Tyler Green Modern Art Notes

I read a story about an artist yesterday. It was a great and emotive story, the kind of story that made me want to… well… puke up enough bile to rival the vomit of a thousand corpulent Jabbas the Hut. (See Blake? I can do that too!) OK, OK, that might not be quite fair. It was worse than that.

The story was in the October Vogue magazine. It was about Elizabeth Peyton.

In this story, we learn that Peyton is sweetly stupid and that writer Dodie Kazanjian is way impressed with this. (“I ask her how it feels to have her painting become so widely accepted.”) Oh, and we learn that Peyton wears a lot of Marc Jacobs clothes and that she has “an understated but stylish nonstyle.” Which, if you read Vogue a lot, probably means something.

But as silly as Dodie’s text is, it simply can’t rival Peyton’s silliness, nearly all of which is excitedly embraced by an apparently breathless Dodie. “I made some paintings of [Abraham Lincoln] the other day,” Peyton tells Dodie. “I discovered he looks a lot like Cameron Diaz.”

Right after swallowing this, Kazanjian tells us that Peyton is smart. “It turns out that what Peyton does isn’t as limited or as ‘light’ as people used to think.”

(Used to think?)

And, to be fair, Peyton probably is not a total doofus. How do I know this? Because everyone Kazanjian talks to for her story comes out sounding like a total moron (one exception: Gary Garrels). They can’t all be morons, can they? Can they?

“[Peyton's] pictures have a freshness that really speaks of this moment,” [Carnegie Museum curator] Laura Hoptman told Kazanjian. “The ambition is very large but the scope is very small. She is doing the universe on the head of a pin.”  

Uh, yeah. OK, well, moving right along…

Kazanjian, who once wrote a book called Dodie Goes Shopping, makes mistakes that prove she doesn’t know about what she’s talking. “Peyton’s work, with its straight-from-the-tube chromatic richness, makes a compelling argument for the validity of paint on canvas,” Dodie writes. Paint on canvas needs to be validated?  One other thing Dodie: Peyton does not paint on canvas. She paints on board.

Another surefire way to tell that someone writing about art is stuck is that they quote an artist’s dealer. And Kazanjian’s quote from Gavin Brown, Peyton’s dealer, is a doozy: “Here was a voice that was so clear and had so little to do with the pointless dialogue in the New York art world,” Brown tells Kazanjian. But that’s not enough. Dodie then flips the canvas (or board, or whatever) and quotes Peyton on her dealer! Thus, Peyton unwittingly contributed to what might be the most pointless paragraph in the history of American magazines. Peyton on Brown: “He gave me such hope that it was possible for me to be an artist.”

And you thought I was kidding about puking up bile. (How come no one ever quotes Andrea Rosen on John Currin? Now that would be fun!)

Oh but it gets worse! Marc Jacobs, who owns a lot of Peyton, contributes: “It’s women like Elizabeth who inspire me, women who are alive today and play a creative role in the world. Especially women who are alive, creative, and have lots of disposable income.” (Confession: I added that last part. I’m so ashamed.)

After Jacobs, Peyton is back with a masturbatory grope, this time when talking about a self-portrait she made (for Vogue!): “I suppose I was just looking at myself with a lot of respect and love.”

Which I believe. Because earlier in the story, Peyton offered up this gem: “I often think how transcendent it is that I love the Beatles and you love the Beatles. That can collapse a lot of barriers.”

Yes, like my esophagus.

Related: Todd Gibson disagrees.

Many weeks ago (on Nov. 7) we told you that the Gardner in Boston was expanding and that they were hiring Renzo Piano. The Boston Globe has finally picked up the story.

It’s Art Basel Miami Beach week — and not a moment too soon. Most of the season’s shows are open and most of the season’s reviews have been written. Sure, there’s still a bastard opening or two coming up (LACMA’s Beyond Geometry travels to the Miami Art Museum, Dan Cameron’s East Village USA show opens in 10 days at the New Museum), but December is mostly a month when art writers stretch a bit, when we look for something to write other than reviews. Or at least I do. (And apparently Roberta does too. And LA Weekly tells us everything we wanted to know about Poe and Blum, but didn’t want to fly to City, Culver to ask.)

