Lucid Culture

This is a story that’s been told many times over, one that will be familiar to anyone who stuck it out through the Greeks and Romans and then the Old Masters and made it to Art History 102: how two rival art critics, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg not only made abstract expressionism a household word, but actually shaped the movement. To 21st century eyes, the idea of an art critic for a highbrow magazine like the Partisan Review having any influence whatsoever outside of the ivory tower of academia seems particularly quaint. Here at this site, we would be perfectly happy to get just a handful of people off the couch and away from the tv long enough to discover that there actually is such a thing as art. Yet as often as this story has been told, it’s hard to imagine it being told better than the current exhibit at the Jewish Museum that runs through September 21. It’s a quick, breezy show, one that won’t take longer than half an hour unless you are a passionate devotee of the style or the era, and in that case it could keep you rapt for the better part of an afternoon.

Pretty much everything on display here is either iconic or well-known: there are no Pollocks retrieved from anyone’s crumbling Long Island storage space. But the context here is remarkable and smartly curated, including correspondence, posters, media reportage and even a video of the infamous 1950s tv clip showing the chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs demonstrating impressive brush technique as he creates “modern art.” In an unpublished letter, Clyfford Still articulates through clenched teeth how wrongheaded a reviewer is. And the curators have done a good job underscoring how oblivious Greenberg, Rosenberg and their contemporaries were to pretty much any art other than painting (sculpture especially), and how they turned a blind eye to work by women and minorities.  

As can be expected, the big star here is De Kooning, particularly his famous Gotham News with its bright, urban colors over collage. Pollock is represented most strikingly by the familiar Convergence, vigorous even by his standards. Along with a handful of somewhat psychedelic, cartoonish Arshile Gorky works, there’s also a selection of sculpture. Perhaps the most striking piece of all is a work by Still, first described by the artist as a self-portrait, although he later retracted that title. Which is strange, because it’s so obviously self-referential, and self-obsessed, two qualities which perhaps best describe the whole of abstract expressionism. Yet there is nothing whatsoever maudlin about this almost pitiful stick figure against a black background, a tiny flame burning in its head, illuminating a big yellow box with clumsily outstretched arms.

A great deal of the exhibit, either directly or indirectly, relates to the two critics, whose rivalry grew as their tastes diverged. Greenberg comes across as a trendoid (and rightfully so!), jumping from one bandwagon to the next when he felt the slightest push of grass under his feet. Rosenberg, on the other hand, stands the test of time well. Focused (some might say obsessed) on how the experience of painting itself relates to art, he championed hard work and substance over fleeting fame. The two also differed on how they viewed their heritage: a passage from a Greenberg article stuffily relates an unease with what he felt were the stifling confines of American Jewish life. Rosenberg, on the other hand, embraced his Jewishness with characteristically ebullient wit. When met with the question, is there such a thing as Jewish art, he responded that a gentile would say, “Yes, there is Jewish art, and no, there is no Jewish art.” A Jew, on the other hand, would respond by asking, “What is the nature of Jewish art?” If Rosenberg is to be taken on face value, it comes as no surprise to learn from this exhibit that the greatest institutional exponents of abstract expressionism – many of whose foremost artists were Jews – were not museums, galleries or foundations, but synagogues, especially in New York and the surrounding area which continue to exhibit important works of art. Many similarly illuminating discoveries await the museumgoer who has a little time and an interest in this often mischaracterized and misunderstood period in American art history.

The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St., enter on the street just east of the avenue. Museum hours are Saturday – Wednesday, 11:00 AM - 5:45 PM, Thursday 11:00 AM - 8:00 PM, closed Fridays and holidays. The exhibit runs through September 21.

