Ai Weiwei

NoteWorthy Art Books (and Bricks), 2021

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

As it was for PhotoBooks, 2021 was a challenging year to see as many newly published Art Books as in years past.

Still, the companies kept releasing them, and there were some terrific ArtBooks released this past year. Since there is no such thing as “best” in the Arts, here are those I most highly recommend, which I call NoteWorthy.

MoMA’s Endless Wall of Art Books is at least 60 feet high and twice as wide. I’ve given up seeing Yoko Ono: Lumiere de L’aube under the sleeping cat sculpture about 20 feet above the lady’s outstretched arm!

NoteWorthy Art Books, 2021

Following on the heels of Jordan Casteel’s terrific New Museum show, Jordan Casteel: Within Reach, accompanied by the now classic book of the same name, 2021 was the year of terrific and important Art Books by Black Women Painters, known, and on the verge of becoming much more well known. I’ll celebrate them first-

An early nominee for Art Book of the Decade.

Kara Walker: A Black Hole Is Everything A Star Longs To Be, JRP Editions- Kara Walker has never been one to mince a line, a word or a cut image, and in A Black Hole Is Everything, her raw power is seen in full effect in page after page (600 in all!) of stunning Drawings in this catalog for a show of the same name at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, which she has said was born of “an excavation of my archives.” For those who missed the show, it serves as an excellent retrospective of her Drawings. As anyone who has seen her Drawing shows at Sikkima Jenkins & Co. over the past few years can attest, her Drawings are often timely, and then will surprise by referencing Art history in equally fresh, unique, even humorous, ways. 700 of them created between 1992 and 2020 are included here, with only a small number I saw in her shows, allowing the reader to trace the evolution of this vital side of the Artis’s creativity. Most have never been published. While her huge installations and cut paper pieces often have an all-encompassing effect, her Drawings, which feature immediacy and intimacy, show another side of her range. A number of Kara Walker’s earlier books are now quite hard to find. Given the size of A Black Hole is Everything and the fact that it’s imported, don’t wait long before grabbing yours. An early nominee for one of the most important Art Books of the decade.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly In League With The Night, DAP & Tate- A big year for the British Artist is captured in full effect in this fine book ostensibly published for her exhibition at the Tate, London. It also serves as a fine introduction to her work for those who didn’t see it. I saw her debut NYC solo show in 2019, which the Artist attended, and was immediately impressed with how she made the influence of the masters, like Velazquez and Goya, entirely her own. Her figures are always strong, set against subtle backgrounds, though the overall tone is dark, which is something of a trademark of the Artist, she occasionally offsets them with vibrant color. In this regard, they affect me like some of Hopper’s urban portraits, but Ms. Yiadom-Boakye’s work is even darker. A Painter just beginning to receive world-wide acclaim. I don’t see that ending any time soon.

Toyin Ojih Odutola: The UmuEze Amara Clan and the Hour of Obafemi, Rizzoli Electa- I can’t remember when the last time was I was so blown away by a Painter’s debut monograph. And this is after I had seen her terrific Whitney Museum show in 2017, and her work included in an equally wonderful group show at Jack Shainman Gallery in September, 2018. So, her work was not new to me when I picked up The Umueze Amara Clan. Still, I was just mesmerized by it as I paged through and every single time I pick it up since that feeling returns. Her unique style reminds me of a touch of Lucian Freud or Kathe Kollwitz, with larger touches of Charles White and Kerry James Marshall, but, in the end, comparisons are utterly pointless. I’m sure some will pick this up and say Ms. Odutola is “on her way to becoming a great Painter.” Ummm…no. She is one right now. An important book. Not to be missed.

Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing Serpentine Gallery– Most recently, I’ve been completely lost in Jennifer Packer’s work and the exceptional book, Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, one of the most beautifully designed Painting books I’ve seen- in a year of exceptionally beautifully designed Painting books. Jennifer Packer is another Painter I was introduced to at the Whitney Museum- first in 4 Paintings in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, and now in her spectacular Whitney solo show of the same name as this book, which I saw the day it opened on October 30th, and is currently up as I write this. I’ll have more to say about her soon.

Mickalene Thomas, Phaidon- The newest book on this list was published just in time to make it, and I attended its release just this week. It, too, is one of the most beautifully designed Art Books of 2021, and a fitting overview of the work of this important and ground-breaking Artist & Activist who’s work is Photography based. It’s an overdue collection that was worth every bit of the wait. It joins Aperture’s excellent overview of her Photography, Muse, as an essential book on Ms. Thomas’s work.

Pick one of them? I can’t. I don’t think you can go wrong with whichever one you choose. All are Artists who will only be more and more important as time goes on, yet each of their books sticks a flag in the ground for their Art, and their vision, while making stunning cases for their work right now. 

Hito Steyerl, I Will Survive, Spector Books- Though a catalog for a European retrospective covering 30 years of her work, I’m moving this book out of the Retrospective or Exhibition Catalog category this year because her work is that important and this book is just so well done (like Paolo Pellegrin: Un’Antologia was among NoteWorthy PhotoBooks I looked at in 2020). Ms. Steyerl is probably better known in Europe where she famously turned down a top German honor, akin to British knighthood, because of her country’s pandemic response, so this book will hit Americans like it did me- a jolting wake up call to her work, her career, her ideas and how of-the-moment they seem today. (See Sara Cwynar in my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2021 piece). Primarily a filmmaker (like Ms. Cwynar and Arthur Jaffa), theoretician and writer, her work centers on the circulation of images. As images take over our lives, in every realm besides Art, Hito Steyerl has been pointing out the dangers and the damages of this for a very long time. If her time isn’t now, it’s never going to be her time. The loss will be to the rest of us it’s all happening to who haven’t checked her work out. 

NoteWorthy Art Book/Autobiography, 2021

Ai Weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows– A few years ago I wondered if Ai Weiwei was the Artist of the Decade. Now that the 20 teens are over, it’s hard to think of anyone else who had the impact on both Art, and the world, as the former New Yorker, who finally left China behind for Germany, had between 2010 and 2019. His Autobiography couldn’t be more down to earth or matter of fact but that takes nothing away from how riveting page after page is. His journey is legendary, and I’ve written about it before, but to hear him lay it all out, in detail, makes for one of the most compelling Artist’s Autobiographies in the history of Art in my view. An essential document- on Art, on life, on growing up in China, and on living in the world today. 

NoteWorthy Exhibition Catalogs, 2021

Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands, Yale – A gorgeous book and terrific overview of the work of the late Chinese-American Artist who based some of her Paintings on the work of Dorothea Lange. Not unlike Ai Weiwei, Hung Liu lived with her family in exile during her childhood in China after Mao banished them to the hinterlands for “re-education.” Hung Liu came to know the hardships Dorothea Lange showed personally and spent the rest of her life expressing that in her work showing the disenfranchised of both her countries. Published to accompany the first museum retrospective of her work at the Smithsonian’s Portrait Gallery, the Artist died as it was about to open. (My look at a simultaneous Fall, 2021 NYC show she also worked on before she passed is here.) The book serves as a terrific introduction to the work of an Artist who’s work I believe is going to be with us for the long haul. 

The Painter I’ve been looking at, and obsessed with, longer than any other FINALLY gets a book with text & images worthy of him & his Art.

Van Eyck– A “once in a lifetime” show of the work of the Artist I’ve been looking at longer than any other that I missed seeing in person due to the virus. The accompanying book gave me a second chance for which I am very grateful. Overflowing with the latest scholarship on Jan and his mysterious brother Hubert, two Artists who have been largely overlooked in the explosion of Art monographs this past decade. In my opinion, you buy this book for the text. Though a very large book, it does have numerous full page illustrations, which in my view are best seen in the context of supporting points made in the text. All of that said, it is the finest “coffee table” Van Eyck book available1. No Van Eyck book can hope to top the images available for free online at closertovaneyck.org, which I wrote about here, where you can zoom in as close as you want, seeing Art in entirely new ways, which I believe will soon become the norm (issues of print quality vs screen image quality aside). Jan van Eyck has been (rightly, in my view) honored for his unsurpassed technical mastery. Yet, there is far more going on in his work than just brilliant Painting. The man was an equally extraordinary thinker as well, leaving as much to think about in his work as there is to look at. Van Eyck is the state of the art of Van Eyck scholarship and is likely to remain so for a while, though I am very happy to see that scholars all over the world are continuing to explore his life and work. Don’t stop now!

NoteWorthy Art Book Publisher, 2021

A selection of Taschen’s huge XXL books that weigh 16-22 pounds each. Many are the best way to see the most works by the given Artist in the largest size. They generally run about $200, before they go out of print, which is considerably cheaper than it would cost to go and see these works in person. Frida Kahlo is their newest XXL and immediately goes to the top of the class of Kahlo books as THE best place to see her work. The Rembrandt on the far right was a NoteWorthy Art Book of 2020.

Taschen. It’s just impossible for me not to single out the longstanding, large German publisher for special notice. In particular, I want to make readers aware of the fact that they publish some of the great bargains in new Art Books in a series I call “the bricks.” They’re about the same size and weight as a brick, but they are packed from cover to cover with high quality illustrations and photos and, usually, very good text. At $20 to $25 each, the bricks are the biggest bargain in Art books known to me. ANYone interested in Art should know about them and check them out.

Pick your size. Top to bottom (left to right), Van Gogh in the old, smaller, brick, on top of Basquiat in the new larger brick, on top of The Charlie Chaplin Archives XL and The Charlie Chaplin Archives XXL, bottom, which comes in a brown shipping box.

The subjects, usually monographs, cover a surprisingly wide range of styles from the Old Masters to Basquiat and David Hockney. This past year saw Taschen release their incredible $200 Basquiat XXL 20 pound behemoth in a brick. Yes, the entire book is here, and yes the reproductions are reduced. Still, for $25. list price and over 500 pages, it’s an impossible- to-beat bargain. That’s the thing with Taschen. They release extremely well done Art Books in various sizes over time. First, the huge XXL edition, which usually clock in at about 20 pounds or so and are upwards of 2 feet tall for about said $200. They are, often, the last word on their subject Artist. Then, a year or so later comes the XL size. Substantially smaller and lighter, but still larger than most Art Books, for about $80. Still, at about 3/4 the size of the XXL, I think it’s a very good deal.

THE greatest bargain in Art books known to me. A row of “bricks” show how Taschen has slightly changed their size over the past decade. The newer releases, part of their 40th Anniversary series, like Egon Schiele and the Basquiat, are the bigger ones. The older bricks list for $20(!), the newer books list for $25. This entire row of 8 books lists for $175., less than the cost of one XXL!

And finally, a few years after the XL comes the brick. So, the buyer has choices. 3 sizes, priced accordingly, for the exact same book. You can build an excellent Art library with only the bricks. They’re handy, excellent overviews that hold up regardless of whatever other books come out, and any work you want to see larger can generally be found elsewhere or online.  I’ve been buying the bricks since they began releasing them, and while I prefer the XXL for some books (like the Rembrandt Complete Paintings), I generally wind up with the brick as time goes on. For me, the best thing about these Taschen books (in XXL, XL or brick size) is a good number of them feature “The Complete Works” or “The Complete Paintings,” something that you really can’t see anywhere else in contemporary Art books which make them an essential resource in which ever size you choose.

NoteWorthy Older Art Book Discovered in 2021- Mea Culpa!

Charlotte Salomon looks out at us in a Self Portrait from 1940 when the Artist was about 23, about two years before she was murdered. This Self Portrait is not part of Life? or Theatre? This is a copy of the 1981 first English edition, published by Gary Schwartz through Viking,  the first book to publish the complete Life? or Theater? It’s large size makes it the one to look for among sub-$100 versions.

Charlotte Salomon- Life? or Theatre? As I wrote about the incomparable Photographer & Artist Francesca Woodman a few years ago in my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks piece for 2019, I am equally unable to pick up a copy of Life? or Theatre? and not break into tears. Charlotte Salomon, 1917-42,  is one of the most remarkable Artists in Art history, an Artist who achieved something no other Artist known to me has- ever. She recreated her life’s story, and that of her family, in over 900 Paintings, which tell one continuous story that she completed just before being arrested by the Nazis and then executed at about 25 years of age. Equal parts cinema, opera and passion-play, each work is also accompanied by Music! Even more remarkably, each Painting has a velum overlay with text and Drawing on it that creates something of a different experience than seeing the Painting alone. Stylistically, it’s hard for me to look at Lotte’s work and not think of the great Marc Chagall (who, by some reports “was amazed by them” when he was shown them), but she definitely has her own style, one that she executed with just 3 colors!

The great Art writer Gary Schwartz should get the credit for rescuing her work from the archives where her parents donated it, putting together the first publication of the complete Life? or Theater? in 1980. Since, it’s been reprinted a number of times, all of which have gone in and out of print. There are good and not so good things about each edition. Just make sure to get a complete edition (in spite of what I just said above, I’d avoid the Taschen brick edition since it’s incomplete. The edition pictured above is about the same size and is complete). It’s the only series of Paintings ever created that can be “read” as a book! And, it’s also the ultimate revenge of the young Jewish girl who created a body of work that will be seen for as long as people have eyes to look with and will continue to gain her new admirers all the while. After all is said and done, in my eyes, as Life? or Theater? proves, great Art doesn’t only live today. I’m not interested in any other kind.

*Soundtrack for this Post is “Future People” by Alabama Shakes. Full lyrics, here.

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  1. Ghent Altarpiece: Art, History, Science and Religion, 2019, is an excellent book focused on that one work, based around its ongoing restoration. ↩

Winterlude: Ai Weiwei’s “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

Outdoor public Art in the winter anyone? In February, 2005, Christo & Jeanne Claude presented “The Gates” in Central Park, which combined the 24/7/365 beauty of the Park with a unique vision featuring a gorgeous use of the color saffron. It drew millions of visitors in the dead of winter, and I spent three solid weeks in the Park pondering and documenting it in daylight, at night, in rain and in snow, eventually seeing all of it’s 26 miles. I met the Artists before the show, which consummated a 25 year labor of love, opened, and I was there as they watched the final sunset from a hill in the Park on it’s closing night. Now, 12 years later, another visionary Artist, Ai Weiwei, has chosen the winter for another huge show, this one so big it’s spread out over all 5 of NYC’s boroughs. Luckily, this time, I had 4 months to see it.

“Circle Fence,” “The Hemisphere,” Flushing Meadows, Queens, “The Hemisphere,” built for the 1964 World’s Fair, “as an aspirational image of global unity at the height of the Cold War. During our own period of increasing nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, Ai draws renewed attention to its symbolism. His 1,000 foot long Circle Fence uses a series of metal frames with interconnected netting to surround the site, creating a global border that can be seen as both playful and sobering.” Click any Photo for full size.

