Dear Jason, Letter From Europe

“I had already taken some mild tranquilizers for the flight-something I do not so much for fear of flying so much as for impatience.”

Bram Bogart, Hommage à Seurat, 2005. Pigment, plaster, acrylic, 129 x 140 cm. Courtesy of Galerie Richard, Paris.

Dear Jason, Letter From Europe
Joe Fyfe

Having been remiss in the article I promised to send you I thought that I would list all of the very good artists that are not overly known in the U.S. that I came across during my brief sojourn in Europe this summer. I will forward this outline as a beginning to what was promised.

You see, as I sat waiting for my Air France flight in Palma de Mallorca late this June, I decided to go online and as I searched for an open connection I got the spinning disc. I decided to close the machine and when I opened it soon after I got a gray screen. I had no idea at the time that this meant that my hard drive had failed, but as we are all aware, separation from one’s communication devices can be not a little disconcerting. I had already taken some mild tranquilizers for the flight-something I do not so much for fear of flying so much as for impatience-and my anxiety was muffled.  

While in residence at CCAndratx in Mallorca, I often went to their gallery that had a large group exhibition entitled “Space Oddity.” Most notable to me was an Australian artist named John Nixon, who has been active since the 1970’s. The work consisted of a series of diminutive paintings on masonite of hand-painted, colorful, minimalist abstract paintings. What was striking about them was how standard the compositions and handling were, yet they were so personal. Looking him up online I discovered that he “personalized abstraction to his own ends, acknowledging the arbitrary nature of the meaning of art’s signs and symbols,” and that he was the most important conceptual artist in Australia. He has shown with like-minded artists such as Martin Creed and John Armleder.

When I arrived in Paris I had to first get an appointment at the new Apple store near the Opera (the other one is under the Pyramid in the Louvre, forget that.) But, I can now begin to narrate some of the work I saw in Paris, firstly the Bram Bogart show at Jean-Luc and Takiko Richard gallery. This show amounted to a mini-retrospective, covering an artistic life that began in the fifties through a few years ago. The Belgian painter is ninety and is known for using an extremely thick impasto that is made from some combination of pigment, plaster and acrylic. Bogart blows up the gesture to unmanageable proportions, so the material becomes like huge wads of gum, one large painting looked exactly like that, a kind of dirty pink, chewed piece of bubble gum at an enormous scale.

The Pompidou had re-hung its permanent collection of contemporary art again and had an entire room devoted to the Belgian contribution to the 1982 Venice biennale, consisting of about 40 paintings by Marthe Wéry (1930-2005). The works were all stretched canvases that were very thin and long, some about 12 feet high, none more than about 24 inches wide, the stretchers were no more than ½ an inch thick. They leaned in groups around three walls, gathered sometimes according to one of the two sizes, the very tall ones or shorter ones, around 6 feet. They were painted in various versions of what I assume is Venetian red. Some of them seemed faded, I don’t know if they originally looked that way but they were quietly beautiful this summer. Also at the Pompidou was a free hanging painting by Jean-Michel Meurice (b.1938) that was homage to Matisse, from the late 1960’s. It looked like an oversized religious vestment done with diamond shapes in two colors, but was particularly appealing was its material, a kind of rubberized fabric slapped together with thick glue that seemed like it could have been made in an auto body shop, it had a kind of toxic appeal of strong materials.

Don’t ever take the night train from Paris to Venice. The days of dignified train travel have passed. We were hours late arriving, the breakfast was instant coffee and the worst roll in Europe, handed out by the conductor, who also dished out dinner in the dining car the night before, pasta and roast chicken family style, fifty five dollars, an apple for dessert, there was no air conditioning in the dining car, and no cold water in the compartments.

Olivier Gourvil, Hercules, 2011. India ink on Rivoli paper, 100 cm x 75 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

The Biennale was not as exciting as the previous one, but there were some good things in the ancillary shows, such as the Prada foundation’s collection that included Salvatore Scarpitta’s Kite for Invasion, (1962). The Pinault foundation had a very good sculptural installation by Titania Trouve and the personal collection of Ileana Sonnabend at the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation included Giulio Paolini’s painting Elegia in una Scena di Duello from an exhibition that I remember seeing at Sonnabend gallery in NYC in the early seventies when I was a student.

The Biennale itself had a room full of huge Tintorettos and a small piece of paper with some miniscule abstraction on it by Bruno Jacob, a Swiss artist who I always seem to run into. A few weeks after I returned, I met him coming out of the Met and congratulated him on his inclusion in the Biennale. There was also work in the Biennale by the late Guy de Cointet, a French artist who lived for a number of years in California, and Ida Ekblad, a painter, sculptor, installation, abstract, image everything-er, which was pretty good.

Back in Paris was a two-gallery exhibition by Jean-François Maurige, a very good painter that I included in “Le Tableau.” He had wonderful new paintings at Jean Fournier and older work at Bernard Jordan. There was also an exhibition an apartment in the Marais of Olivier Gourvil, another intelligent Parisian painter.

I honestly think that the French still own painting.

*** This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. NY Arts Magazine is published by Abraham Lubelski. Sponsored by Broadway Gallery, NYC and World Art Media.