By Michele Leight
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has dedicated a new and important installation of works by present generation artists in their contemporary galleries - spanning the 1980s to today - a must-see exhibition for those that desire to learn more about the art of our time, or, as the wall text in one of the galleries describes it "varying perspectives on art of the recent past." There is a significant presence of female artists whose names appear on the little plaques besides their creations in almost equal measure to their male counterparts who - it must be said - for centuries have dominated any art exhibition, discussion or treatise on art. It is heartening to see that change does come, at least for those that are fortunate to live in Western democracies, and several of the women whose work is included here were in the trenches decades ago. It is thanks to them that I am able to write so contentedly about the progress of female artists.
This installation is sponsored by BNY Mellon.
A collaboration between curators from all seven curatorial departments at MoMA, the installation shows a number of significant acquisitions that have not been previously exhibited, including works by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Senga Nengudi, Albert Oehlen, Martin Wong, Huma Bhabha, George Condo and Andrea Zittel. An important project that has been exhibited before in MoMA's design galleries is Architecture and Justice from the Million Dollar Blocks Project described in detail below.
A superb large scale print/painting by Mark Bradford - created from torn and pasted paper - entitled Giant is illustrated at the top of this review, (with detail also illustrated). The front view of Huma Bhabha's imposing mixed media sculpture Bleekman is shown above in the same gallery (the last in the installation) with Dieter Roth's Solo Scenes (1997-98), an autobiographical series of digitized videos on dozens of monitors, created in the final months of the artist's life. This chronicle of meditative, melancholic views of the day-to-day activities of the artist form a monumental visual diary.
Rirkit Tiravanija's Untitled (Free/Still) (1992/1995/2007/2011-) is a personal favorite, an extremely user-friendly and interactive work in which Thai curry is served to the public free during designated hours. It was first displayed at the 303 Gallery in New York in 1992 where the artist outfitted the gallery with a refrigerator, cooking utensils and several tables and chairs - and served curry - transforming the utilitarian space into a social space to eat and sit. Now, for the first time, it has been installed in an institutional setting, and I can vouch for the communal spirit it generated when I enjoyed my cup of Thai curry - made by MoMA's restaurant staff - graciously served from a large tureen and accompanying rice cooker filled with fluffy rice. People sat in groups at individual tables, conversing, or simply enjoying a time out with an unexpected treat. The curry will be served daily from 12 PM to 3 PM, except on Fridays when it will be served from 4PM to 7PM through February 8, 2012.
Tiravanija has developed two scenarios for the exhibition of Untitled (Free/Still), allowing the Museum to show the work in an active state, in which curry is served, and in a passive state, in which docents describe the work following a script prepared by the artist. The installation of Untitled (Free/Still) is made possible by MoMA's Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary art through the Annenberg Foundation.
Several works of art reference HIV/AIDS, notably by artists working in the 80s, when the then unknown virus had a devastating impact on the New York arts community in particular, among others. "Untitled," illustrated above, is a 56-foot-long drawing on two sheets of paper by Keith Haring executed in his winsome, signature style that evokes comic books and graffitti - this work depicting apocalyptic events however. Untitled is on view for the first time in two decades, and was a gift from the Keith Haring Foundation.
Felix Gonzales-Torres's Untitled (Placebo) (1991) consists of an expanse of shimmering, silver-wrapped candy, of which visitors are invited to take a piece, which is continually replenished. Made after his partner died of AIDS-related complications, it is a poetic enactment of a life cycle tragically shortened. Gonzales-Torres deploys everyday materials like newspapers, lightbulbs and - perhaps best known - wrapped candies with simplicity yet formal rigor, which aligns his work with Minimal and Conceptual art. The candies are delicious. I have indulged in them several times, in different settings.