February has also become a special month for me, the month I celebrate being “reborn.” Last February, I marked the 10th Anniversary with my first “Winterlude” Post, “Remembering ‘The Gates'” in a series of Photos I took on the High Line, where the “Art show” mother nature put on was evocative of the saffron of “The Gates.” The other reason I chose it was it was a look at life in hibernation, on it’s way to being reborn. This year, I’ve chosen to take a meditative look at Ai Weiwei’s show for the Public Art Fund, “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors,” the largest NYC outdoor Art show of 2017, which ended on February 11th, exactly 4 months after it opened. Numbering over 300 pieces, divided into “Structures” (numbering 8), “Bus Shelters” (10), “Ad Platforms” (over 100), and “Lamppost Banners,” (200), they were spread over all five boroughs. I made it to Queens(!), above, but I wound up spending the 4 months focusing on seeing as many of the Manhattan works as I could.

I’ve decided to let the resulting Photos, and the words of the Public Art Fund website, do most of the talking. So, please note- All quotations in the captions to the Photos are from the Public Art Fund.

About the show, they said-

“Ai Weiwei conceived this multi-site, multi-media exhibition for public spaces, monuments, buildings, transportation sites, and advertising platforms throughout New York City. Collectively, these elements comprise a passionate response to the global migration crisis and a reflection on the profound social and political impulse to divide people from each other. For Ai, these themes have deep roots. He experienced exile with his family as a child, life as an immigrant and art student in New York, and more recently, brutal repression as an artist and activist in China….“Good fences make good neighbors” is a folksy proverb cited in American poet Robert Frost’s Mending Wall, where the need for a boundary wall is being questioned. Ai chose this title with an ironic smile and a keen sense of how populist notions often stir up fear and prejudice.”

Lamppost Banner 136, 5th Avenue btw West 17 & 18th Streets. “This portrait depicts a refugee on the island of Lesvos, Greece, which has served as the entry point into Europe for hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Senegal, Syria, Somalia, Cameroon and elsewhere. Nearly all have attempted to reach Lesvos by crossing the narrow strait that separates the island from Turkey in overcrowded boats often without lifejackets or with defective ones. Hundreds of migrants, including many children, have drowned while making this perilous journey.” All quotes in these captions are from the Public Art Fund.

“Arch,” Washington Square Park, Washington Square North & 5th Avenue. “Ai opens a passageway through its center in the silhouette of two figures. Their outline takes its form from Marcel Duchamp’s 1937 Door for Gradiva, created to frame the entrance to Andre Breton’s art gallery in Paris. This is fitting to the immigrant conceptual Artist since Duchamp used to play chess in Washington Square Park, and once notoriously made his way to the top of the park’s arch with a group of other bohemian Poets and Artists. There, they spread out blankets, hung Chinese lanterns, tied red balloons to the arch’s parapet, declaring it the “Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square…It is also a fitting tribute to the figure who has had an enormous impact on many immigrant Artists in the years since, who have in turn made New York the hub of world culture that it is today.”

“Ai often visited Washington Square Park when he lived nearby in the 1980’s, drawn to its vitality as a hub for creative and political expression. His 27 foot tall steel cage echoes the iconic form of the marble arch, which commemorates George Washington leading the nation toward democracy. While seeming to create an obstruction, Ai opens a passageway through its center…”

“Five Fences,” Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street. “The five arch-filling security fences…do not disrupt or confine the customary use of the portico. Yet, they do form a new physical- and metaphorical- barrier. ‘Five Fences’ suggests that the logic of social division is often opportunistic and incremental, emerging from and adapting itself to existing conditions.”

Banner 70. Sullivan St btw West 3rd & Washington Sq. “Ai created this portrait from an image taken during one of the artist’s team’s visits to the Shariya Camp in Iraq, where displaced Christian, Yezidi, Shia’ Turcomen, Arab and Shabak ethnic minority communities and religious groups have been forced to flee after being targeted by ISIS.”

Banner 58, Washington Place btw Washington Sq West & 6th Avenue.”This banner depicts Tina Modotti (1896-1942 b.Udine, Italy), the Photographer, model, actress and revolutionary who immigrated to the United States as a teenager from Italy. She moved to Mexico with her partner Edward Weston to join the Artistic community of Mexico City around Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Photographer: Edward Weston”

Banner 81, MacDougal St btw Washington Sq N and West 8th Street. “Ai created this portrait from an image taken during one of the artist’s team’s visits to the Shariya Camp in Iraq, where displaced Christian, Yezidi, Shia’ Turcomen, Arab and Shabak ethnic minority communities and religious groups have been forced to flee after being targeted by ISIS.”

Banner 194, West 3rd St btw LaGuardia & Mercer Sts. “This portrait depicts a refugee from the Gaza Strip, home to a population of approximately 1.9 million people, including 1.3 Palestine refugees.”

Banner 104, Greene St btw West 4th & Washington. “Ai created this portrait from an image taken during one of the Artist’s team’s visits to the Shariya Camp in Iraq, where displaced Christian, Yezidi, Shi’a, Turcomen, Arab, and Shabak ethnic minority communities and religious groups have been forced to flee after being targeted by ISIS.”

“7th Street Fence,” 48 East 7th Street.”Since the 19th century, successive waves of immigrants have settled on the Lower East Side. Many who landed at Ellis Island made it there home.”

Banner 43, 5th Avenue btw East 18th & 19th Streets. “This banner depicts Marc Chagall (1887-1985, b.Liozana, Belarus), a Jewish-Russian Artist famed for integrating folk culture into his Art, who first emigrated to France to escape the Soviet Union and then in 1941 fled Nazi occupied France to the United States. Photograph by Pierre Choumoff, 1920.”

Banner 145, 3rd Avenue btw East 6th & 7th Street. “This portrait depicts a refugee on the island of Lesvos, Greece, which has served as the entry point into Europe for hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Senegal, Syria, Somalia, Cameroon , and elsewhere. Nearly all have attempted to reach Lesvos by crossing the narrow strait that separates the island from Turkey in overcrowded boats, often without life jackets…Hundreds of migrants, including many children, have drowned while making this perilous journey.” Before anyone asks…yes, the moon was really there.

Good Neighbors 76, 14th Street & 1st Avenue. “Location- Syrian-Jordanian Border. The Artist has co-opted spaces city-wide that are generally reserved for advertising on bus shelters…Here, he displays the new Photographic series Good Neighbors, taken during his visits to refugee camps and national borders, where fences are used to divide people and define them as different. These striking images are paired with related information from prominent humanitarian organizations, poetic excepts from writing about these issues, or quotations by the Artist to call our attention to the plight and humanity of the millions of displaced people across the planet.”

Odyssey 3, 14th Street at University Place. “Here, he displays an illustrated Greek-style frieze depicting the many forms of the contemporary global refugee crisis. In a mash-up of historical references, its stylized imagery evokes black-figure vase painting, Ancient Egyptian symbolism, classical Chinese motifs, and Ai’s own iconic imagery to represent a contemporary epic of war, ruins, perilous migration journeys, sea crossings, refugee camps with restrictive fencing, and protest demonstrations. Its compelling imagery highlights the struggle and stark conditions that millions of people worldwide face as they are uprooted and forced to flee their homes.” This work is an excerpt of the wallpaper for Ai Weiwei’s 2016 “Roots and Branches,” show at Lisson Gallery, as can be seen here.

Banner 169, East 18th Street & Broadway. “Location: Nizip Camp, Gaziantep, Turkey”

Banner 149, Bowery btw East 3rd & 4th Streets. “This portrait depicts a refugee from the Idomeni makeshift camp on the Greek-Macedonian border, which was Greece’s largest unofficial camp….the camp was populated by more that 14,000 refugees at its peak. In late May, 2016, the camp was evacuated and the refugees were relocated to other camps.”

“Gilded Cage,” 60th Street & 5th Avenue. “For the entrance to Central Park, Ai has created a giant gilded cage that simultaneously evokes the luxury of Fifth Avenue and the privations of confinement. Visitors are able to enter its central space, which is surrounded by bars and turnstiles. Function as a structure of both control and display, the work reveals the complex power dynamics of repressive architecture.”

“Exodus,” Essex Street Market, 120 Essex Street. “Spanning the flagpoles of Essex Street Market, ‘Exodus’ is a narrative series of banners depicting the flight of refugees. They are depicted escaping warfare and devastation, carrying what they can over vast distances…Since the 19th century, successive waves of immigrants have settled on the Lower East Side. Many who landed at Ellis Island made it there home.”

 

In addition to the portraits I’ve shown here, the following well-known persons had Lamppost Banner portraits included in the show. The number in parenthesis is their Banner Number, which you can see, and get more information about, on the show’s interactive map–

Bela Bartok (Hungarian Composer who fled the Nazis to NYC) (39)
Josephine Baker (38), who emigrated to Paris at 19
Nina Simone (64)
Arnold Schoenberg (63)
Max Born (40)
Robert Capa (42)
Frederic Chopin (44)
Joseph Conrad (45)
His Holiness, The 14th Dalai Lama (46)
Marlene Dietrich (47)
Albert Einstein (48)
Anne Frank (49)
Sigmund Freud (50)
Walter Gropius (52)
Victor Hugo (53)
Wassily Kandinsky (54)
Andre Kertesz (55)
Thomas Mann (56)
Karl Marx (57)
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (59)
Piet Mondrian (60)
Pablo Neruda (61)
Leon Trotsky (66)
Elie Wiesel (67)
Billy Wilder (68)

One former refugee who’s portrait is conspicuous by it’s absence is Ai Weiwei’s, who grew up in exile after Mao Zedong banished his father, the Poet Ai Qing, a former friend and close ally, to exile. (More on that here.) But, Ai has not forgotten his father, or his horrible experience as a refugee in his own country, beginning 6 months after Ai Weiwei was born. I made a special pilgrimage on a rainy, freezing day just to see this one lamppost, with Ai Qing’s Banner, near Avenue C in the far East Village, a neighborhood where Ai Weiwei lived for 10 years as an immigrant. The weather was somehow fitting.

Banner 69, East 3rd Street btw Avenue B & Avenue C. “The banner depicts Ai Qing (1910-1996, b. Jiang Zhenghan), one fo the foremost Chinese modernist poets who was exiled with his family (including his son, Ai Weiwei) to Shihezi, Zinjiang Province, in northwestern China. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Ai Qing was forced to undertake hard labor and made to clean public toilets.”

Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing. “Photographer: Unknown, Date: 1929”

“And I
-Lying on the river of time,
The waves of bitterness
Have for several times swallowed and involved me-
Vagrancy and imprisonment
Have deprived me
Of my best days of my youth,
My life, too
Wan and sallow
As your lives.”
from “Snow Falling on China’s Land,” by Ai Qing (original Chinese & English translation, here)

Fittingly, Ai Weiwei has chosen to install his father’s portrait on the nearest lamppost to NYC’s legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

Ai Qing, down the street about 200 feet, looks out on the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a cultural landmark in the East Village since 1973. One of the last remaining bastions of cutting edge creativity left from the days when Ai Weiwei lived in the area.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Don’t Fence Me In,” by Cole Porter and performed here by David Byrne-

Ai Weiwei’s “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors” is my NoteWorthy show for January. 

My previous Posts on Ai Weiwei may be found here.

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Art In China Since 1989: O Brave New World

Talk about “digging a hole to China.” This one’s right through the Guggenheim’s ground floor! Wang Gongxin, “Sky of Beijing,” 2017, Color video installation with sound.

“MIRANDA:
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!
PROSPERO:
‘Tis new to thee.”
(Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1)

The International world of Chinese Art is a dichotomy, it seems to me. On the one hand you have record prices being paid for Chinese Art all over the planet (particularly in the tightly controlled domestic Chinese market1), to the point that China is now the largest, or second largest, Art market in the world, depending on who you read (as of the latest figures, 12/31/2016). Meanwhile, a large part of the Western world is sitting back with absolutely no idea what is going on, who these Artists, not-named Ai Weiwei, are, and what all the fuss is about. Some of this market explosion may be due to a slumping Chinese stock market, some due to limited investment options in China, and some is good ol’ interest in Art. (Of course, prices being paid for any Art, or anything, are no indication of quality or “importance.” Regarding buying Art, my thoughts are here.)

Chen Zhen, “Precipitous Parturation,” 1999, Rubber bicycle inner tubes, fragments of bicycles, toy cars, aluminum, silicone and paint. Though living in Paris, Chen returned to his native Shanghai in 1999, one year before he passed away, where he saw signs that read “By the year 2000, 100 million people will have their own cars.” In response, he created this huge snaking dragon, largely from bike parts, especially the countless rubber bike tires that form it’s body. It’s pregnant belly is opening to reveal a load of toy cars. One older mode of transportation giving birth to the next.

That crack in the iceberg of the lack of broad Western exposure you heard on October 6th was not another artifact of global warming. It was the opening of the Guggenheim Museum’s monumental, and already historically important, show “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World,” the long-overdue comprehensive NYC Museum introduction to what’s been going on in the Art of China since that apocryphal year of 1989. It’s the biggest show of Contemporary Chinese Art yet in the U.S.A.

Detail of the “bursting belly” full of tiny toy cars. I can’t help but recall that both Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg featured bicycles in their works. They are the two Western Artists I was reminded of the most in this show- whether or not they were influences on the Artists.

“Apocryphal” may be putting it mildly to characterize 1989…Empires fell (the communist’s in Eastern Europe). New ones were born (the first commercial internet service & the first written proposal for the world wide web), and other empires trembled- 1989 was the year of a protest involving 1 million Chinese calling for “government reforms and accountability2” that lasted 6 weeks and 6 days centered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, (which means “Gate of Heavenly Peace,” named after the Tiananmen to it’s north, separating the Square from the “Forbidden City”). The protests (Plural. They took place in many cities in China) culminated in the  “Tiananmen Square Massace” (or “June Fourth Incident,” locally), in which 10,000 people are said to have been killed, with many more injured.

“It crystallized the spirit of the revolt,” Stuart Franklin, says on the verso of this 2015 Print issued by Magnum of his 1989 Photo, “Protestor in Tiananmen Square,” which he signed on the front. “It was a movement for freedom of expression, for basic rights, and against the outrage of official corruption,” he added. From my collection.

The iconic “Tank Man” Photo was taken by Magnum’s Stuart Franklin on June 5th. A tragic end to the decade of the relaxed “Reform-era,” begun in 1978, 2 years after the death of Mao Zedong. Marked by the “lifting China’s long-closed borders on the world and allowing for socialism’s planned economy to adapt to limited free-market principles3,” it served to stimulate both experimental and avant-garde Artists as well as students to question the status quo and seek other possibilities. Smack dab in the middle of this period, Robert Rauschenberg arrived in China in 1982, his experience inspired him to return and mount the “ROCI CHINA” show (for Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Initiative), in the country’s most prestigious venue, Beijing’s National Art Gallery, in 1985, which more than 300,000 people visited in the three weeks between November 15th and December 5th!