There’s a lot to like in Anthony Pontius’ oils on display here through May 24. This series centers frequently goofy, cartoonish, anthropomorphosed animals onto dark, nebulous, out-of-focus forest backgrounds for a feel that is Simpsons and Twin Peaks simultaneously. A two-headed dog chases its own face, a guillotine looms beneath the dripping trees, a killer’s goofy, fuzzy-bearded face leans in from a stick-figure body. These paintings are surreal, psychedelic as hell and the more compelling the more you stare at them, the backgrounds especially. Playful yet eerie, the visual equivalent of a mix of the Ventures’ minor-key hits. In the back room Pontius also has several wry, Edward Gorey-esque pencil sketches on display. Yet another rousing success for 31grand, a welcome addition (some might say antidote) to the neighborhood.

31grand Gallery is at 143 Ludlow St., across from Cake Shop, gallery hours are Tues-Sat, noon-7 PM.

This exhibit, the first major Kahlo retrospective in an American museum in practically fifteen years, commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the great Mexican painter’s birth. Conventional wisdom is that either you’re in the Kahlo cult or you’re not. Not to be disrespectful to Salma Hayek, but more than any major motion picture ever could, this exhibit will shatter any preconceptions about Kahlo that you might hold, especially if you’ve been subjected to disdainful commentary about the artist’s presumable self-absorption. On the contrary, the works on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through May 18 underscore the universality of Kahlo’s dark, tormented vision. For the uninitiated, it could be a life-changing event.

In addition to more than forty original works on loan from around the world, the exhibit includes a fascinatingly assembled collection of photographs from throughout Kahlo’s life, along with two separate exhibits placing Kahlo’s work in the context of Mexican art from her era. The first including works from the museum’s formidable collection, including the famous, anonymous Execution of Maximilian and David Siquieros’ astonishing Giants; the second focuses on the work of her contemporary Juan Serrano, who died only last year. While this stroke of uncommonly smart, relevant curating is a bonus, it’s Kahlo’s work that everyone is coming out for(early arrival is very strongly advised, the earlier the better).

Kahlo is best known for her self-portraits, blending elements of European surrealism into her overtly traditional Mexican style. Despite being crippled in a bus accident while still in her teens, she was a strikingly beautiful woman, someone who bears only a passing resemblance to the monobrowed, lightly moustached, stoic figure in her paintings (on the other hand, her husband Diego Rivera, an aging, dumpy man whose own work has long since been overshadowed by hers, is always rendered as a pillar of strength). In more than one sense, Kahlo never completely recovered from her injuries, was frequently hospitalized throughout her life and spent her last few years in a wheelchair. The anguish in these works -  the iconic Broken Column, depicting her spine as an ancient stone obelisk shattered in many places, and The Two Fridas, one of whom has just ripped her own heart out – is visceral. While most of her work is dead serious, she wasn’t without a sense of humor, as demonstrated by her surreal, green-themed portrait of botanist Luther Burbank as a plant. And she’s nothing if not self-aware: the most riveting, and revolting of all of these portraits depicts the artist as an infant in the arms of a wetnurse, whose breast is rotten and sagging, the tendrils extending from Kahlo’s mouth sucking all life out of it.

There are so many other iconic works here. Without Hope shows the artist on her frequent hospital bed, trying to suck some sustenance out of a funnel overflowing with entrails and fish heads. In a nod to the Mexican votive artists of the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth century, the famous The Dream positions a skeleton on the top bunk overlooking the artist below. The exhibit also includes the hauntingly ethereal Suicide of Dorothy Hale, the New York socialite/actress appearing several times as she floats down through the clouds, then bleeding but intact at the foot of the skyscraper from which she hurled herself.

The show ends on a typically dramatic note with the potently feminist The Circle, a nude torso in a circular frame, a splash of flame – or is it blood? Or both? – emanating from behind a shoulder. The self-portraits are all reliably disquieting, including a handful of miniatures rarely seen in the context of a major exhibit.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the critical backlash against Kahlo is her legend itself. Like Sartre, Camus, Joy Division and Nick Drake, she’s someone that American audiences tend to discover while in their teens, a point where those who have suffered young (who hasn’t?) find special affinity for her work. Whether Kahlo is in your own pantheon or not, this is an extraordinary exhibit, one of the best in recent memory, making the cost of a trip to Philadelphia well worth your while. Through May 18 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Tues-Sun 10 AM – 5 PM, Fridays til 8:45 PM.

