NYC Art Shows 2022

Louise Bourgeois’s Guarantee of Sanity

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

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Your Father’s Winslow Homer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gale, 1883-93, Oil on canvas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning To Think Like David Byrne

Show Seen: David Byrne: How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic at Pace Gallery

David Byrne has never been bashful about stepping out. First, as the the very strange, gangly, guy you couldn’t take your eyes off of with the legendary band Talking Heads, then by himself as a solo, or in collaborations with Brian Eno, Twyla Tharp, and St. Vincent, among others; in Films along the way (as an actor, director, or Oscar-winning composer), as a Photographer in his overlooked PhotoBook, Strange Ritual, and most recently in an acclaimed & successful one-man Broadway show, American Utopia.

Phew!

Me too. I spent a decade drawing every day and going to The Met to draw 3 times a week, even though I had a full-time job nowhere close to The Museum. It’s solitary, but rewarding in more ways than one.

As if that’s not enough, while American Utopia was still running on Broadway, came something else- a “mini retrospective” of his Drawings titled David Byrne: How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic, that ran from Feb 2 through March 19th, already his 8th show at Pace. The show included a selection of work dating back about 20 years, including a group of his Tree Drawings from the early 2000s, as seen in his book Arboretum, a group of Chair Drawings from 2004-7, and a group of Dingbat Drawings Mr. Byrne did during the pandemic. Some of his Dingbats were shown in a 2020 online show of that title. Always interested in what Mr. Byrne is doing, and what I can learn from it, and an eternal lover of the Art & essential skill that is Drawing, I took the elevator to the top floor of Pace’s new mega gallery on West 25th to take a look.

The show coincided with the release of his latest book, the astonishingly popular A History of the World (In Dingbats); a collection of 100 Drawings. Not to be confused stylistically with his earlier Drawings, the Dingbats are more “traditional” Drawings that range across a wide variety of subjects, IF you can call ANYTHING David Byrne does “traditional.”

Swim Inside My Head, 2020, Ink on paper.

The show’s title, How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic, sounds like an open invitation to learn how to think like Mr. Byrne. The range of styles on view gave the viewer the chance to approach that from a few directions that ranged from the apparently quite accessible to obtuse. I guess that’s saying there was something for everyone. On a wall near the entrance was something of an Artist’s Statement, quoted in part-

Installation view.

Cloud Chair, 2006, Ink on paper.

Installation view of 3/4 of the show.

I Dreamed of the Art Trap, 2007, Ink on paper.

A series of “Chair” Drawings from 2006, Ink on paper. The piece on the far right, Cloud Chair, is shown earlier.

A fascinating way to think. If you’re intrigued by it, check out Arboretum.

“I’m an ordinary guy
Burning down the house1“

After all he’s done to this point, it appears that David Byrne is David Byrne’s greatest creation. So, how to think like he does? I think you start by taking the essence of yourself, then throw out everything that’s too derivative of what someone else has done (“Stop Making Sense?”), and then emphasize what makes you unique. Along the way you can put down in Music, Film, on stage or on paper, things you see that no one else does. At least not in your own unique way!

Like these-

The Evolution of Eating Utensils, 2003, Pencil on paper.

Consensual Absurdities, 2003, Pencil on paper

Between his Music, his Films, his Photography, his stage work, and now his Art, as time has gone on, we’re continuing to see there is more…much more, to David Byrne than anyone could ever imagine when that very strange, gangly guy walked on stage with Talking Heads at CBGB in 1977. I hope he continues to amaze and puzzle us for decades to come.

BookMarks-

The most succinct thing to say about David Byrne is that I can think of nothing he has done to not recommend. Some may not be as big fans of The Catherine Wheel, or his album The Forest, but that’s splitting hairs. As the late, great Jaco Pastorius once told me when I told him I liked his work with Joni Mitchell “better” than her earlier work- “Hey man. You either like an Artist or you don’t.” The man has had an important career and written innumerable great songs. Since the surprise hit show American Utopia is introducing him to many new fans, I’ll just give a quick rundown here-

The 8 Talking Heads studio albums chronologically.

Starting from the beginning, ALL the Talking Heads albums are classics in my book. I gave it some thought and really couldn’t pick one to start with. Remain in Light? Fear of Music? The Dual Disc reissues with added tracks are particularly recommended, if you can find them reasonably priced. The complete Dual Brick of all 8 studio Lps on CD/DVD Dual Disc currently goes for $200 to $250 being out of print. Though you’ll gain more Music, the sanctity of the original album should be kept firmly in mind (which is included on the DVD in 5.1 Surround Sound, overseen by Jerry Harrison), though it’s hard to replicate the impact it had when each were released, now. In the midst of punk, Talking Heads seamlessly walked the line between punk and New Wave, if they did not singlehandedly define the latter. I remember it well. I wound up in a New Wave band the year after Talking Heads ’77 came out!

Stop Making Sense is a must-see concert Film. True Stories…I haven’t seen in a while, but it’s on my list to see again.

His work with Brian Eno has many fans.

I thought his collaboration with St. Vincent, Love This Giant. was wonderful. After they got it out on the road with punchy arrangements (I started out as a horn player, and there’s still nothing like the sound of live horns for me!), it sounds even better-

And then there are his countless solo albums. I’m still working my way through them. One thing I can say is those I’ve heard don’t sound dated.

Personally, I really like his PhotoBook Strange Ritual, though I advise you to take a look through it before deciding to buy. It’s not for everyone.

Arboretum is Artistic while showing a different way of thinking. I think the concept, a sample shown above and in other works in the show, works very well throughout. I think it’s a book that’s going to remain sought after.

How Music Works is a uniquely down to earth look at Music & the business of. As much a “field guide” for the working Musician as it is a book for listeners and his fans. Most books like it are written by Music business people or lawyers. Uggh. This one is written from the REAL inside by someone who counts- a Musician who’s done it all AND succeeded at all of it!

