Master Drawings at the National Gallery

Mary Cassatt, "Margo Wearing a Bonnet," 1903


By Katherine Sable


I spent another Saturday at the National Gallery drawing from the work in the Baroque Woodcut exhibition. As I wandered out of the three large spaces encompassing the works for that exhibition, I found myself in a dark, small room filled with drawings ranging from the 1500s to the early 1900s. At first glance, the exhibition seemed only a side note, a peculiar little room filled with a small collection disconnected from everything else in the museum. I passed by each piece quickly in awe and excitement at which one I would come to next, as each sketch held its own presence. Only later did I realize that they were drawings by Mary Cassatt, a few by Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Picasso, Durer, and a Bonnard, to name a few. There was little text, which I liked very much, leaving space for my eyes to wander and my mind to survey. The frames were as ornate as you would expect in a venue like the National Gallery, but the room was not grand and the ceilings were not high. The walls were dark and the lights dim. Not what you would expect for a show filled with the starts and honest explorations of the renowned masters of our art history. It succeeded in creating the most intimate of environments perfect for sharing a moment (or an afternoon, as I did) with these works on paper.

I was impressed by the representation of such highly esteemed artists contained in this small collection. As I stepped forward towards the second room, I found myself standing about 6 feet away from a dark drawing behind thick glass. This was a set up. I was clearly supposed to find in this room the highlight of the exhibition, the most “important” drawing. It was a Raphael and it was big, and it had its own room. The piece was almost creepy, a ghost image of a Madonna and child scene; only upon close examination did I find delicate and deliberate marks functioning to model the figures and the quiet face of the Madonna. I’m not sure if it was the atmosphere or the actual drawing, but when I entered the space designated for this drawing, I had to remind myself to breathe. Of course it is a Raphael, and it’s dated 1507. This thing shouldn’t even still survive; it was a preparatory drawing for the larger painting he would later do of "Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist." This drawing is definitely one to write home about and it seduced me- but in my opinion, any number of the drawings in this collection deserved its own room.

I would have to award the best drawing in the house to an Albrecht Durer piece titled "The Centaur Family," dating to 1505. This miniature drawing resembles a cross-sectional study, each line carefully articulated, aiming to describe volume, mass and form of the figures. Durer’s line far exceeds description of volume, mass, and form and takes this drawing into a realm of complete complication. It is descriptive, yes, but it’s so candid. There is a curious smudge near the top of the drawing, revealing Durer’s search in this small composition. The marks are reminiscent of delicate curls, few and far between, light on touch, and completely perfect in place. This drawing is right on point. The marks are careful and quick and at the same time calculated. I spent a long time drawing from this small set of characters, each time hoping to come closer to the rhythm held comfortably in the miniature piece of paper.

Both of Van Gogh’s drawings held a completely different presence from that which I have described above. They were bold and aggressive but not contradictory; rather, they were very straightforward. The figures in "Man Polishing a Boot" and "Old Man Carrying a Bucket" held a peculiar, awkward, weighty stance. The lines, heavy and strong, faultlessly described the tired men, their exhausted bodies held a sameness with the exhausted shapes that described their bearing. I was much impressed by the quality of line Van Gogh achieved through seemingly quick mark making. The marks were deliberate but also at times haphazard. The boldness was drawn onto the surface of the paper, drawn above, paper used only to catch the day's end moments of the two men.

I also found Mary Cassatt’s graphite sketches to be quite beautiful. Cassatt’s drawing of "Margot Leaning Against Reine’s Knee" seemed to be drawn in the air, the paper acting purely as the space within the depicted world. Her lines inform the paper, but in the end surpass it and float above. In "Smiling Margot Wearing a Ruffled Bonnet," Cassatt’s ability to search and find during mark-making is much more evident. The face of the child looks to be revealed from lines and characters coming from her bonnet; slowly but suddenly my eyes find the child’s face. Cassatt exposes the child to us, and to me it felt as if that which I experienced was the same as Cassatt when the figure revealed itself during mark making.
Each drawing could stand alone, and with moments like these, I don’t know how anyone could decide which gets to be showcased in its own special room.

