Art

Jean-Michel Basquiat, At 62

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Show Seen: Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure

King Pleasure is now a ghost, a shadowy figure in Jazz history. Born Clarence Beeks in Tennessee in 1922, one night in the early 1950s he heard the great Eddie Jefferson sing lyrics he (Mr. Jefferson) had written to James Moody’s recorded tenor saxophone solo on “I’m in the Mood for Love.” Putting words to a recorded, improvised, solo was something no one had done before.

Clarence Beeks, aka King Pleasure (seen here in a rare Photo on the back of a rereleased Lp in my collection), smiled all the way to the bank. In spite of the record company labelling, Eddie Jefferson was HIS source.

King Pleasure was so taken with it, he learned it himself, brought it to NYC, recorded it, and had a hit with it in 1952 (i.e. he stole it). Mr. Pleasure achieved the fame that escaped Eddie Jefferson, who continued to set lyrics to Jazz solos until he was tragically shot and killed as he left a nightclub one night in May, 1979. He bemoaned Mr. Pleasure’s theft, but said “…in a way it opened it up for me1.” Still, the beauty of Mr. Pleasure’s and Mr. Jefferson’s records endure to charm listeners to this day- as they, apparently, did Jean-Michel Basquiat (J-MB henceforth). 

A peak inside a previously unseen world. Partial installation view of the large area devoted to a recreation of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Great Jones Street Studio as seen in Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.

As I walked through the doors of Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure (J-MB: KP hence) on the far west side on an April Tuesday during the show’s first week, greeted by the wooden sign in the first Photo, I wondered how many of my fellow show-goers knew that the title of the show referred to a Basquiat Painting with the words “King Pleasure” on it, and that those words were the stage name of an actual person.

Jean-Michel Basquiat in a cloud of smoke in his Great Jones Street Studio with his Painting, King Pleasure, which the show is named after, partially seen in the back, left of center, in 1987, the year he Painted it. As near as I can tell, it currently resides in a private collection- like most of J-MB’s major works. From the Basquiat Taschen XXL, P.442-3.

As I left Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure, I wondered how many visitors noticed the Painting the show was named for was not included in it!

Installation view.

So, if the Painting is not in it, what’s the point of naming the show Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure? Is it a riff on the words “king” and “pleasure?” While there were some major Baquiat works on view, most of the “200 never-before-seen pieces” advertised2 were not “major,” in my opinion. So, the show wasn’t the “king” of Basquiat “pleasure.” Of the NINE major Basquiat shows I’ve seen (which is more than the total shows I’ve seen by ANY other Artist. It stuns me to realize this. I wasn’t interested in his work for most of my life!3), the 2019 Brant’s Basquiat came the closest to that in my opinion. So, the name was borrowed from a Painting the Artist created but that is off in a private collection somewhere.

Partial installation view of the large area devoted to a recreation of J-MB’s Great Jones Street Studio, his final home. Quite a few pieces were installed in this large space which also included ephemera and (his, I assume) Artist’s supplies. From what I could make of them from behind that barrier, the pieces in this space were uneven in terms of quality. Showing them in the context of a studio space allows them license for possibly being “unfinished.”

A bit like King Pleasure, himself, borrowed “Moody’s Mood for Love” from Eddie Jefferson?

Recreation of the Basquiat family home living room, his first home.

Though I didn’t count them, I’ll take the organizer’s word for it that the show included “200 never-before-seen pieces.” Being it opened 33 1/2 years after the Artist’s death, and given his level of popularity, it’s pretty remarkable there are that many never-before-seen pieces left. It goes without saying that the chance to finally see the previously unseen work J-MB left that is now in his family’s collection is a landmark opportunity for the countless fans of his work. The show was so well installed it had a museum exhibition-quality feel to it (though it was not installed in a museum). The entire exhibition interior was custom built. Galleries of Art were interspersed with spaces devoted to recreating the Basquiat family home living room, J-MB’s Great Jones Street studio, and and a final, surprise, installation at the very end. I felt the quality of the work, overall, was “good” to “very good” with a few (5-10) major pieces, though a number of other pieces left me puzzled.

A wall of items that puzzles me. Look at the top row, for example. WHAT exactly are these? Pieces like these (and NOT these) are one reason why authenticating original Basquiats is likely to remain a hot topic.

The show was so well installed it was “smart” enough to down play, almost “hide,” some nebulous pieces. A wall of smaller works, seen above, seemed to be scraps of ripped paper with writing or a Drawing on it. Each becomes a “work of Art” and is displayed as such, but there was no information as to what it is (beyond the ubiquitous “Untitled, Ink on paper,” or whatever the case may be). Was it found like this? Where? Was it torn from a larger sheet with more on it? Did the Artist intend for it to be seen? All the things Art historians need to know to properly assess exactly what is here, and, eventually, to determine the Artist’s place in history. Pieces like this, without clarification, could possibly serve to bring down the impression of the whole oeuvre in the eyes of some. Also included was also a lot of ephemera, which was better described.

Part of a large case containing personal belongings. Unlike the previous wall, above, cards explained their significance to the Artist.

Some of it related to the Artist and events in his life, as above, and some part of his ongoing studies (in the Studio recreation). The ephemera led to the show being touted as “revealing the man.” Yes, he owned a bike, and it’s here, but it seems to me, the books in J-MB’s collection need to be read, the videos need to be seen, to glean their import and influence on the Artist. Only the Art historians or the VERY interested will have the time and patience to do that. Visitors pass through displays of hundreds of these items, lucky if a few titles remain in their memory.

Among those remaining in mine, I spotted a number of Jazz books J-MB & I both owned. Books on John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and this classic biography of Charlie Parker, Bird Lives! by Ross Russell, on top of the boxes, center. I owned this same paperback edition that J-MB reportedly bought by the case and gave to friends. Unavailable in the US, I had to buy mine from a store in Canada in 1982. Seen in the Studio recreation area.

My thoughts went to the care the Francis Bacon Estate and curators took in 1998 when Mr. Bacon’s equally legendary 7 Reece Mews, London, Studio was dismantled, the 7,000 items it contained catalogued, moved to the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane in Dublin in the country where the Artist was born, and reinstalled EXACTLY as it has been left by Mr. Bacon when he died. Was something similar done with what remained at his Great Jones Street Studio after J-MB died? Maybe it was. I don’t know and I can’t tell.

Installation view of “THE IRONY OF THE NEGRO POLICEMAN” gallery. Edgar, N.D., left and Jailbirds, 1983, right.

While the nebulous work I mentioned doesn’t help his case, in my opinion, overall, the work on view does serve to fill in some holes for those trying to assess his place in Art history. Almost all of the work is related to themes that will be familiar to those familiar with J-MB’s work. This was highlighted by separate galleries devoted to some of them- “ROYALTY,” which included some Charlie Parker pieces and some sports pieces, “THE IRONY OF THE NEGRO POLICEMAN,” with pieces like Jailbirds, 1983, above and below, that speak for themselves, bringing the Artist’s ever-present focus on race to a boil, and, the final room, “THOSE WHO DRESS BETTER CAN RECEIVE CHRIST.”

Untitled (Cowboy & Indian), 1982

Virtually all of the Art on view consisted of Paintings & Drawings, which were hung on the walls. There was only one free-standing piece.

Untitled, 1983, Acrylic and oil stick on wood. The very first piece in the show. A major work in my view, perhaps the most important piece in the show.

Among the pieces I thought were “major” works were Untitled, 1983, the very first piece in the show, and the very last piece in the show- another indication of how well the show was conceived and laid out. Putting a major piece first immediately raises the bar and removes the “quality” question from viewer’s mind (i.e. “Will there be any ‘great” work on view, or just a bunch of fair to middling pieces?”). Installing one last leaves them on a high. As viewers were leaving the show proper, on the way to the exit, off to the left, a black wall contained the word “PALLADIUM” at the top in silver letters. ?

What is this? Around this wall would be one of the most remarkable experiences I’ve ever had in an Art show…

Walking around it I was astounded to find a recreation of the infamous Michael Todd Room on the top of the legendary, now lost, Palladium Nightclub on East 14th Street. To the right, above the bar, was the Mural, Nu-Nile, J-MB had created for the space in 1985, which I had no idea had survived! What a shock! Seeing it again I felt I was standing in front of a piece of history- a real piece of a now lost NYC at one of its many peaks- the peak of nightlife in the City that had been building for decades, that was soon to be lost under Guiliani, as well as a major work in J-MB’s oeuvre.

Nu-Nile, 1985, Acrylic and oil stick on canvas. I still can’t believe I saw this again.

I had been in the real Michael Todd Room a few times over my many visits to the Palladium back in the day, walking around the space, which included another large Painting from the Todd Room, the recreation of the space, though simple, wasn’t all that bad. I could actually feel the original when I was in it! A wonderful feeling.

When I did finally leave the show, I began to wonder about it. Today, December 22, 2022 (the date I am publishing this), had he lived, Jean-Michel would be celebrating his 62nd birthday, and very possibly still creating Art in mid-career! Early death is, unfortunately, WAY too common in Art & Music history. Being left to wonder “What if?” is no substitute for being able to see a complete body of work created over a full life time.

Part 2, titled Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now You See It. Now You Can’t looks at Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood, another major Basquiat show that was up at the same time as J-MB:KP, and concludes with my thoughts on where to for his Art in 2023 and beyond. 

*-“James Moody, you can come in and blow now, we’re through…” the final lyrics to the Soundtrack for this Post- “Moody’s Mood for Love,” by Eddie Jefferson, recorded by King Pleasure in 1952.

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  1. Here. ↩
  2. per the show’s site. ↩
  3. The 9 are- J-MB: KP and Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad in 2022, the four I saw and wrote about in 2019, the Brooklyn Museum Basquiat Retrospective in May, 2005, the large Jean-Michel Basquiat show at Gagosian in 2013, and the Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks show also at the Brooklyn Museum in 2015. ↩

Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now You See It. Now You Can’t.

This site is Free & Ad-Free! If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing. You can also support it by buying Art & books! Details at the end. Thank you. 

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Part 2 of my look at Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure also includes Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad Contemporary. Part 1 is here.

Untitled (Easel), 1983, Acrylic, oil, chalk, and oilstick on wood easel. Seen at Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad Contemporary.

When I did finally leave Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure (J-MB: KP henceforth), I began to wonder about it. Today, December 22, 2022 (the date I am publishing this), had he lived, Jean-Michel (who I will refer to as J-MB) would be celebrating his 62nd birthday, and very possibly still creating Art in mid-career! In thinking about J-MB’s Art, his life and early death, two figures repeatedly come to my mind.

Untitled, n.d., Acrylic and oil stick on canvas. Is this Charlie Parker? The figure’s mouth/nose seems to morph Into the mouthpiece of the sax, looking almost like a beak. I find the fingers interesting. It almost looks like blood is pulsing through the figure’s right hand. Seen at J-MB:KP.

First, his life and Art career mirrors that of one of his great heroes (one of mine, too): Charlie “Bird” Parker (August 29, 1920-March 12, 1955). Consider-
-Both achieved sudden fame with styles never before seen (in J-MB’s case) or heard (in Bird’s).
-Both lived high on the hog only to drink and/or drug much of their money away.
-Both were hugely influential on much that came after them in Art & Music respectively. Jean-Michel created many Paintings that were inspired by or related to Bird, and some were included in the show. Bird’s style, “Bebop,” took over from Swing by 1944, but its reign at the top of Jazz was fairly short-lived. In 1949, Bird’s former sideman, Miles Davis, created the “cool” style and Jazz changed once again. Still, Bird’s disciples were heard from for decades after his death. Among them was a singer named King Pleasure.
-Both worked for most of their careers in Manhattan.
-At one point, J-MB lived with Alexis Adler right around the corner from where Bird had lived on Avenue B on Tompkins Square Park- a few hundred feet away.
-Both wound up victims of their addictions far too early- Bird at 34 (his death the subject of at least one J-MB Painting), J-MB (December 22, 1960- August 12, 1988) at 27.
-Neither had given much, if any, thought to what would happen to their work after their death. Well, they were still young. As a result, the estates of both were thrown into chaos when they suddenly died.

From the ROYALTY gallery- a piece for Jesse Owens, left, and three for Charlie Parker, 2 center and 1, right. When I get past the content, what stuns me about all 4 is how different they are from each other compositionally. In fact, that’s the reaction I have to most of Jean-Michel’s Art- most of his compositions are different- from each other, and from what anyone else has done. I can’t think of another Artist I could say that about1 Seen at J-MB:KP.

When I think of J-MB’s Art, there’s one Artist I think of as a parallel- Vincent van Gogh. There are some striking similarities-
-Both were largely self-taught.
-Both worked as Artists for about a decade.
-Both were extraordinarily prolific.
-Both had another major Artist as a close friend. (Andy Warhol for J-MB, Paul Gauguin for Vincent.)
-Both had relationships with their fathers that were less than they wanted them to be. Both struggled continually to try and improve them (according to Phoebe Hoban’s biography, and John Lurie’s Autobiography, in J-MB’s case.)
-Both died young. Vincent at 37, Jean-Michel at 27.

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887. Seen at The Met. From my 2018 piece on Vincent, here.

Then, there are some major differences-
-Unlike J-MB, Vincent never used words in his Art. He did, however, create one of the most extraordinary bodies of letters any Artist has penned.
-Jean-Michel sold A LOT of his Art during his lifetime. He was one of the Artists who inspired the “boom” in Contemporary Art in the 1980s.
-Vincent sold 1 Painting by some accounts, or only a few, during his lifetime.
As I thought about the show, this is a key distinction.

After Vincent died on July 29, 1890, with his beloved brother, Theo (an Art dealer), to follow 6 months later on January 25, 1891, ALL of his work was left to his sister-in-law. She sold some of it, but most of it remained with her. As a result, decades later, there was enough to found and open the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. A lot of Art and ephemera remained when J-MB died on August 12, 1988. This all went to his family. However, by this point, most of the major pieces had been sold to collectors around the world by his string of dealers. The museums passed on his work while he lived, and since his death have been priced out of the market IF they have changed their minds about it. It would come as a donation if they were to acquire any at this point. 