It includes sketches of CBGB’s, a club that Mr. Byrne helped make immortal, seen here before, left, & after its remodeling, right. I spent many, many a night on the right, a few on the left..In the mid-1990s, I booked Music into CB’s Gallery, another Music club CBGB later opened in the space to the right where the Drawing is labelled “CBGB” and “CBGB “Remodeled'”

A History of the World (In Dingbats) is one of those Art Books that may seem easy to write off at first, but then keeps surprising & intriguing you. I’ve been amazed watching it sell out everywhere. Say what you will about it- it’s speaking to a wide range of folks. Almost ANY book of Drawings that reaches people these days is probably going to be a book I am fond on. This one counts.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Born Under Punches” by David Byrne & Talking Heads from their album Remain in Light, 1980.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. As I face high expenses to keep it going, if you’ve found it worthwhile, please donate to keep it up & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
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  1. “Burning Down The House,” Speaking in Tongues, 1983 ↩

Alec Soth: A Pound of Pictures

Show Seen: Alec Soth: A Pound of Pictures @ Sean Kelly Gallery, January 14 – February 26, 2022

Alec Soth returned to Sean Kelly on 10th Avenue with a show of his latest body of work titled A Pound of Pictures. The show coincided with the publication of his latest PhotoBook of the same title published by London’s Mack Books. Mr. Soth has been a full member of Magnum Photos since 2008, during which time his popularity has steadily increased, so the arrival of new work is met with much curiosity and attention. I went for a look myself. I’ll also take this opportunity to survey his PhotoBooks to date, and make some recommendations in BookMarks, at the end.

“Get yourself a bride
And bring your children down to the river side.”*

A Pound of Pictures consists of Photographs Alec Soth took between 2018 and 2021 on various road trips around the country. There was no check list available, the first time in a long time I’ve seen that, so the titles are lacking.

The title of the exhibition, and the book, comes from a vendor Mr. Soth discovered on his travels in Los Angeles who sells photographs by the pound.

“Across the great divide
Just grab your hat, and take that ride”*

“Harvest moon shinin’ down from the sky, a weary sign for all
I’m gonna leave this one horse town, had to stall till the fall
Now I’m gonna crawl, across the great divide”*

“Across the great divide
And bring your children down to the river side.”*

Five smaller works shown in an alcove completed the display.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Across The Great Divide,” by J. Robbie Robertson and recorded on The Band in 1969.

BookMarks-
When it comes to making & publishing PhotoBooks, Alec Soth has been quite prolific. To date, he has produced books with Steidl, Mack Books and his own publishing house, Little Brown Mushroom creating plenty to explore. His first two books are contemporary classics among PhotoBooks released in this century, and are both highly recommended.

Sleeping By The Mississippi, his first book, was published by Steidl in 2004 in a decorative cloth cover, before being reissued twice by Steidl with pictorial covers- all three editions gong out of print and fetching substantial prices on the aftermarket. The cheaper alternative is the Mack Books reprint edition published in 2017 and still in print.

Mississippi was followed by Niagara, first published by Steidl in 2008, and was quite hard to find until Mack Books reissued it on its 10th anniversary in 2018, which is still available.

Among his other books, Songbook and Gathered Leaves, both published by Mack Books in 2015, are the two most noteworthy, and recommended. Songbook, a collection of black & white Photos, shot around the country, was first published by Mack Books in 2015. It is notorious for its lime green cover which is the most prone to fading book I have ever seen. Good luck finding a first edition/first printing with a truly green cover. Unfortunately, the way it fades, to a dead grass brown, completely ruins the original intention. I have no idea if later printings have fixed this issue. The only choice for buyers of a copy with a truly green cover is to NEVER let it see the light of day. Find the most light-proof covering or bag you can and store it some place dark. Recommended with that caution.

Gathered Leaves is an interesting box set/compilation of reduced size versions of four complete PhotoBooks by Mr. Soth- Sleeping By The Mississippi, Niagara, Broken Manual, and Songbook. At the time it was published, it was the only way for 99% of readers to see Broken Manual, (which was published by Mr. Soth & Steidl in 2010 in a limited edition which completely disappeared almost immediately), Mississippi, and Niagara, all three being mostly legends to those who missed them, and were out of print in 2015. Recommended because you get to see these four books complete, and in spite of the smaller size reproduction of the books.

Mack Books has just announced a new version of Gathered Leaves, to be released later this year. This time, five books are brought together in one large softcover- Sleeping By The Mississippi, Niagara (both originally published by Steidl), Broken Manual, Songbook are joined by the new A Pound of Pictures. Auspiciously missing from this group is I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating, released in 2019. Is leaving it out entirely an indication that Mr. Soth feels I Know How Furiously is not as strong as his other books? I found it surprising, but I agree.

I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating, 2019, Mack Books will be an essential purchase for Alec Soth fans and completists, I rank it as unnecessary for those seeking an overview or only the most essential books. Besides Broken Manual, which will run you thousands of dollars depending on what’s included, which I would include, Sleeping By The Mississippi and Niagara remain his essential books. Both remain affordable in the Mack Books editions.

The recently released A Pound of Pictures, published by Mack Books, is something of a return to form, another large-format, road trip based body of work, like Sleeping By The Mississippi and Songbook. Though not as strong as Mississippi or Niagara in my view, it retains Alec Soth’s curiosity and his ability to capture unexpected/incongruous combinations. Mr. Soth has continually experimented with format, layout and presentation throughout his PhotoBook career. Some succeed. Some a bit less so. I’m all for experimenting. I have some questions about Pound’s design from its curious covers (the title and Mr. Soth’s name appear in small type at the bottom of a long list on the front). I think the back cover should have been the front cover (ala the 3rd Steidl edition of Sleeping By The Mississippi), the front cover should have been the back cover. Inside, the prints, though a very nice size, seem to have a slightly faded look to them. When compared to the prints in the show (as seen above), the colors in the book lack a bit of “pop” to my eyes. Recommended, though after Sleeping By The Mississippi, Niagara and Songbook, among books readily available.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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Caslon Bevington’s Counterfeit Weather

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

Caslon Bevington, Sunstorm II, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 16 by 20 inches.

