I ♥ American Art
Just in time for America’s 230th birthday (as well as its own 75th), the Whitney throws a summer-long birthday party in the form of a museum-wide installation of work from their permanent collection (in an exhibition titled "Full House"). When my good friend, the painter Gary Petersen, invited me along to the opening Wednesday, despite a very long day, I knew I'd be sorry if I didn't accept and go. I was so happy I did. The show is a total delight, with more than a few surprises, and a generous opportunity to revisit some favorites, connect some dots, and come to some satisfying conclusions about American Art in general, as well as what it reflects about America itself.
In the Times today, Holland Cotter offers a thorough and thoughtful review of the exhibition, and notes
Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930, Oil on canvas, 35" x 60", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
I have more personal reasons than aesthetic or conceptual reasons for loving this painting, but it set the tone and got my mind racing like that of child on Christmas Eve about what lay ahead.
The entire 5th floor is devoted to Hopper, the artist most identified with the Whitney according to wall text. You do walk away from it a bit less sure he wasn't simply a very talented illustrator not interested in the challenging revolution painting was undergoing in his day (he had spent time in Paris during the tumultous turn of the last Century and managed to emerge apparently untouched by the ideas flourishing there). But limited to one, I'd take Early Sunday Morning over most other American paintings any day.
The fourth floor covers Minimalism, and it's a remarkably handsome installation. We spoke with the exhibition's lead curator Donna De Salvo about the installation at the opening, and she pointed out that they symbollically opened up (uncovered) every window in the museum for the show. The 4th floor installation feels remarkably open and allows some larger pieces to have a dialog with smaller ones in a way most installations wouldn't achieve. Minimalism is getting is share of criticism these days (it's fashionable to reject it as fraudulent), but I loved this floor all the same.
The real treat for me though was the third floor, whose installation is subtitled "The Pure Products of America Go Crazy." With works as disparate as those by Stuart Davis and Andy Warhol, this floor is more than a candy store, it's virtually Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. This floor illustrates the point at which American artists began to turn their attention outward (as opposed to how the Ab Exer's had turned it inward) to deal with the reality of the world around them (and truly examine the discord Holland Cotter highlights). The argument seems to have been that life in America wasn't really some noble narrative full of heroes and ideals, it was, as rock star Bono once noted "The best of everything and the worst of everything." In order to capture that dichotomy truthfully, American fine artists began blurring the lines between high and low culture, and, as Arthur Danto argued, managed to bring Art History to an unceremonious end.
So why with that depressing baggage did I love this floor so much? I'll explain with an anecdote: There's a lesson about art I learned from the dealer I consider my first mentor that I'll never forget. When a client asked him why a rather pricey Diebenkorn etching was so special, he responded quite emphatically "Just look at it!" Indeed. That's all there is really. Walking around the third floor at the Whitney, that's all one needs to do to be enthralled...just look at the work. It's exhilarating.
On the second floor are the works that finally enabled New York to steal the title of World's Art Capital away from Paris, those of the Abstract Expressionists. As on the 4th and 3rd floors, there's a blend of art not quite defined by the central theme installed throughout, making for some eye-opening juxtapositions, like the Joan Mitchell sandwiched between a Pollock and a deKooning.
Adrian Piper, Out of the Corner, 1990, mixed media, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
It was about this time in our tour however that the museum was closing down, so we didn't get to see the Calder on the first floor or spend anywhere near enough time taking it all in. But we have all summer to return and there's so much more to see and learn there. The hard-hitting Adrian Piper installation (see above), for example, took my breath away, and it was a bit overwhelming to see the Mark Lombardi piece in this context...I can recall meeting Mark at his first exhibition of that work at Pierogi as if it were yesterday...and now here it was, part of the canon...part of American history.
Have a safe and fun-filled weekend folks...and Happy 4th!