The phrase “actus reus,” meaning the physical commission of a crime, in combination with “mens rea,” the mind to do it, equate to criminal liability in a court of law. For her New York solo debut, Israeli/Argentinian artist Tamara Kostianovsky has created a series of mostly lifesize sculptures of beef carcasses made from used clothing. The show has all the subtlety of a Mack truck hitting a brick wall at 100 MPH, but sometimes that’s what you need to do to prove a point: these works are impossible to turn away from.  The colors are bloodless, the reds muted admidst the pink, beige and white of cowskin, fat and sinew, which makes them all the more powerful: the stuffed animal quality almost makes you want to cuddle these dead animals and reassure them that everything’s ok. Of course, it’s not.

The slaughterhouse includes a quartet of “beef” sides, each in plastic bags with their own individual tag (which looks suspiciously like a recycled airline baggage label); a sink full of “blood” (knitted or embroidered), “blood” seeping all around it; several carcasses, some on hooks, others not, shown from the the underside of the ribcage; and the most striking cow of all, who hangs from the ceiling by a single leg, the other limp, the skin of her belly peeled away to reveal an intricate network of veins. The realism is striking, as is Kostianovsky’s remarkable prowess as a seamstress. As agitprop goes, it doesn’t get much better than this (is Kostianovsky a vegetarian? One would think so). If all else fails, she can always become the house artist for PETA. But the equation isn’t that simple. Most of us eat meat. Only a tiny fraction of the carnivores of the Western world actually kill what they consume. In tackling this cognitive dissonance head-on, Kostianovsky takes on the difficult task of trying to give these animals some dignity in their ugliest possible state and succeeds brilliantly. Through May 24 at the Black & White Gallery, 636 West 28th St., west of 11th Ave., Tuesday - Saturday, 11 AM – 6 PM and by appointment.

Shows like this are why we live in New York. This is someone who will be creating important and emotionally impactful art for a long time, the rare artist whose work will send you flying out into the street afterward with an elevated pulse and renewed passion for being alive. Argentinian expat Andrea Cukier’s work is defined by subtlety, yet packs a potently visceral intensity. To say that her collection of nebulous yet riveting oil paintings - on display at the Consulate General of Argentina through April 30- is captivating is the understatement of the year. Many of these works are pensive and stark, yet rich with emotion and sometimes longing. The artist has a special affinity for the port of Buenos Aires, several views of which are featured in this show.

Cukier’s unique vision makes liberal use of lush textures, subtle earthtone shades over a signature grey background. Another of her signature devices is to situate her point of view looking in from the shadows or somewhere hidden, whether it’s from behind clouds or in a thicket. At its best, Cukier’s work is quietly transcendent. When these paintings are representational – not all of them are – the view is jaggedly hazy, out of focus. Her clouds are thick with shades of white and grey, rather than opaque: they get in the way, or provide concealment. Ships’ masts rise, thin and frail, through the mists concealing what’s below. Vertical and horizontal lines snake their way through washes of shadow: is it barbwire, or the view of a town along the shoreline? Cukier has stated that she wants the viewer to be able to feel the humidity and the smell of the water, a goal whose ambitiousness is not as farfetched as it might seem (New York artist Pamela Talese does the same thing with brutal New York summer heat in her landscapes of industrial wastelands). It is impossible not to be drawn into the remarkable depth of these paintings, with their seemingly endless layers and minute variances of shade. In the distance, barely discernible, the ghost of Turner nods approvingly.

Overall, what is most impressive about this show is that as good it is, this isn’t even her best work – wait til you see what’s on her website. An appropriate soundtrack would be the eerie ambience of Jehan Alain or Radiohead. Or A Salty Dog by Procol Harum, at leat as far as the harborscapes are concerned.

Cukier also has a series of green-themed, Chinese-inspired watercolors here, mostly pondscapes, seemingly painted by an entirely different artist – they have absolutely no resemblance to her oils. While demonstrating a good eye for light and reflection and an ability to assimilate a very stylized technique (which also calls on the viewer to feel the heat and humidity), it’s been done before and just as well many dynasties ago.