“I can hear the nation cry
You will set the world babe
You will set the world on fire
You will set it on fire”*

The late David Bowie was, along with everything else he was, a passionate Art collector. As far as I know, he never got to see the work of Caslon Bevington, so I am willfully borrowing his words in speaking about her Art, and her stunning new show, Duping False Landscapes, at both of Ki Smith Gallery’s new East Village locations. In it, she has set the world on fire. More about that in a bit. 

Flashback: Installation view of Caslon’s 2017 show at Mana Contemporary. *Photo by Roman Dean.

I, however, am not a stranger to Caslon’s work. On September 20th, 2017, I actually left Manhattan(!) to see her show at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City. I wrote about what I saw here. Her show has stayed with me. In these intervening five years, my appreciation of it has continued to grow. At that point in early Fall, 2017, eternally & forever a “Painting guy,” I was 2 months away from being completely consumed by Modern & Contemporary Photography (i.e. from the 1958-59 publication of Robert Frank’s The Americans, to the present) for the next 5+ years to the present moment. When I saw what Caslon was doing with her Photo-based pieces, I was coming at it from Painting and Print making. Now, I also see it through the lens of the past 5 years, the x-thousand PhotoBooks and hundreds of Photo shows that have passed in front of my eyes, and what those Photographers have been doing these past 60+ years. Of course, there is some overlap: many Painters are, also, Photographers, and vice versa. As I wrote, she was on the edge of what Artists were doing with Photography. Five years later, I can’t say I’ve seen anyone else doing quite what she was doing then. Caslon was making what strikes me as ground-breaking work. It turns out I missed her 2019 show, her first for Ki Smith Gallery, and my vague impressions of it comes from a few installation shots. 

Duping False Landscapes, Ki Smith Gallery, East 4th Street, Installation view.

Fast forward to April Fool’s Day, 2022. I had a deja vu experience all over again when I walked in to see Duping False Landscapes at Ki Smith Gallery, stopping in to their East 4th Street location first. The wall facing the front door was lined with 8 striking image or Photo-based prints, seen to the right above. Robert Rauschenberg, Wade Guyton, Jeff Elrod, Nico Crijno, Chris Dorland, and others crossed my mind, but I immediately stopped myself when I realized these were an evolution from what I saw in her own work in 2017. I stopped caring how the images were manipulated or printed and just enjoyed looking at them. These were new, fresh, exciting pieces, and most of all, they are just beautiful- a word seldomly, if ever, applied to such work. Some are vibrantly colored & printed. Some look like snap shots in a family album that has been thumbed through so often the prints have faded from light and time. But, it all just works and holds together as a group (though they are separate works). For me, at least, these new prints provided a bit of  continuity with what I had seen before, and they set the stage for the rest of the show.

Sunset from Moving Cars (Revisited), n.d., Acrylic on canvas, 70 by 53 inches.

On the left wall of the gallery was the show stopper of both shows. “Sunset from Moving Cars (Revisited),” 70 by 53 inches, Acrylic on canvas, with about another 6 inches of Painted canvas exposed on the sides(!). It turned out to be a bit of a harbinger of what I would see in Part 2 of the show on East 3rd Street. The Artist seems to be drawn to fleeting images taken on the fly, like from a moving car, here. It was also the first “weather-related” piece in the show. Ki Smith mentioned to me that Caslon was a Painter when he met her circa 2015. Then, she moved away from Painting to explore other mediums. I didn’t realize her history and experience with Painting from seeing her 2017 show and images from her 2019 show. Between the two new shows I counted 15 Paintings ranging in size from 4 by 6 inches, to 70 by 53 inches that mark her return to Painting in a big way. There are about a dozen prints and 2 works on Terracotta also on view.

Counterfeit Weather, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 29.5 inches square, left, and Untitled, 2022, Inkjet on archival vellum, 8.5 by 11 inches, right.

Moving over to the East 3rd Street space, there were more Prints on view, with the same effect. However, at the far end of south wall was something else. On the corner wall was a large Painting, Counterfeit Weather, 2022, that was seemingly influenced by the print, Untitled, 2022, Inkjet on archival vellum, hanging just to its right. Paintings have been translated into Prints going back to the invention of printing in an effort to get them more widely seen. It’s rarer to see a Print translated into a Painting. In fact, I can’t recall seeing anyone do something like this. It’s utterly fascinating to contemplate one and then the other. Here was the largest Painting in the show that is a translation into a Painting of a work in another medium. In all of them, the Artist depicts source images that are distorted, (intentionally or not), or so small as to make detail almost impossible to make out, allowing for “Artistic license” in their translation.

Three Untitled pieces, each from 2022, each Acrylic on canvas, seen in the windows of Ki Smith Gallery’s East 3rd Street location.

Three prime examples of this are featured hanging in the East 3rd Street Gallery’s windows. In them, the Artist has taken Photos that most of us would throw out or erase. Pictures where either the camera’s technology had its own mind, or the Photographer moved while the shutter was open, blurring the resulting Photo beyond recognition of its subject. The Artist has decided to render these images, as they are, in paint! Thinking back through the history of Painting, Kerry James Marshall’s 7am Sunday Morning, 2003, came to mind. In it, Mr. Marshall has devoted almost half the 120 by 216 inch canvas to depicting the lens flare from his camera pointed at the morning sun. I can’t really think of another instance where an Artist has done this, and certainly not one where the Artist has made it the subject of an entire piece, in this case at least 3 pieces.

