February 17 to July 1, 2012
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
New York City, 212-685-0008

When we think about the work of Dan Flavin (1933-1996), his drawings are hardly the first thing to come to mind. Instead, it is the fluorescent light sculptures that had the enduring impact on 20th- century art, making him one of the most significant minimalist visionaries.  But his works on paper remain little known. Curated by Isabelle Dervaux, this elegant, concise yet comprehensive exhibitionit reveals that Flavin cherished drawing, embracing it as a daily practice. This first drawing retrospective comprises over one hundred sheets from each phase of Flavin’s career.  By also presenting drawings by others artists from the artist’s personal collection, this excellent show allows the audience to recognize the extent Flavin to which found inspiration in both the act of drawing and in viewing examples by contemporaries and predecessors.

Flavin equally valued literal and abstract depictions of a subject. Over the years, his stylistically eclectic drawings ranged from abstract expressionist watercolors completed in the 1950s to pastel renditions of sailboats made in the 1980s. Some of his more traditional drawings date from the 1960s and 1970s. Usually made outdoors from observation, these depict the Hudson River landscape or the Long Island shoreline, places where he lived or spent much time.Realistically capturing the scenery with its waterscapes, rock and tree formations, they prove Flavin a fine draftsman. Though their inherent vocabulary differs strongly from his abstract sculptures, these drawings reflect the artist’s ongoing quest, through attention to detail, to establish a distinct sense of atmosphere based on nuanced observations of light and shade.

And yet, compared to his sculptures, which remain groundbreaking in their transformation of industrial materials into installations that contemplate notions of transcendence, most of Flavin’s drawings are surprisingly conservative, particularly in their use of materials. There are no experimentations with collage, for example. In fact, in many of Flavin’s drawings, his radicalism seems replaced with an affinity for classicism.

Flavin’s traditionalism in drawing might spring from insecurity. He was self-taught and never received a traditional art education. His sketches from nature and portraits tell of his passion for the act of drawing, but they also indicate a need to prove his skill. He had a deep appreciation for artists who could capture transcendental ideas through the mere use of line and light. Though he achieved the same in sculpture, his works on paper lack such higher aspirations. Instead, many of his drawings were products of an ongoing note taking. He usually carried a notebook and ballpoint pen to be able to jot down thoughts quickly and wherever he was at the time. These sketches do not embody finished renditions of original ideas, but rather appear as extensions of thought, often including written notes, numbers and dates.

Some of Flavin’s most accomplished works on paper refer to his sculptures. In these, fluorescent tubes are depicted as colored lines on plain grounds or else use words to designate color. They are characterized by a unique delineation of space through a minimal use of line and occasional color accents. They differ from Flavin’s “final finished diagrams”, which he began in 1971 as visual records of each installation. These records, made with colored pencil on graph paper, are distinctly less inspired and less immediate. In fact, later many of them were not done by him, but by his first his wife Sonja and their son Stephen, following his instructions.

Flavin’s personal collection illustrates how much he appreciated skill and draftsmanship in drawing. Above all, he found it in Japanese drawings, as well as nineteenth-century American landscape drawings. His interest in the latter began during the 1960s after he moved to Cold Spring, in the Hudson River valley, and continued through the late 1970s when he acquired a large number of works by Hudson River school artists on behalf of the Dia Art Foundation for the purpose of displaying them at a planned but unrealized Dan Flavin Art Institute in Garrison, New York. Flavin also collected 20th-century drawings: there are stunning examples by Piet Mondrian, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt in the exhibition.

Flavin became famous for works that did not reveal his hand: using factory-made fluorescent tubes, his sculptures were assembled by electricians. This exhibition, however, gathers works that show direct mark making and document the artist’s thought process when observing a subject, providing unprecedented insight into Flavin’s creative inspiration. For all that he is considered a minimalist, an abstractionist and even a conceptualist, in this not-to-be-missed display we encounter a different, private side of the artist, a man who was moved by romanticism and aspired to develop craftsmanship.

