quite good -- and their art history time line is useful.)
Home Delivery at the MoMA (-Oct. 20)
"This sporadically exciting but ultimately diffuse show begins indoors, on the sixth floor, and sidles up on the present by way of the past. ...an exhibit that can’t quite decide whether prefabrication should be treated with irony or exuberance. ...the history of mass-produced shelter as a shaggy tale of standardized cottages and eccentric prototypes elaborated with hyperrational lunacy. ... In the company of so many utopians and tinkerers, the current exhibit feels bereft of an agenda, lacking in loopy euphoria or any quixotic certainty about what’s next. ...a chronicle of impossible futures. The masses were never going to live in molded plastic wombs or fancifully efficient cubbyholes. Instead, many chose trailers, or assembly-line units disguised as old-fashioned, stick-built ranches. Mass-produced housing exists, but the beautiful, original, and flexible varieties remain stubbornly in the realm of the experimental. All this historical vamping doesn’t so much set up MoMA’s prefab village as make all five new houses seem variously retro." -Justin Davidson/NY Mag.
"With a shiny cubic pod, a scaffolding wrapped in transparent solar panels and a jigsaw-puzzle cottage, New York's Museum of Modern Art has turned a next-door vacant lot into a tiny, giddy world's fair. ...a wildly ambitious display of the pleasures and peculiarities of prefabricated houses. The prototypes, augmented inside the museum by a rich history of the genre, capture both the earnestness of architecture's obsession with industrial technique and its faith in technology as an agent of progress. ... The gallery exhibition reveals the almost pornographic obsession of many architects with machined surfaces, floors supported by webs of triangulated tubes and joinery layered with washers, gaskets and ball joints. Too often the fetish gets in the way of both marketability and production reality. Few of the exhibited prototypes have found a market." -James S. Russell/Bloomberg
"...a delightful surprise. ...more than 80 projects, from humble experiments in suburban living to stunning works of creative imagination. In a tour de force Mr. Bergdoll was able to build five full-scale model houses for the show in a lot just west of the museum. The effect is startling: expressions of a suburban utopian world surrounded by Midtown’s looming skyscrapers. ...the kind of loving, scholarly achievement that is rare in today’s architectural climate, which so often favors cheap spectacle over probing intellect. Mr. Bergdoll has not only managed to track down some unexpected gems, he has also arranged them in a way that allows us to see them with fresh eyes. He makes a convincing case that prefabricated housing was both a central theme of Modernist history and a dream that remains very much alive today. ... one of the exhibition’s most haunting themes: the conflict inherent in the so-called American dream. In many ways the prefab house embodies the tension between a desire for stability and a quixotic faith in social mobility." -Nicolai Ouroussoff/NYTimes
After Nature at the New Museum (-Sept. 21)
"... strange, lugubrious, wildly uneven dream of an exhibition. ...it exudes a distinctly European spirit of ruminative pessimism relieved intermittently by moments of black humor and otherworldly fantasy. It lurches from transcendentally thrilling to portentous to kitschy. ... No stylistic trends prevail, but many of these artists will be familiar — in some cases, overly familiar — to followers of the international avant-garde. ...the exhibition sets out to evoke a metaphorical landscape of death and destruction. ... From behind a grill on the second floor comes the noise of a bird rustling and screeching, as though desperately trying to escape its cage. A sound piece by Micol Assaël, it suggests the human soul trapped in the labyrinthine corridors of modern consciousness. It might also be the spirit of an exhibition that, however fascinating in parts, is too weighed down by mundane works to really fly." -Ken Johnson/NYTimes
J. M. W. Turner at the Met (-Sept. 21)
"It really bugs me that mainstream art critics never give the sponsors of a show the kudos they deserve. So, right up front, enthusiastic thanks to the Bank of America and the Access Foundation for their spectacular generosity in making possible the grandiose and not-to-be-missed J. M. W. Turner show at the Met. ... A full comprehension of the pieces in this show should be attempted only if you have to study for a Ph.D. exam. The only way to deal with such an array is to walk through swiftly noting the pieces that hit you hard and then backtrack and savor only them. Turner is like old studio-system Hollywood. He created a dozen true masterpieces that appeal to every generation. Hundreds of A-productions, which today seem quaint. And a plethora of B-movies Turner churned out to make a living and which look trite and superficial today. Face it: Whereas William Turner was one of the three or four greatest British artists in history, in world art he’s merely an intriguing figure. ... After seeing this unparalleled array I no longer believe he’s a brilliant landscape, seascape and history painter. I now see him as a painter of compelling fantasies who happened to use landscape and the sea as stage sets. He’s a magician and poet of color and light and atmosphere who transforms grim -- and jejune -- reality into a surreal, dreamy never-never land, which is both intimate and universal at the same time. ... The part of the Met’s website devoted to the show is puerile, as is the entire site, which is kindergarten level compared to the British Museum and the Boston MFA, for example." -Thomas Hoving/ArtNet