Sunstorm II, 2022, Acrylic on panel, Frictions (Variation B), 2022, Acrylic on Panel and Frictions (Variation A), 2022, Acrylic on panel, left to right, seen during a tea party held at the gallery on April 9th.

Back inside, on the far walls, the Artist proceeds to set the world on fire. A series of four Sunstorm Paintings, each dated 2022, and two that appear to be somewhat related, titled Frictions, literally burn up their panels and canvasses. Apparently, they are based on an old, small Photo, which doesn’t lend itself to enlargement, and hence allows the imagination to complete their details.

Sunstorm (Expanded), 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 39 x 49 inches, the largest of the series.

Frankly, I don’t want to know much more about them lest the mystery evaporate. Anchored by the ground, we see the outline of what might be a part of a fence in a few along the bottom, but almost all of the rest of each work consists of a huge ball of flame, ostensibly, given the titles, from a sun looming all too large in the sky.

Sunstorm, 2022, Acrylic on canvas. 11 by 14.5 inches.

This series adds an ominous atmosphere for the first time (that I’ve seen) in her work. Exactly what is going on in these works is a mystery. In the two Sunstorms above the storms appear to be tornadic. What really stands out for me are the multiple layers each Painting features. Multiple Paintings, or part-Paintings, superimposed on the one picture plane. This is a continuation and expansion of the idea the work in her 2019 show presented, and at least one earlier Painting, and again (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) is something I can’t recall seeing in Paintings before. It’s also remarkable that these and so many other pieces on view date from 2022, a year that was exactly 3 months old when they were hung here.

Frictions (Variations A), 2022, Acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches.

Having created further innovations that blur the lines between, and show new possibilities of, the image and the Photograph, Painting, and the relationship between Photography & Painting, I’m left to wonder where Caslon is going to take her work next. It’s still very early in the Artist’s career as she embarks on her 3rd decade of life. Yet, she’s already broken quite a bit of new ground in her work- something very few Artists, of any age, can say.

In 2017, I left her show believing that she was on to something. In 2022, it’s apparent to me that Caslon is now on her way to establishing herself as one of the more interesting Artists working today.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “(You Will) Set the World on Fire,” by David Bowie, from his 2015 album The Next Day.

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.

Highlights of the 2022 Whitney Biennial: Matt Connors

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

There I was, wandering the 5th Floor of the Whitney Museum on my first visit to the 2022 Biennial edition, filled with my usual trepidation, when about 10 minutes in I discovered Matt Connors. I was immediately captivated.

Ahhh…That rarest of rare things: Great Painting on view in the Whitney Biennial. Six works by the amazing Matt Connors line one of two walls given to him on the 5th floor of the Whitney Biennial. After Scriabin (Red), 2020, Untitled, 2021, Body Forth, 2021, I / Fell / Off (After M.S.), 2021, Number Covered, 2021, Fourth Body Study, 2021, left to right.

He was generously given parts of 2 walls and I came away feeling that every one of his works displayed was strong. A feeling I only had one other time on the floor- that for the Paintings on view by Jane Dickson. Ms. Dickson has been working somewhat under the radar of many documenting a time and place in Paintings & Photographs, that no one else has- the Times Square area, before its Disneyfication (which makes it as loathed by locals today as the area was before. No small feat!). When I left, I stopped into the bookstore, as I usually do on my way out, and discovered this huge Matt Connors monograph with the cryptic title, GUI(L)D E. (Hmmmm…If the means the “L” is silent, it becomes GUID E.?) I looked through it to see if my intrigue would grow into more, and I couldn’t put it down. But I had to when they closed.

Body Forth, 2021, Oil and acrylic on canvas

That night, I did some research and discovered that Mr. Connors is not new by any means, but he’s not even in mid-career yet. In fact, his most recent show just closed days before the Biennial opened. Drat! I would have loved to have seen it.
Not only is he not new, he is, apparently, exceptionally prolific. GUI(L)D E is, apparently, part 2 of a retrospective of his work to date, following 2012’s A Bell Is Not A Cup, reprinted in 2016. GUI(L)D E covers his work since in almost 500 pages! His auction prices put him in the “established” category. 30 to 50 grand, or more, for his Paintings were the prices I saw. Even considering what I’m about to say next, my feeling is those prices are likely to hold for the time being. Being so prolific might work against him in this regard. Fewer, of anything, equals more expensive.

Though his work to date is abstract, these two works only hint at Matt Connors’s range. First Fixed, 2021, and How I Made Certain of My Paintings, 2021, left to right. I stood in front of How I Made for quite a while, getting increasingly drawn in to the composition’s unique geometry…

I have seen enough to call Matt Connors one of the “stars” of this Biennial. 

Let’s get lost. About to dig into my copy of Matt Connors GUI(L)D E, published by Karma in 2019, for the first time…

Not being able to get it, or his work off my mind, I went back to the Whitney just to buy GUI(L)D E the following night. After its 464 pages, plus the dozen works I saw the day before, my intrigue solidified into love, as in: “I love his work!” What? So fast? Why? First, I am extremely impressed with his color sense. In my view, Matt Connors is a true master of color. His choices are just gorgeous, rich, ripe, and work together brilliantly (not meant as a pun, but I’ll take it). Proof of this can be found in the Special Edition of GUI(L)D E, which comes with a Limited Edition print that seems to be based on his 2019 Painting Bird Through a Tunnel, or After Scriabin (Red), 2020 (seen in the first image in this piece) in any one of TWENTY-FOUR color ways! I’ve spent hours arguing with myself over which one I like best! Then, his compositions are unique and run the gamut from, apparently, completely free, perhaps improvised, to based on more representational scenarios. Then, there’s the way he manages, and reimagines, shapes. Fond of basic shapes, and multiples of them, “perfect” geometry is not always what he aims for, and that helps to leave his pieces fresh, in my view. His work continually surprises. At times I think he’s another Mondrian, on the next page another Matisse. All the while, he is as prolific as Jasper Johns, and as creative with paint as Paul Klee, as his work shape shifts from one to the next. Though some, many, all, or none, may be influences, he resolutely follows his own sense. In the end, that’s what I admire most, along with there being real variety in his strokes and mark making that is stunning.