Robert Rauschenberg, Poster for “ROCI CHINA,” 1985, Offset lithograph, featuring Photos Rauschenberg took in China, as seen at “Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends,” at MoMA, 2017 (apologies for the glare). The show moved to Lhasa, Tibet after Beijing.

The exhibition “confounded and inspired viewers, whose exposure to Western Art had been limited to reproductions within catalogs, and whose understanding of art had largely been confined to academic Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking4.” For me, at least, it’s hard to not see that there may be at least some influence of that show here. At the very least, Robert Rauschenberg (Duchamp, etc.) may have inspired Artists with a broader range of possibilities, as he has countless other Artists in the West. At the same time, however, many Chinese Artists were rejecting the “New Wave,” and all outside influences, focusing on finding their own answers and their own way forward. After June 4th in Tiananmen Square, radical economic reform came in, experimental Art was no longer “sanctioned,” all backed by strong suppression of any mention of what had happened on June 4th in the press, media, online, or in history books, that continues to this day, as do the international sanctions that the rest of the world responded with.

The scene outside the National Art Gallery during “China/Avant Garde,” with it’s famous “No U-Turn” Sign. From this moment on, there would be “no turning back.”

Four months before that horrible end, another event took place that has had lasting impact-inside and outside of China. The “China/Avant-Garde” Art Show opening on February 5th, 1989, which is seen to be the “official” start of Contemporary Chinese Art in some quarters, and marks the beginning of the period covered by this show. “China/Avant-Garde” was “official,” in more ways than one. First, it was officially sanctioned, as hard as it may be for most Westerners to believe, as the “China Modern Art Exhibition,” on one condition- that there would be no performance Art, and second, it was held in the National Art Gallery, Beijing, where Rauschenberg’s show had been 4 years before.

The “Official sanction” didn’t last long. Two hours after it opened, Artist Xiao Lu fired a gun at her own work, “Dialogue,” and the police shut the show down for breaking the ban on performance Art. It opened and closed a few times (once for a bomb scare, which might have been a “performance”), before running it’s scheduled allotted length of time. By then it had made history- Artistically, culturally, historically, and influentially. While many Artists wound up leaving the country after the climate changed, a good deal of that experimental creative spirit and energy remains. Regardless of where the Artists may be now, the range of creativity on view at the Guggenheim was unceasing, eye-opening, and a good deal of it was operating on multiple levels simultaneously.

Xiao Lu fires a pistol at her work “Dialogue,” Custom-made telephone booth, Photograph, red telephone, glass, mirror, on February 5, 1989, 2 hours after “China/Avant-Garde” opened causing the immediate shutting down of the show. Photo from xiaoluart.com

With so many Artist options and so much time to cover (27 years), any number of alternate shows could’ve been mounted, but I think that what made it into Frank Loyd Wright’s rotunda and the two adjoining galleries, was, on the whole, exceedingly well chosen, with the caveats that, yes, that with 71 Artists included there should’ve been more than nine female artists included- a little under 8%, and, it felt to me that there was a plethora of video and installation Art, at the expense of other mediums, like Painting and Photography.

Lead curator Alexandra Munroe sums up the “post-Reform” environment- “Historical turbulence has given rise to an intelligentsia with a profound sense of skepticism towards governing ideologies and a predisposition to pragmatism in the absence of enduring meaning.” This extended to Artists working post-1989. “They produced works that questioned systems of truth and ideological formations…Eschewing Western humanist avant-garde ideals…experimental Artists approached ‘contemporary art’ as a new ‘other’ space outside the Western and Chinese Art words5.”

Ai Weiwei, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” 1995, 3 Gelatin silver prints and “Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo,” 1993, left, Paint on earthenware.

For me, a classic example of this is Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” 3 Gelatin silver prints, from 1995, is a prime example of letting go (sorry) of the past, it’s influence, and the “baggage” the past brings with it for Artists to “live up to,” or to continue what has been done before.

Many are undoubtedly familiar with those Ai Weiwei works. Not being able to include everything else on view in this piece, I’m going to focus on what stood out to me in Painting, Drawing & Photography, along with a few other works in other mediums I just have to include. The works are not listed in any particular order.

Huang Yong Ping, “The History of Chinese Painting And A Concise History of Modern Painting Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes,” 1987, reconstructed in 1993, Ink on wooden crate, paper pulp and glass. The original was a work displayed at “China/Avant-Garde,” in 1989.

Huang Yong Ping, “The History of Chinese Painting And A Concise History of Modern Painting Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes,” 1997, Ink on wooden crate, paper pulp and glass, begins this show with a strong statement that the past is over. History, as written in these two Chinese Art History Books, needed to be cleansed. The result is illegible, and so stands as a metaphor. Here is an Artist struggling with the question of how to become “modern” without becoming Western. Will studying Art History lead to something truly new, or will it just be recycling what’s been done? On one hand, the pulp though having been washed, is dirty. But, the slate has, also, been wiped clean since the books are now illegible. As Joe Strummer said, “The future is unwritten.” After this work, (which was shown in the 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” show), it was. As such it stands as an ideal starting point for this show. Let’s see what was “written” after.

Wang Xingwei, “New Beijing,” 2001, Oil on canvas. In this work Wang Zingwei reimagines a well known Associated Press news photo by Liu Heung Shing, “Beijing- Rushing students to hospital,” 1989, taken on June 4th during the Tiananmen Square tragedy, where heroic bicyclists were shown rushing off with some of the wounded/injured, or deceased. Everything is as it is in the Photo, except Wang Xingwei has substituted 2 Emperor Penguins- animals not native to China, and therefore devoid of the political import Painting 2 wounded (or dead?) students would have had, while those helping are pulling together in ways that Chairman Mao espoused.

Wang Guangyi, “Mao Zedong, Red Grid No. 2,” 1988, Oil on canvas. Daring, and shocking, even 12 years after the death of Mao, given the omnipresence and power of his image in China. Unlike Andy Warhol’s “Mao as celebrity” series on the early 1970’s, Wang Guangyi has placed the former Chairman in a grid. It almost looks like he’s behind bars. It looks like it was done by (or influenced by) Chuck Close. The grid being one way Artists, including Close, have traditionally transferred images from one medium to another, but here it feels like there’s a different kind of transferring going on. Wang Guangyi painted this in 1988, 12 years after the subject’s passing, when it’s “meaning” is something else, something less fearful, something almost as neutral as the color he’s painted in, where it looks more like an old black and white Photo, and as such, it’s an image now locked in the past.

Liu Zheng, “The Chinese,” 1994-2002, 120 Gelatin silver prints. Among the Photography on display, these examples from the series of 120 stood out. Having worked on the state-run “Worker’s Daily” newspaper, his images go beyond the social realism they favored into a realm that isn’t quite “Street Photography,” and is significantly different from Robert Frank or Diane Arbus’ work, though the title is reminiscent of Frank’s “The Americans,” 1958. The rawness of the image is matched by the Photographer’s approach, which varies in each memorable shot.

Zhang Xiaogang, “New Year’s Eve, 1990,” Oil on canvas with collage of cloth and playing cards. After being hospitalized due to a bout with alchoholism, Zhang emerged from a dark period in his life in 1985 and joined the New Wave movement. This work has a haunting isolation to it. All we can really see are the figure’s left hand and his head/face. It’s as if he’s disembodied. In front of him lie 2 playing cards an unlit candle and a knife. Has the candle gone out? Is the knife for protection or self harm? This work was Painted after Tiananmen Square and refers to the beginning of the New Year. A black cloth hangs over the subject’s head, like a black cloud, with a red lining, possibly referring to additional raining of blood. The eyes stare straight out from the canvas, but not at the viewer. His glance doesn’t seem to make it out of his eyes.

Zhao Bandi, “Young Zhang,” 1992, Oil on canvas. One of the more popular Paintings in the show, judging by how many selfies I’ve seen taken in front of it online. It’s effect goes beyond it’s unorthodox off center hanging. Zhao shows us a young worker, living in a cramped space with few belongings beyond his embroidered comforter and a TV. Rising from sleep, he puts on his glasses and grabs a cigarette and stretches as he begins his day in his life in post-Reform China, where the economy is now booming, though the fruits of that may be slow to reach all levels of the workers.  This work was painted with a model in the Artist’s small room, on his bed. The title “Young Zhang” could really be “Young Everyman,” with Zhang being one of the most popular surnames in China.

Lin Yilin, “Safely Maneuvering Across Linhe Road,” 1995, Still from Performance video, CITIC Plaza, June 3, 1995

Lin Yilin, “Safely Maneuvering Across Linhe Road,” 1995, Color video with sound 36 minutes 45 seconds. Living in Manhattan, where pedestrian safety is an ever-increasing concern, there was no way I could leave this work out.

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Here, the Artist constructs a wall of cinder blocks on a road, then moves it block by block, column by column, across all 4 lanes until he reaches the other side, safely.  At the show, all 36 minutes of it were looped. While I immediately related to the issue of trying to cross any street safely, Katherine Grube, who spoke with the Artist, said “Mr. Lin’s objective was to create a ‘movable wall,’ animated by his own efforts that would interrupt the steady flow of traffic…and call attention to the unnatural, inhuman pace of urbanization and the human dislocations necessary to, and inseparable from such monumental environmental change6.”

Ai Weiwei, “June, 1994,” Gelatin silver print

Ai Weiwei, “June, 1994,” Gelatin silver print- A while back in these pages I called Ai Weiwei the “Artist of the Decade,” even though there were three years left to run in it. I still feel good about my choice. He was named the #1 “Most Influential Photographer in the World,” among 50 selected in 2013, and by now he is, or will soon be, the most Photographed Artist in Art history. Still, it’s now obvious that he’s not the only important Chinese Artist of the past, let’s call it 3 decades. While his works, “Fairytale,” 2007, and “Citizen’s Investigation,” 2009-10, both “multi-media,” for lack of a better term, were also included, I picked this one because Ai Weiwei was in New York in June, 1989, when Tiananmen Square happened. He took this in Tiananmen Square on the 5th anniversary. It features his future wife, Lu Qing, center, while two soldiers walk casually behind her, another woman has her back to her right behind her, and, at the moment Ai shot this, a pensioner driving a powered cart, with his or her crutches visible, drives into the frame. Mao overlooks the whole scene. in the distance. What I haven’t seen mentioned, either on the wall card, or in the show’s catalog is that beginning the next year, 1995, Ai Weiwei began his famous “Study of Perspective” Photograph series, that lasted until 2003, where he flipped off important monuments around the world, including Tiananmen Square. Perhaps, learning from his experience with “June, 1994,” he opted to create a similar “affront” to “power” through means that required less “production,” and therefore, allowed him more control over the final result. Yes, it can be said he, therefore, stripped it down, even further than here, to it’s bare essentials.

Liu Dan’s “Splendour of Heaven and Earth,” 1994-95, Ink on paper. 196 by 75 inches. Photo- Liu Dan, Guggenheim Museum.

Liu Dan, “Splendour of Heaven and Earth,” 1994-95, Ink on paper. Besides Ai Weiwei, Liu Dan is the other Contemporary Chinese Artist that has captivated me since I discovered him at The Met’s “Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China” show in 2013. A close look at the incredible detail in his (often) huge works, reveals the man is a magician. I have since tracked down every book of his work I can find. Each of his larger works have the look and feel of being part of a giant scroll, with no “beginning” and no “end.” They seem to be influenced by ancient Chinese landscape Painting and the study of “Gongshi,” or “scholar’s rocks,” which have the abstract qualities of fantastic 20th Century sculpture. Still, I have absolutely no idea how he creates such incredible Paintings/Drawings, this one is almost 16 1/2 FEET long! Now living in the USA, he is gradually receiving the attention he richly deserves (witness “Ink Unbound: Paintings by Liu Dan,” where he reimagines classics of Western Art, which closes on January 29th at the Minneapolis Institute of Art). It might be too late for latecomers, though. His work already fetches large sums at auction, making it hard for it to find it’s way into public collections.

Liu Xiaodong, Two works from “Battlefield Realism: The Eighteen Arhats,” 2004, Oil on canvas.

Liu Xiaodong, “Battlefield Realism: The Eighteen Arhats,” 2004, Oil on canvas, 18 panels. Liu Xiaodong created a series of 9 diptychs of portraits of soldiers stationed on islands that are contested by China and Taiwan, Painting one soldier in each army in a pair. After Painting each portrait, he asked the subject to Paint their name, age and birthplace on the work. The result makes it hard for outsiders to know which army each soldier represents, and brings home the fact that though the soldier on the left, above, is 20, they all look very young, and the series quickly becomes a powerful meditation on…well, that’s up to you. For me, the two sides look indistinguishable. I can’t tell which side is which. About all that’s obvious is that these are young people with their whole lives ahead of them…unless war cuts them short.

Gu Dexin, 2009-05-02, 2009, Mounted on the top of the surrounding walls, Paint on 72 wood panels, Yang Jiechang, Lifelines I, 1999, On center pillar (and below), Ink and acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, as seen at the Guggenheim.

Gu Dexin, “2009-05-02,” 2009, Paint on wood, (Originally consisting of ) 74 panels, concrete and red lacquer, color video installation. Its’ fitting the show ends with Gu Dexin’s work, “2009-05-02,” At the Guggenheim, it consisted of a frieze surrounding the space who’s panels contain 11 sentences, unbroken, unpunctuated and repeated, which read, “We have killed people we have killed men we have killed women we have killed old people we have killed children we have eaten people we have eaten hearts we have eaten human brains we have beaten people we have beaten people blind we have beaten open people’s faces.” These sentences are said to evoke the revolutionary writer Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary,” from 1918. The work bears the same title as the show at which it debuted, as seen below, where it consisted of three components- a video of white clouds in a blue sky looped on video screens mounted over the gallery’s windows, above the 74 Painted panels. At the center of the gallery’s floor was a concrete plinth bearing a single sentence: “We Can Ascend To Heaven.” The show was up during the 20th Anniversary of the June 4th Incident in Tiananmen Square.

Gu Dexin, “2009-05-02,” installed at it’s premiere, Galleria Continua, Beijing, May, 2002, with the concrete plinth with red lacquer, below, and the video screens, above, from the show’s catalog.

During the run of the “2009-05-02” show, “Gu Dexin declared that ‘2009-05-02’ would be his last Artwork. He then proceeded to retreat entirely from Art and the Art world, which he understands as having become complicit in a political, cultural, and moral system which he refuses to accept. This refusal, more than any single object or image, may be his most enduring work of Art…He is, in singular ways, the conscience of his generation7.”