So ABMB is perfect for that. Plus we all get to drink a bit, socialize a bit, and just generally relax. (Franklin thinks we should drink less and look at the art. I think that after seeing a trillion c-prints, I need an abundance of vodka to stop my eyes from seeing things in chromogenic color.)

Here’s MAN’s Official ABMB Tip: Forget the big parties, forget getting into what someone tells you is The Big Thing of the Night. The paradoxical ABMB rule is this: The biggest stuff is the worst stuff. Avoid the crowds. (Note: This does not mean “Go to NADA.” Because we still haven’t figured out where the NADA fair is. We hear it might be in Tampa. Another source tells us that it’s closer to Orlando. Our best advice is follow the trail of glue and glitter. And we can’t explain why the link to their 2004 fair says ‘2003.’ Well, actually we can: It’s NADA!)

And for good measure: Official Tip No. 2: See Beyond Geometry at the Miami Art Museum. You’ll walk out feeling stupid and excited.

… except for Sam Keller’s SPF preference.

Late last week I did a DC two-fer for Bloomberg. Here’s an excerpt from the Calder Miro portion (the other half was about Gerard ter Borch @ the NGA):

If you loved “Matisse Picasso” at MoMA QNS in 2003, you’ll like “Calder Miro,” on view now at The Phillips Collection. While Alexander Calder and Joan Miro weren’t quite 20th-century titans in the way Matisse and Picasso were, the premise of the show is similar: Two leading artists of their day played the same riffs. Calder makes art about circuses, so does Miro. Calder explores abstraction, so does Miro. Curated by Elizabeth Hutton Turner of The Phillips Collection and Oliver Wick, guest curator at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, “Calder Miro’” is art history made lyrical.

The show’s installation in The Phillips Collection’s newly re-opened annex galleries is especially noteworthy: Lots of museums install Calder (1898-1976) well and lots of museums make Miro (1893-1983) look good. But the Phillips deserves special credit for making them flow into each other so well to demonstrate how a sculptor and a painter approach the same themes and challenges.

The first Miro painting in the exhibit is the 1927 “Painting (Circus Horse)” an abstract allusion to a horse made up of a white blob, a white ‘V,’ and a few yellow and red splotches on a ruddy background. At first glance, I didn’t see a circus horse. Then I looked around the room and saw two delicate Calder wire sculptures of circus performers, “Arching Man,” (1929) an acrobat bending over backwards, and an acrobat standing on a strong man’s arm, “Two Acrobats” (ca. 1928). The circus theme clear, I could see the horse in the Miro.

While there are often thematic constants within galleries, I enjoyed thinking about the show in terms of balance. The magic in Calder’s mobiles and in so much of his other work is in the way that they hover gently, balanced perfectly on nothing but air.

Even though he worked in two dimensions, not three, Miro explored the same idea. His abstract compositions have the same presence on canvas that Calder’s do in the air. Overlapping planes of color, biomorphic shapes and other painted elements achieve a balance of form not so different from the balance of color and space that Matisse achieved.

The Corcoran is bowing to government pressure again? I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Feeling a little MoMA-exhausted (BTW, I’ve updated the print reviews list), a friend of mine and I tracked down a weekend e-saver to Buffalo and Toronto for the weekend. As crazy as this sounds, well, it’s probably as crazy as it sounds. The highlights:

The Albright-Knox, In Focus: Themes in Photography: Permanent collection shows are huge in the last year or two. (See the Gugg, the Whitney, the Hirshhorn, MOCA, and on and on) This one, of photography in the A-K’s collection, is awfully darn good.

Chelsea-ites will well-remember Jennifer Steinkamp’s Dervish from her last show at Lehmann Maupin. (Check out that link — it’s QuickTime video from LM.) It was one of the best gallery shows I saw this year. The A-K bought it, and it’s on view now. Dervish features an animated tree, projected on to a wall. It swings, it sways, it breathes, it’s a ballet.

The A-K wasn’t crowded on Saturday but there were a few people around. Two of them were a young woman and her mentally disabled elderly mother. They weren’t exactly moving through the museum quietly — the mother was raising a pretty good racket, but there wasn’t a whole lot anyone could say, of course. Eventually, they got to the Steinkamp room.

