{"id":2044,"date":"2012-10-02T15:14:29","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T19:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/?p=2044"},"modified":"2012-10-02T15:14:34","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T19:14:34","slug":"a-couple-of-sleeper-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/?p=2044","title":{"rendered":"A Couple of Sleeper Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 2, 2012
\nProfessor Tom Wolf<\/p>\n

School is back, and so is the art season in New York, in full swing.\u00a0 On my way around some much talked about shows in Chelsea and uptown, I have found a couple of gems that aren\u2019t getting so much buzz but that are well worth visiting.\u00a0 They also afford the great pleasure that when you see them you are not among throngs of people, but almost alone with the works of art.<\/p>\n

In Chelsea you should definitely catch Thomas Hirschhorn\u2019s dramatic capsized installation at Barbara Gladstone (530 West 21st, <\/sup>through October 20), Richard Phillips\u2019 glamorous Hollywood treatment of Lindsay Lohan at Gagosian, with some immense paintings by Anselm Kiefer and two huge sculptures by Baselitz in the side gallery (for those of you who like Wagnerian sturm und drang), (555 West 24th<\/sup>, through October 20), plus Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman\u2018s dystopian funhouse at Marlborough (the favorite of my Contemporary Art students, 545 West 25th<\/sup>, through October 27).\u00a0 But a less trafficked show at Bruce Silverstein offers different pleasures.\u00a0 Modestly titled Seven Americans<\/em> after a 1925 exhibition, it features a group of major American modernist artists, those grouped around the great photographer and art impresario, Alfred Stieglitz.<\/p>\n

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Maine Seacoast Still Life, Hartley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Equivalent, Alfred Stieglitz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The gallery includes several works by each of the now historic Seven Americans<\/em> included in Stieglitz\u2019s original show:\u00a0 Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Paul Strand, Stieglitz himself, and Georgia O\u2019Keeffe, the one woman.\u00a0 The modest sized works usually take nature as their subject, and often feature close up views, as these early 20th century modernists, especially Dove, come daringly close to total abstraction, while also retaining some reference to the real world. \u00a0Stiegltiz\u2019s nine photographs from his Equivalents<\/em> series exemplify this:\u00a0 black and white expanses of sky and clouds with celestial light playing across them, they are tiny (around 3 1\/2\u201d X 4 1\/2\u201d) monochrome prints that capture infinite space.\u00a0 In the show they are given equal status to the paintings, honoring Stieglitz\u2019s early 20th<\/sup> century campaign to have photographs accepted as works of art, hardly an issue today.\u00a0 Among the paintings, the exhibition features two compact nature abstractions by O\u2019Keeffe, and a rare opportunity to see four Hartley still life paintings in a row.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, uptown the Regarding Warhol<\/em> show at the Metropolitan Museum is a must, as it features a mini-retrospective of one of the most important and entertaining artists of the late 20th<\/sup> century, plus assorted works by 60 other celebrity artists who, like almost all of their contemporaries, could claim to be influenced by him.\u00a0\u00a0 Pick your time carefully\u2014when I went for a second look this Saturday afternoon the entrance to the exhibition was so crowed you had to stand and wait to get in, and most of the exhibition is not spaciously installed (I looked at the splendid, recently re-installed 19th<\/sup> century American paintings instead).<\/p>\n

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Mike Kelley, Memory Ware Flat #49<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Mark Kelley, Memory Ware Flat #41<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peter Scheldahl, in his review of the Warhol show in The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em> agreed with the general consensus that another 60 artists could just as easily have been chosen as influenced by Warhol\u2014but he singled out Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley as a particularly conspicuous omission (and suggested a curatorial bias against the West coast).\u00a0 By coincidence you can walk a couple of blocks south of the Met and see a splendid show of Mike Kelley\u2019s Memory Ware Flats<\/em> at Skarstedt Gallery, (20 East 79tth, <\/sup>through October 20).\u00a0 I was alone in the gallery when I went on a Tuesday afternoon.\u00a0\u00a0 These works are rectangular conglomerations packed top to bottom with small mass produced found objects: \u00a0plastic jewelry, plastic toys, buttons, etc., held in place with tile grout. Between 6 and 7 feet in their longest dimension their frenetic surfaces recall Jackson Pollock paintings or Alfonso Ossorio\u2019s combines, but their imagery evokes the bargain stores of Middle America as much as Warhol\u2019s soup cans evoke supermarkets.\u00a0 The assorted stickers, peace signs, and buttons include slogans such as \u201cI know 50 Ways to Taco Bell,\u201d \u201cDrug Use Is Life Abuse,\u201d \u201cMom\u2019s Taxi\u2014Buckle Up,\u201d \u201cI Was \u2018Gangster\u2019 Rocked,\u201d and \u201cVote for Secretary Rachel Cortes\u2014\u2018Cuz Character Counts.\u201d In juxtaposition they suggest the rich diversity of everyday American life\u2014the subject matter of Pop art in the 1960s.\u00a0 Depending on the artist\u2019s choice of objects, the works range from buoyantly multicolored to elegantly restrained–like Memory War Flat # 49<\/em>, (2008), on the second floor, the most recent piece in the show, which the artist restricted to just black, white and gold objects.\u00a0 The little plastic death\u2019s head, positioned just below the middle on the central axis of the piece, can\u2019t help reminding us of Kelley\u2019s recent suicide; recalling the loss of this talented artist it adds an elegiac note to a handsome and exuberant exhibition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 2, 2012 Professor Tom Wolf School is back, and so is the art season in New York, in full swing.\u00a0 On my way around some much talked about shows in Chelsea and uptown, I have found a couple of gems that aren\u2019t getting so much buzz but that are well worth visiting.\u00a0 They also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-man-about-town"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2044"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2059,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions\/2059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}