In the Age of Excess Post-Haste, part two
Lee Klein
So it was not that the Maine exhibition was not a success but in its pivoting it was an exhibit that changed directions–sort of in the form of a circle squared. Therein Lerner’s new urban rhythm with a hard edge (whereby he tried to import Basquiat and Twombly into Baziotes and Pollock) came accompanied with determined explanations. This defensive offensive which Lerner and his prominent champion Dr. Kenworth Moffett kept shooting forth all the while fell short (that is as far as this party who over time has been so partial to this work often to his own derision is concerned).
Though on the other hand in other paintings Lerner had now recast himself as the master of the painterly ridges of tactile tangible intangible range. Moreover he created some beautiful small works which swam between moments of light blue translucence and once and a while white (whose wispy ghostly qualities conjured. The Vision of Saint Francesca Romana by Oraczio Gentilleschi–who used a such a hue to create a head cover for a representation of the work of the Holy Mother).
Then upon finding one of these works to reference in the presence of the always sharp Karen Wilkin, I said they reminded me of an Oraczio Gentilleschi touch. She returned in conversation Artemisia and not Oraczio.
Little did I know she had written a piece for The New Criterion on said father and daughter painter (possibly just about to be issued forth as we spoke). Still I say Oraczio and not Artemisia. The classic Lerner dazzle was brought back in good due course.
So in finally helping to choose the works which went up at the National Arts Club I stayed certain to the course that Lerner needed to stop his venture into painterly misadventures and return to orphic symphonic hypertextural razzle-dazzle. So though at first I was supposed to curate this exhibit at the former Samuel J. Tilden mansion I did not (I quit after being asked to write something for the auto dealership art dealership on Perry street "Coopers Classics" and then being constantly excoriated over it) then regained footing got commissioned to write the piece for the NAC, chose, some of the paintings, helped to hang another exhibit, took the money from the National arts club piece, zoomed, up to Toronto for a second time (on an overnight bus), washed my hands of all the dollar bills, (which I have received for all the things I’ve done and as Annie Lennox said if I had a dollar bill for all the things I’ve done I ‘d have a pile of money piled piled piled up), lectured at Gallery One, got reviewed as gobbety goo, saw my NAC piece taken down, attended the coopers classics exhibit to see that it looked like a blueberry tinged ermine blizzard with every third canvas looking like scrambled eggs [all the while thinking Joan Mitchell did white well by using just the canvas as a backdrop in its’ Spartan hue.-Oh well!].
Meanwhile Joan Miitchell’s posthumous retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American art proved her powerful in a range of softness much as was Pierre Bonnard in his super charged state of relax. However the works at the Whitney were hung to close together like an exhibit on the avant-garde my friend and up and coming art dealer Neil Stevenson saw at the Statens Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark (in September) (There in the latter exhibit George Grosz’s and Umberto Boccioni’s blew the roof off of spatial conjugations and so soon it was headache time).
Next it was onto "Face to Faith", Shalom Neuman’s exhibit at A Gathering of the Tribes as part of the Unbearables Festival. This exhibition may in the end rest as a great exercise in collaboration but also as a grand attempt for the artist to recodify himself. This span of works illustrated by way of inclusion each of the artist’s reaction or coming to term with or to religion (some in relation to current events).
A strange choice of paintings led to some passages, which wound up working. Indeed the juxtaposition between a canvas by canvas Mark Kostabi (of course painted by someone else some or another of a long list of endless assistants who lend their talents to this hapless conceptual reshaped mishap in search of any publicity any publicity Kostabi if you had a dollar bill for all the thing you haven’t done you’d have a mountain of money pile pile piled up and you do) and Pennsylvanian painter Isidor La Duca had the latter’s black and deep red canvas waxing passionate and redolently against the very similar and glowing ersatz Estonian’s.
Meanwhile Neuman’s computer montage of baseball players taking the field for various religions was and is hilariously well threaded and sartorial. This piece made from pieces in the form of baseball cards was used as the image on the invitation for the exhibition. Meanwhile Neuman’s crack of the bat anti-Catholic clergy attack was grandstanding and a bit too much of slide head first into the home plate of literal. In fact this is where the artist falls short by being literal in a three way meaning; thus he seems to work sometimes like a scene re-creator in a wax museum might.
Finally here Ron English with himself in the role of Jesus is more tired then tired (but other of his works in the exhibit were well done). And why I ask not now Ron English as Moses or any of other historical figures who are under represented as being him?