Good luck(!) to those “isms” lovers trying to “box” Matt Connors! His work proves the folly in that. Why bother? Just sit back and enjoy looking for a change.

I / Fell / Off (after M.S.), 2021

Though he works in what most would call “abstraction,” his work strikes me as being accessible to virtually anyone. Accessible, perhaps. Understandable is another matter. His work is (almost) fiendishly inventive, leaving the viewer to ponder “what it all means,” while his color sense, which can be breathtaking, is going to seduce many an eye and surprise even those who think they’ve seen every palette an Artist ever invented.

One Wants to Insist Very Strongly, 2020

It’s nice to see Matt Connors, and Jane Dickson (along with what may still lie ahead on the 4th floor, yet unseen), like Jennifer Packer in the 2019 Biennial, holding the Painting flag high in these two Biennials, which have far too much video and installation work for my taste (not meant to disrespect these mediums or the Artists who work in them- I’m forever a Painting guy, who also has a passion for Modern & Contemporary Photography), and way too little Painting and Photography. Painting (especially Painting by Americans) has made a grand resurgence this century, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the past few Biennials. You’d have to go up to the 8th floor to see the landmark Jennifer Packer: The Eye Isn’t Satisfied With Seeing (until April 17th) for living proof of that. And, hey wait- Isn’t Photography now the most popular medium in the world? WHY are there so few Photographers represented, again, at a time when virtually EVERYone is a Photographer? A good number of those I see are doing excellent, even ground-breaking, work.

First Fixed, 2021

A terrific, and large, Biennial could be mounted just from these overlooked American Painters and Photographers. Someone should do one! Message me if you want my suggestions.

As with Jennifer Packer, I’m sorry I missed the boat on Matt Connors’s work when I may have been able to afford it. Those days are likely gone forever. So, I will continue to explore & enjoy his work on the printed page, and just be happy I got a copy of GUI(L)D E before it went out of print and sells for $500.00 per, like the 2012 edition of A Bell Is Not A Cup does.

*-Soundtrack for this post is “Sister I’m a Poet,” by Morrissey from Beethoven Was Deaf and My Early Burglary Years.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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The Sculptural Photography of Vik Muniz

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Detail of Gente Indo, 2021, seen in full further below, just to the right of the middle.

Brazilian Artist Vik Muniz is like the weather. The next time you look, his work will be completely different. A seemingly endless font of creativity, he continually invents new techniques with which to create, and has since he began creating Art in 1987. This fact alone is enough to put him on the list of important Contemporary Artists. His massive 16 1/2 pound, two-volume Catalogue Raisonne shows the Artist creating entire bodies of work in materials as diverse, and as far from the Art-world norm, as chocolate sauce, or ketchup, or jelly, in true Duchampian fashion. However, Mr. Muniz is so prolific his C.R. is already 6 years out of date! A look through it does reveal that the Artist’s process is to invent a technique, create an entire body of work with it, then invent another completely different technique, most likely in completely different materials, and create another body of Art using it. Rinse and repeat, over and over and over, for 35 yers now. Through it all, Photography remains central to his oeuvre. Originally a Sculptor, Mr. Muniz Photographs most of his works, those which are too delicate or ephemeral for display. Along with the extreme creativity in their creation, the other remarkable common thread that runs though his oeuvre is his work is often visually stunning and as a whole, in spite of the variety 0f techniques used, somehow manages to coalesce into one of the most unique bodies of work created since the mid-1980s.

Gente Indo, 2021, Dyptich, Archival inkjet print, 158 1/2 by 57 1/2 inches, One of a kind. Click any Photo for full size.

Needless to say, I had no idea what I was in for this time when I ventured through the doors of Sikkema Jenkins on February 17th, as Mr. Muniz returned with his latest work in a show titled Scraps, that runs through April 9th. His last show, Museum of Ashes, in late 2019, which I wrote about here, included two themes and two equally stunning bodies of work, including one made of its own ashes.

Oklahoma, 2020, Archival inkjet print, 50 1/2 by 71 inches, One of a kind. Good luck trying to count how many pieces make up this amazing recreation, from a media image, of this horrific event.

Detail of the right side seen from an angle.

This time, there is one theme and one body of work on view all sharing a complex process of creation. I’ll let the press release explain- “Muniz’s newest body of work, entitled Scraps, developed from the use of textures in his previous Surfaces series and his interest in mosaic compositions. He begins his collage process by sourcing painted elements from his studio and assembling them into an abstracted mosaic, which is then photographed, printed, and cut up; the cut pieces are arranged and layered to form the new, final photographic image. The physical element of painting is thus subtracted from resulting art object but is evoked visually through the cut prints. These multiple levels of dimensionality effect a dynamic sense of composition, and a sublime tension between part and whole.” I was told that the end piece of Art replicates an original Photo that either he had taken himself, or sourced from the media.

Jakarta, 2021, Archival inkjet print, One of a kind. In this Photo, it looks like a Photo. Standing in front of it, due to all the layers and pieces it’s made up of, it has a depth no 2D Photo can capture, a bit like Sculpture, that comes closer than a Photo does of what it must have felt like to stand there.

In Scraps, his subjects range from the mundane (Gas Station Sink, New Jersey, 2021, below) to the monumental (Oklahoma, 2020, recreating the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing), a number of cityscapes and large crowd scenes, and a stunning over-life sized portrait. I can’t begin to imagine how many individual pieces are in each work, or how long it took to make one. Unlike some of his pieces, the work in Scraps, though infinitely complex and one-of-a-kind, are Photo based and so are stable enough to display. They are mounted in case-like frames that allow three dimensional space for the multiple layers attached to the paper. Each one may be pondered from a distance, or studied in detail as close as one would care to for a different experience, like the work of Chuck Close.