Installation view of the allway at J-MB:KP leading to galleries along the left and videos along the right.

As I walked through it, I wondered if Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure was the family’s attempt to see if their holdings could be turned into a museum. A trial balloon. In my view, it’s not strong enough to be viable on a long-term basis as it is.

Partial installation view of Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad Contemporary, June 6, 2022..

It should be noted that at the time J-MB:KP was up, there was another major Basquiat show going on in NYC- Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad uptown, which struck me as both important and very strong. It is pretty remarkable that there was a show with 200 never-before-seen pieces up at the same time as ANOTHER show with 30 or so strong works- all by an Artist who’s career lasted about a decade!

Untitled (Football Helmet), 1981-4, Acrylic and human hair, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s?, and his signature, on the back of the Football Helmet piece seen on the right in the previous picture. Seen at Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad Contemporary. While there are Photos of J-MB wearing the other helmet, that has AARON Painted on the crown, I have not seen one of him wearing this one.

There was no checklist available for the Nahmad show. Though the family is listed among those involved in it, I don’t know if they lent any works, and if so, which. It seems fair to say the family owns more work than we see in J-MB:KP and this may include some important pieces.

Jazz, left, and Black, right, both 1986 and Oil, graphite, crayon, and Xerox on wood, look like figures with shadow legs on the wall. Since they are Painted on all sides, it looks like they also be displayed laid flat on a table. Seen at Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad Contemporary.

Still, based on that assumption, my feeling is a Basquiat museum is not imminent. Will a few major collectors get together with the family and combine forces to open one? So far, 34 years on, they haven’t. The shows that have been mounted have been largely independent. So, Basquiat’s King Pleasure, the Painting (shown in Part 1), is a bit emblematic. If J-MB had been able to hold on to his most important Art (and I’m not saying his King Pleasure is among them), maybe there would be a Basquiat museum now. But, like most Artists, he needed the money from the sale of his Art, like King Pleasure, to survive.

Installation view J-MB:KP

It’s pretty rare in Art history post-1800 that an Artist’s work winds up virtually exclusively in private hands. Until J-MB, most Artist’s work was divided between collectors and institutions/museums, with the latter winding up with the bulk of it. For Artists who were beneath the radar of the public during their lifetimes, like Hilma af Klint, or Vincent, their work stayed with them up through their passing. Other Artists, like Edvard Munch, selectively retained pieces which enabled him to make a very large gift upon his death to the city of Oslo, who created the Munch Museum. Today, it’s common for Artists to hold on to at least some of what they create, but this didn’t begin until after Jean-Michel’s passing, when Artist became more aware and more Art business savvy.

Brett as Negro, 1982, Acrylic on tiling glued on plywood. Seen at Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad Contemporary.

So, that begs the question- Where to with the Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat in 2023, and beyond? 

J-MB’s former home & studio on Great Jones Street- the real one, where he died on August 12, 1988. That’s probably not his bike out front, though there is one in the show which might have been parked there once. Whenever I’ve been here, I haven’t been able to tell what, if anything, the building is being used for now. Seen in June, 2022.

Going forward, as the original owners age or pass away, like both of his parents who inherited all the work after J-MB’s death, have, it’s only a matter of time before some dispersal begins. Some of it may wind up in museums- IF the museums want it. Think that’s crazy? Consider this- Early on, the museums passed on his Art, apparently not believing it was “Art,” or that it hadn’t stood the test of time. 34 years after his death, there have been very few U.S. museum Basquiat shows beyond those at the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim Defacement show (I wrote about here), and the 1993 Retrospective at the Whitney Museum after he died. MoMA and The Met have NEVER had a Basquiat show2. I wonder if any NYC museum was offered the chance to show Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure. If they were, they passed. It was mounted in a space a bit off the beaten Art trail in far West Chelsea. So, it remains to be seen which and how many U.S. museums would be interested. Some of it, maybe much of it, will wind up at auction. To this point, a few major works have come up at auction and set records. High prices love scarcity. They also often respond to quality. If mostly “non-major” works come up, prices realized are likely to adjust. Nothing, not even Dutch Tulips, goes up forever. But thankfully, Art lives in a place beyond “value.”

While only the piece in the center is titled as such, each of these appear to be a Self-Portrait. Are they finished? At J-MB:KP.

Jean-Michel might have been “old beyond his years,” but his early death robbed him of something else besides a complete career- the chance to edit his oeuvre. From the beginning of recorded Art history, Artists have destroyed work they deemed not up to their standards. Michelangelo is famously reported burning Drawings near the end of his life so that “nothing less than perfect would remain from his hand.” J-MB never had this chance. And it shows. For better, or worse, it seems the curators decided to show everything. As a result, there are some questionable pieces on view in Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure. They serve to lessen the impression of the rest. Had he lived to edit his output I seriously doubt it would be as uneven as we see in the show. Some (maybe more?) of these pieces were, possibly, not meant to be seen by anyone but the Artist. He never had the chance to decide that. More pieces included means a bigger show, and a big show could be marketed as a “blockbuster,” with the possibility of charging people to see it.

Jeanine Heveaux, left, and Lisane Basquiat, center, J-MB’s sisters, at the J-MB:KP book release in NYC on April 12th.

When I heard J-MB’s sisters speak at the J-MB:KP book release, one said that J-MB:KP was “a gift to his long-standing fans.” Hmmm….a gift that costs the recipient $45 to get? Yes, I paid to get in. (If you find this piece, or my previous Basquiat pieces worthwhile, donations will help me continue. Thank you.)

Further on the money tip, it simply must be said that things could not have gone better for the early Basquiat collectors from the day they bought his work until now. They’re living the dream that fuels many collectors of Contemporary Art today, a “dream” that was largely realized because the Artist died at only 27 years old- decades before his career should have run its course- a career that could very well be going on full-strength right now! Then, other stars aligned for them-

-J-MB did create a lot of Art, but only for about a decade.
-The museums passed, leaving virtually all of it to private collectors.
-Prices for his major pieces that have come to auction have set records unheard of for 99% of Artists in Art history!
-Meanwhile, the public took to Jean-Michel and his work the way they have to no other Contemporary Artist. Still!

Shelves of J-MB T-shirts next to those of his friend, Keith Haring, another of the world’s most popular Artists, at Uniqlo, spring, 2022.

-In 2022, his Art is already on everything from candles to t-shirts to shopping bags to- you name it.

ALL of this is completely unprecedented in Western Art history! Keep that in mind, Art speculators!

J-MB:KP entry foyer. The weight of the (Art) world on his shoulders? Or, is he thinking back to his trip to Africa in 1986? Hard to know, there was no date given for this Photo.

In 2019, I wrote a piece about the 4 Basquiat shows in NYC that year titled “Jean-Michel Basquiat, at 59,” and the title for my piece on Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure is titled  “Jean-Michel Basquiat, at 62” since it, and this piece, are published on December 22, 2022, what would have been his 62nd birthday) to reinforce how young Jean-Michel would STILL be had he lived. So much has happened in the past 61 years that today Jean-Michel Basquiat already feels like a part of History. His influence is everywhere- world-wide. 42 years (since his debut in the Times Square Show, 1980, which also included Jane Dickson, subject of my last piece) is a long time for anyone to be this popular in this fickle, no-attention-span, age. How much longer will this continue? Most likely, someone else will come along and be “the most popular” of the near future. As we well know, levels of popularity are no indicator of quality.

The remarkable Kalik, Painted in 1988, the year the Artist passed away, in J-MB:KP’s  final room, titled THOSE WHO DRESS BETTER CAN RECEIVE CHRIST.

Beyond popularity is the impact and influence his Art has. A student of Art & Art history, Jean-Michel Basquiat rebelled against what Art and the Art world was right out of the box as the street Aritst SAMO©, which then exploded in his works on canvas, paper and objects, that flew in the face of everything that had been done to that point. Most importantly, it seems to me, he also put the fight against racism that had been going on in the Art of Charles White, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Gordon Parks, and others, front and center in his Art. His influence in this regard is already incalculable and will endure.

Self-Portrait, 1985, Acrylic, oilstick and bottle caps on wood. Seen at Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood at Nahmad Contemporary.

Jean-Michel Basquiat created some of the most powerful and unique Paintings of his time, like this one, and since Francis Bacon, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist, post-Picasso. (Interestingly, all of them, except Picasso, were not only alive and working during J-MB’s career, each outlived him. Mr. Johns is still working.) Then, he died at an age when most Painters haven’t “reached maturity,” yet another great Musical or Artistic talent who died too young, leaving posterity forever tantalized by “what if?”

Installation view. Great Jones Street Studio recreation at J-MB:KP.

Still, even with the uneven, unedited, oeuvre he left us, 9 shows and 400 pieces in, it’s undeniable to me that he was an important Painter of the 20th century, with possibly, a uniquely singular gift for composition. And, he was an Artist who took the ever-building fight for civil rights to centerstage in his Art.

Crisis X, 1982, Acrylic, oil, oilstick on canvas mounted on tied wood support, left, with a cross shaped canvas, and Gravestone, 1987, Acrylic and oil on hinged wood panels, right. Gravestone is a work that memorializes Andy Warhol after his passing, per the show’s curator. Note the word “PERISHABLE,” and the doors, which may be symbolic of death as a passage. Seen in Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art & Objecthood’s final room.

It seems now, 62 years after he was born, that enough time has passed that it’s clear, that love it or hate it, the Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat is here to stay. While the Art world will have its say over the next few hundred years as to where he ranks among the Painters of the 20th century, meanwhile, how will the people be able to see it? On t-shirts? Only in books? When he started as SAMO©, his work was public, available to be seen by anyone who passed by the spot he made it. Now, it’s ironic that almost none of it is public (i.e. in public institutions). To this point, the public has depended on collectors and foundations showing the work in one-off shows. Is that how it’s going to be?

While the historians argue about his position in Art history, everyone else wonders- Where can I see it to decide for myself?

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” the title track from the album of the same name by the Peter Gabriel-era Genesis released in 1974. Of it, Peter Gabriel, who conceived the story & wrote all the lyrics, said-

“It was intended to be an intense story of a young rebellious Puerto Rican in New York who would face challenges with family, authority, sex, love and self-sacrifice to learn a little more about himself. I wanted to mix his dreams with his reality, in a kind of urban rebel Pilgrim’s Progress.” Quote, and lyrics here. Original complete recording here.

It’s fascinating and amazing to consider that Peter Gabriel’s Rael, the hero of The Lamb, is a Puerto Rican graffiti artist who wanders the streets of Times Square & NYC, presaging Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was born to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, who’s career as the graffiti artist SAMO© began a scant 2 years later in 1976! 

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I’m pleased to announce you can now support it by buying Art, ArtBooks and PhotoBooks! I’ve curated a selection of 400 books & pieces of Art from my collection, offered through my partnership with eBay seller GallerieK. Featured items of particular interest to my readers may be seen here. The complete selection is here now!

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  1. Also, in my opinion, too much is made of the possible influence on J-MB of Jean Dubuffet and Cy Twombly by Rene Ricard. I’ll leave it at that though there is much to say about it. ↩
  2. Online, The Met & MoMA show they own a TOTAL of 16 Drawings and NO Paintings between them! ↩

Jane Dickson: The Artist Laureate of Times Square

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

“They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway
They say there’s always magic in the air.”*

Perhaps the most “famous” of the Times Square porn theater signs, the infamous Peepland sign stood on 7th Avenue (i.e. Broadway), between 47th & 48th Streets. Big Peep Eye, 2021, Oil stick on linen, 62 x 76 inches. Seen at Jane Dickson: 99c Dreams at James Fuentes, April 7, 2022.

It takes a poet to turn the lurid den of iniquity that was Times Square in the 1980s into Art. Jane Dickson has spent a good part of her career doing just that. Now, times have changed. Visitors to the place today have to look long and hard to get a sense of what it was like 30 or 40 years ago. But, has it been change for the “better?” Earlier this year I asked Jane Dickson which she liked better- the “new” Times Square, or the “old?”

“They’re equally bad,” she replied without even taking a moment to think about it.

Her answer may surprise many who don’t live here, but New Yorkers know and largely agree. I’ve lived through both, so I wanted to get her take on it since she actually lived in the middle of it in it’s most notorious heyday, while I was always ensconced at least a mile away- close enough to walk there easily, passing through it often enough, and leave when I wanted. Meanwhile she stayed in her loft on 8th Avenue near 43rd Street, right in the heart of all of it, watching it all go down from her window, or on the street.

99c Dreams Felt, 2022, Acrylic on felt, 62 x 84 inches. The titular piece from her spring, 2022 James Fuentes solo show.

The place had a look all its own. While you were looking, keeping your eyes open in “old” Times Square, best known to most from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, was key to surviving it. Still, I was mugged once on “the Deuce” as 42nd Street was called. Keeping your eyes open in “new” Times Square is also key to surviving it, for different reasons. Now, you’re not as likely to get mugged as you are to get hit by a bike. Looking at the Art of Jane Dickson, it seems that she never closes her eyes. Her work is full of fleeting moments that may not be the “decisive moments” Henri Cartier-Bresson immortalized. They’re more like “What just happened?” moments, where the pitch black night is “stabbed by the flash of a neon light,” as Paul Simon wrote in “The Sound of Silence.”

Big Terror, 2020, Acrylic on linen. What appears to be the strip of theaters on West 42nd Street between 7th & 8th Avenues back in the day. All the marquees are gone now.

While Taxi Driver definitely captured the look and feel of the place, Travis Bickle traveled mostly by car. You can’t really get the sense of what the place was like unless you were walking it. And walking it was risky, as I said. Times Square back in the day was seedy and dirty- in most of the definitions of that word in standard usage, both of those terms ran neck and neck with each other on a daily basis to see which one would win.

