23 January – 21 March

This expert survey of Jörg Immendorff’s career reassesses an artist whose period of notoriety in America lasted a relatively short time in the 1980’s. This was partly a matter of mistaken identity – he was too closely linked with the neo-expressionist and new image (?) bandwagon prevalent at the time. His connection to direct contemporaries who gained mega-celebrity status, Anselm Keifer and Gerhardt Richter, is also shown to be partly incidental. From this exhibition, Immendorff emerges more fully as an original artist of great complexity. This reevaluation also makes distinctions that remove him from convenient generalizations made about the “postmodern” Eighties, the Trans-Avant-Garde, and art generally, and it illustrates thoroughly the conceptual nature of his work.

Born in 1945, Immendorff was of the generation that experienced post-war disillusionment that politicized every waking moment. As a student in the 1960s, he faced the task of examining Germany’s tragic history and its fraught relationship with modernity. This forced him to devise a balancing act between eras.

Immendorff subsequently takes on the multiple roles of jester, storyteller and historian. He actively participates in a self-conscious continuum of twentieth-century German art while simultaneously throwing stones at the powers that be. After running the full gamut of conceptual work á la fluxus, his adoption of painting appears as a sort of purposeful and elaborate bluff. Although this suits his needs, it makes the connection to Ludwig Kirchner and the original German expressionist group die Brücke seem almost superfluous. What comes to the fore instead is a weaving together of political, social and personal myth making. It is the content that matters most, putting him more in line with the social, satirical and metaphorical intents of George Grosz and Max Beckmann respectively.

Immendorf’s early work from the sixties tells of the political upheavals of his days under the mentorship of Joseph Beuys. At that time, with the strong fluxus influence, there existed all sorts of manifestos, sloganizing and politicized minimal art. A petition to end the Vietnam war from 1965 (signed by Beuys and others) serves as a defining historic document here. This section of the show also conveys how Immendorff’s later shift to painting, in all it’s conventionality, is not so much an “about face” as it is a specific strategy-he goes on to combine his well-learned conceptual precepts and his inherent politics with his painterly methods.

The large “Café Deutschland” paintings (1978-83) feign expressionist representation and zeal and move towards a system of complex metaphor which is in some way novel. Although illustrative, viewing these so-called Picabian “bad paintings” is merely the first step one takes in deciphering their meanings. They must be read as “multiple texts” not just formally as paintings. The bars with wooden floors serve as meeting places of mythic characters where the artist and converses with Mao, Marx, Stalin, Beuys and Brecht. Whether conspicuously or not, Immendorff avidly adopts the mantle of Beuys and with it, the ability to fabricate and mix myths with facts.

Beuys’s image appears continuously in Immendorf’s work. A small painting, “Gertrude Stein,” includes a depiction of Beuys piloting his Stuka dive bomber with “Fluxus” written (in typical Immendorff fashion) across the wings. In the large painting, Sun Gate, a diagrammatical outline of his teacher becomes a Beuys’s museum.

Eventually, Beuys turns up in Immendorf’s theatrical productions of the 1990s. As the paintings progress, Immendorff both pays homage and mocks, cycling his own personal myths, those of East and West and those peculiar to the art world. This process reaches a natural culmination when Immendorff uses theater — for which he was originally trained — as his canvas. Immendorf’s video production of Stravinsky’s opera Rake’s Progress is ingenuously used as an unlikely channel for German art and society. Key figures appear-Beuys, Penke and Lüpertz -all playing different historical figures in the play. The artist Baselitz plays the Keeper of the Insane Asylum, while Lüpertz becomes Mick Shadow, Rakewell’s alter ego. With Immendorff as Tom Rakewell, one can see a fantastic interweaving of past and present, a confluence of Germanic art historical reference brought to life. Immendorf’s use of Hogarth’s morality tale shows his strange affinity with the English caricaturist and reinforces where Immendorff’s interests lie: in promoting an open-ended dialogue on culture. The fall of the Berlin Wall, so long at the center of his rationale, may have been the reason he went looking for alternative fertile ground to further extend his content and may partially explain his disappearance after his 1980s heyday.