The post A Radical’s Romantic Side: Dan Flavin’s Drawings at the Morgan appeared first on artcritical.

The neon sign over the door by Paris-based collective Claire Fontaine suggests a Dante-esque Divine Comedy awaits.

“Part consortium, part collective,” is what Independent art fair called itself, as launched by gallerists Elizabeth Dee (X Initiative, N.Y.) and Darren Flook (Hotel, London). Making use of the former Dia Art Foundation’s handsome West 22nd Street building, the free-of-charge venue offered artist projects, public programs and commercial galleries showing artworks without the defining “walls” of traditional booths.

SMELL A RAT?

Packed in for Thursday’s party-atmosphere opening, viewers were met with a 12-foot-high inflatable rat muttering recorded aphorisms such as: “Only one thing counts in this life/Get them to sign on the line that is dotted.” Responses seemed affable.

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Murray Moss with Michal Fronek and Jan Nemecek’s, Illuminated Crucifix, 2010, and Thomas Struth’s, Stanze di Raffaelo II, Rome, 1992, behind.

SoHo design store Moss paired with Westreich-Wagner art advisors, in an attempt to create 12 “dialogues” between disparate objects that were “never intended to be together,” in Murray Moss’s words. The results should be “subjective,” he explained, “like the circumstances of our lives.”

CALLING A GHOST TO THE TABLE

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS

“She knits a sweater about political or current event, then wears it around,” explained Nelson Hallonquist, of the Florida gallery. Overheard viewer comment: “It’s like shopping in a mall with small stores.”

SIMPLY RED

THE NEW PAGANISM

DON’T FENCE ME IN

ART CRITICISM FOR SALE

CALLING DR. STRANGELOVE

Known for her motion pictures, Sussman here presents an exact replica of Russian Yuri Gagarin’s office, the first man in space.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Artists Space promotes its screening of Make It New John, a documentary about carmaker John DeLorean by Glasgow-based filmmaker Duncan Campbell.

AN OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE

TILT-A-WHIRL

Move over Olafur Eliasson and Anish Kapoor. Danish artist Hein did more with less, as his optical contraption beguiled audiences with its dislocation of gravitational reality.

FLASH OF HISTORY

One couldn’t help but feel the presence of the Dia Art Foundation and its illustrious exhibition history in the building’s earlier incarnation—before there was such a thing as The Chelsea Gallery District, or, for that matter, a contemporary art world driven so ruthlessly by art fair culture.

The post The Independent Show (West 22nd Street) A photo journal appeared first on artcritical.

Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered
The Jewish Museum

1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street
New York City, 212 423 3200
March 16 to August 03, 2008

Dan Flavin: The 1964 Green Gallery Exhibition
Zwirner & Wirth
32 East 69th Street
New York City, 212 517 8677
March 6 to May 3, 2008

There is a new genre of art exhibition, I’ve noticed recently.  And while the genre is novel, the actual exhibitions I’m referring to are not.   The crux of this new genre –  which has found a cozy place in contemporary art history – is, basically, to re-stage a previous exhibition (though not necessarily at the original venue) several years, even decades later, and see how its effect has evolved over time.

Two examples of “recycled exhibitions,” one at a museum and one at a gallery, are up in New York right now:  Andy Warhol’s controversial show from 1980, Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, has been recast in 2008 as Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered, currently on view at The Jewish Museum, the last stop of a three-city tour; and dan flavin: fluorescent light, which exhibited at the now defunct Green Gallery in the fall of 1964, has been resurrected today as Dan Flavin: the 1964 Green Gallery Exhibition, presently at the Zwirner and Wirth Gallery.

Back in 1980, Andy Warhol, in collaboration with New York gallerist, Ronald Feldman, chose ten prominent Jewish figures – including writers, actors, composers, philosophers and political figures – as the subjects for his controversial show.  Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, Sarah Bernhardt, Golda Meir and Gertrude Stein are among those who made the cut.  In an effort to retain the spirit of the original exhibition design, Warhol’s Jews is located today in a small room in the museum, which grants it both a casual and intimate feel.  The works are set against a series of panels painted brown so that the architectural elements would recede into the background, bringing the vibrant and characteristically Warholian silk-screens, replete with overlays of drawing and blocks of color, into relief.