Yang Jiechang, “Lifelines 1,” 1999, Ink and acrylic on paper mounted on canvas. 236 x 91 inches.

At the Guggenheim, Gu Dexin’s “2009-05-02” panels were installed surrounding Yang Jiechang’s “Lifelines 1,” 1999, in the final gallery at the top of the 6th floor. Of “Lifelines 1,” which Yang Jiechang created for the 10th Anniversary of Tinananmen Square, Alexandra Munroe says, “”It recalls the pathways volunteers made in Tiananmen Square during the demonstrations to ferry hunger-striking students to the hospital8.”

I’ve never been to China so I have to see this show through Western eyes. Overall, I find Chinese Contemporary Art to be one of the most interesting and fresh realms of Contemporary Art anywhere9. I’m not sure exactly why, but it seemed to me that even the most “avant-garde” works were not as obtuse as much of what I see around NYC, and most of what I’ve seen in my lifetime. While I’m not big on Art that meeds to be “explained,” given the differences in language and culture, I took a different approach here in an effort to “meet the work halfway.” Almost every time I did, I found the work not only made sense, I became aware of different levels the Artist was working on. Of course, it should be said that though Shakespeare’s “Tis new to thee” applied to me, with the two noted exceptions, most of these Artists have been long established both in China and Internationally. As I said, however, it would have been possible to mount any number of alternate shows given the universe of Artists to choose from. As a result, the only possible way to look at this show is that it represents “the tip of the iceberg” of Contemporary Chinese Art.

Therefore, trying to sum up this show is as pointless as trying to  sum up China itself. The strength of the show lies in the diversity of its vision, that so many unique, strong voices are at work creating impressive, and interesting, work right now is what counts. At those times when I wonder where the next big breakthrough will come from I see I need to cast a much wider net. It’s out there. And it’s probably going on right now out of the gaze of most of us.

“It’s new to thee,” indeed.

If this work can come out of/be born of repression? There may be more hope for the world than I feared.

“Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” is my NoteWorthy show for December. 

My previous Posts on Ai Weiwei, covering his NYC shows in Brooklyn in 2014 and four Manhattan shows in 2016 may be found here.
My look at Cai Dongdong’s recent show at Klein Sun Gallery may be found here. 

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Brave New World” by Iron Maiden, released in 2000 on the album of the same name, which was inspired by Aldous Huxley’s novel.

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  1. diplomat.com “China’s Art Market Is Booming…” ↩
  2. time.com Tiananmen Protester Wang Dan ↩
  3. “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World,” Exhibition catalog, p. 23. The show’s exceptional catalog is one of the best I’ve seen, for any show, in many years. It’s much more than a guide to this show. It also includes extensive documentation on the history of Contemporary Art in China, including an in-depth look at all previous larger shows of Chinese Contemporary Art, internationally, biographies of Chinese Artists & Artist Groups, and a guide to reference texts on the subject by year, all of which will make it a standard reference on the subject in the USA for the foreseeable future. ↩
  4. UCCA, “Rauschenberg in China,” 2016 ↩
  5. Exhibition Catalog P.25 ↩
  6. Exhibition catalog, P. 157 ↩
  7. Alexandra Munroe, Philip Tinari, Exhibition catalog for this show, P. 286. ↩
  8. Exhibition catalog, P.35 ↩
  9. While keeping an eye on Africa. ↩

On Buying Art

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

For NighthawkNYC’s 2nd Anniversary, I decided to share some thoughts based on my experiences buying Art over 3+ decades. I hope they’re useful. My thank yous for year 2 appear at the end.

Everyone should have something that speaks to them on their walls or in their space.

It could be something personal, something from your past, or, it could be a piece of Art. If you find both lacking in your space(s), I hope you’ll think about changing that and seeing what it adds to your life. If you choose something personal? You’re on your own. If you would like to try a piece of Art? I’d like to share my experiences and thoughts about it with you, for whatever they’re worth.

Todd Hido Untitled #7910, from House Hunting, 2012, seen at AIPAD, as I mentioned, here. It only took me 2 trips to see it to buy it. It’s me, right? Click to enlarge.

Of course, you could make something yourself. Most people take photos, so it might be worthwhile to get them all together and go through them and see if you have one you’d like to print and display. Or, you could create something from scratch- a Drawing, a Painting, a Sculpture, or…? While almost no one is a brilliant Artist right away, if you’re determined to create something that speaks to you and you feel proud enough of to display? With a bit of work, you might surprise yourself with the results. But, if you decide to buy something, there are some things to consider. Since I don’t know how much readers might be looking to spend on Art, I’m going to take the big picture view of it, to include as many cases as possible. If you haven’t bought Art before, it’s probably something you don’t want to rush right in to. While there could be a virtually endless amount to learn if you want to do this on a “serious” level, there are some essential things to keep in mind when you’re starting out that I think also apply to those with experience buying Art.

Of course, setting an amount you’re comfortable spending of your budget is essential. It’s too easy to spend over your means on Art and that might well mean having to sell it quickly, usually at a loss. I’ll call this budgeted amount “$X” since it varies by person. Once that amount has been determined, over many years, there’s one thing I’ve learned that, as far as I’m concerned, comes closest to being THE #1 “Rule” for buying Art-

ONLY BUY WHAT YOU LOVE.

Buying only what you love establishes your philosophical approach to buying Art. There’s a number of reasons I recommend this approach, most importantly the long term satisfaction with your purchase. If you love something, you’re going to enjoy it more than something you don’t, right?

Should I buy it? Umm…What is it? Is it Art? I think it’s actually an air vent for the 8th Ave Subway under it until some clever fellow decided to try to sell it for a cool 1.2 million. Maybe he was kidding? Well? I’ve been known to laugh at asking prices, too.

Of course, any time you spend more than a few hundred dollars on something, the investment aspect of it comes into play. Before you buy, look at comparable examples of the Artist’s work and see what they have sold for and when. After you buy the work, you should continue to do this- how often is up to you. But, in terms of buying Art purely because of what its value may be in the future? That’s an unknown. NO ONE knows what’s going to happen to Art prices in 5 years, or 50 years, or 200 years. Therefore, this can’t be your main reason for buying Art. Plain and simply, buying Art primarily for investment purposes is nothing but a crap shoot. The Art market has gone up and down during my lifetime, something that those who have only been in it for the past decade of rising prices can’t imagine. IF, heavens forbid, the Art market tanks, again…No. Not “IF.” WHEN the Art market tanks, again, and the piece you own becomes worth less than you paid for it, you can still get real value from it by enjoying it, IF you love it.

“Cos I don’t care too much for money
Money can’t buy me love.”*

They’re a bit more “bullish” on the “Art market” than I am.

I say “When the Art market tanks, again,” because the historical data shows that it’s VERY likely to happen. Sooner, rather than later. NOTHING goes up for ever- not even NYC real estate. Across the board, Art prices are as high right now as they’ve ever been. I look long, hard and generally fruitlessly to find any Artist who is “undervalued” today, and that includes many Artists who are not even in major museum collections yet. Is this sustainable? Very possibly not. Will prices go higher? Maybe. Will they go A LOT higher? I’m not convinced. I’ll put it this way- Right now, in my opinion, in general, there is far more risk that prices will go down than there is the chance they will go a lot higher (an increase of 40%, or more).

As strange as this might sound to say, I also believe that the Art market going through a substantial downturn might not be a bad thing all the way around. Yes, there will be a ton of pain. Many Art galleries and some institutions will no longer be with us, and many jobs will be lost. Many Artists will turn to other fields of endeavors. I may not have anything left to write about. None of these things are good, and I don’t want any of them to happen. Yet, it might also return some semblance of sanity to the Art market. If the investors are out of Art, only Art lovers will be left.

Ok. So now that I’ve gotten the negativity out of the way (i.e. the risk), let’s get back to why you want to buy Art- because you love Art. In the end? I think that people will always love Art. Some/many/most of them will want to have some in their spaces. Those are the people I’m talking to here. If you buy Art you love? Your risk is less than someone who buys it as an investment. As an Art lover, the good news is that even now you don’t have to spend a fortune to buy Art. There is Art for sale at every price imaginable. Set a budget and you’re good to go.

Whether you should, or shouldn’t buy something will rarely be this easy to know.

If you’re buying Art today, or in the future, here are a few things to keep in mind-

First, educate yourself as much as you can about the Artist, the piece, the medium it’s created in (Is it a Painting? A Drawing? A Limited Edition Print? Or…what?). Does it appear in any book on the Artist? If so, what does the author say about it (description, dimensions, year created, size, etc.). Does all of this match the piece you’re considering? If so, this is good, but it may not completely close the question of authenticity, forgery, or being “right” I’ll get to in a moment. The second part is to educate yourself on the Artist’s “market”- what is their work selling for. Selling for. Not what people are asking for it. What are people actually paying for it. People are free to ask whatever they want for it (like our friend with the air vent, above). But? ANYthing is ONLY worth what someone is willing to pay for it. How do you find all of this, and more, out? You have to dig.

Going up to dig. Once a week I climb these stairs to The Strand’s Art Book Dept on the 2nd floor. More often if I’m really stumped.

Second, is it genuine? This is a very sticky question that, unfortunately, rears its head in almost every Art transaction- or, it should. I will say that it seems to me that forgers seem to focus on Artists who have a certain status, and a well-paying market, but you never know. Pieces that are “not right” in some meaningful way (they’re damaged, repaired, mis-identified, stolen, “sketchy” is some other way, etc.) are more common in my experience, but it varies by Artist. You want to know you’re getting what you paid for. What does the Artist’s genuine signature look like? What are the telltale signs of his or her style, and on and on. Is it an original (one of a kind) piece, or is it a limited edition? If it’s a one of a kind- is it signed, dated or titled? Does it appear in the Artist’s Catalogue Raisonne, or other authoritative guide? If so, does it match the work in the picture of it? If it’s a Limited Edition- How many copies are in the edition, how many “Artist’s Proofs” are there, and what was the Artist’s involvement in making the print, are some of what I’d need to know. You may never get to be expert enough to replace the opinion of a real expert but it’s your money and you should know as much as you can about what you’re buying. I stay away from pieces that are not signed by the Artist. Why? Though they are, generally, (much) cheaper, I want to have that connection, and it means less chance of a forgery or an unauthorized edition. I also stay away from prints that are “open editions,” because, in theory, additional prints can be created indefinitely, and the larger number there is of anything out there, the less valuable it generally is1.

I KNOW this Raymond Pettibon Owl sketch & signature are genuine because he drew them right in front of me. “Obtained directly from the Artist,” is, also, the best provenance there is, though the hardest to get.

Third- What condition is it in? You may need an expert’s opinion on this, and you should get one if the work is over 50 years old or you’re spending substantial money on it, but you should look it, and whatever supporting documentation the seller has for it, over carefully yourself. If he doesn’t have it? That’s likely a deal breaker. I think you want to get in the habit of getting complete documentation for the Art you buy which may include a receipt, the provenance, a letter of authenticity from an expert or someone personally involved with the Artist, a condition report, and an appraisal for insurance purposes. Learning the terms of, and some of the ins and outs of the various mediums (Oil Painting, Acrylic Painting, Watercolor Painting, Drawing, etc) will help you and help you understand what the experts tell you. Old paintings may have been subject to restoration, cleaning, or even additional painting added to it by others, and these are very sticky waters for any Art buyer- even museums2. If you’re buying a piece that is already framed, it is possible the frame is hiding damage that could materially effect the value. At some price level, it becomes imperative the work be examined unframed, and the seller may, or may not, be willing to do this.

Pettibon, again. Very rare among Artists, his work is pretty easy to examine unframed at his shows, but any buyer of it should immediately take it to a framer. A view of part of the final room of A Pen of All Works, at the New Museum, includes work he created right on the wall itself!

Fourth- Who am I buying this from? What is their background and area of specialty & expertise, and is this Artist in that area? What is their connection to this piece, and to the Artist? Do they represent the Artist, or their estate? What is the provenance of the piece? I will not buy a piece without a known provenance, and ask it be spelled out in writing by the seller. Why? Whoever buys this piece from you will ask you for it, and it helps assure me the work is not stolen, and lessens the chance it’s a forgery (even knowledgable and reputable dealers, as well as museums, have been duped by forgers). How knowledgable is the seller about this specific work, and its condition? Anyone who knowingly withholds information about damage or something “not right” with a piece is not ethical, and shouldn’t be in business. But? They’re out there. It’s happened to me. They’ll claim they “missed it,” so? Buyer beware. What’s the return policy if something turns out to not be “right?” Ideally. you want to buy from someone who stands behind what they’re selling and what they’re saying about it. There are an unlimited number of people and places selling Art these days. I’m not going to recommend any one. (Oh, and for the record, no one sponsors me). However, I will say that I think if you’re buying Art for the first time, go and look at it in person. Buying Art online that you’ve never seen in person is hard for an experienced Art buyer, very hard for an inexperienced one, and something I highly recommend you avoid. For one thing you can’t get the full effect of the piece, in my opinion, from a photo, and you can’t assess things like condition and damage anywhere near properly enough from one. Terms vary by seller. Look over them closely before you commit to buying anything from anyone. Learn to develop your own terms- what you require and what you won’t accept regarding payment, paperwork, returns & refunds, authenticity, condition, etc. If you see something that doesn’t sound reasonable, or is against your terms, walk away. Keep in mind that where limited edition prints are concerned there’s a chance you can find the same item being sold by someone else, especially if it’s less than 10-15 years old.

Almost every window in this Photo is of an Art gallery on West 26th Street, which is full of them from 10th to 11th Avenues, as are many of the adjoining Chelsea streets.

It’s vital to get out there and look. Books and the internet can provide information, but there’s still no substitute for seeing Art in person, as I said, especially when you are forming your tates. Even if nothing is being offered for sale (as in a museum show), you’ll learn something every time you look. See what’s being shown and how your feel about it. Gradually, your tastes will come into focus. Wait until you get “that feeling.” You know- like when you fell in love. If you don’t? Keep looking, enjoy what you see, and learn about it. Another thing that’s become apparent to me is that I like Art that says something different to me every time I look at it (as I’ve mentioned in prior Posts). This has become an essential element I need to have in anything I actually buy because I’m going to be looking at it a lot for, hopefully, a long time. While I have never bought a piece I didn’t love, as in other types of “love,” I find it’s the piece you can’t live without that may be the piece to buy. Keyword- may be. Obviously, many other things are more important to life than Art- Shelter, food, health, and those things effecting survival come way before one gets to the point of considering buying Art. Art adds to and enhances life. But, no one ever died from not having Art, as far as I know. (Though, some people who live without Art may not be living!) So? Wait until you find a work that gets inside of you and won’t let go.