At the Consulate General of Argentina, 12 W 56th St. through April 30, free admission Mon-Fri, 11 AM - 5 PM.

If Whitfield’s bright, carnivalesque pastel paintings are meant to be satire, they are resoundingly successful. If not, his work on display at 31Grand through April 19 is inadvertently a scathing condemnation of the effeteness of the idle and the affluent. One striking canvas shows a woman striking a flouncy pose, tangled in a long string of pearls, a wireless phone receiver hanging dramatically from her hand, a uniformed man (who is supposed to be Klaus Kinski) to her right, caught in the camera. As an American Gothic parody, it’s good for a laugh, maybe more if the artist is slinging arrows at his subjects. It’s hard to tell. At least he has a sense of humor: another canvas shows a nude Abraham Lincoln, his penis erect, sitting beside a rodent pedaling furiously on a treadmill. Perhaps the most striking of all of these has a woman snaring a bird with just a flick of her pearls as they encircle its talons.

Whitfield seems to have a bird flu fixation: there’s a series of paintings featuring a blonde woman (who’s supposed to be Sarah Jessica Parker, although she looks a lot more like an older, fatter Bette Midler) surrounded by birds. The best of these shows her wearing a fur scarf with the animal’s face still attached, a trio of Buddha-like children below her, each with its own matching pet vulture. A send-up of yuppie parenting, or not?

Whitfield is also curator of the group show in the back of the gallery, which is a mixed bag. The artists’ names weren’t matched to individual works, at least at the opening, but there’s plenty to intrigue. The most captivating is a trio of still videos of a captive woman, pictured out-of-focus in various states of disrobe. It’s hardly erotic, therefore all the more disturbing. There’s also a big gold statue of a seated, grinning Ganesh with elephantiasis of the ears, a striking oil of a skull heavily troweled, so much as to be literally three-dimensional in yellows, whites and pinks, surrounded by troweled 3-D flowers in various shades. In addition, another oil colorfully and quite oddly juxtaposes a mosaic beneath a brilliantly lit water cave, the obsidian of the rocks above making an intense contrast with the reflection on the surface of the water beneath.

Whatever the ultimate intent of everyone involved here, this is definitely a show to see. 31Grand is at 143 Ludlow Street between Stanton and Rivington on the west side of the street. Gallery hours are Tues. - Sat. 12 – 7 PM

Drop whatever you’re doing. Now.

There’s an art show you need to see. Cruelly, it’s only up through March 15 (the gallery has had it up for weeks, but we are obscenely late on picking up on this). If you’re distraught over the way New York has been turned over to the effete sons and daughters of the ultra-rich, if you’re disquieted by the thought of the apocalypse occurring in our lifetime, get your ass down to 31Grand Gallery (incongruously located on Ludlow between Rivington and Stanton on the west side of the street) for Francesca Lo Russo’s exhibit. This is the most powerful, intense, relevant show we’ve seen all year long. In typical fashion, we discovered this on the spur of the moment, having showed up a few minutes early for a Linda Draper show at Cake Shop (more on that later).

Self-taught Francesca Lo Russo really has it in for trendoids. In her paintings – mostly oil on masonite – they lounge nude at the bar texting each other, dos a dos, by the light of their cellphones, sip martinis at a bar that looks suspiciously like Max Fish while balancing their children on their laps, and make videos of volcanos of burning chemical waste while toxic chemicals spill on their oblivious feet. In these paintings, Lo Russo instantly vaults to the absolute pinnacle of the most spot-on satirical artists of our time. There’s a graphite-and-watercolor grey-and-white work here that perfectly capsulizes her vision. In the background, boxy, geometric apartment buildings – perhaps she’s been inspired by Little Annie Bandez? In the foreground, some random guy making a skull out of the debris of the tenement in the background, bricks and children’s toys scattered around, with a brand-new luxury apartment building immediately adjacent to it. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call it Brueghelesque: her characters sprawl and take over every inch of space they can cover with a sense of entitlement that makes you want to shoot them all.