Freebasing with Blackberries

Thomas DeBari reviews Tony Just
at Gavin Brown Enterprise

There were two types of work in the Tony Just show. The painting work was further divided into two categories. First was painting work from street posters ripped from their everyday context. Second were canvases with pop images in a “trapper-keeper” aesthetic. The work commanding the room was sculptures featuring break-dancers after Keith Harring and a few after Picasso.

The sculptures were painted to random effects. The idea of brings together someone like Harring, a king of free speech and the positive message in graffiti art, with community. Also he brought in outside monumental sculpture indoors on a smaller more manageable scale. Are they bootlegs? In appropriating from other artists, generational masters if you will, different approaches in application created a loss in cohesiveness. With that aside it must be the greatness of expression. The variation of culture, different aesthetics, envelop the same starting forms. This is the spirit of the high eighties.

Information not presented to you in the beginning of this exhibit was that the thirty something sculptures while all made by Tony Just were painted by other people during a party. Evidence of this cannot be found anywhere. Here is the disconnect though. It seems important to think about them as being completed in a painting party. Yet not stated the work is confusing. In doing such a varied degree of representation the work is all over and grasping anything is tough. Feeling overwhelmed and crowded by them you just want to dismiss them. I truly believe in the template of the work and the idea of people coming together and the quality of that experience. I think that by not announcing the sculptures as a reason for that event, belittles the magic of the moment. Also in knowing the people involved it feeds a like a wonderful idea of the artist community also present in the 80‘s. Also it mimics the Eighties community of Basquiat Scharf and Haring all on one block making work.

With and without information I foresee two conclusions one in which is positive the other is problematic. The problematic sculptures felt crazy with unresolved identity. The positive sculptures were a diversified field of self-expression. It sucks informational details matters this much. Polke loves it.

The street pieces were edited with paint to show in the moment of concision beauty of the everyday 21st century. Painted out and glazed over the surface a field of paper floated off the wall due to its crustiness. The information obscured was still there under the omitted of info. The edges contained the info that they were ripped down. Promoting the refinement of the work lets the work transcendence with the craft not being problematic. What he does now has a basic system aware of where it came from. That is now the strength of the work. This work also is just caught between the gallery and the street. Provocative, yes, but overall it suffered from the strength of the contextual cube.

The other painting pieces are of street culture. Text messaging and simple design formats dominate the work. Outsider informational pieces talking about aesthetics’ of pop culture. Neo-Expressionism, fluorescent color, and the small scale defined this work. All so diverse there were even cloud studies in pastel and a neon pastel reinvention of leopard print. I feel as if it was a throw back to Monet painting the factories in Paris or even still the moment in Vanilla Sky when “The Cruise Character’s” life becomes computer generated. Allover the work varied greatly. It was hard to grasp the obsession of this person. It felt like a conceptual distancing was done towards this Idea of expressionism. This distance feels like youthful agitation. Some sort of playful wonder at the contemporary culture. Puzzling jargon because of it being out of context, reaffirms the everyday by products of man being mutated. It’s attachment is to the techno based society we have become. Technology shapes and informs society changing us into mutated humans. The show is puzzling and uplifting.

The Collection of Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen

Lauren Rice

My opportunity to tour benefactors Dr. Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen’s apartment was certainly a rare and generous honor. That said, I am certain that any person that experienced claustrophobia in Whistler’s Peacock Room experienced it twofold under these circumstances. I am reasonably comfortable in tight spaces, particularly those crowded with inanimate objects as opposed to people so I was engaged instead of overwhelmed by the situation. The Katzen’s art collection is so large (and continues to grow!) that every spare wall surface was covered with examples of work by artists as diverse as Nancy Graves’, Pablo Picasso, Larry Rivers, Dale Chihuly among many, many others, including AU’s own Don Kimes and William Willis. Sculptures and glass works sprouted out of every corner. Most table surfaces were also used as exhibition areas. Furthermore, the artworks were surrounded by fantastically ornate furniture and patterned rugs, which added to the eccentric personality of the Katzen’s home. I find it extremely difficult to base this review on the quality of every individual piece of work at the Katzen’s apartment, or even give a complete sense of the breadth of work on view. Although, a few works stood out in particular, such as lovely little drawings by Modigliani and Milton Avery in addition to a Bill Willis painting entitled Heroes, I believe it to be much more relevant to discuss the Katzen’s space as a whole, specifically considering the Katzen’s collection of chachkas or kitsch collectibles. Furthermore, I believe it relevant to discuss kitsch’s relationship to fine art in general. Several questions come to mind based on the Katzen’s display of both kitsch and fine art. What are the differences between the two? Is there a different system of value for each type of work? Finally, how significant is humor’s role in an artwork? ( I don’t think I can answer these questions in a short review. However, I believe they are important to consider in relationship to the Katzen’s collection.)