Unlike the subjects of his many of his famous portraits from the 1960’s and 1970’s, Warhol had never met a single one of his Jewish “sitters.”  All the images were taken from random sources ranging from passport photos to film stills, which are on display next to the portraits. The portraits are also accompanied by preparatory drawings and preparatory collages.  The source photographs and drawings have not been previously exhibited alongside the portraits until now, which is one of the major differences between the previous exhibition and the “recycled exhibition.” 

dan flavin: fluorescent light marked a critical period in that artist’s career.  Flavin’s ideas and experiments with hand-made lighting elements culminated in 1964 in the usage of commercially-available fluorescent lighting.  The original show was meticulously curated by the artist himself and included seven works in total.  The new show, equally well-curated with all seven works in a historically accurate recreation (in a space that bears a striking likeness to the original Green Gallery space), also offers diagrams – not previously exhibited – drawn up by Flavin of the original installation.  These diagrams – much like Warhol’s source photographs that reveal a physical and emotional distance from his subjects – are where the deferred learning comes into play.

The study of art history aside, the idea that art cannot exist (or invoke meaning) outside of the context in which it was created is not always the case.  Regarding the Warhol show – which was conceived by a Catholic artist who had never before appeared sympathetic to Jews or the Jewish cause –  many perceived it as anti-Semitic.  The colorful and kitschy silk-screens of (some of them) serious intellectual and political figures came across back then as overtly tongue-and-cheek—especially when thought of in the context of the artist’s iconic Marlyns and Jackie Os.  

It was important, therefore, to see how religious and political indignation has changed or, in this case, subsided almost thirty years later.  To highlight Jewish controversy now seems more like a badge of honor and a learning tool (for those studying the history of anti-Semitism and/or Holocaust studies) than a modern-day promotion of anti-Jewish sentiment.  And furthermore, when taking into account the controversy surrounding The Brooklyn Museum’s 1999’s Sensation exhibition and Chris Ofili’s “Holy Virgin Mary,” which bore the brunt of Mayor Giulinai’s indefatigable crusade, Warhol’s Jews looks as harmless as a Renoir exhibition.

In contrast to Warhol’s Jews, the re-examination of Flavin’s show has less to do with religion and politics and more to do with the progression of art in the latter part of the twentieth century.  dan flavin: fluorescent light was the first exhibition comprised solely of fluorescent lighting and was integral in the development of the artist’s minimalist rhetoric.  Further, the newly-exhibited diagrams help the viewer better understand the artist’s ideas and intentions regarding the exhibition.

These shows are just two of many examples of this new genre, which is being practiced by curators and gallerists, who see the progression of history as a yet another tool for teaching.  To revisit older exhibitions and try and gage their aftershocks years later is a worthy exercise, speaking to social/political change as well as the progression of artistic styles.  If “recycled exhibitions” can teach us anything, it’s that there’s always more to learn.

The post Recycled Exhibitions appeared first on artcritical.

“Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain: Sculptures” at Gagosian Gallery until December 20 (980 Madison Avenue, between 77th and 78th Streets, 212 744 2313)

To say that a show by John Chamberlain is a smash hit will inevitably sound like a bad pun, as the veteran sculptor has made mangled auto-parts his trademark medium. But the exhibition of his early work at Allan Stone, which now has been extended for another month, is a real stunner.

Taking in the period from the late 1950s and early 1960s, the show forces us (literally) to radically rethink this artist, sending us back to his aesthetic roots. The coincidence of a show at Gagosian of less than compelling work from the 1990s, however, arouses a desire to turn the clock on Mr Chamberlain backwards.

Appropriately, in view of his menacingly jagged materials, Mr. Chamberlain doesn’t fit neatly into a stylistic box. Despite his baroque exuberance, the use of impoverished materials and an emphasis on process have associated him with minimal art. Donald Judd was a critical champion and they traded works (a pristine steel cube by Judd actually ends up, suitably crushed, in a piece at Allan Stone by Mr. Chamberlain) while at Gagosian he is being shown with Dan Flavin, and he has a nave of his own at Dia:Beacon, the minimalist cathedral.