The beautiful, nostalgic painting illustrated above "Stanton near Forsyth Street," circa 1983, by Martin Wong, captures the grittiness of lower Manhattan back then, and the feeling of a neighborhood still cut off from the hustle and bustle of mainstream city life - which some of us remember well. Today, the same area is totally transformed, and has become one of the "coolest" neighborhoods in the city. Rents are high, most artists have gone. I remember with great joy being invited to celebrate the arrival of a pristine new sink in the (totally bare bones) loft of some artist friends, which they installed themselves. It was so cold I kept my coat on. (No heat in that humongous loft, of course). Martin Wong's Stanton near Forsyth Street (1983) is the artist's first work to be acquired by the museum, and it is one of his Lower East Side cityscapes.
Several galleries are devoted to cities with strong artist communities. One shows New York in the 1980s and features such artists as Ashley Bickerton, George Condo, Nan Goldin,and Sherrie Levine - whose drawings are magnificent. A gallery on Cologne in the 1980s has works by Gunther Forg, Georg Herold, Martin Kippenberger, Reinhard Mucha and Dan Oehlen.
The wall text in the gallery "New York In the 1980s" offers perspective:
"Lower Manhattan witnessed a period of creative revitalization during the 1980s. In neighborhoods such as the East Village and Soho, low rents and plentiful housing attracted a wide variety of artists, musicians, filmmakers, and fashion designers. Art made in New York during this decade is characterized by heterogeneity, as artists often worked across disciplines and frequently in collaboration with one another. Many deployed images taken from advertising and popular entertainment, implicitly critiquing an increasingly market-driven culture. Other projects were conceived for and situated within the urban landscape, forging a new relationship between the work of art and its immediate environment."
Film buffs will be pleased to find superb works by Jean-Luc Goddard, Steve McQueen and Stan Brakage included in this show, and they are not to be missed. The British filmmaker Steve McQueen's Deadpan (1997) is an early video installation that pays homage to Buster Keaton, who, together with Charlie Chaplin, is widely considered to be one of the greatest comedians of all time. Watching Keaton's antics is exhilarating - being Keaton must have been exhausting. The film's title Deadpan may allude to the filmmaker, who interjects himself at regular intervals in a virtually immobilized state, heightening Keaton's exertions and superbly exaggerated facial expressions - a defining characteristic of silent films. No more information should be given here about what else happens. The film must be seen in person. One "still" of Buster Keaton's marvelous face is illustrated below, in a rare moment of repose.
Another intimate screening room/gallery is given devoted to Jean-Luc Godard's film Historie(s) du cinema (1988-1998), that the museum describes as "an affusive video collage of film-clips, still photographs, on-screen text, and images of the filmmaker and other performers that is scored with a profusion of sound and music devices." Goddard's gift for visual story-telling alternates in this film between the bad/horrific and the good/beautiful - unleashing Hitler and his grotesque death camps in one segment, and beautiful churches, gorgeous movie stars and iconic classical paintings in another. This oscillating between contradictory subject matter heightens the sense of disorientation in the viewer, and the collage effects are daunting and impressive considering they were done long before the slick film editing programs available today, like Final Cut, among others. Films by Stan Brakhage will be screened daily at 3 PM in the Time Warner Screening Room on the 2nd floor of the museum's Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building. At the time of writing this review, I have not seen the films of Stan Brakage.
One of the most fun exhibits is Andrea Zittle's A-Z Escape Vehicle (1996), the ultimate de-compressor for stressed out New Yorkers - or any city dwellers. This little vehicle is a scaled down version of recreational trailers that "offer their users a complete escape from the outside world in an environment designed to deliver serenity and pleasure. The trailers have uniform stainless steel exteriors, but their interiors are customized for each owner" (exhibition wall text). The customized interior is illustrated above, and resembles a rock pool - without water. Zittle is the CEO of A-Z Administrative Services, a creative enterprise that encompasses the design and fabrication of furniture, clothing and various inhabitable structures. The museum wall text also notes that "Andrea Zittel uses her remote desert residence in Joshua Tree, California, as a testing ground for her ideas." That must be an Aladin's Cave of contemporary invention...