Reader Advisor, 2021, Oil stick on linen, 22 x 32 inches.

It wound up a toss up, at least in my book.

Halloween Wigs, 2021, Oil stick on linen, 32 x 22 inches.

“They say the women treat you right on Broadway
But looking at them just gives me the blues
‘Cause how you gonna make some time
When all you got is one thin dime
And one thin dime won’t even shine your shoes”*

What may, or may not be, the same place, seen on 8th Avenue & West 35th Street, November 22, 2022.

So, it’s a very strange thing to say that “cleaning up,” or “disneyfying” Times Square, in honor of its most famous new anchor tenant1, wasn’t an improvement. But, it wasn’t. Times Square went from being the City’s capital of porn to being the City’s capital of tacky chain commerce porn. For my part, I’m still waiting for signs of life IN new Times Square. Though, yes, there are some good shows, like this one, on the side streets off the actual Square. 

Traffic Cop Port Authority, 2020, Oil stick on linen, 34 x 20 inches. If you’re coming to NYC, crossing the street is, perhaps, THE most dangerous thing you’ll have to do. It’s not only cars, trucks, busses. Now the bigger problem are all the bikes, e-bikes, scooters, motorcycles that obey no laws or rules that are deadly. A man was hit by a bike on my corner in August. He died of his injuries. The cyclist got up and left. I’ve spoken to many cops about this problem. They’re at just as much risk! Right now, no one cares. My advice? Have eyes installed in the back of your head before you get here, and use them!

All the while, Jane Dickson has built a considerable career out of observing life in old Times Square. Her Paintings, Photos, Mosaics, Videos, works on paper, et al, show the Times Square where life happens in the living definition of a “New York Minute”- a nano-second.

Fascination Sign 1, 2020

“I chose to be a witness to my time, not to document its grand moments but to capture the small telling ones, the overlooked everyday things that define a time and place,” she said.

Her work features two recurring elements- the deepest black of the dead of night, punctuated by the glow of lightbulbs, neon tubes, or both, rendered in paint on such surfaces as Astroturf, felt, sandpaper, or carpet. A number of her subjects are faceless or indistinct. They literally could be anyone. While many others have created work in Times Square, (including Richard Estes, who has made some stunning Urban Landscapes there), no other Artist or Photographer has devoted more than 50% of their body of work to it.

Late Show Cop, 2020, 32 x 22 inches, left, and Open, 2021, 34 x 24 inches, right. Both Oil stick on linen.

Little by little, Ms. Dickson is starting to get the recognition she deserves.  In 2007, her Mosaics, The Revelers, depicting Times Square New Year’s Eve celebrants, were installed in the IRT 42nd Street/Times Square Subway Station- permanently.

You’ve made your mark when your Art is rendered in the permanence of mosaics, publicly. Jane Dickson’s The Revelers partially seen here installed in the NYC Subway, fittingly right under Times Square where the titular celebrants gather each year on New Year’s Eve to…revel. Seen on July 2, 2022, when most New Yorkers look like they could use some revelry.

I’ve lauded MTA Arts previously, and once again, their selection of this Artist for this location is spot on. The Revelers is installed right under the place where the event takes place each year- New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Walking through the long corridor the piece is installed in on a summer day, I was stopped by a number of the figures.

Yes, the “confetti” around the figures is recreated in glass mosaic and embedded into the tiles surrounding the figures.

The real thing. Leftover confetti from the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square on West 42nd Street at 7th Avenue directly beneath where the Ball was dropped. January 4, 2022.

Many of them ARE reveling. Some are hugging and kissing. Many carry or play horns. Joy & happiness abounds. Not things you see every day in the Subway. I tried to put myself in the place of those people and remember what they were feeling. New Year’s Eve isn’t a big deal to me. I haven’t celebrated any holiday in years. The pandemic sealed that. Still, it is a good thing to see here, it’s good to have a reminder of happiness & joy, which many will see almost every single day on their commute.

Installation view.

As I think about the piece, having made a few trips just to see it, I’m struck that it provides the only vestige of the feeling the holidays bring for some all year long, anywhere in the City.

Installation view of Jane Dickson in the 2022 Whitney Biennial, seen on March 31, 2022.

The first large monograph on her work, the stunning Jane Dickson in Times Square, was released in late 2018. This year, to my eyes (along with Matt Connors who I wrote about here), she was a “star” of this year’s Whitney Biennial. Concurrent with the Biennial, Ms. Dickson also showed new work in a solo show Jane Dickson: 99c Dreams at James Fuentes from April 7th through May 8th in Soho. Both shows reveal she has lost none of her power, and her eyes remain wide open.

Living the dream…Jane Dickson at the opening of Jane Dickson: 99c Dreams at James Fuentes, April 7, 2022, while her work was also starring across town in The Whitney Biennial.

“They say I won’t last too long on Broadway
I’ll catch a Greyhound bus for home, they all say
But they’re dead wrong, I know they are
‘Cause I can play this here guitar
And I won’t quit ’til I’m a star on Broadway”*

Jane Dickson is yet another example of a wonderful Artist who has been making very good work for a long time (over 4 decades) finally beginning to get the recognition her work deserves. She captured the feel and the experience of Times Square (and beyond) as  no one else has. In doing so, she’s done something remarkable: she not only survived it, she created something lasting out of it all.

For me, Jane Dickson is the “Artist Laureate of Times Square,” by definition 3 of this definition of “poet laureate” from the American Heritage Dictionary:

poet laureate
noun
  1. A poet appointed for life by a British monarch as a member of the royal household and expected to write poems celebrating occasions of national importance and honoring the royal family.
  2. A poet appointed to a similar honorary position or honored for artistic excellence.
  3. A poet acclaimed as the most excellent or most representative of a locality or group2. <–Bingo.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “On Broadway,” by Mann, Weill, Lieber & Stoller as performed by George Benson in 1978. 

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  1. Are they still there? Like most New Yorkers, when I find myself in Times Square, I don’t stick around long enough to see the sites, so I don’t even know. ↩
  2. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. ↩

Diane Arbus At 99

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Among Modern & Contemporary Photographers, perhaps no one’s Portraits have been discussed more than Diane Arbus’s, the late Photographer who would have turned 99 this past March 23rd. Much of the printed discourse devoted to discussing her oeuvre over the past 50 or so years has been collected in the new, 500-page tome, Diane Arbus Documents. Paging through it reveals that there has never been a consensus on her work. Opinions range from here to there and back again. Yet even with all of those words expended on them (with countless more to follow no doubt, starting right here) they remain deeply mysterious. (A slightly smaller number of words have been expended discussing her life, which also leaves the woman in the center of them mysterious.) Seeking “the answer,” myself, for over 25 years, I put the book down. As always, my answer if there is one, is not to be found in the opinions of others. My answer is only to be found in her Art. 

The Human Pincushion, Louis Ciervo, in his silk shirt, Hagerstown, Md. 1961, Printed by Diane Arbus 1966-1967.

Diane Arbus is one of the few Photographers, along with Robert Frank and Araki, I became interested in in the 1990s while I was exclusively a “Painting guy,” before and after my career as a musician/producer, then Music writer. My interest solidified when I saw the monumental Diane Arbus: Revelations at The Met in 20051, one of the truly great shows I’ve ever seen. The recent show, .cataclysm. The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited, is the 5th Diane Arbus solo show I’ve seen-

-Diane Arbus: Revelations, The Met, 2005
-diane arbus: in the beginning, The Met Breuer 2016
-Diane Arbus: In the Park, Levy Gorvy, 2017
-Diane Arbus: Untitled, David Zwirner, 2018
-.cataclysm. The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited, David Zwirner, 2022

A family on their lawn one Sunday in Westchester, N.Y. 1968, Printed by Diane Arbus 1970-1971

So far, I have only written about her briefly, when I listed in the beginning as a NoteWorthy Show for October, 2016, here. I did, however, spend months working on a piece on Untitled, which I saw almost a dozen times. Beyond the other-worldly work, I was fascinated in comparing Diane Arbus’s lifetime Prints (i.e. those she Printed herself) with those issued after her passing by her estate (which have all been Printed by Neil Selkirk). I finally abandoned it primarily because Photographs were not allowed to be taken in it, or any of her shows. Up to now. Another reason is that I felt my thoughts on her work itself had still not congealed. The Untitled show was a wonderful chance to see her unique and powerful late series of the same name, shot in a center for the mentally disabled in Vineland, New Jersey, complete, but it didn’t give me the insights I longed for into her whole body of work, possibly because it is so singular. The wonderful in the beginning consisted exclusively of early work, again an outlier to the main body of her work between those two.

I missed the 1972 Arbus MoMA Retrospective. So, seeing .cataclysm, a “recreation” of it, was an unheard of second chance to see an important show. Being that it includes a good cross section of her mature work, originally selected by legendary MoMA Photography curator John Szarkowski, things FINALLY began to come together. 

Every time I’ve stood on the precipice of a Diane Arbus show, I’ve been greeted by a “No Photographs” sign. Until now.

As I walked through it themes recurred across time and place. However, the first thing that must be said is that Diane Arbus did not Photograph “freaks,” an offensive term, as some have called her subjects.

Albino sword swallower at a carnival, Md. 1970. Not one, but two swords.

She liked show people as subjects, which I feel is revealing, and took an interest in them beyond the stage.

Russian midget friends in a living room on 100th Street, N.Y.C. 1963, There is so much to this Photograph, and so much going on, I find it one of the most captivating of Diane Arbus’s indoor Portraits. There is the layer of these performers as performers, who came to America with a circus in 19232 Here, we see behind the curtain and I for one just can’t stop trying to read each person’s expression, and what this image may say about their relationships.

She even gained access to a number of them at home, which provided another duality- the performer previously seen in performing guise removed from the stage and shown in his or her “real life” environment. Some of them, and her other subjects, were also what we now call GLBTQIA+. In Photographing them, she was ahead of her time, anticipating the work of Nan Goldin, Zanele Muholi, and others.

Girl with a cigar, Washington Square Park, NYC, 1965. “A blond lesbian smoking a cigar had sultry star magnetism…3.” I’m struck by the fact that at the exact moment this Photo was taken, Edward Hopper was living a few hundred feet away at 3 Washington Square Park. He & his wife frequented the Park. Too bad his path, apparently, never crossed Ms. Arbus’s.

Though she did some Street Photography, capturing the unsuspecting at random, in her most enduring work, her Portraits, the compositions are more direct. Many of these subjects are people she spent some time with, and are done with their cooperation, or at least their awareness. Though examples of the full range of her non-commercial work are included in .cataclysm, it is, again, her Portraits that stand apart. This may be because in any number of them, the Artist is directly in front of her subject pointing her camera directly at him or her in what results in one of the most powerful one on one confrontations in the history of Photography. In a number of her Portraits, it looks like Ms. Arbus was extremely close to the subject’s face, something rarely seen today.

Blonde girl with shiny lipstick, N.Y.C. 1967

As Diane wrote her friend Carlotta Marshall, “The pictures are getting bigger. Some are life-size or more4.” Germaine Greer, who was Photographed by Diane Arbus in April, 1971, three months before her suicide, recalled the experience-

“She set up no lights, just pulled out her Rolleiflex, which was half as big as she was, checked the aperture and the exposure, and tested the flash. Then she asked me to lie on the bed, flat on my back on the shabby counterpane.

I did as I was told. Clutching the camera she climbed on to the bed and straddled me, moving up until she was kneeling with a knee on both sides of my chest. She held the Rolleiflex at waist height with the lens right in my face. She bent her head to look through the viewfinder on top of the camera, and waited. In her viewfnder I must have looked like a guppy or like one of the unfortunate babies into whose faces Arbus used to poke her lens so that their snotty tear stained features filled her picture frame (eg, A Child Crying, NJ, 1967), I knew that at that distance anybody’s face would have more pores than features. I was wearing no make up and hadn’t even had time to wash my face or comb my hair.

Pinned on the bed by her small body with the big camera in my face, I felt my claustrophobia kick in; my heart-rate accelerated and I began to wheeze. I understood that as soon as I exhibited any signs of distress, she would have her picture5.”

Germaine Greer from the book Diane Arbus: Magazine Work, P.151. (Not included in .cataclysm.)

Ms. Greer reports that “No permission for the reproduction of what is undeniably a bad picture was ever requested6.” It has subsequently seen as Feminist in Hotel Room. In Diane Arbus: Magazine Work, it is listed as “Unpublished, New Woman, 1970.” (Note- The Guardian article states twice that Ms. Greer posed for Diane in April, 1971. The Photographer committed suicide on July 26, 1971.)

This reminds me of what Edward Hopper means when he asserted that “An artist expresses nothing so much as his own personality in art7.” Regardless of what you think of her results, in many cases they can be a bit painful to look at. It’s hard for me to look at Ms. Greer’s Portrait and not see Diane Arbus in it.

A woman in a bird mask, N.Y.C. 1967. One, perhaps the most exotic, of many Portraits of a masked man or woman in the show.

In studying her Portraits of performers, at work and at home, and then moving on to the other Portraits nearby, I was struck by a commonality- a mask. A performer is one who dons another persona when they work. Diane Arbus shot a number of them either back stage or demonstrating their “act.” Then, she shows some of them at home, as in Russian midget friends in a living room on 100th Street, N.Y.C. 1963, seen earlier.

Transvestite at a drag ball, N.Y.C. 1970.

We see the same person in two different contexts. Having seen them in the mask of performance, are they also “performing” at home? Are we seeing behind the stage mask? Showing them in two contexts is adding layers to what the viewer must peel through.