Looking is hard work. Quick- What do you see? A rabbit facing right, or a duck facing left? From Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigations,” as reprinted in Errol Morris‘ superb Believing Is Seeing, which I recommend to everyone who looks at Art.

Fifth- What other expenses am I going to incur buying this piece? Tax, shipping, framing and insurance are the most usual ones. Packing and appraisal (which you may need for insurance if the value rises above what you paid) may be others.

Professional Art handlers and movers may be needed to handle large, heavy, delicate or unusually sized pieces, like these seen here during an installation earlier this year at Metro Pictures. Doing it yourself may risk damaging it. Damage= lower value.

Deinstalling Richard Serra’s For John Cage series at Gagosian last year. Hopefully your needs won’t be this involved.

Also, once you buy a work, you are then responsible for “curating” it- keeping it in as good condition as you bought it to maintain its value. If you are considering having a work framed? Go to an established pro who regularly does work for museum and gallery shows. I only use City Frame, in NYC. I have used many other framers and since I don’t believe in being negative here, I’ll simply say, call Corinne Takasaki at City Frame if you want something framed. They’re the best I’ve found. No. I don’t get a cut from them for saying that. If you’re buying a work on paper that is from before the days of acid-free paper be aware that you’re going to have yellowing to deal with over time going forward. Consult an expert about what this might entail before buying it.

The first stage of framing at City Frame. A photo about to be measured.

Sixth- So, if you’ve bought what you love? Hang it and enjoy looking at it each time it comes into your view. If, after time has passed, you’ve decided to part with it? Selling is a subject for a whole other Post (or 10). I will say this, though- In general, it takes time to sell Art for what it’s worth. I mention it now because it’s something to keep in mind. BEFORE you buy something. You should ask yourself- IF, and when I decide to sell this, what are my options? One thing many people fail to realize is that new & largely unknown Artists have one market- the dealer who represents them. Most likely, you are buying their work from them. When it’s time to sell it? They may well be your only option. They know the Artist’s market and his/her existing collectors. They’re going to take a piece of the sale price to do so. How much varies by dealer, but it’s something to keep in mind. Auction houses may not accept the work of Artists who don’t have a proven track record of sales. You can search for this online and it’s something you should do before you buy a work that costs more than $X (unless you’re prepared to lose this money). I applaud people who buy the work of “under-known” Artists because they love their work. You are helping that Artist survive, and make more Art. I’ve been able to actually buy Art directly from the Artist, which you might be able to do before they sign with a gallery to represent them and handle their sales. It adds a personal element that’s hard to forget, and hard to equal.

Christie’s, Rockefeller Center. The big auction houses rarely sell the work of Artists who aren’t “established.” On the other hand, living Artists don’t get a percentage of re-sales of their work at auction (though most auction houses get paid by both the buyer and the seller). Look! They have their own flag (center)!

ALL of this being said, you don’t need to spend a fortune on a piece of Art! Art is available at almost any price you can mention. Just remember everything I’ve said above still applies, and that buying even relatively inexpensive Art may require some of the additional expenses I mentioned earlier, or others I didn’t. Everything I’ve said is based on my own experiences over the past 30 some years. I make no “warranty.” This is by no means meant to be “advice” or a “complete guide.” In my opinion, there is no such thing.

It’s a good thing I don’t have one of those stencils.

Another thing I’ve learned from looking at a lot of Art is that I will never own 99.99% of all the Art out there in the world. I’ve come to terms with that. Sure, I want to take Hopper’s “Nighthawks” home and hang it here, though that’s incredibly selfish. Yes, I see things every time I look that I think about buying (with varying degrees of seriousness). But? That’s ok. I’ve learned to use shows as another room in my home. It’s like if I go to a show often it’s a bit like living with the work on display, which is kind of fun-and? It’s as close as I’ll ever get to really doing that.

I still walk around this show in my mind. Nasreen Mohamedi at The Met Breuer, 2016

25 visits was easier than getting one of these home. Ai Weiwei at Lisson Gallery, 2016

Another important consideration in buying Art that you love is timing. As I’ve mentioned, I believe the Art Market is (at, or) near a peak in value. As a result it becomes extremely hard to find Art that is “undervalued.” Far more Art is “overvalued,” in my opinion. Of course, there is no way for anyone to really know what Art is going to speak to, and be valued by, future generations. We can only make assumptions. One of those is- “If it’s spoken to people for x hundred years, why won’t it continue to do so?” Another is, “They’re not making any more Vermeer’s.” So, yes, supply and demand is always the key element. And that brings me to a final point. While “Contemporary Art” has a certain “sex appeal” that comes with being new, as I touched on earlier, most new Artists don’t have an established market. This is very, very risky, in my opinion for anyone buying their work for more than $X, which, apparently, many people are doing. It seems to me that most people, especially those new to buying Art, would be better off buying the work of Artists with (long) track records, which also allow a wider ranger of selling avenues, if/when the need arrises.

Henry Taylor & Deana Lawson shown together at this year’s Whitney Biennial, where they were among the “stars.” Being included, means it’s too late now to “get in at the bottom,” on either, but it’s still no guarantee either will “make it,” and their prices will rise substantially the next 20 years, since both are still in “mid-career.” Therein lies the rub, and the risk, in buying the work of good Artists who are beginning to “make it.” Are you now paying for the quality of their work, or its future price potential? At least the Artists get paid.

Going back to the Master of Delft, it’s hard for us to realize that Vermeer lived in obscurity after his death for many, many decades (like Van Gogh lived during his entire life).

Yes, that really is Van Gogh’s The Starry Night at MoMA, or as close as I could get to it. I often wonder what Vincent would have made of his incredible popularity now.

It’s quite possible “another Vermeer” is out there waiting to be discovered right now. Carmen Herrera, who’s now 102 years young(!), had only one major show (in 1984) before being given a solo show at the Whitney Museum LAST YEAR (2016)!

Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight at the Whitney Museum, January, 2016.

With all the Art that’s been created in just the past, say, 300 years, I think it’s a virtual certainty that someone major has gone over looked. So? If you get good at this, you go to see enough Art, know what to look for, and you have your eyes open? Who knows what you might find!

But? Don’t buy it if you don’t love it.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Can’t Buy Me Love,” by John Lennon & Paul McCartney, of The Beatles, published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC.

Two Years! This Post marks the Second Anniversary of NighthawkNYC.com. I can’t let it pass without saying “Thanks!,” first to Sv for pushing me to start it, to Kitty for research assistance above and beyond the beyond this past year, to all the fine people I’ve met who work in the galleries and museums I haunt who have answered questions, shared insights, helped, and especially for putting up with “him, again,” to all the Artists who have spoken with me this year, and everyone who has taken the time to check out the 150 Posts I’ve done so far. Thank you! Oh! And I almost forgot- to my two fine feathered friends, aka “The Birdies” of “On The Fence.” For those who have wondered “What the heck?”  They represent the random voices I hear commenting at shows, though, unfortunately, only I am to blame for what comes out of their mouths. Don’t worry- No actual Birdies were harmed in the making of that series. But? Their Photo has sure taken a beating!

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 8 years, during which 300 full-length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. I’m not speaking further about buying Photographs in this Post. From what I’ve seen, and learned, this year, that is a whole other topic. ↩
  2. If you want to get an idea of HOW sticky it can get, or you want to see how world-class experts work, check out the Rembrandt Research Project’s controversial findings on all of the Master’s Paintings, here. Well, the ones they accept as being by the Master, himself. ↩

NYC Art Shows 2016- Sheena Wagstaff Rules The Waves

This year past, Manhattan Art was largely dominated by two themes. There was a seemingly continual string of shows by many of the bigger names in Abstract Expressionism (i.e. AbEx), one after the other, and I wrote about every one of them, beginning with Jackson Pollock @MoMA, Lee Krasner, Philip Guston (two- here and here), Richard Pousette-Dart, Joan Mitchell and Mark Rothko, along with a few excellent satellite compilation shows, each in a different venue, which, apparently is continuing into 2017 with Jackson Pollock set to open at the Guggenheim, completing the circle, for now. It was also a year of Women Artists getting important shows. Patti Smith, Nasreen Mohamedi, Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Marilyn Minter1, June Leaf, Carmen Herrera, Nan Goldin, Mary Bauermeister, Carrie Mae Weems, Latoya Ruby Frazier, Krasner and Mitchell were only some of the highlights. Still? Artists weren’t the only women making a big impact on the NYC Art Scene in 2016. In fact, for my money, the biggest impact of all was made by another woman, The Met’s Chairwoman of Modern & Contemporary (M&C) Art, Sheena Wagstaff.

As far as I’m concerned, no other single person had the impact on NYC Art, all year long, that Ms. Wagstaff and her department did.

Sheena Wagstaff was named Chairwoman of TM’s M&C Department on January 20, 2012. Four years later, her 2016 began with putting finishing touches on TM’s new “branch Museum,” The Met Breuer (TMB), the first “branch” The Met has opened since The Cloisters in 1926! No pressure there. As it was about to open, ostensibly as the showcase for The Met’s “new” M&C Art iniatative, The Times’ Roberta Smith put the situation perfectly into perspective, speaking about the task Ms. Wagstaff faced/faces-

“But the Met is huge and old, with a history of treating contemporary art as an afterthought. Getting it to change is like turning around an ocean liner.” Roberta Smith, NYT, March 3, 2016.

It sailed into it’s mid- March opening with 2 shows- Unifnished: Thoughts Left Visible, a veritable Museum in itself covering 2 full floors (the third and fourth), and, easy to overlook, tucked away on the second floor, Nasreen Mohamedi, the first American Retrospective of the Indian woman artist who passed away in 1990, aged 53. Wait…Who? Yeah. Me, too.

Met Breuer, Opening Lineup, March 8, 2016. 11 months on? The 5th Floor is now gallery space, the 1st Floor Gallery is now the Gift Shop. Those 2 shows? They live on, indelibly. Notice that for all of Art History that’s represented in Unfinished, the signature image chosen is by Alice Neel, a woman, of James Hunter Black Draftee.

Vijay Iyer (piano, left) performs with his trio. Met Breuer, Member’s Opening Day, March 8, 2016.

The first members of the public get to see Unfinished on March 8, 2016. That tiny drawing on the far opposite wall is by Michelangelo.

After over 15 visits later, to my eyes, “Nasreen Mohamedi” was nothing less than 1) an epiphany. Here was an Artist who was a Major figure in Art in the 20th Century who’s name exists in not one Art History survey that I know of.

I now haunt these galleries, in my memory.

2) Therefore, it was easily one of the best shows of the year, and 3) the more I think about it, for many reasons, it was one of the best shows I’ve seen in years.

Most Memorable Art Work of the Year. Nasreen Mohamedi Untitled, circa 1970. When I first saw it, I thought it was a piece of fabric. Nope. This is a DRAWING.

Detail (about 10″ x 6″). Two amazing things about this- 1- The superhuman focus & manual skill on display. 2- The disease that would kill her would take these incomparable motor skills first, and shortly.

The subtlety, uniqueness and micro/macro impact of Nasreen Mohamedi’s drawings is seemingly without precedent. They speak to the “grand design” of the universe, while also giving the feeling that they are somehow familiar, though they are not.

Some call this work The Seven Planes of Existence. All her works were left untitled and undated, only 5 here were signed. Many were given to friends as gifts. She created most while dealing with an illness that would kill her family members, then rob her of her skills, and eventually kill her, as well.

Also an accomplished photographer, I find her photos every bit as wondrous as her work in other mediums. Each Untitled, ca. 1970

Closeup of the photo on the right. What exactly are we looking at?

I spent an hour sitting right next to Sheena Wagstaff at a “Nasreen Mohamedi Symposium,” at The Met 5th Avenue in June. After it was over, I had the chance to speak to her. All I could say to her was “Thank you,” for Nasreen Mohamedi, which gave me the chance to discover her. Then, I told her she had made “the perfect choice” to begin M&C Art at TMB.

Sheena Wagstaff, right, Met curator Brinda Kumar, center, and an Artist who’s name I didn’t get, left, at the Nasreen Mohamedi Symposium, June 3 at The Met. Ms. Wagstaff then sat down immediately to my left.

Six month later, I stand by those words.

Think about how much guts it took to make that call. How daring it was. TMB famously costs The Met 15 million dollars a year to operate. The Met, reportedly, ran a deficiet in 2016, costing jobs.  To say “a lot” was, and is, riding on the success of TMB would be an understatement. Not to mention TM’s world leading prestige. Nasreen Mohamedi was followed by diane arbus: in the beginning. Perhaps it would have been “safer” to have run Diane Arbus first. Maybe. Probably. I’m glad it was Sheena Wagstaff’s call (along with the rest of TM’s powers that be), and they chose Nasreen Mohamedi.

A page from one of her diaries. She blotted out much of what she had written. I wonder why. They left these patterns, reminiscent of her drawings.

The show was, apparently, a labor of love for Ms. Wagstaff. Hidden away in the very last gallery, in an iPad on the tables where visitors could peruse the now out of print and rare catalog, were some of the few extant photos from Ms. Mohamedi’s life. One of the last photos was a photo of Nasreen Mohamedi’s unmarked grave. I marvelled that someone had found it and photographed it. I looked for the credit to see who the photographer was. Sheena Wagstaff.

Nasreen Mohamedi was more than a terrific show. It was a statement. What was as easy to miss as the show itself was, as visitors made a bee line to see the copious treasures upstairs, it was more. It was the “answer” to the question about where Ms. Wagstaff was likely to steer The Met’s “new M&C initiative” going forward. As such, it was a shot over the bow of the future.

The future of M&C Art at The Met, and The Met Breuer, appears to be international, and inclusive. I expect more of the unexpected, more of the unknown and under-known. Bring it on. MoMA is running on all cylinders, putting on shows that are spectacular. It’s good for them, the Whitney, The Guggenhim, et al, to have some competition in M&C Art from The Met, and for us.

While Nasreen Mohamedi was blowing my mind on the 2nd floor, upstairs on 3 & 4, Unfinished was blowing everyone’s who saw it. Right off the elevator on 3, you make a right and in a small gallery you’re confronted by Leonardo da Vinci AND Michelangelo (all too rarely seen together in this hemisphere), AND Jan Van Eyck, and a few other works I can’t even remember because my mind was already overloaded. Oh yeah, some guy named Dürer did one. This was TM “showing off,” as I read Ms. Wagstaff say in an interview. Boy, did they. The rest of the show had a roster that would make 90% of all other whole Museums in the USA jealous.

For a New York Minute, Michelangelo, left, and two Leonardos were on display in “Unfinished,” as the show opened. The triumvirate was soon broken up, no doubt due to the fragility of the works.

