Not a review: Michael Rakowitz at the Jane Lombard Gallery

Michael Rakowitz is showing work at the Jane Lombard Gallery in an exhibition entitled:

Detail of work at the top

THE INVISIBLE ENEMY SHOULD NOT EXIST  (ROOM F, SECTION 1, NORTHWEST PALACE OF NIMRUD).

He has recreated his versions of those particular works that have been destroyed by ISIS at Nimrud. Above is an example, the bright colors coming from wrappings with arabic branding on them. The relationship between the destruction of the art and the wrappings is unclear. ISIS can not be accused of promoting consumerism, they don't promote anything but nihilism, the only relationship seems to be that the wrappings are Arabic. ISIS has been able to establish itself in Iraq following the chaos left by the American invasion. This military action was justified as a response to Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction". It appeared later that there were no such weapons and that US intelligence had no convincing evidence that they ever existed, and that the motivation was purely to access petrol.

In that sense, the destruction of these world heirlooms can be imputed to the interference of the US in the region. The same could be said of the destruction of art such as the Buddha statues by the Taliban, as the US armed the mujahhideen when the enemy was the USSR. We had no idea when the Taliban blew these statues that one day the Taliban would seem rather mild and self disciplined in comparison to ISIS. Ironically, the Assyrian civilization was one of brutal militarism.

Organisations such as the Taliban and ISIS would not waste their time and dynamite blowing ancient monuments if they did not purpose to antagonize the West. One can feel quite helpless if this iconoclasm is only attributed to fundamentalism. But if these actions are, correctly, imputed to Western inference in the Middle East, we can exercise our political rights to prevent this kind of short sightedness in the case of the Taliban, and self serving politics in the case of Iraq. Imagine a foreign power (no names here, as I prefer my coffee non radioactive) poured funds into survivalist groups in the US, we would soon have a number of Timothy McVeigh empowered to blow up more buildings with babies. 

The ancient Assyrian reliefs that were acquired in various ways by institutions in the Western World were saved from destruction by ISIS, necessarily. The show seems to be an indictment of the movement pressuring these institutions to return the work to their originating countries. Also the stunning beauty of the original reliefs contrasts jarringly with the current branded look, providing added motivation the original work not be destroyed (See beautiful original on the left). At least, that's how I perceived it, which was somewhat puzzling. I'm quite ready to believe that Rakowitz had good intentions, I wish they had been clearer.

Caption accompanying the work above at the gallery

Written and published by  - -  Arabella von Arx

Not a review: Wheeler at Zwirner

The title states that this is not a review, in the sense that I try to communicate my personal experience of a gallery event in Chelsea rather than discussing the work which I will let speak for itself.

I have a problem with a panel with 3 white guys even if one has a charming Italian accent, I know I'm being dogmatic, but it does feel terribly déjà vu. I was incapable of listening to anything Germano Celant said, maybe it's his accent, and he is likely to have said some very interesting things, he is the guy who coined the term "Arte povera" and who heads the Prada Foundation in Milano - maybe he is better with the written word. He does have a most charming name too, a whole story could be imagined around that name!

Doug Wheeler was more arresting. He stuck me as being the interesting case of a man who was shy to start with in life. Had he chosen another path, he would have had to overcome it. But he has become a famous artist, and  this allows for every idiosyncrasy of the personality. The artist is sold "as is" :with the understanding he is not able, nor expected to conform, and his failings are his qualities as they are linked to his creativity.

Wheeler, 81, has a handsome mane of long white hair. Its always a fun exercise to imagine a man with his long hair trimmed short. And I thought, imagine, imagine this doctor's son had had a career in a corporation. Or had started his own business of medical supplies. He might have had to beat the shyness out of his system, as is expected of what one calls a real man, of a breadwinner. And I can see his face shorn of hair, he would have had to compact into something showing power and control his spread out sitting position that is a self conscious attempt at appearing relaxed, and why not, It is a very different person yet the divergence in these paths might have been caused by something seemingly benign, like a bit of bullying by a cousin or an over demanding father.

My impression is that Wheeler knows the show business. He's been there for a while now. He probably doesn't really like it but it's the ransom of celebrity, and he'll play along, which is fair enough. He tells his stories, gamely. Does he tell these stories repeatedly? You would think, from their content's relationship to his artistic path, but if he has told them before, it's not obvious from the fresh, convincing delivery he achieves. He's a good story teller. He recalls his father the surgeon flying his small plane to remote areas in Arizona. Scary landings on high streets when there was no runway. His father would say: see that patch of the sky over there that's particularly blue? Don't go there. They're turbulences. John Wayne! In fact, minimalism has something macho about it. For a start, there is a certain arrogance in asserting that a very simple piece is a worthy art work just because the artist says so. Nothing soft or intricate or empathic about minimalism or conceptual art, these qualities typically needing figurative art or complex abstraction.