Gas Station Sink, New Jersey, 2021

Scraps also wonderfully combines Painting and Photography in a new way. As seen in the detail from Gas Station Sink, New Jersey, the cut up pieces of Photos that went into this are of Paintings from Mr. Muniz’s studio.

“He begins his collage process by sourcing painted elements from his studio and assembling them into an abstracted mosaic, which is then photographed, printed, and cut up; the cut pieces are arranged and layered to form the new, final photographic image. The physical element of painting is thus subtracted from resulting art object but is evoked visually through the cut prints. These multiple levels of dimensionality effect a dynamic sense of composition, and a sublime tension between part and whole1.”

Detail.

The remarkable thing for me about this technique, and many of his prior inventions, is their way of reinventing the world- everything looks new again, and in Scraps he proceeds to walk us around that world through these new eyes.

Gavea (for Jorge Hue), 2021, Archival inkjet print, One of a kind.

Detail. Here, as in every part of every piece, if you stand to the side, you can see the layering, with, apparently, the same image in each layer. The effect is different from the Cubism of Picasso & Braque, but is still multi-dimensional.

I met Vik Muniz at his 2019 show and spoke with him again at the opening of Scraps. I commented that there was a new kind of cubism going on in this work and he replied that people had been talking about cubism in his work in another recent show.

Vik Muniz discusses Nameless (Woman with Turban) after Alberto Henschel, 2020, Archival inkjet print, 90 by 59 inches, One of a kind. Mr. Muniz was saying how this woman is ubiquitous in Brazil.

What I was referring to was the intriguing layering that is seen in every work on display. Not apparent in pictures of them, which flatten the third dimension, as you stand in front of them, the multi-dimensionality is immediately apparent. It draws you closer and almost forces you to look again from an angle. As for a “new type of cubism,” unlike most work that hangs on a wall, every piece in Scraps has layers that protrude from the surface, or are layered on top of each other giving each part of the piece more or less depth. Moving slightly to the side, back and forth, allows the viewer to look behind the upper most layer(s). There he or she will find something fascinating. Each layer is identical. The effect, up close or at a distance, is sculptural, something I also mentioned to Mr. Muniz. “Sculptural” work that is labelled “Archival inkjet prrints,” that are “One of a kind.” Seeing them for first time I thought their effect akin to a kind of “static cubism,” since there is no sense of movement as there is in Picasso’s cubism, because each underlying piece being identical to the one above, shares the same perspective.

Boy, 2021, Archival inkjet print, 37 by 31 inches. One of a kind. I was told this piece is based oa Photo of Mr. Muniz at age 4.

Vik Muniz has had a long and successful and accomplished career, and is quite well-known, though he is only in mid-career. Still, it seems to me that his is the kind of work that almost any Art lover could take a shine to. I could see Via Muniz becoming an “Art superstar” very easily. Perhaps the only thing holding his work back from a very large level of popularity is that it really needs to be seen in person to appreciate. A large traveling U.S. mid-career retrospective might do the trick. It’s time. 

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “The Secret Life of Plants” by Stevie Wonder from Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants, 1979.

BookMarks-
If you choose to buy from a link below, I will receive a small commission, with my thanks. There are no such links in the body of the piece, above.

Gramacho, 2021, 50 1/2 by 70 1/2 inches, One of a kind. A work based on the Documentary, Waste Land, 2010, which Vik Muniz starred in.

Perhaps the best introduction to Vik Muniz is in the award winning documentary Documentary, Waste Land, 2010, which he starred in. It’s a look at the garbage sifters outside of Rio de Janeiro as Mr. Muniz creates portraits of them and learns about their lives. It’s available to stream or on DVD.

Vik Muniz: Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer, Aperture-The best overview I’ve seen on Mr. Muniz and his Art to 2005. Numerous illustrations, though not many full page images. Still, you get a lot of fascinating information about the creation of the Artist’s amazingly innovative techniques that other books don’t have. Copies of this out of print book trade for very reasonable prices (around $10).

Vik Muniz has released at two Catalogue Raisonnes that I know of, and a third book that calls itself “Incomplete.” Box Vik Muniz: Catalogue Raisonne 1985-2015  is the most current, complete, look at his output. It’s a beautifully produced, huge 16 1/2 pound, two-volumes in a slipcase, set, with countless large Photos of all his work to 2015. It’s a constant treat for the eye. I asked Vik about the fact that it is now 6 years old (published in 2016) and if he planned another one. He said that he was considering doing a Catalogue Raisonne online. So, this may be the last CR in book form. Note- It’s listed as being in Portuguese. The English set is titled Vik Muniz Catalogue Raisonne 1987-2015: Everything So Far (ISBN 978-8589063579). I’d recommend checking with the seller on the language before buying.

The earlier Catalogue Raisonne, Vik Muniz: Obra Complete 1987-2009, is beautiful and only one, large volume, but it only goes to 2009 and is in Portuguese only. Then there is Vik Muniz: Obra Incompleta/Incomplete Works, published in 2004, which is in both English & Portuguese and was published to accompany a retrospective, is also very well done and contains a very well chosen selection of his early work.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

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.

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  1. Scraps, Press release. ↩

Jennifer Packer Arrives

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Art in NYC, 2021, Part 2-

David Hammons, Day’s End, 2021, a permanent installation, which opened in May, 2021 on the Hudson River on the former site of Pier 52, which the great de-constructivist Artist Gordon Matta-Clark once “modified” into a work also called Days End in 1975. Appropriately seen here at day’s end, December 23, 2021.