Immendorff promulgates a watertight tautology that runs progressively through his ideas and delivery. His questions about the purpose of art and the conceptualization of the artist’s role are answered by the work itself and indeed, in retrospect, by Immendorff’s own life. His question, “What Can Art Do?” resonates particularly well now as art continues to develop an apolitical global/corporate mind set. This superbly researched show qualifies his unique contribution to art and ensures his enduring legacy.

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As the first in a projected series at the Woodmere Art Museum, the Triennial of Contemporary Photography is not only an attempt to showcase the diverse currents in photography in the Delaware Valley, but also a purposeful bid to update the museum. Due to a positive change in their financial circumstances, and with an impressive wing designed by Venturi, Scott-Brown soon to begin construction, the Triennial signals a new direction at the Woodmere. Spearheaded by Curator of Collections, Douglass Paschall, it is a sign that the museum wants to change it’s spots in the new century.

The 7 photographers chosen for this invitational were selected from an original pool of 150 and the quality is high. Adding to an already loose thematic, the museum presented by way of historical preface “The Legacy of Philadelphia Photography” as a mini-show in the foyer. This included rare and remarkable photographs from the Woodmere’s collection with some by Eakins and Muybridge. A gorgeous history lesson, the show was something of a distraction to a triennial already pushing the boundaries in its eclecticism.

Several generations of photographers were presented in a way that pitted an old guard against newcomers with a major gap in-between. In fact, the show runs the gamut from modernist work through American journalistic tradition to the contemporary. Larry Fink presents confident journalistic style and his paparazzi-like shot of George Plimpton sitting glum-faced at a table of party people is carefully placed to form the centerpiece in his section of the show. Ray K. Metzker follows in the footsteps of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans; his carefully captured plays of light are mostly street scenes from 1962 and they are delicate, meticulous and a perfect combination of craft and moodiness. Fink and Metzker form the backbone of the show and are worth seeing in their own right but they bring nothing “contemporary” to the table. Indeed, can pictures from 1962 really classify as contemporary?

Leif Skoogfor’s photojournalism from the early seventies is strong work in the Magnum tradition but it is not contemporary either. The great leap across generations to Amanda Tinker, Jessica Todd Harper and Trevor Dixon is abrupt and Charmaine Caire stands out as the only representative born in the fifties. Claire’s work has ironic content and use of the “set-ups” full of objects and toys from popular culture produced as digital prints. In the context of the show, her pictures indicate the departure from the classic “realism” to art photography. The remit here is not “documentation” but playing with the nature of truth in photographic images complicated further by digital manipulation.

Harper’s large family “snapshots” seem to comment on class, money and taste and channel portraiture of the landed gentry of the eighteenth century. It almost seems a red herring that she inserts extra figures digitally in the manner of Jeff Wall. This is part of the painterly aesthetic that photography sometimes mimics these days. Tinker’s and Dixon’s work seems to be the link connecting the “masters” and the early experimental work in the hallway to the present day. Playing with such formalities as focus and scale, Dixon’s pictures are intellectually engaging and strange: images of half-blurred churches and woods evoke the passing of time generally and photography’s past specifically. They also mark a formal difference between optical and photographic vision which is a truly contemporary concern.

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Victorian wallpaper was used as a status symbol along with other tasteful furnishings by the burgeoning bourgeoisie of the 19th century. Densely packed and richly colored, its heyday coincided with the apex of mechanical reproduction. Oddly enough, this “machine-made” quality is what English designers like William Morris were reacting against when they introduced a handcrafted process and designs that mimicked the gothic. Their work continues to form our view of “classic” decorative wallpaper. In the early 20th century, wallpaper design followed the arts loosely through many styles: art deco, modern-abstract and mock colonial; but by the mid century it had evolved into a debased variation created for suburban houses. These were cheaply made, inoffensive and made little statement apart from matching the avocado or beige color scheme. Now, after decades of white and off-white walls, we have begun to decorate again with Pottery Barn leading the way, selling us an ersatz “Arts and Crafts” movement. Though today’s domestic interiors have the emphasis on technology (have we begun to think of the “house” itself as an “appliance?), and are littered with computer gear, we want a little coziness,albeit in a post-modern sort of way. It is interesting, then, to see how contemporary artists deal with this quaint notion of wallpaper.