So? Ok. This was a “fail safe” show. Ms. Wagstaff was by no means finished.

Rembrandt & Velazquez- the two greatest Painters who ever lived, according to many, very rarely seen side by side.

After Nasreen closed, diane arbus: in the beginning came in on 2, with an installation unique in art & photography shows in my experience. Every piece got it’s own wall. Yup. You read that right. Over 100 pieces. Over 100 walls. Amazing. No beginning. No ending. The point being that it was all her beginning.

A rare shot of Tatsuo Miyajima’s Arrow of Time, on view in TMB’s first floor gallery. The only show to take place there before it became the gift shop.

After “Unfinished,” the year at TMB ended with another blockbuster success- Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. This is the kind of show that makes you wonder WHY it took so long for Mr. Marshall to be so recognized. He’s been creating at a very high level for a long time. It was only 3 years ago that he was showing at the always excellent Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea. But? Not everyone was sleeping on KJM. Walking through this show it’s a sad feeling for a New Yorker to read the tags and see great work after great work that belongs to Chicago or Los Angeles. Not even MoMA has stepped up to a large degree with Kerry James Marshall. TM FINALLY got a major work of his last year.

The beginning of Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. In many ways, this was the show of the year.

Now? It’s probably too late.

This, unfortunately, highlights one area where much work remains to be done. The Met’s collection is sorely lacking the work of M&C Masters. As I recently pointed out, as far as I know, they own no work by Ai Weiwei. no work by Nasreen Mohamedi, and only one work (albeit a very, very good one) by Kerry James Marshall (and this was only acquired in 2015), to name but 3 cases. Frankly? I find this shameful. TM recently elected three new trustees, two of which are M&C specialists, so hope springs eternal for a little more wind to be added to those sails.

New York had until January 29 to enjoy seeing a lot of KJM in one place. (My piece is coming soon.) Now? It’s going to be a long wait. Los Angeles? You get your chance beginning March 12.

So? By my scorecard, that’s 4 shows in 9 months that will be remembered and talked about for a very long time, including no less than TWO that were major breakthroughs for the Artists- Nasreen Mohamedi and Kerry James Marshall2, putting both in the pantheon of the Artists who belong in our greatest Museums.

But? Ms. Wagstaff, who struck me as having so much energy, downtown NYC could have used her during the Hurricane Sandy Blackout, still wasn’t finished. Over at 1000 Fifth Avenue…(remember The Met’s Main Building?), she and her staff have also rehung TM’s M&C Galleries there, and done an amazing job.

While at sea, mind the lighthouse! Edward Hopper’s iconic The Lighthouse at Two Lights, 1929, receives pride of place in TM’s newly rehung M&C Galleries. Which reminds me- Sheena Wagstaff edited the Tate’s 2004 Edward Hopper Show catalog.

Works have come out of storage that haven’t been seen there in…?, and some, thankfully, have gone there in their stead. The arrangements are new, too. Themes take the place of chronological arrangements in many rooms, while the AbEx Galleries still remain largely together, but subtly ammended. We get to see, what I consider to be, a major work by Philip Guston that I never knew TM owned! Other works are given new prominence, notably Edward Hopper’s famous The Lighthouse at Two Lights, and Richard Pousette- Dart’s Symphony No. 1- The Transcendental, (photo, here, further down the page.)

In this one gallery, I was shocked to discover works by Pousette-Dart (Path of the Hero, 1950, right) and Philip Guston (left, and below) that I didn’t even know The Met owned because they haven’t shown them!

Philip Guston, Performers, 1947. WHERE has this been? With one foot in his past, and one in his future, for my money, this is one of the most important periods of Guston’s career, and very few works from it exist, after he destroyed most. A major Guston.

The result is a veritable breath, no, wind of fresh air throughout. More wind for the sails of that S.S. Met Roberta Smith wrote about.

Sheena Wagstaff had a great year, in my book. Here’s to her. May the wind be at her back. That sound you heard in January was my giving a major sigh of relief at the news that we didn’t lose her when the Tate Museums chose a new Director (Ms. Wagstaff was Chief Curator at Tate Modern before she joined The Met).

P H E W…

Elsewhere, in the big City…

Other Museums and Galleries, of course, put on shows that linger in the memory, and I would be remiss in not including them. In addition to Nasreen Mohamedi’s, another Retrospective tried to make the case for it’s Artist’s place in the canon on 20th Century Art History, and wildly succeeded, in my opinion- Bruce Conner: It’s All True @ MoMA  Though he spent some time early in his career in NYC3, he, and his work, were rarely seen here after, and as a result, seeing this broad & in-depth look at his accomplishment over a mind-bending number of mediums was nothing less than a bombshell in it’s impact on myself, and I suspect many other New Yorkers. The depth, the staggering detail in the work (most famously in his films, but we see here it was carried over in most of his other work in other genres.), the mediums he probably invented, (like the music video), techniques he created or mastered, and on and on. This show was a capstone on a great year for shows at MoMA. Picasso Sculpture, Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty, were must see/won’t soon forget in their own right. Bravo, MoMA. Now? About that building and the new one on the way…

Picasso, Owl, seen in Picasso Sculpture. One sure way to make this list? Include an Owl in your show. ; – )

In the galleries, what lingers with me were Ai Weiwei’s return to NYC at long last with 4 concurrent shows, Mark Rothko: Dark Passage, Patti Smith: 18Stations, Philip Guston: Laughter in the Dark, Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, at the Whitney, and William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest (mostly for the chance to study his work at length, which only made me want to look again). And, I always enjoy the chance to be captivated by someone I previously didn’t know, like the amazing Sydney Cash at Heller Gallery, or the up and coming Robert Currie at Bryce Walkowitz- both of who share a fascinating ability to make you see things that aren’t really there.

Sydney Cash’s Split Selfie, 2016, oversees two of his other works that no photo can “capture,” at Heller Gallery. See them better here. When you watch, remember all that’s happening is the viewer moves slightly side to side.

And finally, personally, the chance to meet Patti Smith and Sheena Wagstaff, or run into Chuck Close, were things that remain rich, as much for the opportunity to speak with them as for what I learned from each encounter.

All of these experiences reminds me that in the final analysis? Art is personal. For every one of us.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Andy Warhol” by David Bowie (who we lost this year, and who is Ms. Wagstaff’s fellow countryman, and an Art collector), from his classic album Hunky Dory.

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. in 3 shows- 2 in Manhattan, 1 at the Brooklyn Museum, as part of their “Reimagining Feminism” Series ↩
  2. It must be noted that KJM: Mastry is a show organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A. the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and The Met. ↩
  3. when legend has it he was denied entrance to MoMA for the opening of a show that included one of his works. ↩

Ai Weiwei’s Mute Witnesses

This is the second of two Posts about Ai Weiwei’s 4 recent concurrent NYC shows. Part One, about Ai Weiwei: Laundromat, at Deitch Projects, may be found here. This piece is on the other 3 shows. 

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

Show Seen: Ai Weiwei: 2016: Roots and Branches, Lisson Gallery, Chelsea

If there’s one thing I think NYC needs many more of, it’s trees. Given the extremely high rate of tree deaths here1, it’s always great when new ones show up. Even transiently. Ai Weiwei temporarily added to our tree population in 2 of his 4 shows, as only he could. Though it’s been over for nearly a month as I write this, I continue to think about this show every day, only partially due to the meditative properties of trees.

Lisson Gallery, December, 2016, nicely nestled under the High Line. Click any photo to see it full size.

Walking into the long rectangular space of Lisson Gallery on West 24th Street in Chelsea during “Ai Weiwei: 2016 Roots and Branches,” you’re confronted by a “forest” of 9 massive tree parts (3 measure almost 16 feet each) situated among 4 newly exposed and equally massive columns for the High Line, which runs directly above the gallery’s ceiling. Along the seemingly endless right hand (western) wall, 16 rows of black and white graphic images fill it’s wallpaper. The other 2 walls remains stark white (the 4th wall being the doors). Natural light streams in from both sides of the long ceiling as if there really were a canopy of leaves and branches above the “trees” allowing only some sunlight in.

A “Zen Garden” of the beauty, and horror, man can create. 7 of the 9 sculptures are seen, or partially seen, along with a partial view of the wallpaper, right.

But, these tree parts show no signs of life, the ones that “stand” only do so due to placement. Or, is it dis-placement?

Though their arrangement invites walking around them and viewing them from all sides, a relevatory experience in itself…

9 views of the same piece- Iron Root, 2015. Seen larger, below-

it is viewing them from one angle in particular- directly behind, that one gains a unique perspective. Standing behind them (to their east, that is) you see them with the wallpaper behind them. The effect struck me as making them “mute witnesses” to the seemingly endless spectacle unfolding on the wall. The saga unfolding therein is about war and displacement. The displacement of countless thousands of refugees due to the war in Syria.

A view of just about all of the 200 x 25 feet (my estimate) of wallpaper.

The wallpaper is also designed to be looked at every bit as closely as the tree parts are.

A close-up. You’re not alone if you think you’re looking at real tree bark. Then again? I never get out of Manhattan. This is cast iron.

So encouraged, I returned again and again, continually seeing something “else” so often that after 15 visits, I stopped counting. The first thing that’s striking is it’s all in black and white. Looking a bit closer you note the poses, the lack of detail, and even some of the outfits call to mind the Ancient Greek Vases I’ve seen often at The Met, which is fitting since Idomeni, home of the camp in Ai Weiwei’s Laundromat, is in Greece.

About a third of the wallpaper. Each row seems to have it’s own theme.

There’s a lot to see. A detail of 12 of 16 rows in this section.

From bottom- 2 rows of the refugees in flight- by boat, by foot, by vehicle, while the third row depicts the reasons why. In the 4th row from the bottom, Ancient Greek soldiers march on the left, while their modern counterparts march to the right of the fighting animals. Directly above them in Row 5, Ai Weiwei’s iconic extended arm and middle finger looms as a repeating circular motif, which will appear again. To the left in Row 5, a backhoe picks up the clothes left by the refugees in the Idomeni Camp that would become the clothes in Ai Weiwei’s show, Laundromat.

Looking even closer, I realized that some of the motifs recur, except in the very middle! There, in what musicians call “the golden section,” some fascinating images appear. They include Michelangelo’s Vatican Pieta, and a variant of the image of Nour Al Khzam, the 24 year old Syrian woman refugee who Ai Weiwei had a piano brought to the Idomeni Camp for, (as I wrote about, and Posted a photo of, in Part 1)! We see her playing the piano, while others (including Ai Weiwei himself, seen from the back) hold up a plastic sheet to protect her from the rain that day. Yet, in the wallpaper, we don’t see rain. So? Perhaps they are protecting her from everything else that’s going on. Is this Ai Weiwei’s way of speaking about the value of protecting your creativity, no matter what’s going on around you? Or, protecting what’s most important to you? Or, does it speak to overcoming all over this and having a life after, like Ai Weiwei, himself did?

The wallpaper’s “Golden Section,” (the darkened center section) features Nour Al Khzam right smack dab in the middle of the entire 200 foot piece (rows 6 & 12). Also notice Michelangelo’s Vatican Pieta, just to the left of center in rows 3, 9 and 15. Elsewhere we see a huge explosion (rows 4, 10, 16) and a baby, perhaps abandoned, under trees (rows 1, 7 and 13).

A singular image. A close-up of the image of 24 year old Nour Al Khzam playing piano as Ai Weiwei (right) and others hold a plastic sheet over her. A photo of the event is here.

I was left to ask my friends, the trees.

If you were careful, you could stand inside the semi-circular Iron Tree Trunk, 2015. It felt like a hug.

I felt a terrible pang when this show ended on December 23, and I’ve missed it daily since.

Outside Lisson Gallery on December 26, “Iron Tree Trunk,” 2015, and a piece of the wallpaper still barely visible on the right. My tears are not shown.

Why?

Partially, it’s the beauty of these “trees.” They are contemporary sculpture at it’s finest, in my opinion. I could look at them endlessly. Partially it’s the wallpaper has sucked me in to trying to understand it’s every detail. Real trees spend their entire lives in one place. Something humans can’t imagine doing. Trees have been meditative objects for a thousand years in Zen Buddhism and elsewhere. They are that, here, as well. These “tree parts” were created from parts of dead trees brought down from the mountains of southern China and sold in the markets of Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, where Ai Weiwei found them and brought them to his studio.

Maybe the show reminds me of life in NYC, where the few trees we have stand alone as all the chaos and activity of this insanely busy City happens around them. Perhaps, Ai Weiwei, who lived here for 10 years, intends this. Perhaps not. But this is no story of City life unfolding up there, with each of those 16 bands telling a different part of it simultaneously, perhaps symbolizing that these events were happening to so many people simultaneously, each making their own journey, and each with their own experiences and story. It’s a story that begins with the horrors of war and it’s various instruments (including Ai’s trademark surveillance cameras), followed by the long, treacherous journeys, of (too) many refugees, to lands unknown, their lives in the camps, a story that, unfortunately, continues for who knows how many. Here we come face to face with man- at his best, as when he is creating Art, and at his worst, when he is killing and ruining the lives of countless innocents, who have no one to turn to for help. Taken as a whole, Ai Weiwei has created one of the most unique Zen-like “Gardens” ever seen. One that offers almost as much to ponder as a “real” Zen Garden.

Ai Weiwei: 2016: Roots and Branches, Mary Boone Gallery, Chelsea

The new LEGO triple self portrait, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, a LEGO version of his well-known work of the same name from 1995, is seen in the background. Better view and details below-

Ai “was so much older then, he’s younger than that now.” And, “playing” with toys. Sorry, Bob. Ai Weiwei as seen in his recent LEGO version of his work, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995

Besides Laundromat (the only show of the 4 with a different title), Ai Weiwei’s three other NYC shows, Ai Weiwei 2016: Roots and Branches, eshewed the use of his most renowned media- the internet, photography and words (seen to devastating effect in “Laundromat”) to focus on two other of his “signature” mediums- natural elements and ancient artifacts along with one newer medium- LEGO portraits, originally inspired by his son, who constantly plays with them. His LEGO works were previously seen in, perhaps, his most political show to date- Ai Weiwei: @Large, which took place at none other than the former site of one of the world’s most notorious prisons, Alcatraz. Ironically, Ai Weiwei, himself, was not able to attend that show as he was still living out the rest of his sentence following his 81 days of imprisonment, that saw him unable to travel internationally (because his passport was still held). At Alcratraz, the work, Trace, consisted of LEGO portraits of 176 people from around the world who have been imprisoned or exiled because of their beliefs or affiliations,” according to the show’s press release. This time, the LEGO Portraits on view at Mary Boone Gallery, Chelsea (a few hundred feet west of the Lisson Gallery show), were confined to Self Portraits. These were juxtaposed with two works in wood- both “sculptural,” and both “puzzles” in their own way, while, again, one wall was lined with gorgeous, fascinating wallpaper, this time in gold.