Buckminster Fuller at the Whitney (-Sept. 21)
"His geometries and lightweight skeletons live on in the architecture of Norman Foster, whose celebrated 'Gherkin' bears a remarkable resemblance to Fuller’s drawing of a segment of the Montreal dome. With his insistence on environmental efficiency and his globe-spanning practice, Foster is Fuller reincarnated in more practical form. He has, for instance, never flinched from the imperial implications of his mentor’s grandest visions – or of his clients’ political leanings. ... On all this, the Whitney is sadly silent – so intent on chronicling the history of Fuller’s intellect that it has neglected the continuing relevance of his genius, his philosophy, and his megalomania." -Ariella Budick/Financial Times
Framing a Century: Master Photographers at the Met (-Sept. 1)
"...the story of photography’s first century through the work of 13 luminous figures who shaped its evolution, from Le Gray, Fenton and Watkins to Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï. The show cleverly lets us juxtapose different treatments of the same motifs, exposing the extent to which sensibility, culture and context filter the quirks of individual vision." -Ariella Budick/Financial Times
Philip Guston at the Morgan Library & Museum (-Aug. 31)
"The link between Pollock and Guston is well documented, but what seems to get left out of every telling is how, in his art, Guston changed the terms of their dialogue, particularly when it came to line, image, and space. Starting around 1945 and lasting at least until his death in 1956, the conversation is dominated by Pollock. He was the first to take the image out of painting, and it was Guston who followed suit. Pollock, however, wasn’t completely successful in his attempts to put the image back into painting, while Guston, who got sick of how abstraction had become codified after his friend’s death, succeeded in reintroducing both image and space, but only after he stopped painting in the late sixties and focused solely on drawing." -John Yau/Brooklyn Rail
Imi Knoebel 24 Colors–For Blinky at the Dia: Beacon (Beacon, NY) (ongoing)
"...as visually striking and technically accomplished as Dia’s Knoebel show is, it also reflects the aesthetic pitfalls and challenges of reconstituting past projects. ... Upon further inquiry, I learned that the panels weren’t merely restored. Rather, each was reconstructed from scratch. ...the wholesale recreation of Knoebel’s paintings has purged them of a not insubstantial measure of their authenticity. Remaking Donald Judd’s plywood boxes, say, or Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light installations does not detract from their real or intended artistic import because the visible subtlety of the artist’s hand is not germane to the aesthetic experience of viewing the work. But a painting itself perceptibly reflects the artist’s creative process, and cannot be reconstructed without effacing the artist’s original experience of making the piece. ...the show would have been far richer had a few of the originals been displayed alongside the recreations, taking us back to the time when Knoebel was both honing his art and mourning the death of a friend. Would he have objected to that?" -Sharon Butler/Brooklyn Rail
Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpoolat the Yale Centerfor British Art (New Haven) (-Aug. 31)
"If you occasionally succumb to the idea, for instance, that English painting has little to offer before the ascendancy of Constable and Turner, or that the 18th century - give or take a few Frenchies like Watteau and Chardin - was a frivolous and formulaic period, put such thoughts on hold as you take a trip here to see 'Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool,' a superb exhibition... Influenced by Rembrandt and the Dutch Caravaggists of the previous century, Wright made his reputation with paintings of candlelit scenes... Wright had an ability, as was once said of Edmund Burke, to wind his way into a subject like a serpent. The subject in question might be the Industrial Revolution. It might be the divorce of ethics and scientific inquiry. Or it might be the slave trade. But again and again Wright showed that he was prepared to inquire rather than declaim. He framed questions rather than providing answers, and tried not to patronize his audiences by pandering to what they already knew." -Sebastian Smee/Boston Globe
The House That Sprawl Built at the Hunterdon Museum of Art (Clinton, NJ) (-Sept. 7)
Lisa Dahl: No Place Like Home at the at the Hunterdon Museum of Art (Clinton, NJ) (-Sept. 7)