One gallery is devoted to sculptures by Doris Salcedo, and it is memorable. Many of her "sculptures" are composed of found materials such as domestic furniture, remnants of clothing, and human bones that address the effects of political violence in her native Colombia, or, as the museum wall text describes it, they become "monuments to the missing." There is an acute sense of lives lost in disturbing circumstances in these moving works of art. Atrabiliarios (Atrabilious) (1992-93) was conceived in response to testimony the artist gathered from relatives and loved ones of those that disappeared during the Colombian Civil War, an armed conflict that has been ongoing since the 1960s. Worn female shoes in sealed niches are stand-ins for missing bodies and evoke reliquaries for the remains of saints." Another evocative work, La Casa viuda IV (Widowed House IV) (1994), is a door flanked by bedposts, a woman's diaphanous blouse, and a slender bone:
"I believe that the major possibilities of art are not in showing the spectacle of violence but instead in hiding it. It is the proximity, the latency of violence that interests me," said the artist.
The extraordinarily delicate and beautiful Untitled, illustrated above, is an incised leaf by the Cuban born, (American), feminist body-artist Ana Mendieta, who died tragically when she fell to her death from the window of her Greenwich Village apartment after an argument with her husband, the famous artist Carl Andre. Mendieta's death remains extremely controversial after Andre was arrested for second-degree murder following the tragedy, but the eventual trial that acquitted him (after three years) was not a trial by jury, as it is in most murder cases. Carl Andre was tried by a judge.
The comments of a close friend of Mendieta - the renowned performance artist Carolee Schneeman - are transcribed in "The Case of Ana Mendieta " by Gillian Sneed, for Art in America (International Edition, 10/12/10), when she reviewed a symposium, "Where is Ana Mendieta? Donde está Ana Mendieta? 25 Years Later." This review is at www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion-news/2010-10-12/ana-mendieta/
In this review Sneed also writes: "Painting a picture of how difficult it was for women artists in the 70s, she (Carolee Schneeman) reminded the audience that feminist artists of the time were trivialized and denounced as narcissistic. 'We have forgotten the dangers of depicting the explicit female body, how much anger and resistance that inspired,' she concluded..Most riveting, however, was her frank assertion that she is convinced that Andre murdered Mendieta. 'She made me change her light bulbs. She was afraid of heights. She would never go near the window,' Schneeman confided.
This and other reviews of the work of feminist artists who were in the trenches in the 70s and 80s reveals the often outright hostility that First Generation Feminist artists like Ana Mendieta faced. Carolee Scheeman met Ana Mendieta through the filmmaker Stan Brakage, whose films are included in this MoMA installation.
Mendieta's passionate art survives - the delicate leaf, and shadowy, ominous "Untitled (Amategram), are illustrated above. Both artworks are revealing, and very different from the artist's often blood strewn photographs that repeatedly reference violence against women - as did so many of her performances - an irony compounded by Mendieta's violent death. I recently saw a series of photographs by the artist that depicted herself with the signature "blood" dripping down her face - a staged performance of a horribly battered woman, and so very sad given the circumstances of Mendieta's passing. It was a wake-up call and reminder of the fragility of "female-hood," (which persists if one reads the statistics on rape and battery in this country), and the crimes committed against females in many nations around the world.
Ana Mendieta was born in 1948 and died on September 8, 1985, a year after she created the exquisite "Untitled," incised leaf in this show.