He tells of his father letting him fly the plane. Of the  landscapes seen from above, of the different

experience of the world. Of wanting to communicate his sensory experience of the world to others. 

He speaks simply, he is humble, he often seeks the gaze of his wife in the audience, the Hollywood producer Bridget Johnson, and mentions her by name. He also refers to another man in the audience by name, maybe to break the mythology of the famous artist on stage addressing the anonymous reverential audience, which is sympathique.

But still he is there, and he speaks, filling his expected role. The Zwirner son, Lucas, moderates. He's the picture of the young golden boy, well to do, confident, educated, handsome. WASP. Does he know suffering? I guess everyone suffers at some point. It's not a criticism of Lucas. It's a genuine question. The people  I know personally that have been born into exceptional privilege do not strike me as happier than the average Josephine (the average woman informed me she prefers Josephine to Jane).

At the end of the show, people take selfies in the Infinity Room.

And this ... is definitely not a review.

Written and contributed - reluctantly - by  - -  Arabella von Arx

10 Women Artists That Are Vastly Underrated

Calla Lillies by O'Keefe

In the list of the 100 most expensive art work sold, the first work by a woman is in 100th place (maybe they cheated a little and dropped a few male artworks to sneak in one woman, Georgia O'Keefe, and spare our feelings). This stresses how much women's work has been suppressed and underrated. I believed for the longest time that women had created very little art work throughout the centuries, because they were discouraged to do so, did not have access to instruction nor to adequate equipment.

As I researched the project The Thread where I use the art work of women to illustrate women's condition through History, I realized that many more women created than I expected. Some were famous in their time such as Sofonisba Anguissola and Giovanna Garzoni. It was later that their work was systematically excluded from museums and art history books. I have enjoyed many wonderful, underrated artists's works. Here are some my favorite works, the ones that also should sell for hundreds of millions of dollars if any work of art should sell for that kind of money. Absent from the list are the most famous women artists whose work also should be in the 100 most expensive list, but who are not as underrated: Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Bourgeois, Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun, Marina Abramovic. This is also a list concerned mostly with Western Art. We would need a more knowledgable art historian, and a much, much longer list for all the women creators from the rest of the world.

1. Giovanna Garzoni - Still Life. It amazes me that in the middle of the Renaissance, where the tendency was to shut women up (yes, women had more legal rights in the Middle Ages - they were not yet persecuted as witches which started in the Renaissance), the sexual innuendo in the work of Garzoni went completely unnoticed and uncensored. Artemisia Gentileschi could be pretty explicit too. See the violent birth scene disguised as Judith cutting Holoferne's head, or Mary Magdalene enjoying an orgasm thanks to her skulled lover. Giovanna Garzoni was called Chaste Garzoni during her lifetime, but in my opinion, she was familiar with a man's aroused private parts as evidenced by the beans above, gently swollen with life: life that is, life that might be. Neither vertically erect nor martial, it's a very different image from the aggressive phallus men artists have favored. Her open figs and melons are quite juicy too.

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Transgressions, Nalini Malani

2. Nalini Malani: (B 1946) - Remembering Mad Meg. There are many contemporary women artists who deserve a larger spot in the limelight, and that includes Malani who is bigger than life.  Her work is big, her referential is big, her soul is huge. Consequently, the work she produces, bewitching, is an enchantment. Malani has addressed the feminine condition extensively, but not exclusively. This is what she has to say about her piece: 'Mad Meg was a character in a Breugel painting, which is in Antwerp now. It’s not a very large painting; it’s about 75 centimeters high by about a meter wide. You see this figure, this woman who almost looks like an androgynous figure striding across a landscape of completely perverted things around her, for example, there is an egg-like humanoid eating through his anus. It’s almost like she is seeing all of this and somehow wants to put things right but then she is considered the deviant.' I find it very touching that she goes and salvages a female character from a European Renaissance painting.

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3. Sofonisba Anguissola: Her work is outstanding, it's difficult to choose one piece. She made stunningly beautiful portraits of women. In fact, she often explores the relationship between men and women, the female condition: a girl looks at her reading brother with an ambiguous expression: resentment? In Portrait of the Artist's Family, featured, her sister Minerva looks at the bond between her brother and her father, who seems only interested in the boy, and turns his back to her. The dog is the only one looking at the artist, asking her to bear witness to the injustice.
Anguissola is finely getting her due, with Lavinia Fontana, with an exhibition at the Prado in Madrid.