In spite of everything that happened in 2021, particularly the “return to normal” that wasn’t, there were some extremely good shows up here last year. I’ve written about a number of them- Alice Neel: People Come First, Goya’s Graphic Imagination, Cezanne Drawing, and shows of Tyler Mitchell, John Chamberlain, and some others. Having just featured the monumental NYC half of Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror in Part 1 of this look at Art in NYC, 2021, there was another NoteWorthy show of 2021 going on at the Whitney at the same time.

Of all the shows I saw last year, Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, was the biggest revelation.

Jennifer Packer gets top billing. That might be reflective of the fact her show is on 8 while Jasper Johns is on the 5th floor?, or her name is longer? 7 years later, I still haven’t warmed up to the architecture of the new Whitney, the east end of it seen here from the High Line. But the shows have dramatically improved, in my opinion. That’s the High Line Admin building to the lower foreground, also designed by Renzo Piano, who designed the Whitney.

The Johns and Jennifer Packer shows are a fitting cap to 2021 for the Whitney Museum, which has had a steady string of excellent shows beginning with Vida Americana in 2020 (which I wrote about here) that continued throughout 2021. The stellar Julie Mehretru and overdue Dawoud Bey shows up from spring through the summer, 2021, continued Vida’s momentum, with Jasper Johns and Jennifer Packer now setting the stage for the next Whitney Biennial in the spring. The Whitney also collaborated with Hudson River Park (which lies across the West Side Highway to its west) on legendary Artist David Hammon’s Day’s End, which opened in May, 2021 directly opposite the Museum. A permanent installation right next to the site of a large public park (to the right in the picture up top) currently under construction (where the Department of Sanitation complex was when I looked at the “new” Whitney Museum Building, here, in 2016). It’s something of a major coup in my view, that with the new park when it opens and the Little Island a few blocks away should bring more people to the area and the Whitney. As hard as I was on them during their early years on Gansevoort Street, in spite of everything, the Whitney had a great year in 2021, and they deserve a lot of credit for it.

Flashback- May 25, 2019. Two of the four works by Jennifer Packer in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, each in a different size that ranged from letter size (right), to small mural size.

On October 29th, after my 4th visit to Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror at the Whitney, I headed up to the 8th floor to see the member’s preview of Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing. I had seen 4 of Ms. Packer’s Paintings in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, where they gave me pause. Painting has increasingly become a minor medium in each succeeding Biennial, much to my dismay, and this was true, again, in 2019, so I opted not to write about it, after having written about the 2017 edition. Whereas 2017’s installment was memorable for the marvelous “dialogue” between Henry Taylor, who was already quite established, and Deana Lawson, who was just making her name, it was hard to get a full sense of what Jennifer Packer was about from this selection. I filed her name and the impression. Before that, she had been Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum from 2012-13, with a show there, her work was then shown at Sikkema Jenkins in Breathing Room in 2015 and Quality of Life, 2018, the Renaissance Society in Chicago in 2017 in a show titled Tenderheaded. But, it was the debut of Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing at its first stop at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in May through August, 2021, that began the buzz that’s now taking on a life of its own at the Whitney. Simultaneously, there is Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at MOCA, L.A., her first West Coast show. 

The opening gallery during the early days of the show’s run. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!), 2020, Oil on canvas, 118 by 172 inches, her largest Painting to date.

Still, it turns out I had no idea what I was in for when I stepped off that elevator in late October. An hour and a half later, I left awestruck.

Mourning is a central theme of this stunning, meditative, work, and others in the show. Here, in a work that also includes 3 fans, the 2020 violent death of Breonna Taylor is echoed in this reminder that the mourning continues as does the search for justice. I don’t know if Ms. Packer knew Ms. Taylor or not, but the sense of loss here fits right in with the intimacy of her Portraits of her friends and those she does know.

I can’t remember the last time I was in a show of work by an Artist largely unknown to me that left me with the undeniable feeling that I was in the presence of true greatness.

Fire Next Time, 2012, Oil on canvas, 72 x 156 inches. The presence of fans (2), a recurring motif, doesn’t keep this  remarkable large work from literally burning off the canvas. The stairs offering the only way out for the figure slumped to the left.

I did not writing that last sentence lightly. I’ve spent two months thinking about it and letting the dust begin to settle before writing this piece. I started going to Art shows in 1980. The very first show I saw was the 1980 Picasso Retrospective at MoMA. I was on the road with a band and flew back to NYC, twice, just to see it. I could have stopped looking at Art right then. I’ve never seen anything like it- still. In the intervening 41 years I’ve seen thousands of shows, hundreds each year, and I count 1,700+ visits to The Metropolitan Museum among them. I’ve been thinking back trying to recall having had this feeling before… When I first saw a Sarah Sze show in the 1990s that had a similar effect, though, given the large size of the work, there were only a few pieces in the show. Most of the great shows I’ve seen have been of work by Artists very well known to me. It takes years, decades, for an Artist to create a body of truly great work. Jennifer Packer has managed to put together an extremely impressive, even revolutionary, body of work at at the ripe old age of about 37. It’s even more remarkable to consider that some of the major pieces in this show are 10 years old (Fire Next Time, 2012 or Lost In Translation, 2013), or close to it!

Lost In Translation, 2013, Oil on canvas. One of the most remarkable Paintings I’ve seen in years. One of Ms. Packer’s “trademarks” is the there/not-thereness of her Portrait subjects. Here, in this double Portrait, things get taken to an entirely different level. I under exposed this shot to try to show the gorgeous, subtle, range of tones that are easily lost under bright light.

Revolutionary? How?

In the space of 35 works, Ms. Packer manages to “reinvent,” in a sense, both the Portrait and the Still Life. Portraits have been around for thousands of years, going at least as far back as the Ancient Egyptians. Yet, I can’t recall ever seeing anything like Lost In Translation before. The figures melt into each other in a way that Abstraction overplays and Representational Painting doesn’t attempt. Here, we have something “in between,” leaving it up to the viewers to try and decipher. Well, yes, Picasso managed to reinvent the Portrait any number of times (no comparison of the two Artists is intended). He was about 26 when he Painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907, perhaps the beginning of his continual reinvention of the Portrait (though in a group ). Jennifer Packer was about 27 when she Painted Lost In Translation.