For me, perhaps no Diane Arbus Portrait sums this up than the one she took of my late friend Stormé DeLarverie, Miss Stormé De Larverie, the Lady Who Appears to be a Gentleman, 1961. I look at it and wonder how many layers there are to it. As someone who bent the lines of gender fluidly throughout her life, this Portrait can be seen as Stormé in her performing guise (multiple layers already), yet, it’s taken outdoors, and not on stage (or at home), adding even more layers. Then, the are all the layers of the woman, herself, who even in her late years, when our paths crossed, never lost her mystery.

Miss Stormé De Larverie, the Lady Who Appears to be a Gentleman, 1961, 45 years before I would meet her. Not included in .cataclysm. Stormé told me Diane had taken her picture. Seen here in 2015, in a darkened gallery, this was the first time I saw it.

Subsequent history would add even more layers. 8 years after Arbus, on June 28, 1969, Stormé may have been the one who started the Stonewall Uprising, the event that is widely seen as the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement. She told me she was, and I believe her. (She also told me Diane Arbus had Photographed her, but it wouldn’t be until after she passed that I saw her Portrait). She spoke emphatically against the term “riot” being used in referring to Stonewall! “The Stonewall Uprising” is what she called it. History, take note! Photographing her in the peace and calm of Central Park shows a side of Stormé her friends knew. However, Stormé was a VERY strong person- both in her inner fortitude and her physical presence and strength. She was lightning quick to speak up. After a career as a performer and M.C., she often worked as bar security later in her life. In fact, the first time I encountered her, she denied me entrance to one because I was not a lesbian though the female I was with was. I wasn’t about to argue with her! A decade later we met again and became friends. Many a late night I escorted her home to the Hotel Chelsea during the legendary Stanley Bard-era. In fact, Mr. Bard gave me his phone number and told me to call him anytime Stormé had a problem. More than once I called him at 4am. He always picked up. Stanley was one of the people who made Chelsea the legendary neighborhood Patti Smith immortalized in Just Kids.

Lady at a masked ball with two roses on her dress, N.Y.C. 1967

Beyond the performers, a number of her other Photographs show people wearing actual masks. Elsewhere, we see someone dressed in the face they show the world, “performing with a mask on” in a different way, on the public stage of life, which may or may not reflect who they really are. In all of these, the common denominator is a kind of mask- literal or figurative. In a number of instances across all of these “types” Diane Arbus captures her subject at the moment when the viewer can see behind the mask. It seems to me that Ms. Arbus, who herself wore many “masks” in public, according to Arthur Lubow’s biography, strived to see under other people’s masks.

Blonde female impersonator with a beauty mark in mirror, N.Y.C. 1958, Printed by Diane Arbus between 1958-1960. For me, this is an historic and revolutionary image- for so many reasons and in so many ways, The composition astounds me. The Printing adds incalculably to the effect.

In  this glimpse of someone behind the mask, of whatever kind, something IS revealed for a split second. But what? Is it an inkling of who they “really are?” Or…? We have no way of “knowing” for sure. It’s left to every viewer to read into it as they will.

 

Installation view.

Then, so armed with a glimmer of “knowledge” the rest of the puzzle looms. These images, like her Portrait of Stormé, are what I call an “Arbus onion,” with as many layers for the viewer to unravel as both women who created it had. The mirror in Blonde female impersonator with a beauty mark in mirror, N.Y.C. 1958 adds even MORE layers to all the others for the viewer to unravel. 

And this, it appears to me, is the crux of Diane Arbus’s Art. When one layer is finally peeled off, there’s another one under it. The “world” of her Art is an onion- one layer shows at a time, but there are many, many more underneath.

Underneath ALL of it, I’m left to wonder- “What’s left? The Artist, herself?”

“Happiness perplexed her.”

Untitled (11) 1970-71

“In the summer of 1969, she traveled to (a center for the mentally disabled in Vineland) New Jersey as often as she could to photograph the handicapped. Even before her first visit, she knew that she wanted to portray “idiots, imbeciles and morons (morons are the smartest of the three), especially the cheerful ones.” She wasn’t seeking out suffering, but rather joy in the face of terrible adversity. By artistic standards, a photograph of a severely disabled person with a smiling face would usually be more moving and mysterious than a conventional documentation of the afflicted and downtrodden. But her motives were not entirely aesthetic. As when driving through the hardscrabble backcountry of Florida, she questioned how people with so little could be this happy. Happiness perplexed her.

Untitled (7) 1970-71. Other-worldly. The power, and yes beauty, of Diane Arbus’s Untitled series has captivated me since I discovered them in Diane Arbus: Revelations at The Met in 2005. For me, Untitled is among the very few, if not the only, Photographic series I could speak of in the same sentence as Goya’s timeless Prints, including Los Caprichos, in therms of their mystery, power and compositional brilliance.

In the enervating summer heat, her mentally disabled subjects—whom she found “the strangest combination of grownup and child”—provided solace. Her pictures of their parties and processions convey a sentiment of acceptance and contentment. These people had stopped fighting fate. They had surrendered any pretense of control. And they seemed happy. Not all of them, of course. Some were angry or distraught. But those were not the ones she usually chose as subjects8.”

While making these Photographs which would become her Untitled series, Diane told a friend, “that one of the women, aboard a bus, touched her with an affectionate little hand. The exchange moved and depressed her. She loved these people, but they could lend her no strength9.” How utterly revealing. How utterly crushing.

November, 2022 marks the 6 year anniversary of my “deep dive” into Modern & Contemporary Photography. As time has gone on, I’ve found that most Photography doesn’t hold up to repeat looking like Painting, Drawing, or Sculpture, at least for me. Diane Arbus’s does.  

*- This piece is dedicated to Stormé DeLarverie. The Soundtrack for this piece is “Andryogny” by Garbage featuring Shirley Manson, an icon in my book, from their album Garbage 2.0. In it, Ms. Manson dons an outfit at one point hauntingly similar to those worn by Stormé in her publicity photos (a coincidence?). It’s seen here in its official Music video-

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  1. A show that was only up from March 8 through May 30th, 2005, a pretty short run. ↩
  2. Arthur Lubow, Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer, P.550 ↩
  3. Ibid, P.366 ↩
  4. Diane Arbus: Revelations Exhibition Catalog, P. 185 ↩
  5. Germaine Greer, “Wrestling with Diane Arbus,” The Guardian, October 7, 2005, reprinted in Diane Arbus Documents ↩
  6. Ibid ↩
  7. Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, P.42 ↩
  8. Excerpt from Lubow, Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer, P.418. ↩
  9. Ibid, P.422 ↩

Barbara Kruger: Red & White And Read All Over

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

Shows seen: Barbara Kruger @ 3 David Zwirner West 19th Street Galleries &
Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. @ The Museum of Modern Art

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Whitney Biennial, the first time Barbara Kruger’s work was shown to the public1.

Over the past 50 years Barbara Kruger’s style has become iconic to the point where now A LOT of people either wish they could design like Barbara. Detail from Untitled (That’s the way we do it), 2011/2020 Digital print on vinyl wallpaper, seen at David Zwirner, July 12, 2022.

A lot of others simply rip off her style, including countless advertisers, most notoriously, possibly Supreme, according to StockX. This is NOT by Barbara Kruger. NYC Subway, August 28, 2022.

49 years later, Barbara Kruger is one of the most powerful voices in Art. Moreover, she is an Artist who is a powerful voice in the world beyond Art.

Detail of Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You., which fills the 5 stories of MoMA’s Atrium. September 2, 2022.

Year 49 brings two formidable shows of new Barbara Kruger pieces and new versions of older work to NYC- one, Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. fills the MoMA Atrium with the new site-specific titular work this fall/winter. Barbara Kruger, a show of new versions of classic work, filled 3 of David Zwirner’s West 19th Street galleries this summer. Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. was a traveling retrospective in its prior stops at LACMA and the Art Institute of Chicago. Sadly, the retrospective segment of the show, announced to be mounted at MoMA PS1 (site of a 1980 BK solo show) was cancelled due to pandemic scheduling issues2. Darn! New Yorkers will have to make due with the main building’s Atrium and the show’s excellent catalog, which includes 40 of the 60 pieces we could have/would have seen. 

Untitled, 1989, Public Art Fund installation, West 41st Street & 8th Avenue, April 3, 2001. A huge office building now occupies this space. Good luck cleaning it!

In spite of missing the retrospective part of Thinking of You. , New Yorkers have, probably, seen more of Ms. Kruger’s work over time than anyone, being she began here and has maintained a place here all along. While we missed another look-see at the depth of her work and the historical overview the retrospective provides, the impressive (and sad) thing about Ms. Kruger’s oeuvre is that her themes haven’t changed over these past 50 years. The retrospective would have shown her dedication to addressing these issues over time, and for all this time. 

“Issues about power, value, unfortunately do not grow old,” she told Art21.

Blind Idealism Is…, Paint on wall, the High Line Mural for 2016-17, seen February 5, 2017. An adaptation of a quote from Frantz Fanon. That’s “DEADLY” behind the trees, which I guess cannot be moved. Installed in summer, 2016, it eerily foreshadowed what was to come. Seen on February 5, 2017.

Barbara Kruger was born in Newark in early 1945 to a working class family. Her dad was a chemical technician, her mom a legal secretary3. After 1 year at Syracuse U, she took some classes at the Parsons School of Design with graphic designer/art director Marvin Israel and legendary Photographer Diane Arbus4. Though she never earned a degree, she credits her studies with Arbus & Israel with influencing her, and it was through her connection with Mr. Israel that she began her professional life at Condé Nast in the design department of Mademoiselle Magazine5. She became chief designer at 22,  before becoming a freelance picture editor and designer for magazines and books, including at stint at the Aperture Foundation.

“You know, it always gets me when people say I worked in advertising. I never did. I never had that experience of selling a particular product. When you work in magazines, it’s a serial process, it’s about seriality- and so is photography. Or Painting,” Barbara Kruger, Interview Magazine, 2013.

Instead, Barbara Kruger uses advertising’s methods and means including billboards, posters, pieces mounted on buildings, and short videos, while also being regularly featured in public spaces of all kinds all around the world. In her work, she lays bear the methods advertisers uses to manipulate viewers (as does Sara Cwynar more recently). The major difference is in her work Barbara Kruger isn’t “selling” anything. She wants her viewers to think.

Barbara Kruger’s David Zwirner show featured a number of older works that the Artist has reincarnated as short videos. In I Shop Therefore I Am, the work comes together on the screen as a jigsaw puzzle gradually falling into place. Untitled (I shop therefore I am), 1987/2019 Single-channel video on LED panel, sound, 57 sec. David Zwirner, July 12, 2022.

After forming “I shop there fore I am,”, the “I Shop” is replaced with other words making new phrases.

“These are just ideas in the air and questions that we ask sometimes- and questions that we don’t ask but should ask.” she told Art21.

In the 1970s, she began showing her work, then took a year off late in the decade to consider what she was doing and what she wanted to do with her Art. Now, her 1970s work has all but disappeared- I can find no trace of it anywhere. In the 2010 Rizzoli Barbara Kruger monograph, the largest and most comprehensive book on her work so far, the earliest pieces included date from the 1980s. During her break, her time with the Artists Meeting for Social Change proved critical in helping her focus her ideas, which she combined with her graphic design expertise to develop the unique text & image style that has become instantly identifiable as hers. In the 1980s, a steady string of gallery shows began, continuing right up to this summer with Barbara Kruger, her first show with David Zwirner. The museums came on board with the 1999-2000 MoCA, Los Angeles, mid-career retrospective. Her work has since been on view in numerous museums around the world (with the text in her work in the local language), up to Thinking of You I Mean Me I Mean Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. now at MoMA after prior stops at the Art Institute of Chicago (Sept, 2021- Jan, 2022) and LACMA (March – July, 2022). Such has been the demand for her work, her Zwirner CV runs 31 pages.

Partial installation view of one of the three Zwirner galleries, July 12, 2022.

The images that appear in her work are often sourced from mid-century catalogs6. But, Barbara Kruger has issues with Photography- particularly Street Photography and Photo-Journalism.

“There can be an abusive power to photography,” she said7.

Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You., MoMA Atrium, September 2, 2022. It won’t, but I think it should stay right here permanently. In the now 16 years this space has been here, this, and Adam Pendleton’s recent piece, are the best use of almost all of it I have seen. Unlike much of her earlier work, there is no Photography in this piece.

Her signature red on white pieces, which suddenly became black on white pieces, often pose tough questions that put the viewer on the spot. “You talking to me?,” as DeNiro said. Christopher Bolen walked readers through what happens next in Interview Magazine-

“The direct address is disarmingly direct. Certainly, the “you” implicates the reader—a shopper, a consumer, a part of the capitalist enterprise, guilty of impulsive buying habits. But the “you” is also a general composite—that annoying, far more guilty everyperson-and the reader sides with the artist in condemning this sector of the population who is greedy, wasteful, and irresponsible. So already—and almost always in a graphic Kruger text piece—a haunting repositioning occurs in the mind of the viewer: judged and also judging; agreeing with the charges even as she or he is charging others.” Christopher Bolen, Interview Magazine, 2013. 

The view of MoMA’s Atrium from the 5th floor, September 2, 2022.

If anything, her newer black on white style without Photographs is even more direct. There is nothing to distract the viewer from her text. Not even color.

Detail of Untitled (No Comment), 2020, Three-channel video installation, sound, 9:25 min. As she has used found Photography, Barbara Kruger may also use texts from others. “Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” is a quote from Voltaire. At David Zwirner, July 12, 2022.

“I want my work to create commentary,” the Artist told Art 21.

In doing so, she turns the methods of advertising on their heads, “to teach us how to the two languages of persuasion, photographs, and words, influence us. Believing that no message is neutral, Kruger would have us be critical interpreters, rather than passive consumers, of the media8.” In doing so, she allows the viewer to see how advertising works- how it manipulates and persuades, while helping the viewer understand the power of the media.