Kitsch is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as “Sentimentality or vulgar, often pretentious bad taste, especially in the arts,” whereas the term fine art is described as “a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics and architecture.” Clearly these definitions value high art over kitsch. However, given many significant artist’s use of kitsch as their works subject matter and/or the “productness” of art as their works content, the matter becomes stickier than the above definitions allow.

In addition to being kind enough to open up their home to such a motley crew of art students, the Katzen’s also lead the tour, providing myriad anecdotes along the way. Dr. Katzen was most engaged with his stories about his chachkas, delightedly showing us his collection of battery-powered dolls, including a furry gorilla that sang “I don’t want to work, I want to play drums all day” as it naturally banged on two miniature bongos. A metal sculpture of Picasso with a girl bathing in his stomach sat beneath several Picasso drawings and ceramic works. Many of the works were slightly off-color, not my grandmother’s Hummel figures by any means. My favorites of these were a series of sculptural works made by a Texas artist depicting scruffy, southern bandits hiding in trees, waiting to shoot the good guys. When I said this aloud, Myrtle, who is a painter herself, decidedly stated that she preferred the serious works while her husband liked the humorous trinkets. So I got to thinking about art and seriousness. Although I do believe that making art should not be taken lightly (and neither should looking at it), I have found myself looking more and more for humor in my work and the work of others.

Considering that the Katzen’s collection was overridingly Modernist, I began to wonder why the paintings (except perhaps for a few Larry Rivers relief paintings) and chachka collections were so disparate. Why, for example, aren’t the Katzen’s collecting Jeff Koons whose work focuses on “Art” and kitsch? Or even John Currin (I say this through gritted teeth)? For indeed, the close proximity of the chachkas and the paintings made a simple statement: art and chachkas are both products. The Katzen’s display of their collection knocked down the intellectual and emotional effect of the painted works while it built up that of the chachkas. However, the crammed apartment and the display of the chachkas added humor to the otherwise sober collection of paintings.

Stanley Lewis; The Legend

By Amy Misurelli Sorensen

I was amazed to see so many people in attendance at Stanley Lewis’s opening and lecture on February 17. He led a discussion on his retrospective currently on display at the Katzen Museum.

Stanley Lewis comes from a specific school, The New York Art School, where form takes precedence over content. It has a history. It is a very modernist notion and I believed this notion and his work to be dated. I was prepared for the rhetoric to accompany the monotonous display of landscapes presented on the wall. I thought I had Stanley all figured out, and I admit, I went into it half-heartedly.

The audience was a problem. It was a very large crowd. I had a hard time hearing Stanley speak. The fans in attendance fascinated and distracted me with their gaping mouths, frozen smiles, and adoring eyes. What kind of man generates such a large fan club?

Stanley Lewis does.

He stepped in like a breath of fresh air. I found myself engaged with his nonspecific descriptions of process, his humility and honesty to his obsession with paint and paper applications. He is entertaining and I found myself laughing aloud. Finally, someone, an artist, is simply saying it is o.k. to do this art thing, just for the love of it. What a gala and free wine to boot!

On February 19, I witnessed the true genius of Stanley Lewis. Stanley is an admirable teacher. He instructed a drawing class at the National Gallery. After showing the class several Dutch paintings, he recommended we sit and draw from one painting to figure out and reveal its secrets.

