In Dogen’s Shobogenzo Zuimonki students are taught not to worry about clothing or food and only to focus on “the way”. After a few rounds of questions regarding the practicality of such an approach, Dogen responded that the important thing is to be focused on “the way”, these other things are trivial in the whole of your practice.
Robert Ryman has said “It is not the what, but the how of painting that is important” (paraphrased).
More and more I come to believe that these ideas, thousands of years apart are for the most part some of the most important words ever said about the production of artwork (if they were even said about artwork at all). It is with this in mind I focused on my gallery tour through New York last week.
Andreas Gursky at Matthew Marks
Let’s get to the meat about this show right off the bat. The critical tongue lashing that Jerry Saltz gave this show last week in New York made it hard not to think about the comment that he (Gursky) is delivering a lesser show than is expected. This may or may not be true – depending on your point of view. There is something to say (good and bad) about the artist that hammers the same nail over and over again – however the spectacle of these images is incredibly hard to resist. His artworks, I believe have started to embrace that spectacle more than anything else.
These new images re-establishes Gursky’s love of ordered spaces and grids. This is true for the more organic pieces as it is for the overly geometric. As I look at the how of these images and the spectacle they deliver to the viewer, there is a lot to sit and digest. The other side of these images are lavish, enormous in size and detail and flawlessly executed. The images of race car crews in particular bring to mind late european salon style mannerism to mind, with the obvious staging and production these surely required.
Haim Steinbach at Sonnabend
As we discuss the artist that hammers the same nail for a career, Steinbach is much further along in that process than Gursky, however the lack of spectacle or even banality of Steinbach’s work brings very different questions than does Gursky’s. First off, we know that Steinbach is focused on the practice of questioning of domestic objects ability to be simultaneously functional, decorative and expressive, and I find that interesting – especially when I first saw his work at the Washington Project for the Arts in 1984. Unfortunately very little has changed with the exception of his works seeming to match in color palette extremely well. In this case, as much as I enjoy the combinations of relationships that occur in these works – it’s time for a new framework to present these thoughts.
Andy Goldsworthy at Lelong
I know I’ll get a lot of crap for liking this show – however Goldworthy’s base in conceptual work with Arte Povera undertones really comes to the forefront with this installation. The show is titled White Walls, it consists of clay applied to the wall and allowed to sit, dry, and eventually fall. I attended around the halfway point of this show and most of the “wall” was at this point on the floor. This made for a real pleasure of ruins type moment. It also made me realize that his work is in the field and very rarely in the gallery.
The big complaint people have with Goldsworthy are the books of nature images/installations – and although I’m not one of those people who intensely dislike them, neither am I in love with them. This show, really does carry forward to me the thought that art is about the experience of looking and being in the same environment as the art itself.
Jean-Michel Basquiat at Van de Weghe Fine Art
As much as I am currently a little bit tired of JMB at the moment this is really a enjoyable show. Hung salon style as many as 4 high and on every surface of the gallery, this is a rewarding and slowly paced show – probably due to the hanging style of the show. The works are mostly works of words and some simple sketches – these are not his paintings and that’s ok. I was expecting a real stinker and came away very happy.
2×4 at Luhring Augustine
Reinhard Mucha and Rachel Whitread steal this show with two great pieces. Whiteread with one of her white room based works, in this case a casting of a door (similar to her work on display at the Nation Gallery right now) focusing on the space occupied by the object than the object itself. Mucha with a sculpture of wood and canvas – that seems to be barely holding together – until you notice the small buttons keeping the structure inside contained. A small show that delivers great rewards.
Jim Dine at Pace Wildenstien
I’m always quick to discount Jim Dines work – especially after what seems like years of hearts and robes as images. However I have always loved the way he draws and sculpts – his sculpted venus figure I saw in Arizona (at the Bentley Projects) has really strong in how it help it’s space and the way the form evolved to the viewer. However nothing prepared me for his current “Pinocchio” sculptures. These artworks are at once finished and rough – with the Disney version of Pinnochio as it’s initial point of view. However that point of view is twisted just a little bit – let’s call these the “Pinnochio for the disenfranchised”.
These are wooden sculptures of 5 – 7 feet in height, roughly sculpted and loosely painted. They seem at once new and old. The painting of the artworks is almost the way Neal Jenney painted his “bad paintings” – the color is used as an indicator, not as a stand in for detail. This is especially apparent in one piece where you can see the traces of the eyes painted in, only later to be smeared out.
To me this seems like Dine has started to recharge his work – in ways that seem to allow him to open up to newer and more interesting approaches. This is the kind of later career thing that I think Saltz is really trying to get to with his Gursky review. Highly recommended.
Richard Serra at MoMA
Here is the story of my getting kicked out of Moma. I didn’t get kicked out of the whole museum – just the part I’m not supposed to be in. Here it goes. I was very interested to see the installation of the new Richard Serra retrospective that is currently being installed, and seeing as I was probably not going to be in town anytime soon, I decided to slip inside the installation and have a look around.
Let me say right now – this show is going to be the hit of the spring summer in New York.
Some of the things I saw – “One Ton Prop” – a piece I’ve wanted to see for some time as well as two of the lead plate and pole pieces (I think one of them was “Corner Prop Piece” a “Torqued Elipse” and some early pieces I just don’t know by sight. Bottom line though is this i
s a fantastic installation even though it is in process.
So I’m looking around like the fanboy that I am and eventually someone step up to me and asks “What I’m doing here?” in my most nonchalant way I say “I’m checking out a couple of things” clearly this is not going to work when he replies – “like what?” It is at this point I’m asked to leave the area, and I’m escorted to the door. They were really pretty good about the whole thing and I was respectful too so it wasn’t taken any further by the staff – to that I’m thankful.
So I was reading the interview by Kynaston McShine and I learned quite a little bit – one of the oddball things I liked – Serra used to have a small moving company called Low Rate Movers – here is the list of some of the workers; Steve Reich, Michael Snow, Chuck Close, Phillip Glass, and Spalding Grey. I knew that Glass was also a Taxi driver as well as Serra’s assistant on some pieces – does this make him the hardest working man in avant garde New York?