In the Times today, Holland Cotter offers a thorough and thoughtful review of the exhibition, and notes
The work is mostly arranged by loose theme rather than date, an approach I like. It enlivens objects by setting them in unexpected, often energizing company. And it points up the basic arbitrariness of orthodox art history and critical opinion. An unfamiliar little piece off to the side is revealed to be every bit as interesting as a celebrated big piece in the center of the room.Gary and I had left ourselves only a short period to see the whole show, so we unfortunately had to rush through it a bit, but each time we emerged on a floor I felt a rush, like the proverbial kid stepping into a candy shop. There, right outside the elevator, on the fifth floor hung my sentimental favorite American painting of all time:
The important thing the show does, though, is deliver the story — a story — of American culture through art. It is a culture of staggering contradictions: idealism and amnesia, censure and unruled pleasure. It is diverse and narrow-souled, with a devotion to the idea of power so ingrained as to make discord inevitable and chronic. If "Full House" is about one thing, it is about discord. It is about how harmonious America never was.
Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930, Oil on canvas, 35" x 60", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
I have more personal reasons than aesthetic or conceptual reasons for loving this painting, but it set the tone and got my mind racing like that of child on Christmas Eve about what lay ahead.
The entire 5th floor is devoted to Hopper, the artist most identified with the Whitney according to wall text. You do walk away from it a bit less sure he wasn't simply a very talented illustrator not interested in the challenging revolution painting was undergoing in his day (he had spent time in Paris during the tumultous turn of the last Century and managed to emerge apparently untouched by the ideas flourishing there). But limited to one, I'd take Early Sunday Morning over most other American paintings any day.
The fourth floor covers Minimalism, and it's a remarkably handsome installation. We spoke with the exhibition's lead curator Donna De Salvo about the installation at the opening, and she pointed out that they symbollically opened up (uncovered) every window in the museum for the show. The 4th floor installation feels remarkably open and allows some larger pieces to have a dialog with smaller ones in a way most installations wouldn't achieve. Minimalism is getting is share of criticism these days (it's fashionable to reject it as fraudulent), but I loved this floor all the same.
The real treat for me though was the third floor, whose installation is subtitled "The Pure Products of America Go Crazy." With works as disparate as those by Stuart Davis and Andy Warhol, this floor is more than a candy store, it's virtually Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. This floor illustrates the point at which American artists began to turn their attention outward (as opposed to how the Ab Exer's had turned it inward) to deal with the reality of the world around them (and truly examine the discord Holland Cotter highlights). The argument seems to have been that life in America wasn't really some noble narrative full of heroes and ideals, it was, as rock star Bono once noted "The best of everything and the worst of everything." In order to capture that dichotomy truthfully, American fine artists began blurring the lines between high and low culture, and, as Arthur Danto argued, managed to bring Art History to an unceremonious end.
So why with that depressing baggage did I love this floor so much? I'll explain with an anecdote: There's a lesson about art I learned from the dealer I consider my first mentor that I'll never forget. When a client asked him why a rather pricey Diebenkorn etching was so special, he responded quite emphatically "Just look at it!" Indeed. That's all there is really. Walking around the third floor at the Whitney, that's all one needs to do to be enthralled...just look at the work. It's exhilarating.
On the second floor are the works that finally enabled New York to steal the title of World's Art Capital away from Paris, those of the Abstract Expressionists. As on the 4th and 3rd floors, there's a blend of art not quite defined by the central theme installed throughout, making for some eye-opening juxtapositions, like the Joan Mitchell sandwiched between a Pollock and a deKooning.
Adrian Piper, Out of the Corner, 1990, mixed media, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
It was about this time in our tour however that the museum was closing down, so we didn't get to see the Calder on the first floor or spend anywhere near enough time taking it all in. But we have all summer to return and there's so much more to see and learn there. The hard-hitting Adrian Piper installation (see above), for example, took my breath away, and it was a bit overwhelming to see the Mark Lombardi piece in this context...I can recall meeting Mark at his first exhibition of that work at Pierogi as if it were yesterday...and now here it was, part of the canon...part of American history.