I choose to draw from Rembrandt’s “Man with an Earring.” I specifically choose this painting because of the one figure composition and the compelling portrait. Stanley begins to draw along side of me. He eagerly assimilates the larger forms in the planes of the face to their relationships to the planes in the ground. He makes discoveries and shares them with me. I see in Stanley a commitment to figuring out Rembrandt’s formal decisions. I questioned his presumptions, and continued on my own investigation. Then, as I stand and draw from this painting, I have a revelation. Through drawing, I have revealed the analytical rhythm of this painting that is not apparent from first glance. I search through this drawing for two hours, and finally I too figure out the puzzle. I dialogue with the ghost of Rembrandt through my pen and paper.


Stanley’s contagious passion and teachings are a gift. Stanley Lewis is committed, as Picasso was, to figuring out the language of art.

Multiple Takes on The Art of Cindy Workman

TIM CAMPBELL

Cindy Workman’s most recent prints are currently on view at Lennon Weinberg Gallery through March 3. The show delivers a series of fully-realized, single edition digital prints whose conceptual strengths work fantastically in nuanced, complex composite-images of women. The body of work addresses issues of identity, gender, sexualized imagery, and the difficulties of person-to-person interaction that go hand-in-hand with these issues.

Upon entering the gallery, several large prints are mounted to the east side behind plexiglass that is bolted to the wall. Further back in the gallery space, similar prints are displayed in plain white frames. All of the prints combine a variety of imagery from dolls, floral cloth patterns, magazine advertisements and pornography to create highly edited constructions of women. Like many other great prints and paintings, Workman shows how the best visual strategies are simple on the surface but full of intense complexity and struggle underneath.

The use of plexiglass brought to mind issues of transparency. As viewers, what are we seeing through? Are we seeing through social constructions of gender and recognizing their theatrical aspects, or are we seeing the constructions themselves and thus rendering the individuals behind them transparent? I left the gallery feeling that this question was not resolved in the work, but that it was intentionally left to the viewer to think about.

In many of the prints, such as “Woman 12,” Workman cuts and enlarges images of breasts from pornography and contrasts this enlargement with a shrunken head, whose outline is derived from either advertisement or a doll. This distortion is highly suggestive and puts the viewer in a position of discomfort because Workman is clearly referencing a predatory, sexualizing gaze directed towards women. In this piece, the head is disproportionately small, pushed back in space, and forced to confine to the outlines of an ideal shape. The mouth is blurred as though the words that issue from it are something to be skipped over, hushed. Some type of close-fitting band constricts the throat. Meanwhile, magnified breasts rendered in high grayscale relief occupy the entire lower third of the print.

The print “Large Woman 10” takes on an equally tragic tone in its discussion of childhood, growing up, and the difficulty of dealing with changing social expectations. Between the doll-like image of a young girl chasing butterflies and the soft-core porno image that dwells inside of the girl’s dress, there seems to be no chance of relief for this person in both childhood and adulthood; social constructions, expectations, and sexualization impose at every age.

The most impressive aspect of these prints is their ability to evade definition and question themselves without loosing any of their stunning visual presence. Are we looking at investigations of assigned identity, at collages of social projections of gender, or are these prints supposed to be portraits of specific individuals who must struggle with social projections, gender, and sexualization, while maintaining their own unique identity? Incredibly, the prints do all of these at once without leaving any slack behind.

What really drove these images home for me was how Workman pushed the imagery out of the realm of cold theory than can isolate viewers from highly conceptual artwork, without sacrificing any of the conceptual strength that dictated the composite arrangements. These prints are not actually collage or assemblage because they are pure-image; various images were cut and edited together on a computer and then printed digitally. None of the original material upon which the fragments were printed is included. This fuses the fragments together into a newly synthesized whole, and it lends a cohesive power to each composite image. Furthermore, Workman chose to place these images upon blank backgrounds (with the exception of an occasional butterfly). The combination of a cohesive image and a blank background pushed these prints surprisingly close to a more traditional genre: portraiture. This is what really gave the imagery a lot of power; the suggestion that the viewer might actually be looking at a portrait of an individual, a person with a specific background. The images are not just composites and clips of information; they have a strong visual and figurative presence that compels the viewer to consider each woman-image as a person here in front of them. Workman’s ability to keep the viewer guessing about where the social constructions come from, or who assigns them, only makes the work more affective and challenging. This highly successful show is certainly worth a visit as it will engage the viewer on multiple levels and its message stays with the viewer after leaving.