David Zwirner, June 30, 2022

At David Zwirner, some of the Artist’s most well-known pieces, including Untitled (Your Body Is A Battleground), 1989/2019, have been given new life as single channel videos on LCD panels. Originally created to support women’s reproductive rights for the 1989 Women’s March on Washington, it’s just one example of the unfortunate timelessness of Barbara Kruger’s work. Your body is a battleground is already 33 years old. I shop therefore I am, is 35 years old.

Detail of Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You., MoMA Atrium, September 2, 2022.

As she prepares to enter the second half-century of her work, she finds herself in a world that is substantially more open to her voice, and that of female Artists, than it was when she began to show her work in the early 1970s. Barbara Kruger has been a substantial catalyst of that change. I’m not sure she’s gotten enough credit for it. Of course, there is still much to be done. Though her methods have evolved over time, the effect she’s had, already, is incalculable- in so many ways. Purely as Art, 50 years on, her work has more than held its own.

Detail of Untitled (That’s the way we do it), 2011/2020 Digital print on vinyl wallpaper at David Zwirner, July 12, 2022.

Based on all of this, leaving aside how her work will be viewed aesthetically, it seems to me that 100 years hence, her work will remain every bit as relevant as it is right now.

For better. Or for worse.

Untitled (Remember me), 1988/2020 Single-channel video on LED panel, sound, 23 sec. David Zwirner Gallery, June 30, 2022.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Color Synesthesia,” by Nik Bates, with the classic line, “And without Barbara Kruger, there would be no Supreme,” from his album Goodbye, San Diego, 2010.

Also- I’m pleased to announce I’m curating a selection of Art, ArtBooks & PhotoBooks for sale! All items are from my collection or selected by me in my travels through the Art world. The complete selection of over 370 items is here.

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  1. Barbara Kruger, Rizzoli, 2010, p.305 ↩
  2. This isn’t mentioned until the next to last page of the exhibition catalog’s text. ↩
  3. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kruger-barbara ↩
  4. A life learner, the Artist has gone on to teach at a number of schools since her short period of formal study, herself. She has been a professor at UCLA since 2005. ↩
  5. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/barbara-kruger ↩
  6. Thinking of You exhibition catalog, P.153. ↩
  7. Interview Magazine, 2013 ↩
  8. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kruger-barbara ↩

Jordan Casteel: Surviving The Buzz

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Jordan Casteel, Yvonne and James II, 2021, Oil on canvas, 90 x 78 inches. Seen at The Met, June 18, 2022.

You’re a Painter. You’re 32. Your Yvonne and James II was bought by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s now hanging directly opposite Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Studio), 2014, one of the show-stoppers in the blockbuster Kerry James Marshall: Mastry in 2017, in The Met’s largest Modern & Contemporary Art Gallery, #915. If that’s not a “Wow!,” what is?

The Baayfalls, 2017, Oil on canvas, 6’6 x 7′ 6, seen at MoMA, August 27, 2022.

Not enough? Your Painting, The Baayfalls, 2017, Oil on canvas, 6’6 x 7′ 6, Painted at about age 27, has a wall to itself on the 2nd floor lobby at MoMA, where it is part of their permanent collection.

The Baayfalls, Paint on wall, the High Line Mural for 2019-20. Yes, the trees have gotten bigger since I showed them in my Barbara Kruger piece. I LOVE trees, but move them, please.

Then, there’s this- in 2019, The Baayfalls became the High Line Mural. Ed Ruscha, Kerry James Marshall, Henry Taylor and Barbara Kruger have had Murals up on this wall before Ms. Casteel, who was all of 30 at the time. Originally scheduled to be up for a year, due to covid, it’s still there as I write.

A very rare copy of the sold out catalog for Jordan Casteel: Within Reach is now impossible to find in any condition for less than $300.00.

A year after her Mural went up, her New Museum “Retrospective” (I’m not sure you can call a show of work by a 30 year old living Artist a Retrospective, but ok), Jordan Casteel: Within Reach took NYC by storm, although not many actually got to see it because it was closed for much of its run while the pandemic devastated the City and the world. Be it through the show’s terrific catalog or its online presence, viewers got the point. The word was out.

Can you say, PHEW!? Not since the day of Jean-Michel Basquiat has a young Painter risen so far so fast. And, Jean-Michel never had a Painting of his acquired by The Met or MoMA (let alone both) during his lifetime before he died at 27. Ms. Casteel’s work was acquired by both when she was about 31.

Jennifer Packer, Jordan, 2014, Oil on canvas, 36 by 48 inches. Seen in Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing at the Whitney Museum, December, 2021.

Hold on- I’m not done with her C.V. yet! Buzz builds upon buzz. International shows followed. Last year, Jordan Casteel appeared in a Portrait of her done by her friend, Jennifer Packer, in one of the shows of the year, the Whitney Museum’s Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing. Ms. Packer Painted Jordan in her studio while they were both students at Yale in 2014. Then late last year, Jordan Casteel was named a MacArthur Fellow. She received what is called a “genius grant.”

I’m not sure anyone can imagine what experiencing ALL of this has been like for her. It’s unprecedented. Luckily, Ms. Casteel seems to have a great head on her shoulders. She decided to assess ALL of this then reassess her life and her direction. Horror of horrors, she decided to leave NYC and move to rural New York. NYC is such a big part of the Denver-born Artist’s Portraits, it’s helped her to already create one of the strongest bodies of them since Alice Neel. Like Ms. Neel, many of her subjects were found on the streets of Harlem. I wondered what direction they would now take.

Marisa, Isabel and Sage, 2022, Oil on canvas, 94 x 80 inches.

At Casey Kaplan on September 8th, I found out. In Jordan Casteel: In bloom, Ms. Casteel unveiled 9 new Paintings, each dated 2022 and each created since she relocated from NYC to “rural New York,” as the press release says. 

Morgan, 2022, Oil on canvas, 90 x 78 inches.

The group consists of some Portraits, the genre she’s, perhaps, most associated with (Within Reach was exclusively portraits), and adds some Still Lifes and Landscapes to her range. Through them all, Ms. Casteel’s work is characterized by strength. Her line, her brushstrokes, and the character of her subjects, all exude strength. I continue to be captivated by the way she renders skin.

Sunset, 2022, Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches

Charles White, who had a way of making his figures larger than life- monumental, comes to mind. While Ms. Casteel’s figures often have a “monumental” quality to them, she has developed entirely her own way with rendering.skin.  All the while, rendering the Black men she Paints non-sexually.

In bloom, 2022, Oil on canvas, 78 x 90 1/4 inches.

There’s also a “there/not-there” element in her work, how she leaves certain parts outlined and not detailed, going back to The Baayfalls, seen above. It takes some adjustment of the eyes on the part of the viewer to see the scene the way the Artist does, and it’s not something I can say I’ve seen many other Artists do regularly. Jennifer Packer uses it, too. Sometimes it occurs in Ms. Casteel’s backgrounds. In the landscape in bloom, above, it’s also seen in the middle ground.

Greg Tate said Jordan Casteel captures the soul of her subject. When I look at her work I see Painting that is “old beyond its years,” and I don’t mean “early maturity.” The Artist is able to recognize subjects who make compelling Portraits, then uses her skills to reflect the appearance they present to the world and the essence, the strength, of their inner selves. The end result is pretty remarkable. Even her domestic scenes have a quiet power and self-assuredness. It’s a testament, I feel, to her subjects, and herself. At Casey Jordan, the 9 Paintings on view don’t seem to miss the City at all.

Damani and Shola, 2022, Oil on canvas, 90 x 78 inches. I haven’t measured, but the large size Ms. Casteel favors in her Portraits make her subjects pretty near life-size.

It’s waaayyyy too early in Jordan Casteel’s life and career to make predictions as to where she, or her Art, are going. So far, her work has struck a nerve with the Art-going public and an ever-increasing number of curators, which will lead, I believe, to her work finding a home in most of the major museums around the world that show Contemporary Art in short order. The bigger picture is only just starting to come into focus. Over and over, the name of Alice Need comes to mind when I think about Ms. Casteel’s Portraits. The first part of her post-graduate career saw her following Ms. Neel’s footsteps in a way in Harlem creating Portraits that feel ripped from life. Now, the Artist has moved on, perhaps wanting to separate herself from those comparisons? She’s her own woman and her own Artist, as her Casey Kaplan show reminds us. It will be utterly fascinating to see how she handles the attention, the pressure, the expectations and the demand for her work going forward.

Field Balm, 2022, Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches.

I don’t see any of that ending any time soon.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Hold On” by Alabama Shakes, the debut single from Boys & Girls, 2012.

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Hughie Lee-Smith- Leaving History Behind

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Show seen- Hughie Lee-Smith @Karma

Who?

That’s probably the first thought coming to the minds of most reading the name Hughie Lee-Smith. I’ll admit his name was new to me, too, when I came across a thumbnail sized repro of one of his Paintings in a listing for a new show of his work. That was enough to draw me down to Karma’s East 2nd Street space to see Hughie Lee-Smith. Having seen said show, the mystery is now how Hughie Lee-Smith has remained such a well-kept secret during his lifetime (1915-1999), and still, 23 years after his passing.

Hughie Lee-Smith, Self-Portrait, 1964, Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches.

Beginning to think over what I saw, I felt his work springs from a solid base of influences. For example, his 1964 Self-Portrait vaguely echoed that of another, at least for me.

Edward Hopper, Self-Portrait, 1925-30, Oil on canvas. Seen at the Whitney Museum.

Both Artists strike a 3/4 pose, though their bodies are positioned differently, both wear a jacket, shirt and tie, and both look out at the viewer- Mr. Hopper directly. Mr. Lee-Smith looks somewhat through the viewer it seems to me.

The Birds, 1955, Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches.

I’ll admit I have a weakness for Painters who evoke feelings similar to those I get when I look at Hopper, Balthus or Giorgio de Chirico, and I get them when I look at Mr. Lee-Smith’s work, but it’s more than that. Mr. Lee-Smith uses some of their devices- de Chirico’s buildings, banners, deserted spaces, Hopper’s lone figures, Balthus’s female poetry, to the point that the visual evidence says they were influences. Then, he takes them someplace else. He makes these elements part of his own visual vocabulary, not the end point. Mr. Lee-Smith’s end results are different and resolutely his own. His work stands on its own considerable merits.

Aftermath, 1960, Oil on linen canvas, 30 x 46 inches. Mr. Lee-Smith is a master of scenes like this in my view. There’s so much about this that intrigues, from the encroaching shadow to the globes and ribbon, which add somewhat incongruous “celebratory elements,” to the still-standing buildings in the background. And mostly, “Aftermath” of what? A portrait of urban decay? A meditation on death? Or…?

At Karma, the 34 Paintings on display make the case for him as a real omission from the canon of 20th century American Painting. Painting after Painting draws the viewer in, then holds his or her gaze indefinitely. Each work is open-ended. Each feels like a moment frozen in time, a snapshot of a dream, or a memory. Like a dream or a memory, images from one place or time often collide with others creating a scene that’s not “real.” For me, at least, I don’t consider them “surreal.” They manage to hold on to too much that is all to real in the world- crumbling walls, signs of decay, and elements that were the New Topographic Photography movement’s meat.

Untitled (Urban Landscape), 1975, Oil on linen, 32 x 26 inches.

I suspect that a number of museums who don’t own his work will be looking to acquire it.

Festive Vista, 1980, Oil on canvas, 15 x 13 inches. Already in a museum- The Studio Museum of Harlerm’s Permanent Collection. The arched windows and streamers are similar to those seen in de Chirico, the view reminiscent of Hopper, but what Mr. Lee-Smith does with this makes it his own. Targets and streamers recur in his work, as already has been seen.

Currently, his work is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Studio Museum of Harlerm and SFMoMA, among others. He is, also, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (they own a Watercolor, acquired in 1994, and 3 Lithographs, acquired in 1943 and 1999), though he is not in MoMA or the Whitney. So, it comes as no surprise that the Karma show is the first substantial show of Hughie Lee-Smith here in 20 years. Not a surprise but unfortunate.

Pumping Station, 1960, Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches.

It shows convincingly that his work speaks fluently to today’s viewer, particularly at a time of recent forced isolation. 

Outing, c.1970, Oil on canvas, 26 x 36 inches. The woman on the right strikes a pose similar to those seen on more than a few mast heads. I wonder if the male figure is  a “Self-Portait” or a surrogate.

Whereas Mr. de Chirico used mannequins and creatures of his own invention as surrogates, Mr. Lee-Smith uses people. Usually alone, or alone together in groups, in a number of these works which serves to neutralize the metaphysical air that surrounds Mr. de Chirico’s early work to 1920 or so. This humanizing shows man (or woman) caught between nature and the world he’s constructed, which is often seen in disrepair in spite of the festive balloons and streamers the Artist often includes. Perhaps they are remnants of better times? That’s easy to relate to now, too.

Portrait of a Boy, 1938, Oil on canvas, 25 x 17 inches.

Mr. Lee-Smith was not to be confined to working in one genre. The show also included a few Portraits and Still-Lifes.

Cliff Grass, 1950, Oil on canvas, 26 x 32 inches. The geometry (not the light or color) brings my mind to later Cézanne when I see this.

Mr. Lee-Smith loves to juxtapose and include surprising elements that serve to up-end any easy “interpretation” of the composition.

Quandry, 1995, Oil on linen canvas, 50 x 46 inches. A late work.

Still there is nothing here that is not part of the world- natural or man-made. He seems to feel no need to delve into the supernatural, like the Surrealists.

The Platform, 1984, Oil on canvas, 22 x 32 inches.

Still, every element, wether seemingly major or minor, deserves attention. As I worked my way through the inventory of things included in his work- partially those that recur, one element that particularly caught my eye was Mr. Lee-Smith’s recurring brickwork. Each stone is very carefully rendered- whether in the foreground or background. In The Platform, the entire middle ground of a table, earth and grass is out of focus, yet each brick in the back is in sharp detail. Bricks are useful elements because they can be rendered in a number of ways- as a solid wall, or as a crumbling wall, for instance. Both are seen in the show, and both carry their own connotations with them, leaving the viewer to sort out what is what. That is the case for me after seeing this show. I’ll be weighing all the elements and thinking about these works until the next time I see Mr. Lee-Smith’s Art.