The 52nd Annual National Juried Print Exhibition at the at the Hunterdon Museum of Art (Clinton, NJ) (-Sept. 7)
"...one of four sequels to 'Sprawl' at the Jersey City Museum (still up through Aug. 24 -- the other venues were at the Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts, the Arts Guild of Rahway and the Art Galleries at Ramapo College), which tries to address the problems New Jersey has with suburban development around the state. At the Hunterdon the emphasis, given the museum's location in Jersey horse country, is on single-family homes and their iconic meaning in America. .... 'No Place Like Home,' wields its irony more openly. Dahl makes dozens of little paper houses, like the hotels in a 'Monopoly' game, gluing them to the walls and arranging them in little cul-de-sacs on the windowsills, but she also takes photos, like real estate pix, and carefully blanks out the houses with blank paper. And she appliqués suburban homes onto canvasses so they float on a stormy sky or a slab of pink veined marble, or underlines them with embroidered clichés... the '52nd Annual National Juried Print Exhibition'... always an eye-popping display of techniques from around the country, but this year's Lynd Ward Memorial Purchase Prize went to an absolutely amazing stone lithograph called 'Identity' by Angela Young, a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls." -Dan Bischoff/NJ Star-Ledger
Luisa Rabbia: Travels With Isabella, Travel Scrapbooks at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston) (-Sept. 28)
"...Italian artist Luisa Rabbia's attempt to transform Isabella Stewart Gardner's travel scrapbooks into art. As a lyrical experiment, Rabbia's 26-minute video is nothing if not audacious. And yet - except intermittently - the work is not quite transporting. ... The result is a kind of surrealistic doodling in real time. Visually, it is intriguing, and yet its isolated moments of surprise and even brilliance came too infrequently for my liking." -Sebastian Smee/Boston Globe
Noche Crist: A Romanian Revelation at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center (Washington, D.C) (-July 27)
"Not every art exhibition has a color scheme, but 'Noche Crist: A Romanian Revelation' does. ... It's a shade of pink whose unofficial name, chosen by Romanian-born, Washington-based artist Noche Crist (1909-2004) as the best backdrop to her paintings, cannot be printed in a family newspaper. Nor can many of the works, which tend to celebrate the delights of the flesh in a way that ranges from PG-13 to NC-17. Parts of the show, characterized by copious nudity and images of not infrequent coupling, ought to be accompanied by a parental advisory. ... Maybe it's all the pink, which sends me into the kind of sugar shock I get from eating too many cupcakes. Maybe it's embarrassment at the in-your-face eroticism of Crist's art, which sometimes feels like an uncomfortable cross between postmodern do-me feminism and the old-fashioned notion that women belong in the bedroom, not the boardroom." -Michael O'Sullivan/Washington Post
Frida Kahlo at the SFMOMA (-Sept. 28)
"...is Kahlo the Clinton of the art world, a courageous barrier-breaker in a male-dominated arena? Or is she art’s Hillary, who has attracted legions of worshipful fans by shamelessly playing the victim card? ... I came away convinced that, however irritating Kahlo the icon may be, as a painter she’s too good and too weird not to take seriously. ...as a half-Jewish, half-mestiza, intermittently lesbian, disabled Mexican woman, she’s a veritable political-correctness punch line. It doesn’t help that she’s also wildly popular with people who are more likely to read People than ArtForum. Indeed, many of Kahlo’s images are so familiar that encountering them in person is like a celebrity sighting: they’re smaller than you expect, yet denser with significance than anything else in the room. But unlike many celebrities, they look better in real life than on glossy paper. The brushwork and colors are more delicate, and the paintings’ slightly overcast patina give them a depth that make the reproductions look a bit brassy by comparison. ... er combination of visual imagination, unrepentant solipsism, and disregard of art-world propriety is flat-out exhilarating." -Tessa DeCarlo/Brooklyn Rail
Hadrian: Empire and Conflict at the British Museum (London) (-Oct. 26)
"...the brutal thematic clarity here is worthy of Hadrian himself. To prove how up-to-the-minute history can be, the opening object is a colossal head of Hadrian discovered in Turkey only last August. It shows him to have been the first emperor to sport a beard, perhaps to cover up some facial blemishes. ...much is made in the show of the open-mindedness of the Romans in matters of gayness. Antinous, who died in a mysterious river accident in Egypt, was quickly deified by Hadrian and worshipped as a god around the empire. The resulting statues show a beautiful marble Adonis with softly feminine looks. ... Anyway, it’s an exemplary piece of storytelling, achieved with exactly the right mix of telling objects and great art." -
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