CORY OBERNDORFER

In a masterful play of dichotomies, Cindy Workman balances images of the innocent and the experienced, the playful and the playgirl, the naïve and the voyeuristic, and the metamorphosis between the two.

Her most recent show at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. in New York’s Chelsea District is titled “Les Demoiselles”, an obvious reference to Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (The Ladies of Avignon). Picasso’s painting depicts five prostitutes in a brothel and receives a great deal of attention due to the use of multiple styles in the same painting. For Picasso, this painting documents a transition period in his work. For Workman, it’s the ladies themselves that are caught in a transitional period.

Workman gathers her images from a number of sources. The idealized drawings of girls come from the envelopes of sewing patterns, clad in bows, ribbons, simple frocks and plain hairstyles. The soft-core nudes are obtained from photographs, publications and online sources. They offer breasts, inviting looks and the occasional accent of kink. The artist has then her sources and collaged them using computer technology and transitions in opacity and transparency. I am still unsure how these transitions should be viewed. Upon first look, it seemed that the child and adult fought for attention and dominance within the same figure. But after further viewing, the subtle transitions and overlays blend these archetypes together with an odd sense of harmony, creating a new hybrid. The hybrid idea is reflected with the occasional appearance of butterflies in her prints.

In each piece, we are witness to the physical and sexual transition. The bodies of the young girls blossom immediately into curvaceous women, fully aware of their sexuality yet sometimes still displaying shyness by covering their genitals. As viewers, we experience a metamorphosis of our own. Watching a young child at play is such an innocent activity, but seeing the adult nude in sexual poses is voyeuristic. But in actuality, the traditions of voyeurism are reversed here. The children are unaware of the viewer and are often found at play in their own world. We have stumbled across a candid moment. The adults pose full frontal or in ways that are hyper-aware of the viewer and invite the gaze. In which situation should we feel like the peeping tom?

Workman has also made a deliberate choice to cull her images from a specific time period. By using work created in or around the 1950’s, she recalls a time when gender and age roles were more strictly defined and crossing those lines was taboo. The dated material also provides color palettes for Workman to manipulate. The adult nudes are presented in black & white or muted sepia tones. The children are rendered with pastel colors found in children’s clothing or candies. The transition in palettes takes place within the figures as well as the neutral backgrounds.

While standards of propriety may have been clearly defined in the 50’s, the lines have been blurred. We now live in a time when children mature at a younger age and are inundated with images of a sexualized culture. At what point should we let go of innocence? What are the implications of the transition from virgin to whore? Can the two identities exist simultaneously? Should we enjoy the playfulness in Cindy Workman’s pieces or feel like a voyeuristic pervert? Can’t we have both?

MAXWELL O. PERRY

Cindy Workman's show was the first of a few shows that I was really impressed with on my recent trip to New York. I was not familiar with her work so that made it all the more impressive in its freshness. Her pieces are large scale ink-jet prints (most likely giclee) which appear as layered transparencies of various body parts of women, juxtaposed together to form one powerful image usually frontal with strange cropping within each layered image to accentuate the whole being the sum of the parts. The individual images come from a wide range of sources – soft core, sewing patterns, children's books, etc. Each individual image, through it's construction with the others, takes on the history of the portrayal of women in the media as well as how women portray themselves to reveal the complexity of identity.It is also significant that the women are made up of varying ages, the little girl's face in transposed with the full breasted female of a men's magazine. The act of juxtaposition references politics and time in these pieces as they seem to tell the story of themselves. They reference narrative without being narrative in nature. There are also signifiers within the images. One woman wears a bondage collar, while another holds a flower. Each one identifying and addressing stereotype and archetype while not being stereotypical in any way. The nudity in these images serves their politics as well, at once they are both exposing themselves and being revealed, but because of their construction, do not come off as pornographic but rather simply provocative. The use of the scanner and computer could be seen as a crutch, however the artist's use here separates these images from being simple pop art and transforms them, giving them an extremely modern look.It is interesting in reading the press release for the show that Workman's style developed from forms of direct collage and fully realized narrative to arrive at these striking images.

