Mehrutu’s Grey Area
Julie Mehretu, "Berliner Plätze," 2008–09. Ink and acrylic on canvas, 304.8 x 426.7 cm Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG in consultation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
In her large, complicated paintings, Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu has blended everything from historic ruins to plans for sports arenas into her rich canvases in ways that make identifying individual elements sometimes difficult. She works with layers both in terms of ideas as well as of paint and other media. Beginning with a gesso base, Mehretu adds an architectural sketch along with flat colored shapes on top of it. Then comes a layer of drawings in ink and acrylic paint after which she smoothes the surface of the canvas by sanding it down. By layering, Mehretu is not only inserting visual content into her work, but she is also simultaneously losing and obscuring some information in the process.
Julie Mehretu, "Middle Grey," 2007–09 Ink and acrylic on canvas, 304.8 x 426.7 cm Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG in consultation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
The Guggenheim Museum in New York is currently exhibiting Julie Mehretu: Grey Area, composed of six semi-abstract paintings Mehretu was commissioned to make in 2007 by Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Thanks to this commission, Mehretu was able to rent studio space in Berlin and hang her canvases together, working on them at the same time. As a result, they dialog with each other and within the theme of the show’s title, Grey Area. Though cities may be the large topic of the paintings, Berlin takes center stage. In Berliner Platz, she seemingly forgets the modern-day city and depicts the city’s buildings as they may have looked 100 years ago, effacing Berlin’s less than attractive modern history.
Klein’s Big Leap
Yves Klein, “Obsession de la lévitation," 1960. Private Collection. © 2010(ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris. by Shunk-Kender, © Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, courtesy Yves Klein Archives.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. is currently showing the first Yves Klein retrospective to hit the United States in nearly 30 years. Called Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, it was co-organized with Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center. The show traces Klein’s evolution from monochromes to his Anthropometries and Fire paintings in nearly 200 works of art.
As an artist, Klein distanced himself from the strict confines of painting. Instead of conceiving of ideas to paint figuratively or abstractly, his plans were more along the lines of body painting and air architecture. Early on, he invented his own shade of ultramarine blue, called his International Klein Blue, which was inspired by a blue he saw used in Assisi by the Italian fresco painter, Giotto, in the Basilica of St Francis. Klein, in his desire to step away from the canvas, was an early performance artist. He was likely inspired by American abstract expressionists, but he took the performative aspect of artistry a step further; the making of his art was often a public spectacle.
Klein and a model during the performance "Anthropométries de l'époque bleue," 1960. © 2010 (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris. Photo by Shunk-Kender, © Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, courtesy Yves Klein Archives.
Klein’s performances didn’t always include himself. In his unrealized plans for “Capture du vide,” the residents of a particular city would be asked to return home at a designated hour, leaving the outside world devoid of people and their sounds. At the opening of the Galerie international d’art contemporain, Klein organized nine musicians to perform his Symphonie-Monoton-Silence. The musicians were instructed to play one note for twenty minutes. Klein dressed to the nines in a tuxedo and a white bowtie and was a step removed from the performance. Though he was the artist, he wasn’t creating the art or the music. Instead, he directed the musicians as well as a group of models to make his paintings. The models were nude women who slathered paint on their bodies and then pressed themselves up against sheets of paper, their body marks becoming Klein’s paintings.
The Persistence of Memory
Christian Boltanski, "No Man's Land" at the Park Avenue Armory
With our poor economy and tough times in general, it would be natural for artists to look ahead to happier days. Like the rest of us, they are frustrated, and probably wish they could sell some more work. However, artists continue to deal with the past. They are looking back to difficult times, and making art that expresses fear, anxiety, and sadness stemming from events in their own lives as well due to world events like war, genocide, and state-imposed repression.
At the Park Avenue Armory, French artist Christian Boltanski recently mounted a large-scale installation called No Man’s Land, for which he assembled a giant heap of clothes in the center of the 55,000 square-foot Drill Hall. This mountain was surrounded by 45 rectangles—“plots,” the release calls them—of jackets and coats neatly laid out on the floor. Throughout these plots, anonymous poles played the sound of hearts beating—each one different, and taken from Boltanski’s ongoing heartbeat collection project, Les Archives du Coeur. At the front of the Hall, an intimidating arrangement of oxidized biscuit tins formed a towering 66’-long wall halting a visitor’s entry into the large, dim space and forced him to consider a path left or right to get inside.
Christian Boltanski, "No Man's Land" at the Park Avenue Armory
The Holocaust connections seemed to be everywhere. Boltanski’s 40-year career has been absorbed with the Shoah, and he is known, to a certain extent, as a Holocaust artist. Born in occupied Paris in 1944, Boltanski grew up in postwar France. It was not only the pile of clothes in the center of the room that was reminiscent of victims forced to part with their packed belongings upon entering concentration camps, but also the rectangles of clothes on the ground and the steel beams holding up the heartbeat speakers that suggested the blocks of a camp. The sounds of the anonymous heartbeats reverberating throughout the old-fashioned Drill Hall and the massive amount of objects belonging to unseen people call the extent and anonymity of the Nazi genocide to mind.
Dumbing Down the Art Museum
Courtesy brooklynmuseum.org
A popular article in Tuesday’s New York Times discusses the Brooklyn Museum’s failed efforts at drawing bigger and more serious crowds. This historic museum has tried everything from Saturday night dance parties to exhibitions that sometimes push the boundaries of art. Even its entrance, made from glass, was meant to attract locals. Though it has attempted to bring in more visitors by what the article calls its “populist tack,” its efforts don’t seem to be working.