Now onto Ed Ruscha’s suite of mountain bound palindrome paintings at Gagosian Chelsea. Well in the now finished year of the palindrome this year 2002 adding up to four or ABBA spelled forward or backwards or that spells Mama Mia and or the year was as good an excuse as any for restaurants to charge $20.02 for brunch entries. In the meantime Mr. Ruscha’s well painted palindromes before doppelganger scenes of mountains and valleys summits and crest are only credible if the saying such "Aslut-Tulsa" says something which makes sense which literally registers forwards and backwards and thus in convergence.
This summer then saw me as usual traveling out of town often through the small hours of the night to exhibitions in other locales. Early on in the golden season it was onto to Helen Frankenthaler at Yale to close off my financial sketch of the market for her work for Gabrius Italia and to the Corcoran in WDC to see the career survey of the work of Larry Rivers.
Frankenthaler as usual left me cold (the exception being her recent watercolors) but it was great to see a fine range of her friends Mr. Rivers at Corcoran Museum in Washington DC. The Rivers retrospective one would think would have been at a powerhouse museum like the MOMA or the National Gallery; but here it was.
Of course this was to be the closing exhibition in the life of Mr. rivers. I came to know Larry through my offhand role as a nightclub musical and literary producer and did three gigs with him. I got to discuss not only my writings on him with him but also other things such as Gore Vidal and Red Grooms. He would even call me up and torture me with offers to publish my book- and then say "now onto serious business."
As everyone in the know is by now aware Mr. Rivers was quite a piece of work. However, despite his eccentric personality (which was practically off the scale) he was an important and groundbreaking artist who deserves some respect in death. And that is much more than Richard Polsky on www.artnet.com gave him (by penning the market for an artist after he dies right after the fluvial one passed).
Rivers was gifted by a deep breadth of talent that may have seen itself streetwalking once and again but he also possessed his work with a swift undercurrent of satire and commentary.
His abstract expressionist brushwork in stop go slow mo in deranged experiential works such as In the Studio captured states of being (whether drug induced or otherwise of an altered consciousness) which were extremely well articulated–thus rendering these paintings important to the course of perception.
The Corcoran exhibit displayed all of his periods though its deployment of artifacts from Rivers life was off kilter. Furthermore, the exhibition rooms were over packed with work.
All said Mr. Rivers remains the only artist who called me up to discuss the review I had written on him after I wrote it (albeit I handed to him after he came out of bed with the flu to play a gig at life in my Literary Life series on Bleecker Street).
Mr. Cool, Gerhard Richter’s exhibition at MOMA had my temperature range fluctuating. If and when one garners the time and strength to examine his opus I believe one will find it to be Herculean. That is in that for the deeper and deeper one penetrates his work the more convinced and overwhelmed one becomes in their belief that his work holds its ground. It is body of work kept by way of explanation in a state of paradox–as the artist claims its bad but it so good. All is believed until the silly interview meant to escape answering the questions of curator and catalogue writer Robert Storr.
Next on the continent with art dealer in offing Neil Stevenson a giant Richter held forth in the Statens Museum in Copenhagen. This work was one of his many colored canvases that look what the choices for an auto body hue might be in infinity. Then in the Bundeschtag entryway there was a Richter of the German flag in the high security entryway. The building as updated Norman Fosters’ domed edition to the parliamentary building (also formerly known as the Reichstag) is perhaps the most majestic structure I have ever seen. Up on the roof of the Bismarck era colossus there is a stone glass interface and an inside outside dialectic all as one is left out among the stars while staring straight down into the great parliamentary chamber itself.
Indeed all of Berlin was indeed a pleasant surprise: from the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz to the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Pergamon (where I heard Anne Waldman read a poem about being at the Kenneth Koch memorial reading at St. mark’s Church and when I told her how amazing it was hear her read about it after having just been there she could have cared less).
By the time anyway that I arrived in this city I was tired and trying to immerse myself in an ‘Artforum Berlin" event (which hardly set the world on fire). I was not exactly electrified. I ran into a couple of complaining New York art dealers.
One artist I did discover for myself however was David Schnell. Schnell’s work seems to resemble Neo Rauch’s in its Spartan pop imagery and thin veneer. However the formers work involves racing as theme and surreal juxtapositions of volumes and perceived past motion (via it’s allegorical twists and turns and or replacement values). Though the catalogue said it was all about landscape.