There is so much in this show to fire your pulse and give your trigger finger extra itch. A post-Katrina New Orleans scene, skeletons everywhere, climbing the ivy, while the whole city drowns. Another with a band tuning up and playing knee deep in water while someone in an adjacent bed is visited by Death himself.

From the press release for the show: “Lo Russo completed the vast majority of these new works in an intense three month period of isolation in an attic in Texas. She is self taught as an artist and lives in Brooklyn. NOTE: Cumbre Vieja is a massive volcanic ridge in the Canary Islands. So fractured by previous eruptions, it could break off completely with any new activity. And though it’s real threat is hard to determine, some scientists say the breakage could cause a megatsunami that would could destroy major cities in Europe, Africa, and the United States’ East Coast.” See this show. You will leave validated. And ultimately richer whether you have the means to purchase anything here or not.

Maysles, along with his late brother David, is one of the great pioneers in documentary filmmaking. Their most famous works include the groundbreaking Salesman (1968), the immortal Rolling Stones movie Gimme Shelter (1970) and the cult classic Grey Gardens (1976). Albert Maysles’ latest documentary, The Gates, chronicling the notorious Christo installation in Central Park two years ago, premieres on HBO this coming February 26. The shots on display here, from the just-published A Maysles Scrapbook: Photographs/Cinemagraphs/Documents fill four walls of the gallery, beginning with over two dozen from the Soviet bloc in 1955. In one black-and-white photo, Albert Maysles casually leans against the bumper of an old World War II surplus truck somewhere in Czechoslovakia, beer in hand, as the locals have just offered him as much as he can drink and as much gas as his scooter will hold. It’s an indelible moment, and sadly, unlike the vast majority of what’s on display here, it’s not for sale.

Other black-and-white shots from the Maysles’ trip behind the Iron Curtain that year include several of inmates at a mental institution, including one particularly scary character posing up against his hospital’s marble steps. Others are alternately troubling and lighthearted: a series depicts weary, clearly out-of-sorts travelers in the Moscow airport, including a family sleeping huddled together, as well as some amusingly sarcastic portrayals of Soviet-era women’s fashions, or what posed for fashion in a society that denied its citizens the right to express any esthetic sensibility that could conceivably be considered individualistic.

The stars of this show occupy the final wall, several large color montages from Grey Gardens. Popular in the gay community because of its camp factor, it’s actually a harrowing look at the effects of mental illness, tracing the twisted, symbiotic relationship between the aging, reclusive septuagenarian Kennedy clan member “Big” Edith Beale and her equally crazy wannabe-chanteuse daughter, fiftysomething “Little Edie” Beale over the course of several months in the duo’s rotting, rodent-infested Long Island mansion. Grey Gardens (which was adapted into a popular musical last year) is an incredibly funny movie, but the humor is completely unintentional, as far as its subjects are concerned. “Al Maysles is a great artist. He’s also a great photographer. He is also of Russian descent. My best friends were all Russian, but they were royalty,” Little Edie is quoted as saying, which speaks volumes.

Several of the most classic scenes from the film are here: a series of six shots of Little Edie cavorting with an American flag, as well as larger shots showing her doing sit-ups in her bathing suit on the decaying back porch, posing in the dunes, perusing an astrology book through a magnifying glass, demonstrating how to wear pantyhose underneath a dress and reclining on a bed while gazing at herself in a mirror with considerable trepidation. What may be the film’s most immortal scene is included here, where Big Edie, sitting bloblike and practically falling out of her dingy green dress, reprimands Little Edie to stop her incessant singing, threatening to leave the room and go hang out with the cats instead. The show’s scariest moment is the final shot, a black-and-white photo of Little Edie posed on the porch in a short skirt, dark scarf around her waist, pulled up to show her thigh. But there’s no seduction here. The frightened bewilderment on her face stops just short of complete self-awareness: only a crazy person would let someone take a picture like that. And as you leave the gallery, thinking you’re seen it all, there’s another black-and-white shot just to the left of the elevator, this time showing a smiling Little Edie shooting with Albert Maysles’ camera. This is a must-see exhibit whether you are a fan of the Maysles’ work or not yet a convert. The show runs through March 15 at the Steven Kasher Gallery, 521 W 23rd St. just west of 10th Ave., second floor, 11 AM – 6 PM Tues-Sat.