"Star Wars: The Magic of Myth," courtesy brooklynmuseum.org
The Times reports that attendance dropped 23% last year while it grew over at New York’s major Manhattan museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. The article raises some important questions about how a museum can bring in new crowds without alienating established art-loving visitors. To that end, I have spoken with quite a few art world people who feel uncomfortable at the Brooklyn Museum and try to avoid it.
Art of the Oil Spill
Image courtesy of chuckmeyers.com
As Gawker posted the other day, in an act of what now seems like prescience, Chicago artist Chuck Meyers painted a leaking “BP Truck” in oil. This was back in 2006 and was simply part of his Series of Car Problems. Now he has made a new version, called Oil Spill– Matchbox BP Truck, which is for sale on eBay for the next few days.
Looking at Contemporary Dance
Scenery by Santiago Calatrava, image (c) Paul Kolnik
As an art form, dance is a mixture of the visual and the auditory. While we watch dancers perform aesthetic pieces onstage, we hear music meant to enhance the experience. Because of this inclusive nature of dance, collaborations among designers, musicians, and choreographers are commonplace and have been for some time, allowing for artists in their respective fields to showcase their talent alongside each other. In 1913, Nijinsky and Stravinsky brought audiences the ballet, The Rite of Spring before a set by the designer Roerich. Picasso designed the scenery and costumes for Cocteau’s ballet Parade in 1917, which was set to music by Satie. And closer to home, Merce Cunningham initiated a number of creative and fruitful partnerships. He worked with musicians such as John Cage, Sonic Youth, Sigur Rós and Radiohead, and visual artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Olafur Eliasson. Though he hasn’t worked with a dance company yet, William Kentridge, who was featured in Art:21 Season 5, has designed sets for productions of The Magic Flute and The Nose.
The New York City Ballet is presenting the latest dance-art relationship, offering what could be described as a gesamtkunstwerk, the Wagnerian term for a total work of art. Their Spring 2010 season features an extensive listing of artistic collaborations among instrumental music, dance choreography, and the visual arts. Among the new commissions are four original scores and seven new ballets, five of which are to be performed against backdrops designed by renowned Spanish architect and artist Santiago Calatrava. It is appropriately called The Architecture of Dance. Commissioning scenery from an architect is an interesting choice on the part of the Ballet and must have been an exciting challenge for Calatrava. While sets change throughout a short work of dance, buildings and bridges — Calatrava’s usual fare — are meant to last.
Koons on your Google homepage?
Google's new Jeff Koons background, courtesy of googleblog.blogspot.com
Today Google unveils a new “choose your own background” feature. According to the company’s official blog, “You can choose a photo from your computer, your own Picasa Web Album or a public gallery hosted by Picasa which includes a selection of beautiful photos.” The publicly available options include pictures by contemporary artists like the French environmental photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, glass blower Dale Chihuly, and painter/sculptor Polly Apfelbaum.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand, courtesy of googleblog.blogspot.com
Making Google a more personal experience is the reason the blog offers for this new option. However, it also makes Google’s homepage look similar to Bing‘s, Microsoft’s search engine that has used colorful background images from its start. In any case, this innovation from the company that brings many their email, chat, and documents on a daily basis will not only brighten up the search page’s typically plain, white background, but it also brings attention to some lesser-known artists whose work they have chosen to feature.
An Artist’s Day Job
Boris Rasin, "Arch Masons," 2010
To support themselves, artists typically have day jobs. While many teach, some find other ways to make ends meet. Warhol and Hopper earned money in advertising and commercial art, while Koons worked for a time as a Wall Street broker. For my inaugural guest post for Art21, I interviewed a typically silent member of the art world, an artist’s assistant. Boris Rasin is currently the assistant to a major contemporary painter and is an artist himself. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Rasin immigrated to Brooklyn in 1991. A graduate of Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School and The Cooper Union, Rasin has dabbled in everything from drawing to video and multimedia sculpture. In this Q&A, we talk about what it’s like for him to work for an artist while being an artist himself.
Caroline Lagnado: What have some of your jobs as an artist assistant been like?
Boris Rasin: When I used to freelance, I worked for several artists in their studios, and helped several others through the galleries where they exhibited. I always liked doing these gigs. You got to hang around artists in their element, have a hand in making their work, see their quirks, etc. I especially liked seeing the art workspaces, which always give you clues about their personalities. All the gigs were different and they showed me how diverse the art world was. One moment I worked for a guy who was so broke, he shook me down for change to buy coffee; the next, I worked on a sculpture that will be sold for hundreds of thousand dollars.
CL : How does being an artist assistant jive (or not) with being an artist yourself?
BR: It definitely jives for me. I’ve picked up useful techniques and have gotten to see how people react to the pressure of deadlines and production problems. Also, it’s really inspiring to be part of the creative process.
CL: How did you get the job you have now?
BR : I worked part-time at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise for a number of years, helping them with special events, bartending, or whenever their staff was over-stretched. I became acquainted with a few of the artists that show there and one of them, my current boss, asked me if I was interested in being a personal assistant. I said yes.
CL: When do you find the time to work on your own projects?
BR: It’s tough. Between my full-time job and my personal life, there isn’t too much studio art time left. But if the motivation to work is there, you find the time. When it comes to doing site specific installations, it usually ends up with me taking time off from work and applying myself 24/7 until the job is done.