Have a safe and fun-filled weekend folks...and Happy 4th!
posted by Edward_ at
7:35 AM
19 Comments:
Like OK, I miss NY.
Ooooh Hoppers, a whole floor of them.
I'm there.
'a talented illustrator'?
Only a master painter could evoke the intense feelings that Hopper does.
Only a master painter could evoke the intense feelings that Hopper does
I feel disloyal for mentioning it, but I'm just being honest.
Cotter was more direct about it
Like most effective graphic design, his pictures grab the eye, spark an emotion and get into your system, all in a flash. But too often the first look is the best look, and the first emotion — with Hopper, a rush of generalized nostalgia, a soft-centered melancholy — the only one. It's an experience; it's not nothing. I just wish it were more.
"You do walk away from it a bit less sure he wasn't simply a very talented illustrator not interested in the challenging revolution painting was undergoing in his day.... But limited to one, I'd take Early Sunday Morning over most other American paintings any day."
This kind of schism is always interesting to me--Edward, you love Hopper but don't respect him! Is a love of Hopper evidence that art can be great without intelligence and a connection to contemporary thought?
" 'Just look at it!' Indeed. That's all there is really."
This thought is a well-taken corrective, but I'm almost sure you don't mean that's all there is. This eye-brain fissure in art could be where the action is!
This kind of schism is always interesting to me--Edward, you love Hopper but don't respect him! Is a love of Hopper evidence that art can be great without intelligence and a connection to contemporary thought?
Maybe not "great," but certainly compelling and desirable, yes. I have several pieces in my collection that I love that are not connected to contemporary thought. Usually, though, they hold sentimental value that transcends what I'm looking for in conceptually interesting work (i.e., I wouldn't expect anyone else to care about them the way I do).
This eye-brain fissure in art could be where the action is!
It's certainly ripe for exploration. I'd say go for it.
There aren't that many American artists whose work hits me full stop, but Hopper is one of my own sentimental favourites of any nation/era. Would love to see this.
I've been thinking. Doesn't Hopper deserve some intellectual credit for reavealing something new in his painting? John Sloan looks a little like Hopper, but the feeling he evokes is new and unique.
Okay, to foil my own argument: Isn't finding new territory, both physically and in feeling, the task of any realist painter? And, as such, not really a great innovation because the intellectual framework never changes? This is also the problem of much photography, which, dependent as it is on subject matter in the real world, is simply a series of variations in subject matter nestled in a basically conservative formal framework. I guess realism of all sorts is conservative BECAUSE it is tied to actual things, because it prefers observation over imagination, and because, perhaps, its practitioners are the kinds of no-nonsense people drawn to physicality and materialism and usually described as down to earth.
Okay, then why is photography that is as intellectually stunted as Hopper--and holds to basically the same conservative realist strategy--so credible to a wide range of sophisticated viewers and institutions right now?
Sorry for the long wind here, but writing is learning and I'm a little dim...
I just saw the Hockney show at LACMA and came away with the same questions. Has the century of exhortation toward abstraction caused us to question realism?
A local art writer, Shana Nys Dambrot, summed it up pretty neatly: past art tried to find the meaning in form; modernism on has tried to find the form of meaning. Not so much about description any more but about explication. In this sense I think Hopper is more current than Hockney - whenever I look at Hopper I understand the isolation and despair which underlies the Great Depression and poverty in general. His work is more sociological than description of exteriors. We, like his view point, are always on the outside envying as much as observing.
What a treat to read your thoughts and emotions surrounding this show. It sounds fantastic and I am considering visiting the Whitney after reading your thoughts.
I think sentiment especially EMOTION are the most valuable things about art. In fact, I believe emotions have been undervalued and recommend Martha Nussbaums take on human survival and emotions. Her book is called Upheaval of Thought.
Reason(often tarted up as intelectualism) always gets the front cover but emotion is the meat.