Williamsburg artist Dodge is not completely at ease with technology, which is something of an understatement. This show features some recent work which is very thought-provoking, as well as some that is decidedly not. Several of Dodge’s graphite-and-oil paintings are considerably gripping, including one showing a person naked except for a pair of briefs, facedown, hands tied behind the back, a computer keyboard above. Another is a sunken scene, a lobster, reeds and debris along with a keyboard resting on a riverbed or sea floor. There’s also the portrayal of what looks like the Death Star from Star Wars, its surface comprising boats and a plane aimed at one of the World Trade towers. “It looks like barbecue sauce,” an artist from the Williamsburg scene remarked, pointing to the the brown, seemingly random smudges throughout the painting. But the best piece in the entire gallery is something different entirely: a large abstract oil ominously interspersing different shades and textures of black.

On a wall that can’t be seen from the street are also several separate pages taken from coloring books, colored with crayon (within the lines, of course), each with colorful plastic refrigerator-magnet letters affixed to the corners. These are for sale for $400 apiece. We emailed the gallery and asked them to let us know in the event that anyone buys any of them. If that happens - and at the rate the art world is going, it probably will - we will contact the buyer and see how much he or she is willing to pay us for a piece of used toilet paper. $500 seems fair to us. 

One of these days, sooner than later, we have to get to galleryland right when the doors open and go for broke til the eyes get jaded just as they will if you try to do the entire Met in a single day. So much good stuff here. Our latest discovery is at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts where there is a particularly timely exhibit of Louisiana artists running through March 8. Jacqueline Bishop has a series of intensely gripping surrealist oils on display. Everything is caught in a net, as if behind barbwire. Fishes, birds and plants are trapped together, some wide-eyed as if startled to be snared so easily. In one particularly disturbing painting, a fetus and a fetal pig lie side by side on what could be hay. Or it could be something far more menacing.

Raine Bedsole has a fixation with boats, and her big, oblong oil depicting a big barge through the mist gives the viewer pause: is it on the ocean, or did it wash up during the hurricane? Mary Jane Parker also has some very captivating work here, encaustic on panel, juxtaposing green, young twigs, buds and flowers against a shadowy background to create an eerie sense of enclosure.

The Allen Sheppard Gallery moved down here from a side street in the Flower District a few years ago and since then  has really taken it to the next level: a stop here is an absolute must if you’re in the neighborhood. Right now there’s a haunting, stormy cloudscape from Zaria Forman’s Cloud Series, a particularly apropos work for the era of global warming. Grace Mitchell has a few excellent, luminous, nebulously blue and green-tinged glazed oils, perhaps a mountaintop through mist. And there are two pointillistically-enhanced acrylics from Elizabeth Knowles, on which the crew here is divided. Our rigorously art-schooled, working painter thinks they’re blatant Pollock ripoffs, the visual equivalent of Britney Spears; our low-frequency music guy, who can’t draw to save his life, thinks they’re fun and playful. You be the judge.

And as always, Jim Kempner has an abundance of excellent work on display in the current group show, “People,” which runs through February 23 and will alternately make you laugh and scowl. Or scream. On the top floor, there’s a series of hilarious, politically charged, black-and-white mugshots – we’re not going to give away the joke – along with a very funny portrait of Monica Lewinsky. There’s also a laugh-out-loud cartoon depicting Christo’s recent Central Park exhibit, with viewer commentary. On the gallery’s lower level, there are two narrative paintings containing eyewitness accounts of the conditions at Abu Graib prison from innocent Iraqis who ended up there, something every American should be required to see.