Tree at Mary Boone Gallery, Chelsea

In the main room, facing the LEGO triple self portrait seen above, a Tree was, again, the centerpiece, This time it’s one, monumental Tree, 25 feet tall, that is constructed of actual weathered sections of dead trees that, according to the press release, “may be seen as a comment on the strength of modern China built from many ancient ethnic groups, or a determined attempt to create something new and vital from what is irrevocably lost.” In China, dead trees are venerated as important counterparts to the dead on earth, the realm between heaven and the underworld.2 It stands in front of another monumental wallpaper piece, this one I believe titled “Golden Age,” another graphic tour de force. This work is based on images from AWW’s life- from the ever present surveillance cameras, police chains and handcuffs, to cats- all depicted in a lustrous 3-D gold. For me, it stands for overcoming oppression and turning it’s artifacts into beautiful objects that are, now, just another part of his life, like his beloved cats.

Golden Age, detail, and reflection.

Situated on center stage, here, Tree, is, seemingly, another work that speaks to modern China being a blend of many ethnic groups, like Map of China is, see further down. That the parts making it are dead, as is the whole construction, of course, is something I cannot offer a comment about. I can say that I find it a compelling idea, and object, and one that some of it’s base parts seemed to bear a resemblance to the Iron Roots seen at Lisson.

Also on view here was the amazing Treasure Box, a sculptural piece of furniture made of ancient reclaimed huali wood, which is actually an intricate puzzle box of sliding and locking components3

Ancient & Contemporary puzzles. Treasure Box, sits in front of Self-Portrait, made of LEGO bricks.

This is, surely, an aspect of Weiwei’s work that, while not by any means new, deserves more attention and study. The Mary Boone, Chelsea show struck me as being “about” things not being what they seem. Being “more,” perhaps, and being “other.” There’s still one more show left to see…

Ai Weiwei: 2016: Roots and Branches, Mary Boone Gallery, Uptown

40,000 spouts broken from antique Chinese porcelain teapots are surrounded by Finger Wallpaper.

The final show, at Mary Boone’s Uptown Gallery may be his comment on all of this.

Detail of the spouts

Finger Wallpaper, and detail-

Yes, a variant of this wallpaper, too, is available, here.

As the world has seen these past 6+ years since his “Sunflower Seeds” Show at Tate Modern, London, brought him to international renown in 2010, Ai Weiwei is a man with a strong conscience. He’s not shy to share it with the world, whenever, and wherever he sees things that bother him. While it’s tempting to say that he’s turning his attention away from China after his arrest and 81 day imprisonment in 2011, he said to the Council on Foreign Relations in November–

“When I fight human rights in China, I never think that’s human rights in China. I think that’s human rights everywhere. That’s first. And also, when I’m dealing with situation outside of China, I don’t even think that it’s not going to help China, you know? Human rights is the value which I believe is universal, it relate to everybody.”

Garbage Container, an elegy to five homeless boys who suffocated in a dumpster while trying to stay warm.

Summing up…

The meditative effect of all four shows was the common takeaway for me, vastly different from the meditative effect of Mark Rothko: Dark Palette, a few hundred feet away from Ai Weiwei’s 2 Chelsea shows. While Rothko’s meditative impact is almost otherworldly, akin to standing in a door way open to…?, Ai Weiwei has us meditate on life, presence and absence, having roots and being rootless, what it is to be human, and what it should be to be human.

Speaking of “being human,” it almost looks like a hand. Or, maybe an extended arm and extended…hmmm…

For me, the shows seemed to flow into each other from south to north, beginning with Laundromat, the southern most, in Soho, to Lisson on West 24th, to Mary Boone, Chelsea, further west on 24th, and finally up to Mary Boone uptown. I have no idea if this was the intention, or not.  The Lisson show carries pieces of Laundromat, while the Mary Boone, Chelsea, shares the “tree” motif of Lisson, and Mary Boone uptown shares Ai Weiwei’s trademark extended arm and extended middle finger motif with Mary Boone, Chelsea, though it now is the overriding motif. It’s hard, for me, not to see this as Ai Weiwei extending his middle finger (and that of 39,999 refugees), now, to the “powers that be,” that have created and largely ignored this refugee crisis, while seemingly having little solution for the crisis to come. But? Your results may differ. Everyone is free to take from it what they will, or leave without taking anything from it. In this case, that would be a shame, and might be shortsighted. If it’s not “personal” for you now, it might be one day. There…but by grace, go I.

Golden Age, Detail. You, too, can hang (a variant) of this on your wall, here.

Of course, Ai Weiwei is not the only Artist who was a refugee. The 20th Century, for instance, is full of them. Some of them, like Marc Chagall, and the great composer Bela Bartok, created works of nostalgia for their homelands, not documentary works about being exiled. Then, there is Picasso, who created “Guernica,” in 1937, about the tragic bombing of that small Spanish town in his homeland, while he was living in Paris, where he would remain throughout the Nazi occupation that began a few years later, through the end of the Second World War, and after, in continuing exile from Spain. Perhaps the greatest artistic record of exile we have was created by a “young girl,”- Annelies, better known as Anne, Frank, the brilliant young writer who’s life ended at 15 at the hands of the Nazis, but who managed to write for the ages about her exile in her own country before she was discovered, and arrested in her “Diary of a Young Girl,” which has sold 30 million copies to date. While Ai Weiwei depicts, and documents, the Syrian Refugee crisis, he has only, as yet (as far as I know), documented his own exile in words. He’s spoken about it in interviews, and written about it in Ai Weiwei’s Blog. His words are chilling, unforgettable, and impossible for me to get out of my mind when I visited these shows. About the “earthen pit” his family lived in when he was 8 years old he said –

“…when pigs would run overhead, their bottoms would fall through our roof, making us all too familiar with the sight of swine nether regions….on one occasion, because there was no light in our earthen pit, my father was descending into our home and smashed his head on a roof beam. He fell immediately to the earth on his knees with a bleeding forehead. Because of this, we dug out a shovel’s depth of dirt, an equivalent to raising our roof twenty centimeters (about 8 inches).”4

While his mediums keep expanding (LEGO portraits), others, especially his sculpture and “furniture,” continue to evolve in wonderful ways. Yet no matter what he does, or what he creates with, his heart, mind, passion, and humanity- his core values, come through loud and clear. Not being one who’s given to compare creative beings, I still find it hard to think that this decade, that still has 3 years to go, is the decade of any other Artist. This is Ai Weiwei’s decade.

Like son, like father. Ai Weiwei says he was inspired by his son’s passion for LEGO to try them himself.

As this decade has unfolded, I find he reminds me of someone else. Another man from the East, who has lived in exile for a very long time. A man with a deep knowledge of the West, a man of compassion, wisdom and humanity. The Dalai Lama. One has written a book called The Art of Happiness, the other has done more than most others to bring compassion to those suffering, through Art. I make no comparison of them. I am simply saying that one brings the other to mind. In any event, there is no doubt that Ai Weiwei has gone from being an exile to being an unknown Artist and Art Student in New York for a decade to now having the eye, and ear, of a good part of the world. In doing so, am I alone in feeling that what he espouses about human rights and freedom sounds a good deal like what passed for “traditional American values” for most of my life?

A detail of the above. LEGO refused a bulk order from Ai Weiwei last year, which resulted in a furor that led to the company reversing themselves.

Artistically, these shows raised another question for me.

Even now, very rarely do I see his work on view in the museums here. Right now, The Met lists zero works of his in their online database of over 700,000 items (about 1/3 of their total holdings)! I do recall seeing 5 works of his displayed during the Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China. Show there in 2014., including the one I photographed, below. It turns out that all five were lent to The Met. MoMA lists 12 of his works out of their 73,000 items currently online. Of those 12, 7 are photographs with his extended middle finger at various locations, 4 are books, and one is a magazine! I have to say I find it shameful that there is no major work of his in either The Met or MoMA! I would love for either, or both, to tell me why not.

Ai Weiwei at The Met! Map of China, 2006, a work that speaks to the mosaic of fragments that is China today, made from wood salvaged from destroyed temples, as seen (on loan) in the Ink Art in China Show in 2014.

While we see the results of uprooting in both it’s natural and unnatural ways, at Lisson, Ai Weiwei turns uprooting into creative acts in using the felled tree parts as the basis for his sculptures and the travails of the refugees who’s journeys he shows us in “Laundromat” into what he depicts so beautifully on Lisson’s western wall, in trying to give them a voice, and make their experiences known. During my daily visits, I, and many of my fellow visitors, stood looking at, and contemplating, the complex images that seemed to stretch out endlessly before us on that wall. Like the lines of refugees must have looked like in transit. When I was alone in the gallery, I was like the the cast iron trees before me standing as “mute witnesses” to what was going on in front of us on the wallpaper.

Now that this unique show that was equal parts horror show, and equal parts astonishingly beautiful- depicting the best, and worst of what man is capable of, is over, it’s up to all of those who saw it to not remain mute.

Since Ai Weiwei lived in New York for 10 years? In my book, he will always be a New Yorker.

Welcome home, Ai Weiwei. Come back soon.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” by Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Phil Selway, Ed O’Brien and Colin Greeenwood of Radiohead, as performed on OK Computer.

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. In my 25 years of living here, I’ve come to believe this is part of the reason for so many tree deaths. Not all of it. Part. ↩
  2. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/ai-weiwei-6 ↩
  3. It can be seen opened in the Royal Academy, London’s Ai Weiwei Exhibition catalog. ↩
  4. Ai Weiwei’s Blog, P. 53 ↩

Ai Weiwei & The Value of One Refugee

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Ai Weiwei returned to show his latest work in NYC for the first time since getting his passport back, making a splash to rival his last big show here (which he could not attend), the retrospective “Ai Weiwei: According To What?” (at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014), this time with no less than FOUR concurrent shows- one in Soho, two in Chelsea and one Uptown. With so much terrain to traverse, and with so much to see, it makes sense to adapt my approach to writing about them, so I’m going to cover the 4 shows over 2 Posts, as follows-

Ai Weiwei: 2016 Roots & Branches @Mary Boone Gallery, Chelsea
Ai Weiwei: 2016 Roots & Branches @Mary Boone Gallery, Uptown and
Ai Weiwei: 2016 Roots & Branches @Lisson Gallery, Chelsea in a second Post, here.
Ai Weiwei: Laundromat @Deitch Projects, Soho will be the subject of this one.

Ai Weiwei: Laundromat–

Deitch Projects. Also seen in this site’s Banner.

Of the 4 shows, the centerpiece has to be Laundromat at Deitch Projects, an unprecedented Art show/installation, unlike anything I’ve encountered.

View just inside the front door. Click any image to see the full size photo.


Along with an upcoming documentary film, it’s part of the Artist’s response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis as experienced by the estimated 18,000 (at it’s peak) in the refugee camp at Idomeni, in Northern Greece, on the Macedonian border.



Ai Weiwei said-
“When we started filming in Idomeni, the first thing we noticed was people trying to change their clothes. These are the clothes they wore from Syria, wet and soiled from the difficult journey across the ocean, over mountains and through woods. They had no chance to wash their clothes until they were forced to stop in Idomeni. They would hand wash the clothes and throw it on the border fence to dry. There was nowhere else to hang dry their laundry. We photographed the clothes, but we did not, and could not, imagine they could later be included in an exhibition. The clothes were some of the few possessions they could take when they decided to leave their homes. There is not much else they could take. Off the coast of Lesbos, I found an abandoned boat drifting in the sea. Inside, I found a copy of the Bible and a baby’s bottle. You would also find small objects wash up on the shore. These objects were the most precious things a person could have, the last things they brought with them as they sought a new life.”

Merry Christmas

“Once the refugees were forced to evacuate to different camps from Idomeni, many of those possessions were left behind. Trucks came in and loaded these items up to take towards the landfill. I decided to see if we could buy or collect them so they would not be destroyed. Previously, my studio collected many life jackets from the local officials in Lesbos and made an installation with them at the Berlin Konzerthaus. My team negotiated with local officials who agreed to let us have the collected material. They were aware of our presence and were supportive. With a truckload of those materials, including thousands of blankets, clothes and shoes, all impossibly dirty, we transported them to my studio in Berlin. There, we carefully washed the clothes and shoes, piece by piece. Each article of clothing was washed, dried, ironed, and then recorded. Our work was the same as that of a laundromat.”1

Every item is hand tagged. These read “Baby Rompers.”

While Downtown New Yorkers are no strangers to acts of war and terrorism, catastrophic weather or blackouts2, one of the strange things about living through those events, for me, was that many people in other parts of the City, who were directly unaffected by them, lived in a certain level of oblivion about them. Many seemed completely disconnected from what was going on right in their own City. It can be easy to understand when you look at this, from the Hurricane Sandy blackout, which effected me, and all of downtown New York for 5 days to 2 weeks.  Now? At “Laundromat,” I was the “directly unaffected,” I had never heard of Idomeni, Greece, and knew little about the Syrian Civil War that’s led to 13.6 million refugees3 seeking to rebuild their lives elsewhere. That’s equal to the population of London. During my 5 visits to  it was easy to say now what others may have said about the Sandy Blackout- life gets to be so all-encompassing that few of us really know what’s going on in much of the City, let alone the rest of the world. It’s different when it’s personal.

I’m sure there are those who walked in and thought “This is Art? It looks like the Salvation Army.” I know what they mean. But? Yes, I consider this to be Art, and I consider it to be groundbreaking Art. Laundromat’s range of expression is formidable. Ai Weiwei is the master Artist of the electronic information age. Recently named “The Most Influential Photographer of the Past 10 Years” by complex.com (Cindy Sherman placed 13th, Annie Liebovitz 8th, and Sebastio Salgado didn’t place.? Yet, another reason I don’t believe in qualitatively comparing Artists.). Weiwei’s Blog was, perhaps, the first “essential” Blog of the 2000’s, before it was forcibly removed. Part of it has been translated and published and is still in print.4 Mr. Ai became the first Artist to have photographs “go viral” with his now infamous shot in the elevator with police after his arrest in 2009. Now, he has combined mediums (thousands of photographs, an excerpt from his upcoming documentary film and hundreds of internet articles and social media postings), with actual objects- the clothes and shoes left by the refugees in the camp. The clothes hang on racks. Washed, ironed and/or cleaned, they are “ready-to-wear,” tagged by hand and sorted by type, sex and age, near hundreds of shoes aligned in neat rows on the floor- about an equal number of matching pairs and singles. The shoes are of every kind imaginable, except high heels. (I saw only one pair with a very low heel.) Boots, low boots, sneakers dominate. I assume because their owner’s felt they were finished with crossing wet terrains or bodies of water. Both are present in mute witness to what they have seen and experienced.
What their wearers have experienced can never be washed away that easily. Many are, no doubt, still going through the experience of being a refugee and seeking an answer.