Textile Museum's Mantles of Merit by Lauren Rice

Mantles of Merit: Chin Textiles from Mandalay to Chittagong

October 13, 2006-February 25, 2007

Upon walking into Washington D.C.’s Textile Museum, I am confronted by bright vertical stripes, subtle shifts of indigos, and the use of the grid as a compositional device. All of which, I might add, are displayed upon large rectangular surfaces. Alas, it is not a Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt or Agnes Martin exhibition that I have stumbled into. It is the Museum’s current exhibition entitled Mantles of Merit: Chin Textiles from Mandalay to Chittagong, open through February 25. The way in which curators Barbara G. Fraser and David W. Fraser chose to hang the intricate pieces of 19th and 20th century Chin textiles as two-dimensional works on a wall was strikingly reminiscent of many modernist exhibitions.

As an amateur knitter with a budding interest in decorative pattern design, I know hardly anything about the Chin people and their exquisite (dare I say…) craft. Furthermore, I know next to nothing about weaving. Upon entering the museum, I learned that the Chin are from Myanmar (Burma), northeastern India and Southeastern Bangladesh. The Chin are also known as the Zo, Lai or Kuki and as a group speak over 40 different languages in the Tibetan and Burman family. More relevantly, “Textiles play their most dramatic role in the important Chin effort to achieve merit in this life and the next. Chin people strive to distinguish themselves through success in hunting, war, accumulation of wealth, and feast giving. Textiles announce these accomplishments through specific patterns reserved for the meritorious.” Given that all of these textiles were made to be worn in order to display merit, I am reminded of another realm western culture: our obsession with fashion as a visual display of worth. Despite the information about the Chin available at the beginning of my tour, my training as a painter, my ignorance of weaving and the way the show was hung, I fell into the easy habit of regarding these utilitarian textiles as paintings.

Most of the pieces on view had a symmetrically striped composition, often alternating wide bands of red with indigo or white. The textiles that I found the most striking were the ones that veered from this pattern. A Myanmar’s woman’s cloth using warp ikat and indigo dye was interesting not only because the cloth was woven as well as dyed, but because most of the intricate weaving was in the top quarter of the cloth, at the chest of the tunic. From a distance, the brown, yellow and white thread glowed like gold against the indigo of most of the tunic. One of my favorite works was the man’s mantle or dap zal, which was woven by a brides mother for her future son-in-law. Although symmetrical in design, the use of complimentary colors, dull to bright color and differing widths of line separated this work from the rest. The wide pink central lines, framed by a dull green of the same width did suggest a union. The thickness of the center against the white cotton and finally framed by thin red zigzag lines reiterated the known to the unknown, the togetherness of a marriage.

The Chin’s use of complimentary colors in the central parts of the compositions amazed me throughout the exhibition. On the other hand, their decision to use to indigos close in tone in the same garment was also thrilling. In one particular mantle, two shades of indigo alternate to suggest the wings of the hornbill. However, the width of the stripes vary creating a wavy, optical effect. Another neighboring mantle was woven from yarn of identical color. However, the black threads are made of different material, one linen and one cotton, creating a shimmering pattern of light.

Now I must return to my innate desire to view these beautiful articles of clothing as paintings. I am reminded here of Gauguin and Tahiti or Picasso and African masks. Is the Chin’s weaving meant to be viewed formally instead of a token of cultural worth? I went to the Textile Museum with Lily and Drew and we spoke for a minute at the end of the exhibition about recontextualization. The minute an article from another culture is hung on the wall, we view it as an Art Work, an Artifact from another culture and we are always amazed at how smart, advanced, etc. that they were. Who made us so high and mighty and why do we automatically think that we figured out color theory first? I feel that this is an interesting note to end on, for if I visited Burma and saw the Chin in wearing and using their beautiful textiles, I must wonder if I would view it as art, or just beautiful design.