Untitled (Maypole), 1955, Oil on masonite, 19 x 13 1/2 inches.

Art history seems to have skipped over Hughie Lee-Smith during his lifetime in its rush to judgement. That’s another confirmation that it’s still too early to write the history of 20th century Art. Time will be the ultimate judge of all Art. More time needs to pass for it all to sit and see how it speaks to people over some time- at least 100 years.

I have a feeling time is going to be kind to Hughie Lee-Smith’s work, and a number of his pieces are going to continue to speak to viewers indefinitely. Hughie Lee-Smith at Karma is the first indication of this. It won’t be the last.

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “Red House” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience from Are You Experienced?

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William Klein- A Thousand Times YES

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Show Seen- William Klein: YES @ ICP

William Klein, who passed away at 94 on September 10th, was a big name for so long, creating legendary and hugely influential PhotoBooks, Films, Fashion Photography, Paintings, Photograms, and on and on, that it seemed to me he was somewhat taken for granted over what turned out to be the last decade of his life. Case in point- I can’t remember the last big William Klein show in NYC. So, the International Center of Photography’s career retrospective, William Klein: YES, June 3rd to September 15th, was not to be missed. Due to circumstances out of my control (i.e. my new life), I managed to see it on its closing night, day 5 after the Artist passed.

Untitled (Blurred White Squares on Black and Orange Gel Sheet), c. 1952, Gelatin silver print with transparent orange filter, top, and Untitled (White and Yellow Moving Lines), c. 1952, Gelatin silver print with yellow paint.

Paintings, Collage, Photograms, bodies of b&w Street Photographs in NYC, Paris, Rome, Moscow and Tokyo, Fashion Photography, Film, color Photography, Painted contact sheets filled both gallery floors of the International Center of Photography’s fairly new Essex Street building. The show felt like it was the work of 6 or 7 Artists. Perhaps that’s why they named the show William Klein: YES Photographs, Paintings, Films, 1948-2013- as a reminder that ALL of this sprang from one unique Artist.

The earliest works on view. Untitled (Gymnasts), c. 1949, Untitled (Still life, lamp, and vase), c. 1949, Oil on wood- the others are all oil on canvas, Untitled (Gymnasts), c. 1949, and Untitled c. 1952, from left to right.

After studies with Fernand Léger, William Klein temporarily ignored his advice to get into Photography, Film and publishing, instead embarking on a career as an Abstract Painter during the height of the first wave of Abstract Expressionists. He managed to carve out a style that had elements of Mondrian but also showed an affinity for multi-layered compositions that would also be seen in his later Photography. It’s interesting that the two Gymnast Paintings, above, feature monochrome figures, also presaging his b&w Street Photography.

In 1952, an architect saw William Klein’s Paintings and asked him to adapt them to a room divider made of rotating panels. While Photographing the panels, Klein’s wife spun them. Fascinated with the effect, hep down his camera,  went into the darkroom and began experimenting with Photograms, like Man Ray before him, holding cards with cut out shapes over photo paper during long exposures.

While Photographing a piece he’d been asked to paint, William Klein was inspired to put his camera down and experiment in the darkroom with light on photo paper using long exposures. Man Ray had been among the first to explore Photograms, and Robert Rauschenberg would a few years later, but neither’s look like Mr. Klein’s. They found admirers among graphic designers, who featured them on magazine covers and record covers.

William Klein’s Photograms on the covers of Domus Magazine from 1955, 1959, and 1952, left to right.

His Painting turned out to open a door to his future when Alexander Lieberman, art director of Vogue saw a show of them in Paris and, impressed with his strong vision, saw a Fashion Photographer in him. William Klein, who was born in NYC before moving to Paris in 1946 to become a Painter came back to the City to work for Vogue. Along the way William Klein became Klein, and he broke as many rules shooting fashion as he did in his Art. He took models out of the studio and on to the streets and collaborated with them on shoots. Possibly as a result of this, Mr. Lieberman also funded William Klein’s desire to shoot the streets of NYC. The body of work that became Life is Good came into being, as did the Photographer being christened, “the angry young man of photography1.”

A wall of prints from the classic Life is Good & Good for You in New York, 1956, taken between 1954 and 1956. Almost all of the work in the show was from the William Klein Studio, and the prints were spectacular.

Filling two floors, almost all of the work on view was provided by the Artist, himself, most likely marking the final time he would be directly involved in a show of his work. The quality of the prints on view, many “printed later,” were of the highest order. The black & white prints were unforgettable- black could never be blacker, and many of the color Fashion Photos were printed at a large, even huge size, which made them even more stunning.

A timeless image of NYC, Selwyn, 42nd Street, New York, 1955 (printed 2016), Gelatin silver print. The play of light and shade in this incredible print is a subject all its own. I’m not sure black can be blacker than this.

The late Robert Frank is, possibly, the most influential Photographer of the past 60 years, but a very strong case can be made that William Klein is in that discussion. His Life is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Reveals, was published in 1956, 2 years BEFORE Mr. Frank’s seminal The Americans. Seen alongside the Frank book, Life is Good is a fascinating counterpoint, showing a different America than that seen in The Americans. Mr. Frank got a lot of grief for showing America as he saw it. Mr. Klein’s Life is Good shows gritty NYC as the melting pot it has long been where anything could happen at any moment. But it is his style and technique that ruffled many feathers. Rough, raw, out of focus, as dark as night, off kilter, lacking coherent compositions, grainy…were among the criticisms of those who were perhaps thinking that Henri Cartier-Bresson had discovered the only “true way” to take Street Photographs. But, there was method to his madness, and his methods resounded with many viewers right up to today.

The avant-garde William Klein. Another multi-layered composition. Atget, then Walker Evans took Photos of similar scenes before William Klein, and Richard Estes has spent a good deal of his career Painting them, as I showed a few months back.

Looking through Life is Good is always surprising, even when you’ve seen it before. Quite a few people smile, indicating life was, indeed, good for them, in spite of the rough and tumble settings. A number of others (upwards of 50% of his subjects?) look at the camera and many of those seem to be in cahoots with the Photographer. Many images work in multiple layers from foreground to back. Many show fleeting moments that in Mr. Klein’s hands become intriguing, if not “decisive.” There is a section of urban landscapes in the middle that show a bit of the influence of Walker Evans, but mostly serve to give the book a decidedly avant-garde feel that it retains today. His Photographs down through the years from the b&w shots of NYC of the mid-1950s up to his color work in Brooklyn in 2013 show the universality of modern human existence. Whereas Mr. Frank observes masterfully, Klein often interacts.

Flat Plan for Life is Good & Good for You in New York, 1955, Ink, pencil and colored pencil on paper.

Whereas The Americans remains hugely influential here in the US, and perhaps not as much in the rest of the world, Life is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Reveals, has been hugely influential around the world. It singlehandedly rewrote the possibilities of Street Photography. Perhaps its influence was felt nowhere more than it was in Japan. Daido Moriyama, a great Street Photographer in his own right, has created an important career exploring some of the ideas & techniques William Klein used in Life is Good, which served as an influence and a catalyst2, particularly his high contrast, motion blur and unusual angles. So have any number of other important Japanese Photographers from the late 1950s, on, not to mention numerous others everywhere else. Nakahara Takuma, with Mr. Moriyama one of the Photographers who produced the legendary Provoke Magazine beginning in 1968, wrote a lengthy article on William Klein in 1967. In it, he said about the reaction to Life is Good, “…its impact was unprecedented. The reaction could even be called panic.” And, “…(a number of) photographers…thought of Klein’s photography as an ‘impudent ‘ amateur game, as mere technical experiment. Immediately after New York was published, critical opinion was polarized; rather than photography, it was advocates for the other related genres, such as painting and film, who supported it most positively3.” A case could be made that a good deal of Japanese Photography since its publication bears its influence. “It is not so surprising, therefore, that his photography, as something so new, became extremely popular, especially among the young,” Nakahara Takuma said in the same piece. Pretty remarkable for the first PhotoBook by an untrained Photographer. 

Atomic Bomb Sky, New York, 1955 (printed 2012), Gelatin silver print. Of the millions of images I’ve seen of NYC in my life, I’ve never seen one like this.

It should also be noted that Life is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Reveals has never been published in the USA4! Early on, every publisher rejected it. The first edition was published by Editions du Seuil in Paris in 1956. William Klein followed Life is Good with books on Paris (2002), Rome (1959), Moscow (1964) & Tokyo (1964. It was reported that Klein took 50,000 Photos for it5.), each of which got a section in the show, each of which remains out of print and highly sought after. 

Antonia and Yellow Taxi, New York, 1962 (printed 2016), from Vogue, Pigment print. When I saw this shot at AIPAD in 2017, I realized I needed to do a deep dive into William Klein. I’m still exploring his huge oeuvre. A bit reminicient of Saul Leiter, perhaps?

Meanwhile, Klein had become a top Fashion Photographer.

Installation view. Paris, 1964-83, in the lower foreground and to the right, Life is Good/NYC behind, Painted Contact Sheets above, and a sliver of the large video projection screen, left. I remain no fan of “holes” in museums, including this one which spans the width of the entire floor, except for 2 narrow walkways on the sides. For me they are just expensive wasted exhibition space. I’m not sure they add anything to the show-going experience. In William Klein’s case, quite a bit more work could have been shown.

The second floor was largely devoted to Mr. Klein’s Film work, which is equally revered and important.

Filmstrip montage from Muhammad Ali: The Greatest, 1964-74, Directed by William Klein.

I will leave that for others who have studied it closer than I have to cover. One thing about them that stands out is that Klein repeatedly focused on important Black figures of the time- Little Richard, Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver among them. 

Tramway, Capellona, Rome, 1956, (printed 2013), Gelatin silver print. It’s just me, but my mind juxtaposes this with Robert Frank’s Trolley-New Orleans, 1955, when I see this work.

In the end, William Klein proves impossible to pin down. Each time I look through Life is Good, I pick up on a different thread and see things I didn’t notice previously. That’s true of much of his work.

Kiev Railroad Station, Moscow, 1959 (printed 1997), Gelatin silver print.

Breaking the rules was easier for him because he didn’t know all of them. William Klein shows that, even without training, an Artist’s creativity and vision can be enough to create important, lasting and influential Art.

6 Gelatin silver prints from Tokyo, 1961, including Tokyo Stock Market and Yoyogi Hairdressing School, Tokyo, upper far right and lower far right, printed later.

WK:YES will serve as a testament to his accomplishment over his sixty-five year career and a benchmark for all future William Klein shows. Most likely its soon-to-be-published 400 page catalog will serve as a beacon to influence still more people and aspiring Artists, adding to the incalculable number Klein already has. 

R.I.P.

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “All Blues” by the Miles Davis Sextet from Miles’ immortal Kind of Blue, 1959–

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  1. Gernsheim, A Concise History of Photography, 1986, p.131 ↩
  2. https://time.com/3792413/william-klein-daido-moriyama-double-feature/ ↩
  3. Nakahara Takuma, “William Klein,” 1967, reprinted in Provoke, Art Institute of Chicago, 2016, p.362 ↩
  4. A facsimile version with every page Photographically reproduced, some reduced, in a smaller size book was published by Errata Editions, NYC in 2010. When I bought a signed copy of it, the seller reported that Mr. Klein looked at it curiously before signing it having not seen it previously. An indication that it was not an “official” edition of Life is Good. ↩
  5. Nakahara Takuma, “William Klein,” 1967, reprinted in Provoke, Art Institute of Chicago, 2016. ↩

Louise Bourgeois’s Guarantee of Sanity

Louise Bourgeois: Paintings is now over. If you missed it, this is one of the few places you can still see a bit of it. If you appreciate that, please donate to support it. Thank you.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Show Seen: Louise Bourgeois: Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In spite of having seen at least two prior shows of her work, until the moment I walked in through the entrance, above, I had no idea that Louise Bourgeois was also a Painter. This wonderfully concise show proved a revelation. Her Paintings, which predate her well-known Sculpture, turn out to be every bit as unique, personal, and captivating as her free-standing pieces.

The Runaway Girl, 1938, Oil, charcoal and pencil on canvas. After marrying in Paris, Louise moved to NYC. She came to feel guilt about her sudden departure. Here, she shows herself, with long hair as usual, suitcase in hand, with symbolic references to what she left behind in the background as she floats over jagged rocks, implying a difficult path.

“The Runaway Girl who never grew up…
I do not need a safety net,
Breakfast, big lunch or afternoon snack
I do not need any visitors, telephone
Calls or small mash notes…
I don’t need anything, I don’t confuse anything.
I can wait, I am not afraid. I am grown up.
Nothing is missing.”
Louise Bourgeois1

They’re also as open-ended, and each is autobiographical, beginning with The Runaway Girl, 1938, at the entrance. Beyond her guilt at running away was the pain she suffered discovering her father’s affair with Louise’s nanny- a dual betrayal. “Fear and pain were her main subjects,” her friend, the Art historian Robert Storr said2.

Yves Tanguy, Title Unknown, 1926, Oil on canvas with string and collage. This is about as close as I’ve come in looking for a predecessor to Louise Bourgeois’ Paintings. Seen at The Met. Not in the show.

Some Art historians mention Surrealism as a possible influence on Ms. Bourgeois’s Paintings. Personally, I don’t see it. The Surrealists largely Painted fantasies, dreams and nightmares. Ms. Bourgeois works from her life and her own experiences, even when they take imaginary forms. I don’t consider this Surrealism. The same was said about Chagall, who also worked largely from his own life experiences. Frankly, like Chagall’s, her Paintings don’t remind me of anyone else’s. The great Charlotte Salomon Painted her life, too, at the same moment Louise Bourgeois was (until Ms. Solomon was murdered by the Nazis in 1943). Ms Salomon’s work seems closer to Chagall’s, stylistically, than to Louise Bourgeois’s Paintings to me. Given all that went on in Art just in the first half of the 20th century, creating a unique style is pretty remarkable, and, along with the stellar quality of the work, begin the list of things she should be given more credit for. A good number of these pieces linger in my mind weeks after the show closed- like a person you encounter who has much on his or her mind and much to say, but didn’t say it out loud at the time.