The renowned Painter Jordan Casteel sits in her studio at Yale where Jennifer Painted her in 2014. Jordan, 2014, Oil on canvas, 36 by 48 inches.

More Art in NYC, in 2021. The same Jordan Casteel was commissioned to Paint this Mural, The Baayfalls,  on the High Line. It should be up until March.

She favors friends, loved ones and those in her circle as subjects, so this there/not-thereness of her subjects in her Paintings is partially a way of “protecting” them she has said. This is achieved through a very wide range of mark-making that magically coalesce into images that are remarkable for both their “thereness” and their nebulosity.

Her use of color is another bombshell. When was the last time you saw a Portrait done in red as she does here (in the face not the hoodie)? The Body Has Memory, 2018, Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches, a Portrait of the Artist’s friend Eric N. Mack, a fellow-2019 Whitney Biennal Artist.

The power in her work, for me, lies in her uncanny way of combining opposites- intimacy and nebulosity, presence and absence, color and emptiness, created and enhanced with that extremely wide range of mark making techniques I mentioned that all flow together magically. I haven’t seen anything like her intimacy and nebulosity since Francis Bacon, while other elements, like her settings, echo Kerry James Marshall for me. Jennifer Packer seems to prefer to place her subjects in their surroundings, reminiscent of Mr. Marshall’s marvelous, and intimate, home settings. Her poses have an amazing “comfortable in their own skin”-ness that are a hallmark of Alice Neel’s Portraits. In the end, all of this leaves much for the viewer to ponder for his or herself, and, at least in my case, brings me back again and again to look further.

A wall of her Still Lifes in the third gallery.

How has she revolutionized the Still Life?

Say Her Name, 2017, Oil on canvas. Ms. Packer memorialized Sandra Bland, two years after her death in police custody at age 28.

Those on view at the Whitney are freed from their usual setting in a vase or a bowl on a table. In Jennifer Packer’s, the plants seem to float in thin air. Have you ever seen any like them1? Doing this allows her to control the context. All of a sudden, these pieces are not “about” place. They are about something else. They are about what the Artist has on her mind while she’s Painting them, and that’s what the viewer is left to ponder.

Oh, and to those obsessed with putting Artists in boxes, for reasons that continue to escape me (besides laziness), Good Luck boxing Jennifer Packer in anything besides the Jennifer Packer “box!”

In case you’re wondering, she Draws as uniquely as she Paints.

The Mind Is Its Own Place, 2020, Charcoal and pastel on paper.

The Mind Is Its Own Place strikes me as something of a counterpart to Lost In Translation from seven years before, retaining much of the power of the earlier Painting. Her lines carry much of the weight of the color in her Paintings. The Drawings on view here are every bit as mysterious and nebulous as her Paintings, though in different ways, particularly without the colors. And every bit as stunning, which is no mean feat.

The word is out. The crowds are beginning to show up, the catalog is sold out. December 28, 2021. By the time this show ends in April, I expect there to be a line to see it. And not only because of the virus.

After six visits, two and a half months in as I write this, it astounds me to write that I’m left with the inexorable feeling that we are watching the arrival of an important, major Artist. That’s “major” as in the major Artists who line the galleries of our greatest museums.

Important how?

First, reinventing the Portrait and the Still Life puts her in that discussion. That’s more than a lot of all Painters living or dead have done. Second, as she’s said, “My inclination to paint, especially from life, is a completely political one. We belong here. We deserve to be seen and acknowledged in real time. We deserve to be heard and to be imaged with shameless generosity and accuracy.” Looking at her work, though, one thing that strikes me hard is that in her efforts to imagine “with shameless generosity and accuracy,” many, if not most, of her Portraits have an other world quality that is fresh and haunting. She brings “negative space” into the physical body! Parts of her subject’s bodies are left blank in a different way they are in Egon Schiele’s work, or anyone else’s. It’s almost like she doesn’t want to reveal, or share, too much of the sitter, who are often those close to her. For me, at least, that feels endearing and heightens their intimacy. Those are the qualities I respond to. She accomplishes this using an extremely wide range of mark making. Not since so-called Abstract Expressionism have I seen a Painter who is so free in her technique, but it always just works. It always looks “right.” When I look at her Portraits, they  look to me exactly like what it really is- A sitter who might have been there (i.e. sitting in front of Ms. Packer) once. A temporary state. “It’s not figures, not bodies, but humans I am painting,” she said.

Equally astounding for me is to say that, all of one show in, Jennifer Packer’s name is at the top of my list of important Painters to arrive in the 21st century. Yes, I know. I’m the guy who doesn’t believe “best” exists in the Arts. It doesn’t. Let’s just say that if the conversation turned to “Who are the important Painters to arrive in the 21st century?” She’d be the first one I’d name. It’s a symptom of how much her work is on my mind.

Besides, someone has to be first. ; )

BookMarks-

Going…going…gone….

The catalog accompanying the London & Whitney installations of Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing: Serpentine Gallery, London is exceptionally well-done. One of the most beautiful Painting books I’ve seen, it carries over Ms. Packer’s unique color sense to varying colored paper for the text sections. It was easily one of my NoteWorthy Art Books of 2021 among most highly recommended Art Books I saw last year. If you buy it from the link in the book title in this paragraph (only), NHNYC will receive a small commission, with my thanks. 

*Soundtrack for this Post is “Hidden Place” by Björk, the first track on her album Verpertine, 2001, performed here (at 23:04) in 2001 in her extraordinary concert at Riverside Church.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & 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 allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! 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. There have been isolated instances, like Fantin-Latour’s White Lilies, 1877, but I have not seen a body of them, and certainly not with Mr. Packer’s intent. ↩