Likewise, because of the connotations of mass-production and consumer waste, Pop has grafted itself onto Mr. Chamberlain’s reputation. That the other modern artist who uses crushed autoparts, César, is “nouvelle realiste”, as the French call their pop artists, reinforces this connection.
The show at Allan Stone, however, emphasizes earlier allegiances in a way which makes better sense of of sensibilities and manifest intentions. A butch poetics of scrap comes straight from David Smith and Robert Stankiewicz, while Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline inspire a sense of gesture battling to burst free. The gorgeously convoluted “Nutcracker” (1968) is more like a de Kooning in three dimensions than any of de Kooning’s own (later) sculptures. Mr. Chamberlain had studied at Black Mountain College in North Carolina where many of the instructors were entranced by notions of chance, which perhaps explains the more than passing resemblance of his collages to the combines of Robert Rauschenberg.

“Hudson” (1960) is rightly extolled as a breakthrough piece, not just because it was apparently the first instance where he appropriated a crushed auto part but because of the substance and volume of this gesture. The earlier, more linear constructions in jagged iron and machine parts seemed to speak the language of modern art, albeit with a proletarian accent. The car accelerated him into something declamatory: Looking less like drawings in air or 3-D collages, his works have truly inventive sculptural presence.

Some of the pieces that immediately followed “Hudson,” while still bold, experimental, and advanced for their time, revert to the “modern art” look. It is hard to tell from a historical distance, for instance, whether the small, mixed-media reliefs and collages of 1960-61 are more disconcerting for their messiness or their order. On the one hand, they are made from nonchalantly arrayed, defiantly trashy materials. On the other, they seem artfully uncoordinated, composed both pictorially and in the etiquette sense.

You would expect Mr. Chamberlain’s art to be animated by a sense of tragedy or entropy in view of the suffering or waste implied by auto accidents. But the eye adjusts with remarkable ease to his choice of materials. You soon tell yourself that a Chamberlain is in crushed cars like a Rodin is in bronze, and you pay attention instead to the mood established by the gestures and shapes, which is invariably upbeat and gung-ho.

Where a Kline or a de Kooning implies speed of execution, a Chamberlain lives with – is perhaps energized by -an internal contradiction: apparent frenzy that, like a symphonic scherzo, requires brilliant orchestration and artful composition. The end result is that, rather than looking at a Chamberlain as a car accident, you look at auto-wrecks as works of art.

The gentle brutalist at Stone has poetic charm, whereas his gauche counterpart at Gagosian is a consummate vulgarian. The sculptural forms are still compelling, but not so the surfaces. Maybe the inherent beauty of rusting 1950s industrial parts was a happy accident, but the decision by the artist to start painting his own components has been a tragic one, In terms of taste, Mr. Crash crashed.

The components of these three works from 1992 have been individually pre-painted by the artist, for the most part in a hand better suited to decorating bar stools at a tropical resort than to making works of art. Again defying classification, they beg the question: Are these sculptures that happen to have painted designs on them, the way traditional materials might show patina or grain, or are they paintings on very unusual supports?

Ancient and medieval sculpture was usually painted, of course, so why not modern, too? But the objection to this objection is that Mr. Chamberlain is evidently invested in the whole issue of ontology: how the thing came into being, what came first, whether it happened fast or slow, whether it is animated by chance or by deliberation. What, in other words, it ultimately is.

Mr. Chamberlain’s early work contained similar questions. His sculptures and reliefs were “anxious objects,” in Harold Rosenberg’s phrase. In or by 1992, however, anxiety had given way to crassness. It is as if your favorite young jazzman had been recruited to a heavy-metal band.

A version of this article first appeared in the New York Sun, December 11, 2003

The post John Chamberlain at Allan Stone; Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain at Gagosian Gallery appeared first on artcritical.