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4. Berthe Morisot might be considered famous enough to be excluded from this list. However, quite famous is not good enough. She should be the star because her work is amongst the very best there is: bold, gutsy not too say ballsy, big, passionate, sensual, daring, there is nothing "feminine" about it but her attachment to representing women, girls, and often mothers and daughters. She painted extensively her daughter Julie who was born from her marriage to Manet's younger brother Eugène. She merged impressionism and expressionism in work that is unrivaled in its exuberance.

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5. Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was an African American sculptor who studied at RISD and spent 12 years in Paris when that city was attracting African American luminaries where she nearly died of hunger, literally, while sculpting. She might be the most underrated of the women in this list. She was talented, expressive, brilliant, but her work got her very little recognition, and still to this day is acknowledged by a handful of art historians or African American scholars. She exhibited during her mid career, the Whitney purchased the Congolaise above, a piece of utmost delicateness and elegance, and she taught art. But later, her career petered out, and she ended up working as a maid. Makes me mad.

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6. Helen Schjerfbeck: An honest self portrait by painter Helen Schjerfbeck, prolific despite suffering from bad health. She could be a bit scattered, she tried all sorts of styles, and was very adventurous in her experiments. She had an original and reflective approach to womanhood. She was Finnish, at a time when a number of talented, inventive women painters worked: Elin Danielson-Gambogi and Ellen Thesleff. She is also to enjoy, finally, a large retrospective at the Royal Academy in London.

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7. Paula Modersohn-Becker: Selfportrait at 6th Wedding Anniversary is a paradoxical painting: she had left her husband to commit to her art, and was not, at least physically, pregnant. She eventually went back to her husband, and died following the birth of their daughter. Her last word is supposed to have been: "Shade". Shame. Yes, what a shame for her, for all of us. She would have been one of the major painters of the 20th Century. During her short life, she was prolific: her work, clearly inspired by Gauguin, incorporated Northern European naive styles. She also tended to frame her subjects very closely, giving them a mythic presence. I miss her deeply.

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8. Belkis Ayon: I'm at a loss to discuss her work, either it would take pages and pages of thinking and analyzing and scrutinizing, or there is only need to look at the work. But here are words that seem apt: extremely mystical, extremely original, extremely beautiful, extremely inventive. She was Cuban and died way too young in mysterious circumstances, as did Ana Mendieta who could be included in this list too. Both are supposed to have committed suicide, and both might have been murdered. 

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9. Leonor Fini, Leonor Carrington, Remedios Varos: that's three, but it was too difficult to choose amongst these superlative surrealists. This print was produced to promote a production of Tristan and Isolde at the Met in NYC. I prefer to call it "Two Women". It can be looked at as the epitome of dualism. Is it one woman or two? One sees, the other dreams. One comes out at the viewer, the other one invites the viewer into her self. Only their faces are quite distinct, their bodies might be merged even if the indication of a shoulder seems to locate the closed eyed in front, the open eyed protecting from behind. The technique, so skilled when we consider Fini was never formally trained, brings to mind Michelangelo, and creates an impression of translucence, as if we are looking at spirits.

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10. Marie-Gabrielle Capet  had to be in this list with this vibrant self portrait painted at the age of 22. How confident and bold she looks. Later, she seems more demure, alas, maybe she got the message that confidence was an unseemly attitude for a woman. She was a devoted student of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, also underrated, who taught other women (see her self portrait with two students including Marie-Gabrielle). Their studio must have been a lot of fun, and tender and warm too.

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The suppression of these women's work is unfair to the artists who were actually often more prominent in their life time then now. The institutionalization of art, through the creation of museums and art schools, the institution of art history, has been most prejudicial to women, and other minorities. In the Renaissance, when they wanted a good portrait, patrons did not mind so much the gender of the craft person as long as the painter had talent and could make a good likeness. But when it came to immortality, women were eliminated from memory. 

The suppression of these works has also been unfair to the public, particularly women. Many of these artists depicted their peer, not as objects but as subjects. They presented an interpretation of what it means to be a woman. Women have been deprived of this legacy, of this interpretative mirror of themselves while they have been assailed by images of women reduced to sexually available bodies, or to sexless saints.

Finally....  Most of art works by women artists are anonymous: sacred texts illuminations by nuns, embroideries, the magnificent tapestries from the Renaissance, quilts, pottery, dolls, not to mention the many women who worked in their father or brother or husband's workshop, unnamed and unrecognized. And now, the latest findings posit that even the Lascaux cave paintings were created by prehistoric women, and did they have talent!

written and published by  - -  Arabella Hutter von Arx