Born in 1943, Senga Nengudi was also a feminist artist deep in the trenches in the 70s, exhibiting her unusual installations and performances that referenced the human body and its relationship to ritual, philosophy and spirituality. This is the first time Nengundi's work has been included in a MoMA show, and it is riveting. The artist's website describes her focus:
"Interested in the visual arts, dance, body mechanics and matters of the spirit from an early age these elements still play themselves out in ever changing ways in her art. She has always used a variety of natural (sand, dirt, rocks, seed pods) and unconventional (panty hose, found objects, masking tape) materials to fashion her works, utilizing these materials as a jazz musician utilizes notes and sounds to improvise a composition. The thrust of her art is to share common experiences in abstractions that hit the senses and center, often welcoming the viewer to become a participant."
The installation "Safe: Design Takes On Risk" revisits MoMA's important show of several years ago, which I reviewed for www.thecityreview.com. The "huggable atomic mushroom cloud" (illustrated above) was in that show, and impossible to forget. The drone, "Camcopter S100 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" by Gerhard Heufler and Hans George Schiebel can perform an impressive set of tasks. It is illustrated hovering above other artifacts in the installation.The wall text states:
"This display includes strictly functional items as well as objects that do not work in the traditional sense of the word, but rather contribute a valuable commentary to our thinking about design and safety. Some are physical shields whose forms visually foretell the danger involved in their use - a bullet-resistant face mask, for example, and footwear designed for protection against land mines. Others place danger in cultural or political perspective - a huggable atomic mushroom cloud, for instance. Safety is a basic human need - as urgent now, in the twenty-first century, as it has ever been - and nothing comes as close to embodying the prime reason for design than objects such as these, which deal with self-preservation."
Illustrated on the left of the "Safe: Design Takes On Risk" gallery (the graphic red/black poster and monitor) is one of the most fascinating and important projects in this show that has appeared before in MoMA's design galleries. Entitled Architecture and Justice from the Million Dollar Blocks project (2006), it was designed by students of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University (USA, est.1881) using ESRI ArcGIS - Geographic Information System Software. This important project is a gift of the designers to MoMA. They are Laura Kurgan (South African, born 1961), Eric Cadora (American, born 1962), Sarah Williams, (American, born 1974), and Spatial Information Design Lab (USA, est. 2004)
This ground-breaking study focuses on the 2 million people behind bars in the United States, a disproportionate number of them live in a handfull of neighborhoods in the nation's largest cities. In many places the concentration is so dense that states are spending in excess of a million dollars a year to incarcerate the residents of single city blocks. When these people are released and re-enter their communities, roughly forty percent do not stay more than three years before they are reincarcerated.
But that is not the end of the inhumanity of rape-induced disease and ritual violence, or the expense to the taxpayer.
The United States jail and prison system is the most over-crowded - and most expensive - incarceration system in the world. It is also without question the most violent, especially for younger offenders, who end up in the same bullpen as hardened criminals, and are often subjected to rape and other violent ritualistic practices of gangs and factions that are an intrinsic part of the prison system. I have researched and written about this for several years, with increasing dismay, especially for first time offenders, and those imprisoned for petty crimes. Man on man rape is rampant, often resulting in incurable diseases like HIV/AIDS and Hep C, which then return to unsuspecting family members when prisoners are released. One man became infected with HIV/AIDS after he was raped 7 times by gang members. His crime was stealing a bicycle.
Projects like this demonstrate how artists and designers are tackling some of the most serious issues that confront our times. There are many others at this show that overlap with human rights issues, giving proof that our artists are focused on much more than the surface diagrams or constructions of individual works of art or installations may suggest. They take time to digest, and they dig deep into territory that is disturbing - but they are really worth the effort. Awareness brings change.
This thought-provoking and moving installation interweaves works from all of the museum's departments and furthers the historical sequence found on the museum's fifth floor that has works from 1880 to 1940, and the fourth floor that has works from 1940-1980.
The works selected also demonstrate that curators understand the challenges facing our communities and society - and ultimately the human community, which is heartening.
A review of the films of Stan Brakage will follow.
A important new show at MoMA "Sanja Ivekovic: Sweet Violence" expands on some of the issues confronting First Generation Feminists explored in this installation. A review will follow.