They walked in pretty loudly, the mother complaining that her daughter had kicked her. But when she sat down and started watching Dervish, she turned silent. Almost immediately she began breathing in rhythm with the piece, picking up more quickly than I had that the tree’s swinging movements were just about in time with slow (human) breathing. After leaving Dervish, the woman and her daughter continued to walk through the galleries. No more rackets.

The other highlight of the exhibit was a gallery of 14 of Cathy Opie’s surfers-in-the-water photos. I’ve seen these photos in Opie’s studio and in two galleries. In the A-K’s old, long, narrow galleries, they looked transcendent, their color reminiscent of the glaze on old Asian ceramics.

University of Buffalo Art Gallery, Shutters: Let’s see, the home university of the FBI’s favorite artist, Steve Kurtz doing a show about surveillance… yup, that fits. The strongest work was by Philly artist James Johnson, discussed here by MANpal Roberta Fallon, and by Niels Bonde, who finds childish fun in surveillance cameras.

Art Gallery of Ontario, Modigliani: When I saw this show at the Jewish Museum, I thought it was about a C-minus. But at the AGO it has room to breathe, a few paintings have been added and all in all it’s a much more pleasant show, even quite a good one. Still, a Modigliani retro sans sculpture? Hmmm.

Dear Ned Rifkin, Smithsonian Undersecretary for Art:This work should be shown in Washington, ASAP.

And as in the old building, MoMA doesn’t know what to do with artists who made fine work but don’t fit within the Official MoMA Timeline of Art. In this installation these bastard step-children are relegated to hallways, elevator landings and other awkward spaces. Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Stuart Davis, and Gerald Murphy are all banished from the narrative galleries.

Most of the galleries feed into other galleries, following a u-shaped footprint on their floor. On the fifth floor only one gallery leads to a dead end – the gallery of Italian futurists. Seems about right.

Clearly MoMA has institutional favorites. Alex Katz paints vacuity with aplumb, and MoMA has deemed him worthy of two entries. So too Andreas Gursky, whose primary artistic talent lies in making the mundane massive.

Here’s hoping that hanging Matisses in staircases, a la the Barnes, does not become the norm.

I keep reading that the new MoMA starts with Paul Signac. Except it really doesn’t — there are half a dozen Cezannes paintings on the left and right walls of the first gallery before you get to the Signac, which faces the gallery entrance.

More throughout the week… but for now, check out Ionarts’ remarkable accumulation of Euro coverage of MoMA. Later today I’ll have some thoughts from Buffalo and Toronto.

This will probably be my last MoMA re-opens post. Jerry Saltz’ three-part review is up on Artnet — and much more navigable/visual than the VV postings.

Favorite installation juxtaposition: Matisse’s sculpture, The Serf (1900-04), and painting, Male Model (1900), facing down Picasso’s Les Demoiselles (1906).

Second-favorite installation juxtaposition: Two Bonnards facing four Picassos. Picasso hated Bonnard. John Elderfield (who curated a Bonnard retro) must have enjoyed a laugh about this one.

Noted ommissions: Vuillard, Modigliani (perhaps the portrait in the retro now at the AGO will be added?), Morandi, Lari Pittman, Carleton Watkins, Charles Demuth, Wayne Thiebaud, Shirin Neshat, Joe Deal, Bill Viola.

Unfortunate inclusions: Tom Wesselmann, Howard Hodgkin, Kenneth Noland, Jim Dine, Romare Bearden, Walter DeMaria, Christopher Wool.

Best inclusions: Anne Truitt, Jacob Lawrence, Toba Khedoori, David Hammons.

Fix that!: Throughout the museum the drywall is pretty shoddy. The worst is where Flavin’s Pink Out of a Corner – To Jasper Johns reveals the drywall to be wavier than a lasagna noodle.

Best indication that MoMA curators have a travel budget: Lygia Clark and Joaquin Torres-Garcia, both 2004 purchases. Methinks MoMA saw LACMA’s Beyond Geometry and MFAH’s Inverted Utopias.

Too much!: Gursky (2), Katz (2).

The Bastards in the Hallways: Hirst, Davis, S., O’Keeffe, Murphy, G., Guston, Baselitz, Orozco, Artschwager, Katz, Puryear.