Untitled, 1945, left, Painting: Red on White, 1945, center and Untitled, 1944, right

Louise was born on Christmas, 1911, left France for NYC in 1938, and lived many of her final years until her passing in 2010 around the corner from where I live now, unbeknownst to me.

For much of the last part of her life, Louise lived and worked in the two buildings to the immediate left of the red brick. They now are home to her Foundation. Late in her life Louise moved her bedroom to the first floor, behind one of the two windows, because the stairs were too difficult.

I might have passed her on the street. After she passed away, her home became the HQ of her Easton Foundation, which owns most of the work on display. (Take a look inside here.) Walking by it now, except for some intricate grating on the front door and windows (which was there when she was), it looks just like every other townhouse on the street. Given how unique all her Art is, this is somewhat incongruous.

Themes recur in Louise Bourgeois’s work. One is buildings as seen in each of these pieces. Her series of 4 canvases titled Femme Maison, 1946-7, Oil and ink on linen, center, will be addressed next. Later, buildings appear without human parts (as in both works to the far left), and they are stand-ins for humans. One building stands for a lonely person. Two separate buildings stands for an estranged couple. Three buildings is a triangle. These would seem to be influenced and inspired by life in the tall building jungle that was, and is, Manhattan, home of “Manhattanhenge” as Neil deGrasse Tyson calls it.

Louise Bourgeois’s Art was largely motivated by “her emotional struggles,” as former MoMA curator and Louise Bourgeois researcher Deborah Wye says, “This was something that plagued her for her whole life. And she said by making a work of art she could make these emotions tangible. Try to understand them. Try to cope with them. Try to hack away at them. And she actually called her art ‘her guarantee of sanity3.’” 

Femme Maison, 1946-7, Oil and ink on linen, occupy the central position in the show, as I show in the prior picture. Femme Maison translates as “woman house,” or “housewife.” In each, a woman is confined within a building, which references a part of the Artist’s past, as her role in society confined her. All 4 figures are naked from the waist down, exposing them to the viewer’s gaze. Her trademark long hair is seen in two. A stunning and singular expression, times 4, of a woman trapped in her role in Art history, at least that known to me.

In what appears to me to be one of the final shows, and perhaps the final gallery show, mounted under Sheena Wagstaff’s tenure as Chair of The Met’s Modern & Contemporary Department, Louise Bourgeois: Paintings is quietly spectacular. The feeling of discovering something “new,”exciting, and previously unknown, when you walk in is quickly reinforced by the variety, and similarities, in her work. Themes emerge. The mystery remains.

“1932,” 1947, Oil on canvas. 1932 was the year Louise’s mother passed away after a long illness. They had been very close, with Louise often serving as her mother’s nurse. Her passing precipitated the first of the Artist’s two suicide attempts, and recurring bouts of depression. According to the wall card, the figure to the left was a “more realistically rendered self-portrait in earlier stages.” Its closed room, its railing, the “anguished(?)” lone figure, and central spotlight, remind me of the settings of many of Francis Bacon’s Paintings that would coincidentally begin at this very moment.

I missed what looks to have been a terrific show at the Jewish Museum, Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter, due to the pandemic, but did see Louise Bourgeois: Holograms show at Cheim & Read and MoMA’s Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait excellent show of her Prints and book work, both in 2017. The variety of the work on view in these four shows (thanks to the Freud’s Daughter catalog) is extraordinary, and all of it is compelling.

Her Paintings were done in the FIRST decade of the SEVEN she eventually spent here. In the end, Louise Bourgeois lived, and worked, in New York City for an unheard of 72 years! In my book, she is what I call an “Ultimate New Yorker,” i.e. someone who has defined both what it is to be a New Yorker and who helped shape NYC in the Arts in my opinion, along with Patti Smith, Miles Davis, and others. Though she professes that these Paintings are “American, from New York,” in the quote above, I don’t sense much of the City in them beyond those that depict apartment buildings that look like those found here. They are more about a person living in the City. Buildings, though, are a metaphor for persons, as I said.

Reparation, 1945, Oil on canvas. Though the Artist shows herself as a girl bringing flowers to her family’s cemetery plot, there is no name on the sparsely Painted stone. So it could reference her mother’s or grandmother’s passing, or in a larger sense, mourn those she left behind.

In each of these de facto “Self-Portraits,” the Artist lays herself and her feelings daringly bare. While her Art didn’t “solve” her problems, it helped. Seeing them now, these Paintings may prove to be a touchstone for viewers, now and in the future, as I expect them to continue to rise in stature. Stylistically, they blend abstraction and realism selectively, often in the same piece. Finally, they also provide fascinating background material for pondering her Sculpture and Prints that followed for the rest of her career.

Untitled, 1946-7, Oil on canvas. World War II, guilt, and here, fear, are subtexts in many of her Paintings. I should say I see fear in this piece, which is one of a few pieces that depict this building in the show, the others having an unstated dread and menace to them as well, perhaps part of her agoraphobia.

Thinking about this show, I couldn’t help but recall the case of Jack Whitten, who had a long career as an important Painter, only to leave a comparably important,  large body of unknown Sculpture behind when he passed in 2018. Louise Bourgeois’ Paintings were shown and known, but it was early in her career, before she attained the status her Sculpture brought her. Both bodies of unknown and lesser known work were shown by Sheena Wagstaff in two of the more fascinating and memorable shows under her remarkable tenure. I imagine that this show may have been originally planned to be installed at The Met Breuer before its sudden closing.

Untitled, Oil on canvas, left, Untitled, Oil and chalk on canvas, right, both 1946. During one visit, another visitor asked me if the work on the left was a guillotine.

In the Press Release announcing the show, Sheena Wagstaff said about it, “To date, it is not widely known that Bourgeois was active as a painter in New York for ten years, a period when the city became a vital international hub amidst critical debates around painting. This exhibition reveals the foundational DNA of the artist’s development of themes that would subsequently burgeon into three dimensions, and preoccupy her for the remainder of her long career.”

All of this was “just” preliminary to her long career as a Sculptor, and work in other mediums. Her late Paintings, like these two, begin to look like her Sculpture. Sculpture, she said, enabled her to see what she was feeling in three dimensions. Deborah Wye said, “She said there was no rivalry between the mediums for her in which she worked. She said she just said the same thing but in different ways4”

And so, “Painting” as painting was over for Ms. Bourgeois.

Moving from Painting to Sculpture. Femme Volage, 1951 left, and Dagger Child, 1947-9, both Painted wood and stainless steel. Woman in the Process of Placing a Beam in her Bag, 1949, Oil on canvas, far left.

Being a self-professed and long-standing Paintings guy I really wish Louise had kept on Painting in addition to Sculpting, but her Muse carried her to 3 dimensions. Some Prints on view in An Unfolding Portrait involve brush work, continuing the thread in a sense. She made Prints for the rest of her life. Her Prints were first the subject of a 1995 MoMA show and their 2017 Unfolding Portrait show, which lives on in its wonderful catalog. Deborah Wye, then a MoMA curator who devoted a large part of her career to studying Louise Bourgeois’s output, curated both Print shows as well the Louise Bourgeois Retrospective at MoMA in 1982, the very first show of its kind given to a woman Artist at MoMA5. She has also created a website of Ms. Bourgeios’s complete prints, which may be seen here.

Fallen Woman (Femme Maison), 1946-7, Oil on canvas. As in almost all of her Paintings, her past and present experiences and the resulting guilt, angst and duality are transformed into wonderfully succinct compositions. “The woman depicted here, visually cut in two by a dark building, embodies the rejection, fragmentation, and abandonment that the artist experienced and feared…,” per the wall card.

“Why have there been no great female Artists?,” is the title of a book, and a question I’ve heard many times over the years. There are, and have been. MANY of them.

Untitled, 1946-7, Oil on canvas. Bacon, de Chirico, Miro, Chagall come to mind when I see this, but none of them combined these elements into one piece before Louise Bourgeois did here in what may be her most iconic Painting, which, again, features her long hair.

The history of Art has been largely written by men, museum collections largely curated by men, to this point. It’s only been this century that that has begun to change. It’s really only since the opening of the global Art market in the late 1980s and the accompanying relentless search for Art of value- anywhere by anyone, that more women Artist have begun to get the attention so many have stood up and demanded for so long. There’s still a long road ahead.

Beyond her iconic Sculpture, her Prints that I saw at MoMA in 2017, her Holograms that I saw the same year, and her Installations, Louise Bourgeois created an important body of Paintings, one that deserves a special place of import among those created by women Artists in the 20th century, as well as by Artists, period. I believe that as time goes on, more and more people, who know her name, but not much about what she did beyond her Spiders, Louise Bourgeois will be an Artist who moves more and more into the mainstream. Her work is so diverse, extending across mediums, techniques and time, that it actually reminds me a bit of one of her contemporaries- Pablo Picasso. That’s said not as a comparison, but to mention the similarities and variety in their work. I would not be one bit surprised to see a Bourgeois/Picasso show one of these days. Maybe MoMA’s next Bourgeois-related show6 show ?

Louise Bourgeois, with her long hair, with Untitled, 1946-7,  on her easel, circa 1946. It’s fascinating to compare what we can see of it in this Photo with the Painting we have, above.

Louise Bourgeois channeled her problems through unending creativity into an extraordinary and extraordinarily varied body of work. In spite of two suicide attempts7 earlier in her life, she overcame everything she lived through and felt about it to survive to be 98! There is much in that, as well as in her work, to inspire others. Jerry Gorovoy, her assistant and friend for 30 years, wrote in late 2010 after Louise’s death-

“Though her work was raw self-expression, it was also her way of understanding herself. It has a timeless dynamic that goes way beyond the visual: a profound capacity to awaken in others a heightened consciousness of what it is to be alive.”

Her ceaseless multi-dimensional creativity is up there with Picasso’s, Joan Miro’s, Marcel Duchamp’s and Robert Rauschenberg’s- the giants of endless invention in the 20th century. Add her name to that list if you haven’t. For her own creativity, as well as the quality and timelessness of her Art, it belongs there. 

*- Soundtrack for this Piece is “Cherry-Coloured Funk” by Cocteau Twins from Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full length pieces have been published!
I can no longer fund it myself. More on why here.
If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to keep it online & ad-free below.
Thank you, Kenn.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. Quoted in Louise Bourgeois, Askew and d’Offay, 2013, p.42. ↩
  2.  Robert Storr, Ted Talks, 5/11/18 ↩
  3. Deborah Wye, MoMA Talk, 9/17/2017. ↩
  4. Deborah Wye, MoMA Talk, 9/17/2017. ↩
  5. In 2018, I published my own list of these in my Yoko Ono piece, since there is no “official” list- still! I wonder why. ↩
  6. Update 9/2/22- Since writing those words I’ve discovered a gallery show, Louise Bourgeois – Pablo Picasso: Anatomies of Desire, was held at Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, in 2019. From seeing the catalog, it sure looks like it’s not only an idea who’s time has come, but there is more to mine in it. ↩
  7. per The Met’s wall card for “1932.” I can find no other reference to more than one attempt. ↩

Not Your Father’s Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents is now over. If you missed it, one of the few places you can still see a bit of it is here! If you appreciate that, please donate to keep this site alive. I can no longer create it AND fund it myself. Thank you.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*-unless otherwise credited)

Ahhh….The summer blockbuster. What would Art life be without one? In spite of covid, we’ve been blessed here in NYC with big and memorable shows the past two summers, though of course, remaining careful is the only way to see one. So, I donned my double masks and went to see this year’s summer-fest, Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents, at The Met.

Winslow & chill…Detail of Lady of Santiago (Girl With a Fan), 1885, Watercolor on paper. Less than one quarter of the whole 8 7/8 by 11 1/2 inch piece is shown. How this is Painted is just stunning. Look at her face! Look at those Palm tree leaves! Not bad for not having any lessons, right? His mother was an accomplished Artist and gave Winslow some help early on, later he took a few lessons in Oils, beyond that, he was self-taught.

Interestingly, and probably purely coincidentally, Winslow Homer turns out to be almost an exact contemporary of the Artist who enthralled me last summer, Paul Cézanne, he of Cézanne Drawing at MoMA: Cézanne, 1839-1906; Homer, 1836-1910! Cézanne was, and remains, one of the most influential Artists of his time. Winslow Homer, though continually popular since he began creating, has not enjoyed the same reputation as a ground-breaker as the French master. To this point.

You’d need a telescope to see The Gulf Stream, center, from the show’s entrance, which announces it as the centerpiece for the entire show. There are a lot of very good Paintings before and after you get to it.

That sound you heard might be the tides beginning to turn after Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents.

The Surgeon at Work at the Rear During an Engagement, from Harper’s Weekly, July 12, 1862, Wood engraving on paper. A number of Homer’s War pieces compile different scenes he may have witnessed on one of his trips to the front of the Civil War into one composition. I wonder if this is the case here. Homer was about 26 at the time he created this Drawing which was sent back, and then engraved by someone else. (* Not included in Crosscurrents. Smithsonian Museum of American Art Photo)

After early work as a free-lance illustrator covering the genteel life around him, Winslow Homer moved to NYC in 1859, where he took a few lessons in Oil Painting at the National Academy of Design with Frederic Rondel. He took a job as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly right after the Civil War started in April, 1861, and much to his surprise, quickly found himself at the front in Virginia! It was there that he would come into his own, creating a body of War Illustrations that was important, historic, and ground-breaking, becoming, along with renowned Photographers Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner, America’s first visual War reporters.