I like the reference "just look at it" and fits in with: ...why buy a piece of art? Because you love it.
Have a great weekend back at ya,
Candy
http://gnosticminx.blogspot.com/
Sounds like the perfect show to follow this years Biennial.
Edward_, do you know who curated this one? It sounds like an interesting dialogue: America on the cusp of a new period vs. what America was through the 20th century.
a very talented illustrator not interested in the challenging revolution painting was undergoing in his day (he had spent time in Paris during the tumultous turn of the last Century and managed to emerge apparently untouched by the ideas flourishing there).
I have several pieces in my collection that I love that are not connected to contemporary thought.
Hopefully not all contemporary thinkers are expected to be thinking about the same things. Seems like a perfectly valid decision to take a look at a revolution in ideas and choose to remain on the path you're on.
I denfinitely don't believe in the primacy of emotion, but I think all visual art has to elicit some kind of primitive-brain response, if only as the price of admission. The most conceptual art product in the world still needs to be aesthetically interesting in some oblique way or another.
ML thinks Hopper's contribution is sociological, and, thus, conceptual. (Just not in step with anyone else.) Anyone agree? Or is this just a case of justifying affection for a sentimental favorite?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Just humor: let is be known
It only makes sense, to me, that the ‘primacy of emotion’ is a fine intellect, and a fantastic machine.
Outbursts are certainly real, and part of nature.
Nature outbursts [itself] when things are indeed in need of change.
Change is legitimate and natural.
Change often shows light at the onset of a wild fury, or through to the end of a dark and full night.
An outburst ‘for any of us who have had them; and as a test to this, to mark yes or no’, is it, when the ‘particular’ becomes blurred [the intellect stacked up by so many plates on top of each other that the emotion can’t mange any more, shot high on disequilibrium] ignites--the irresolvable number and overwhelming discrepancies; an incongruence squeezes like toothpaste grows like a feast-- particulars of sensation lost to some gooey float on top bristles....creams?
Or just a bad squeeze?
Back time ago a seaman knew change by being on track, and at the deck. A cabin rider, in the heady days of cruising, usually was unaware of forthcoming change because their cabin was built to resist change. It was build for comfort. Kind of ‘The Love Boat’.
This time now a seaman predicts change from their cabin portal build to sense with greater accuracy the possibility of change before it reaches devastation, or, even, yes, harmony. Yes machines are sensors. They were built by us. They register emotion, and in turn buy emotion. They are our emotions built into machines.
For some reason, Baldessari comes to mind - his throwing balls into air. Hopper looks like was significantly defined by his physical environment. Obviously, real estate was so important in America of his time. The artists of 1960s and 70s then seem to have got very much bored by that.
Hopper could benefit from a new context. its great that so much of his work is together now in one spot. but why should it be isolated from the context of history? it perpetuates the idea that he was an artist working on a separate nostalgic and sentimental aesthetic. i would love to see his work in the same room as de kooning and pollock who were, of course, producing paintings at the same time. or how about redon, or balthus, or dali? the history of art is not so linear and compartmentalized as it is often presented.
if Hopper went to Paris in 1906, what would he have seen that would have informed his work? we know that he was interested in impressionism, read Baudelaire, and was generally unimpressed with contemporary painting. assuming that 'realism' was an important part of recent french history at the time, why not view Hopper in relation to Manet?
it is time to stop considering Hopper a guilty pleasure.
>> bnonymous said...
...I think all visual art has to elicit some kind of primitive-brain response,... The most conceptual art product in the world still needs to be aesthetically interesting in some oblique way or another.
I fully agree with your excellent statement of that law of the art. But then, Piper's Out of the Corner above seems to broke that law? The concept (of coming out of the corner) is highly original and fully justifies the work. But does the elements that he use, or their composition a primitive-brain aesthetic? And does it really need one, if the concept is so interesting one?
Thank you for your review of the show. It's very interesting and informative. If I were in New York, I'd def. visit it.
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