“Time to recharge my batteries” this shirt reads.

A Sea of Words. Hundreds of news and web postings seen in the “Newsfeed” section of the show, which fills the floor beneath visitor’s feet.

Laundromat is a deeply personal show for Ai Weiwei. On a number of levels. First, he seems to just naturally respond to humans in crisis, all over the world, be they individuals in the case of the Feminist Activist Ye Haiyan, as we saw in Brooklyn, in Ye Haiyan’s Belongings,  in 2013 (which recreated that photo verbatim, installing all of her belongings in a gallery in the Brooklyn Museum(!), something of a possibly precursor to this show), or his powerful documentary Stay Home, about the Aids activist  Liu Ximei, or by trying to put names and identity to the countless thousands lost in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, the subject of Backpack pieces Remembering, 2009, installed in Germany, and “Snake Ceiling” (seen in Brooklyn) as well as the monumental work Straight, 2008-12, which consists of 40 tons of rebar from the Sichuan quake that Ai recovered and straightened, It was powerfully displayed alongside the list-turned-wall paper, Names of the Student Earthquake Victims Found by the Citizen’s Investigation, 2008-11, in Brooklyn, photos of which I posted here. The amount of work he, his staff and volunteers put in to try and identify the dead children was nothing less than monumental. Laundromat is only the latest “piece” in Ai’s ongoing “work” regarding human rights. It, too, is monumental, in more ways than one.

I’m left to wonder- If he didn’t do this, who would? Would anyone?

First learning about this refugee crisis in 2015, after being freed from jail, but still unable to leave China, he dispatched two members of his staff to go see the camps and interview refugees. Once he got his passport back, he travelled to Germany, where he could get a much closer look at what was going on. Then he decided to go to Idomeni, and document it. “Laundromat” is the first result of those efforts. The documentary film, Human Flow, is next, scheduled to be released in 2017.

The second level of this being personal for Ai Weiwei is that he, himself, lived in exile for TWENTY YEARS! And? They began when he was an infant, in 1957.

He says-
“When I was born, my father (the great poet and intellectual), Ai Qing, was denounced as a ‘rightist’ and was criticized as an enemy of the party and the people. We were sent to a labour camp in a remote region far away from our home and so began 20 years in hard exile, which saw my father clean bathrooms and the family live in an earthen pit5.” This was after Ai Qing had been a friend of Chairman Mao (Ai Weiwei has spoken about handwritten letters from Mao being in their home), and had served as a representative of the Chinese government. “We carried almost nothing with us to the camp, only trying to survive. It was an extremely difficult time being seen as a foreigner in your own nation, an enemy of your own people, an enemy of those my father loved most. I know what it is like to be viewed as a pariah, as sub-human, as a threat and danger to society.”1. When the exile ended in 1976, and Ai Qing and his family returned to Beijing, many of his father’s readers had assumed he had died. Before he was all that he is today, Ai Weiwei grew up a refugee.
Now, he has turned the latest refugee crisis, coming after what the New York Times called “The Century of Refugees,” into a work of Art, giving voices to all of those who have not been heard. It’s impossible to walk through these clothes and shoes and not feel their presence- that there was a person for every single article here- especially the babies. Though cleaned, evidence of personal wear remains that is permanent, along with what is permanent, though now invisible- the experiences each of these items, and the person wearing them went through. You wonder “Did someone really make this trip wearing thong sandals?” You see many well-known famous brand names, like Adidas, famous images and icons, as well, including “Hello, Kitty,” even “Barbie.”
The clothes look like clothes you could see being sold right down the street, though many of the labels are unfamiliar (a classic way New Yorkers identify tourists), yet so much of what’s here is so common- everywhere in the commercialized world. and not all that different from the jeans t-shirt, sneakers and jacket I’m wearing standing among them. Though, of course, it’s very hard to consider the Idomeni Camp part of the “civilized world,” especially when you read accounts of it, like this one from International Women’s Rights Journalist, Jina Moore.
What are  you going to wear if your house catches fire and burns, or, you have to leave town, or state, or country…in a real emergency, or war?
A story could be told for each item here. Mr. Ai could have made a show with one item, and it would have been quite powerful, but it wouldn’t have been this show. As you walk among the clothes, or around the shoes, look at the thousands of photos on three of the 4 walls, and the hundreds of internet articles and posts on the floor beneath your feet, it is easy to become numb to the numbers, but the little bits of individuality each item retains reminds you of a more finite realm of experience. This is a group made up of people. Of individuals, like you, and me. 1+1+1+…= 18,000.


In the midst of ALL of this, the sea of humanity (not to mention the actual Seas surrounding Greece they crossed), the incredible hardships, suffering and deaths, there was one small part of this story, and this show, I found particularly interesting & revealing, though nothing about it is mentioned in the show itself! I only learned about it through doing my research. Ai Weiwei came across a 24 year old Syrian refugee named Nour Al Khzam, who’s photo I spotted (above) among the thousands on the walls, who is from Deirez Zor, Syria. She was trying to get to Germany to reunite with her husband. Before fleeing Syria she had been studying piano. Ai Weiwei arranged for a piano to be brought to the Idomei Camp so she could play it, as seen in the photos immediately above. I know he’ll be criticized for doing this, but I find it poignent because it speaks to a number of important things, including- going on with your life and realizing your creativity, even after being a refugee (which Ai Weiwei, himself did). It also speaks to something very important- What is the value of one refugee? How many great Artists, maybe an Ai Weiwei, great Scientists, or great people are among these refugees?

This image, above (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) of Ai Weiwei, right, helping to hold a plastic sheet while Ms. Al Khzam’s plays in the rain that day is of particular importance, as we shall see next time. (Note- This photo was not included in the show.)
Though Idomeni is half a world away, there was a beautiful piece of New York City included in this show. Among the materials handed out at Deitch was a sheet containing September on Jessore Road, by “New York’s Poet,” as Ai Weiwei calls his friend, Allen Ginsberg, written after Ginsberg had visited the Bangladeshi refugee camps in 1971. Allen Ginsberg had come to know Ai Qing during a trip to Beijing. And with it, AWW adds poetry to the list of mediums included in this show.
Having lived through a few events that might have made me a refugee (the Hurricane Sandy blackout left me without means of getting off of Manhattan, except on foot), the inescapable feeling of Laundromat was “There, but by grace, go I.” If anything defines the 20th Century as much as the airplane, space flight, electricity and the atomic bomb, it’s the refugee. More of them were created in one century than at any time in world history.
“I cannot give them food or tea, or money, but rather I can let their voices be heard and recognized. I can give them a platform to be acknowledged, to testify that they are human beings. During the saddest moments in our history, mankind has had to prove their worth as humans to their own kind. Unfortunately, this has proven to be the most difficult task. As an artist, this is something I would like to take on1.”
Ai Weiwei reminds us here that in this new millennium we have yet to find a way to deal with this world wide question.

There- but by grace, go I.

“He wants to see how far an individual’s power can go,” Chen Danquing, a Chinese painter and social critic said in the Nw Yorker’s profile of Ai Weiwei in 20108.  Ai Weiwei doesn’t help all of people directly, as he said, that’s not within his means. Yet he, in the way he lives his life, and in his work, stands for freedom- Artistic freedom and human rights. He, and his work, continually remind us of the primacy of human rights in ways that are unique, powerful and unforgettable. As for an “individual’s power?” The more of his work I see, the more I read his words, and the more I see of his compassion and soul, I’ve come to believe that Ai Weiwei is one of the most important human beings of our time. He has become something of the “conscience” of the Art world. If not the world, itself.

As big a statement as that is, even beyond it, no one can leave this show without remembering that here is a man who has accomplished so very much in the world after he, himself, lived in exile as a refugee in his own country for 20 years (not to mention everything else he has had to overcome). Though he wasn’t able to help them all financially, etc. I think he understated the impact he may have had on them.

Ai Weiwei at the Idomeni Camp.

As much as every item in Laundromat speaks for those with no voice, Ai Weiwei, the man, is living proof a refugee can survive, overcome, and make a lasting mark on the world. I have a feeling his mere presence in Idomeni served to remind at least some of those he encountered of that, and possibly gave them hope. How do you put a value on that? Of course he chose to avoid mention of any such thing when he commented on what he could and couldn’t do for them.

I don’t have to.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “The Unknown,” by Acrassicauda, a heavy-metal band from Baghdad, themselves exiled by the Iraqi War, and the subject of the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad. I had the honor to meet and hang out with Tony Aziz, their lead guitarist, in 2011, shortly after the band finally made it to the United States. Talk about overcoming, and continuing to follow your  dream…

(PS- Oh yeah…I still have THREE more Ai Weiwei shows to see…)

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to keep it up & ad-free below. Thank you!

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I’M PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE I’M CURATING A SELECTION OF ART, ARTBOOKS & PHOTOBOOKS FOR SALE! All items are from my collection or specially selected in my travels through the Art world for my readers. The initial selection of over 400 items is here. Either way, all proceed go to support the site. With my thanks.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
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  1. Deitch Projects Interview, 2016. ↩
  2. Hurricane Sandy caused a partial evacuation ↩
  3. According to the UN., 6.4 million have fled the country. An additional 7.2 million are displaced within Syria. ↩
  4. It may be the most essential book on Ai Weiwei, along with the Taschen monograph, which, though published in April, 2016, is already slightly dated as his career continually evolves. Perhaps the best way to stay current with Ai Weiwei is on his Instagram page. But, be forewarned- he almost never captions his photos there, like he does not for the thousands of them in this show. ↩
  5. Ai Weiwei’s Blog, P.53 ↩
  6. Deitch Projects Interview, 2016. ↩
  7. Deitch Projects Interview, 2016. ↩
  8. May 24, 2010 ↩

About Banner #4…

Banner #4

which finds the Nighthawk Downtown outside of Deitch Projects, along the cobblestones of 18 Wooster Street, currently the home of Ai Weiwei’s “Laundromat,” which can be glimpsed through the larger window. I’ve been busy making the rounds of the no less than FOUR Ai Weiwei shows currently up. All 4 shows close on December 23.

Hurry!

In the meantime, here’s a Post from early on that reminisces about my visits to Ai’s last big NYC Show, 2014’s “Ai Weiwei: According To What?” at the Brooklyn Museum.

(More soon.)

 

Hold The Flowers- Ai Weiwei Gets His Passport Back…FINALLY! Then Uses It.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Each day for the past 600+ days flowers have been left in the basket of the bicycle outside of No. 258 Coachangdi, Beijing, China, the address of Ai Weiwei’s studio, by his fans and followers in solidarity with the great Chinese Artist & Activist until his passport, which was confiscated during his April 3, 2011 arrest on charges of “tax evasion,” is returned to him. Ai spent the next 81 days in prison (more on that coming up) until finally being released on bail on June 22, 2011, after he agreed not to leave Beijing for a year. Year up, he continued to be forbidden to travel to other countries…until…

Late last month Ai posted a pic on Instagram announcing the return of his passport, a great shot too long in coming, it can be seen, along with more details here.

At last…He doesn’t look particularly happy, though he looks well. I’d say he looks hopeful. Ai then quickly took a trip to Germany to rejoin his family, sparking rumors of his accepting a university post there.

Still, it’s Wonderful news that’s also a sad reminder that during the past 4(!) years Ai missed the many shows of his work held outside of China, the 2014 Brooklyn Museum Show Ai Weiwei: According to What? among them. Would what we experienced have been changed, modified or altered simply by his larger than life presence? We’ll never know, and we are all undoubtedly poorer for the lack of him. For me, though, it was still a rare chance to explore the many sides of Ai’s boundless creative spirit. Here are some pics I took of the show, in case you, like Ai, missed it.

Stacked 2014. The card refers to the minimalist approach to the bike- no handlebars or seat, suggests “that in China the individual is often undervalued and seen only as part of the whole.”

Map of China

I’ve been to bars that look like this at 3:45am. Grapes, Qing Dynasty Stools

It featured a selection of his work from the past 20 years, above, and a central gallery that included 2 monumental works, the 73 ton Straight, and Sichuan Name List Ai created in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake which killed over 69,000 and left another 18,000 missing 1.

Ai’s Straight (on the floor) and Sichuan Name List (on the wall, left) are works about the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake that may have killed 90,000.

For me, the “showstopper” was the 2013 work S.A.C.R.E.D. (S-supper, A-accusers, C-cleaning, R-ritual, E-entropy, and D-doubt) which consists of six 2 and a half ton iron boxes, each one shoulder height and measuring 5 feet wide and 12 feet long, one for each of the title’s letters. As you approach one, you notice a door near one exterior corner, then you notice slits in the iron that allow a glimpse of what’s inside. Yes, each box contains a diorama of a scene from his life during his 81 day incarceration after that 2011 arrest, while he was awaiting trial(!). Inside, we see TWO guards watching him sleep in one, eat in another, shower in another, and do his business in yet another(!)(not pictured)…It’s a chilling, unforgettable and shocking experience that gives the rest of us a little insight into the risks Ai takes every day, with every new work, and in just “being Ai.” It also reminds that many, many people, some of them Artists, take incalculable risks every day in the name of freedom, and Artistic freedom, or in just living their lives. Many admire athletes, and other so-called “role models.” I admire Ai Weiwei, and those like him.

Thinking about it on the F Train home, I couldn’t recall a more powerful recent work on this topic. My mind seeking an Art historical reference, of which there are, unfortunately, too many, kept turning to Goya. First, for the absurdity depicted in his Caprichos, and then of the power and oppression of the state shown in his The Third of May. In the end, the lesson may be that, in spite of hundreds of millions of deaths in the intervening almost exactly 200 years, tragically, not much has changed in the world .

For more info on and other’s pics of  S.A.C.R.E.D. go here and here. An interview with Ai about it is here.

I consider Ai a New Yorker since he lived here for 10 years. Here’s hoping he comes and visits us, again, soon…and often!

 

For Ai’s story, I highly recommend the 2012 documentary Never Sorry, which has appeared on PBS.

*-Soundtrack for this post- “Freedom” by Paul McCartney published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group

“I will fight, for the right
To live in freedom.”*

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to keep it up & ad-free below. Thank you!

Or-
I’M PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE I’M CURATING A SELECTION OF ART, ARTBOOKS & PHOTOBOOKS FOR SALE! All items are from my collection or specially selected in my travels through the Art world for my readers. The initial selection of over 400 items is here. Either way, all proceed go to support the site. With my thanks.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.