Crosscurrents begins at this point, in 1863. With 88 Oils and Watercolors, covering the full range of subjects the Artist rendered after he found himself and his direction during the War, and tracing the rest of his long career, the show is centered around The Met’s masterpiece, The Gulf Stream, 1900,1906. Work after work shows the lie to the out-dated standing perception and in its stead reveals how shockingly contemporary Winslow Homer is, 112 years after his death. The feeling one leaves the show with is akin to “How could we have missed so much in Winslow Homer?”

The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, Oil on canvas. As time went on, he felt he needed a different medium to express the depth of what he wanted to communicate. So, in 1863, he turned to Oil Painting, a medium he had only briefly studied. The soldier’s jacket lies to the right in this powerful image from the end of the War and the beginning of the Reconstruction. Originally, the scythe’s blade was even longer.

Part of the reason opinions on Winslow Homer haven’t changed is there’s been a lack of big Homer shows, and even Crosscurrents isn’t a full blown retrospective. The Met and National Gallery of Art in Washington had a Homer Retrospective in 1959, which the catalog shows to have had around 130 works. The Whitney had a Homer show in 1974 that had 200 works (per its catalog). For perspective, Winslow Homer created 300 Oil Paintings and 685 Watercolors, plus Prints and Drawings over the course of his career1. 2022 is proving to be a fortuitous time to see 88 Homers. 

Prisoners from the Front, 1866, Oil on canvas. The work that made Winslow Homer’s name, reputation and career. It was then quickly acquired by the young Metropolitan Museum.

Before the War ended, Winslow wound up making multiple trips to the Virginia front. Of one, his mother wrote-

“Winslow went to the war front of Yorktown and camped out about two months. He suffered much, was without food 3 days at a time & all in camp either died or were carried away with typhoid fever- plug tobacco & coffee was the staples…He came home so changed that his best friends did not know him, but is well & all right now2.”

The War forever changed Homer, and his Art. The genteel subjects were gone. To go deeper, he finally turned to Oil Painting in 1863 at the age of 27, fairly old to begin.

Sharpshooter, 1863, Oil on canvas. Not bad for a first Oil Painting, right?

“He was painting by eye, not by tradition; painting what he saw, not what he had been taught to see.” Lloyd Goodrich3

Sharpshooters were, perhaps, the most deadly branch of the Army in the Civil War. The series The Civil War: Brothers Divided, credits sharpshooters with winning the Battle of Gettysburg, and by extension the Civil War4. In Sharpshooter, we see one taking aim. In 1896, Homer recalled-

“I looked through one of their rifles once when they were in a peach orchard in front of Yorktown in April, 1862. The impression struck me as being as near murder as anything I ever think of in connection with the army & I always had a horror of that branch of the service5.“ He included this sketch in his letter-

His very first Oil Painting, Sharpshooter, 1863, opens the show in attention- grabbing fashion. When I look at it, I feel for whoever may be on the other end of the telescope. After seeing the Drawing, I believe that’s what Homer intended.

There it is: right from the very first work, and then time and again, as I walked through the 40+ years of his career covered in Crosscurrents, what stands out for me is his empathy. This is what makes Winslow Homer special in his time, and timely today.

His strikes me as being on the level of the empathy I see in Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, and especially in Goya. All his life he traveled, and many of his pieces reflect things he actually witnessed (some were based on newspaper reports). This combination of observation with his inherent empathy brings an uncanny “realism” to his work, even allowing that some pieces are based on the accounts of others, and some are compilations of events. And so, taking his Paintings as “documentary” is a bit problematic. I prefer to focus on the empathy.

Defiance: Inviting a Shot before Petersburg, 1864, Oil on panel. A Confederate soldier about to get what he’s asking for- two small puffs of smoke are seen at the middle left would seem to indicate the dare accepted, the shots on their way. And so, this is the flip-side of Sharpshooter.

On an adjacent wall, the very next Painting would seem to indicate the Artist may have been thinking similarly. Perhaps, he felt he wanted to be clearer about his intentions, and create a “more direct” work? Here, he shows us the opposite viewpoint. Brilliantly paired in the show. Defiance is utterly remarkable. It’s not like the sharpshooters needed a lot of help.

A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876, Oil on canvas. Seeing this work from 11 years after the end of the War and the middle of the Reconstruction made me wonder if I’ve seen a more powerful 19th century American Painting. Who else Painted anything like this before 1900?

Then, in the period after the War, the Reconstruction, Winslow Homer did something no other Artist I know of did- He made Paintings showing the life of the newly freed Black men and women, and in the process created a unique record of part of their experience, and race relations in the country, at the time. This is another thing that makes him a ground-breaking Artist and gives hm much relevance, today. In A Visit From the Old Mistress, 1876, volumes are said in the eyes and body language. Early on, the Mistress held a red flower in her right hand, which the Artist Painted over after changing his mind. Over time, a hint of the red has become visible near her shoulder. Given that much (but not all) of what he shows us are scenes he witnessed, I’m left to wonder if he saw this scene and the one below. If not, how could he have Painted them so convincingly? His empathy powerfully comes through, yet as strong as it is, here and in all his work, he never hits the viewer over the head with it, and it is his subtlety that I believe has caused the appreciation of his empathy, power and brilliance to be somewhat under-appreciated for so long.

Dressing for the Carnival, 1877, Oil on canvas. A tour de force in so many ways beginning with color and ending up in a timeless meditation on so many things. Who else Painted anything like this?

In 1873, Winslow Homer produced his first Watercolor (at about 37 years of age!). They would become both rightly revered for their virtuosity among any done during his lifetime and extremely popular, helping the Artist survive. No small thing since after Prisoners from the Front, he struggled to regain the same level of success with his Oils, which continually disturbed him, no matter how popular his Watercolors became. Along the way, his focus changed. He turned to the sea. First, in Cullercoats, England, than in New England, and finally in the Gulf Stream- the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba and Florida. Based in Prouts Neck, Maine, he regularly traveled south to avoid the harsh northern winters. That might  be why there was only one Winslow Homer snow scene in the show!

Eight Bells, 1886, Oil on canvas, struck me as endemic of Homer’s work on man & the sea. Here, two sailors take measurements. Man trying to understand the sea.

Of course, Winslow Homer is rightly revered for his sea pictures. Along with the intense, timeless drama in many of these pieces, what has always stood out for me is his mastery of rendering the sea itself. Crosscurrents includes quite a few highlights, including some daring sea rescues Homer witnessed or read about. Regarded so at the time, Winslow Homer remains one of the real masters of sea Paintings. No mean feat in a country about 100 years old at the time in view of the long history of sea Art in many other countries.

Oranges on a Branch, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Hypnotically beautiful, during one visit, another visitor nearby railed against the inclusion of the building on the lower right in this rare Homer Still Life. Oranges were something of a delicacy at the time, and a treat as a staple at meals in the Bahamas, they would seem exotic to many contemporary American viewers.

As darkly hued as many of his Oil Paintings are, as a result of his yearly winter trips south, all of a sudden come his Watercolors that just explode with light and color.

Native Hut at Nassau, 1885, Watercolor on paper. During his trips, Homer kept a close eye on the local population and had a gift for capturing their lives in extraordinary works like this, a scene he may have seen on a walk from his luxury hotel. While picturesque elements of the piece would appeal to American viewers, the condition of the local’s lives is front and center. Again, something not many were doing in 1885.

Homer’s Watercolors were extremely popular with collectors, and even he seemed to get caught up in it. He’s quoted in the show saying-

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.”

At The Met, they indeed glisten with the beautiful light he found in the Bahamas and elsewhere on the Gulf Stream. But, for me, it’s his Oils that are the revelation, and which largely serve to rewrite our perception of him. Homer followed sales of his Oils closely, and took the results personally, particularly when they were misunderstood. His Watercolors cast his subjects in a different light, no pun intended, and seem to me to be more meditative, while his Oils bring the power.

A Garden in Nassau, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Another poignant example shows a child outside a walled private garden. A small detail- Homer’s watercolor palm leaves are always amazing, and offset the sparseness of the wall.

Still, a number of those on view, like these two above, get to the same power, empathy and subtlety, seen in his Oils.

Shark Fishing, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Ummm…I think they’re going to need a bigger boat. The shark is similar to one seen in The Gulf Stream, 15 years later.

In 1885, while in the Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer may have seen and recorded a boat in distress in a sketchbook. The sketch was in the show, as were a number of fascinating Watercolors that seem to reveal something of the development of The Gulf Stream Oil Painting over the next 21 years. Not all of the pieces I’m showing here were in the show’s Gulf Stream section. I’m including Shark Fishing, above, (which is not a disaster work like the others), due to the similarities between the shark in The Gulf Stream. It also includes two Black sailors.

Sharks (The Derelict), 1885, Watercolor on paper. It would seem that this was a work that informed The Gulf Stream, with many of its familiar compositional elements, minus the sailor.

The Gulf Stream Oil was displayed in 1900, then Homer reworked it in 1906. (Possibly in response to criticism?) The Met quickly acquired it the same year.

The Gulf Stream, c.1889, Watercolor on paper. What would be the final composition is taking shape.

In this version, there is no sign of rescue, which is closer to the Oil as it was originally displayed. No water spout to the right. The sailor looks down in the direction of the sharks.

The Gulf Stream, 1900, 1906, Oil on canvas. It was praised and condemned early on. From The Met’s Audio Guide- “When the Worchester Art Museum was considering its purchase, two women Trustees objected to the unpleasantness of the subject. Homer wrote to his agent- “The boat and sharks are of very little consequence. You can tell these ladies that the unfortunate negro who is by now so dazed and parboiled will be rescued and return to his friends and home and ever after live happily.” In 1906 he added the ship on the upper left horizon. 

Not many images exist of The Gulf Stream before his 1906 modifications of it, most noticeably adding the ship on the horizon in the upper left in 1906. A print displayed nearby shows the work as it originally was displayed in 1900 without it. Was it added in response to the worry for the lone sailor expressed to him by viewers? In a letter to his dealer the Artist vehemently expressed that “the subject of this piece is its title.” It’s hard for me to see one subject in it. I’m puzzled by how the man is Painted, and why he is looking off to our right. Perhaps, Homer felt that looking straight ahead, as he does in the Watercolor above, was too obvious. Some see the Painting as being inspired by the recent death of Homer’s father. Yet, he had produced Watercolors of this subject 15 years before. Whatever the case is, it again features a Black man. Perhaps the most iconic American Painting to do so from its time, or earlier. Or, from substantially later, for that matter.

Natural Bridge, Bermuda, 1901, Watercolor on paper. It’s hard for me to look at this and not think of Cézanne’s rock formations I showed in my Cézanne Drawing piece his last year that were done at almost the same time.

“If a man wants to be an artist, he should never look at pictures.” Winslow Homer quoted in Lloyd Goodrich’s Winslow Homer, P.21.

Winslow Homer kept to himself. His life is in his work. He refused to cooperate with his biographer and so very little is known about his possible influences. Writers and critics have been left to wonder about them, and I do, too. He spent 10 months living in Paris when much was going on in the Art world there. Yet, almost nothing is known about how he felt about what he saw. I see bits of Manet, Monet, Cézanne and Goya in his work. Is it coincidental?

Near Andersonville, 1865-66, Oil on canvas. The wall card speaks of the “Black woman emerging from a darkened interior, standing on a threshold and contemplating an uncertain future” near Andersonville, the site of an horrific Confederate prison.

Strong women are also featured in Homer’s work. The Black woman in the stunning early Oil, Near Andersonville, above, and women he encountered in the seaside communities he lived in in Cullercoats, England, and New England, like this one-

The Gale, 1883-93, Oil on canvas.

Again, something not many other Artists were doing at the time.

Right and Left, 1909, Oil on canvas. Homer’s next to last Oil Painting.

Late in his life, he turned his attention to mortality and the struggle of life and death, animal versus animal and man versus animal, as here, and of course earlier, he had depicted the struggle of man versus man, in the Civil War, and man versus the sea. It takes an effort to find the hunters in the piece, since the work is designed to show us the scene from the victim’s viewpoint, like Defiance, shown earlier. This is something unique in my experience to Homer in Art.

As if ALL of that isn’t enough, Winslow Homer’s compositions continually surprise me with their originality. Right and Left being one classic example among many. Something he is not generally appreciated for.

Winslow Homer with The Gulf Stream and his palette in his Prouts Neck, Maine Studio, c. 1899-1900

Francis Bacon said whether something was art or not wouldn’t be known for 75 to 100 years. I’ve always felt it took longer. Still, at about 100 years since his passing, it seems to me that Winslow Homer’s stock is beginning to rise to about mark twain (2 fathoms, or 12 feet, the depth the river must be for a riverboat to pass safely), also the pen name of almost an EXACT contemporary of Winslow Homer- Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910, being 1 year older, and passing in the same year! Like Mark Twain is, for many among American Novelists, in my book, Winslow Homer is just about at the top of innovative and important 19th century American Painters, for his Paintings, his mastery of Watercolor, and his illustrations.

Regardless of how the future looks at him, it seem to me that he’s certainly an Artist with a lot to say to us today. His technique catches the eye, then his subtlety and empathy hold the mind, and the heart.

*- Soundtrack for this Piece is- (“I ain’t gonna work on) Maggie’s Farm (no more),” by Bob Dylan from Bringing it All Back Home, 1965.

This Piece is dedicated to Amy Harding (who made a long trip to see this show, particularly admiring Dressing for the Carnival), for her help in getting this piece published and her long-time support!

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. According to Helen A. Cooper, Winslow Homer Watercolors, P.16 ↩
  2. Winslow Homer: The Nature of Observation, P.34 ↩
  3. Lloyd Goodrich, Winslow Homer, 1973, P.17 ↩
  4. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5427912/ ↩
  5. https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/army-potomac-sharp-shooter-picket-duty-10711 ↩