The exhibition, On the Wall: Wallpaper and Tableau, at the Fabric Museum and Workshop In Philadelphia, updates our view of wallpaper in a major way. Including 33 artists and numerous historical pieces, the exhibition showcases excellent examples of contemporary art. (Of contemporary art or contemporary wallpaper? Or do you mean excellent examples of the ideas inherent in contemporary art.?) This is not an easy task since contemporary art envelops so many concerns normally not confined to walls. The usual axioms of race, gender and politics are to be expected, but when the artists grab onto some aspect of decoration and twist it -this is where the show really does make a statement about the relationship of contemporary art (wallpaper?)to its wallpaper (Victorian?) predecessor. This double intention gives the show an inherent contradiction that could have been emphasized; it deals with issues of art versus decoration by default while simultaneously dealing with artists’ usual concerns. Having said this, the show becomes more of a showcase for these concerns rather than attempting to make any larger cohesive statement about our wider relationship to the decorative arts.

Andy Warhol succeeded in using this medium and set a well-known precedent with his Cow Wallpaper from 1966. He was the first to make the connection between art and domestic (commercial?) products, and artists have been following his lead ever since. Virgil Marti’s Lotus Room nods to Warhol and forms the centerpiece of the show. This is a mixture of homage to a “tasteless” past and a formal exercise in reflective qualities of Mylar and stick-on flowers. This is a wonderful work, though I was disappointed in not finding a sofa, a large palm and a stereo playing Abba to complete the installation. His day-glow, black-lit Bully Wallpaper, which literally depicts people (bullies?) from his high school yearbook, does not have this contextual problem. Installed cleverly in the men’s room, it evokes the seventies so strongly it is scary. This is where the mix of materials and metaphors is most effective, a successful amalgam of style as (and?) content. Other witty works by artists Renee Green and Rodney Graham update the past effectively though they both needed to be more enclosed. These are pieces that could easily be pasted up in work places and homes. (explain what these look like) Notables like John Baldessari and Robert Gober were marginalized in glass cases, and Jenny Holzer’s Inflammatory Essays seem out of place perhaps because there is no nod to decoration (explain what they do have if not a nod to decoration.). This is where the contemporary “historical” aspects of the show didn’t work so well. Adam Cvijanovic’s hand painted removable mural wallpapers show a clever technical development on traditional wallpaper but his suburban scene doesn’t connect much with the method. (this last sentence should be moved up in sequence; the “doesn’t work so well” sentence should be your last to sum up the general feel of the exhibition.)

Organized by Judith Tannenbaum, Curator of Contemporary Art at the RISD Museum, the show began as a smaller version (on a smaller scale?) with a slightly different title: On the Wall, Wallpaper by Contemporary Artists. It has now been expanded by Marion Stroud, Director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum, and includes more artists and tableau. This ambitious expansion perhaps included too many possibilities to explore. Curator Tannenbaum’s assertion concludes that artists subvert the everyday simply by adding content in the form of politics or sexual imagery to the so-called “background,” but this is simplistic. Although many works in the show do this, there is not enough tableau to contrast it nor enough “real” rooms to emphasize the inherent ironies. It is certainly the use-value of these decorative objects that is most interesting (regardless of the subject), but that can only truly be gauged outside the museum context. The wallpapers that worked best were the ones that indeed subverted our idea of decoration but they were, oddly enough, the prettiest to look at in the conventional sense. Nicole Eisenman’s amusing Dr Suess-like illustrations of life in a women’s prison are an effective example. That is the twist. Omitting that twist made the Jenny Holzer work fall “flat” and made the Bullies in the bathroom effectively creepy. Apparently film director Gus Van Zandt (My Own Private Idaho) has wallpapered his office with Virgil Marti’s “Bullies.” Now, that I’d like to see.

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