November 1, 2019 – March 22, 2020
1109 5th Ave, at 92nd Street
New York City, thejewishmuseum.org

To experience Rachel Feinstein’s survey, “Mother, Maiden, Crone,” at the Jewish Museum through March 22, is to walk through crowds of women and sometimes spot yourself. Feinstein, through her sculptural works, explores dualities and extremes, and the binaries of fantasy versus reality, maximalism versus minimalism, and community versus isolation, all through archetypes feminists have historically been eager to both reclaim and resist.

Much of Feinstein’s work refers to fairy tales targeted at little girls, and at first glance seems like an indictment of those fantastical stories. From menstruating shepherdesses to castles that rape, there is something perverse about all of Feinstein’s works that reference fairy tales. Upon closer inspection, however, this distorted nature demonstrates not fantasies dashed, but nightmarish realities realized. In the case of Sleeping Beauty (the focus of Feinstein’s film Spring and Winter, 1994/96), Feinstein is most interested in the story’s parallels in reality. The original tale of Sleeping Beauty is one of rape at the hands of her rescuer, a fictional account that mirrors real cases of sexual assaults.

Feinstein’s mirror is more than an allusion; reflective surfaces appear throughout her work, further critiquing the idea that fantasy exists outside of reality. In her works of enamel paint on mirror, such as her portraits of elderly women, the viewer is forced to examine their own reflection as they consider the fantasy before them—a fantasy that teeters on the brink of collapse. Feinstein’s elderly women are styled as 18th century grande dames, but the faux expressive paint style is more mid-20th century pulp fiction cover than Fragonard or Gainsborough portrait. Similarly, Feinstein’s costuming of her muses does not disguise their age or emotions, or the viewer’s own projections about women over 50. It’s impossible not to see the women as variations on the ever-familiar crone, from Shakespeare’s witches to Bette Davis’ Baby Jane. Physically, the mirrored negative space of each of these portraits provides a literal reflection of the person viewing the work, and the textural application of paint on mirror links the concept of creative artifice with the act of applying make-up.

Feinstein’s Goldstein (2019), a 40-foot long, monochromatic white wall relief, pairs a similar set of extremes, this time juxtaposing maximalism and minimalism, pleasure and shame. Like Louise Nevelson’s work, which infuses monochromatic wall sculpture with baroque intensity, Feinstein’s Goldstein is a shrine to pleasure, despite its monochromaticity. It depicts the opulence of a lively and tropical landscape – perhaps the drug-fueled, materialistic Miami of the 1980s, where Feinstein grew up. The style is both cartoonish and joyful, almost daring the viewer to feel ashamed at its tawdriness. For Feinstein, her Jewish Museum show is intertwined with the idea of shame – her shame at being a woman, at being Jewish, and her desire to reclaim those identities by displaying them in their most extreme forms. Naming her fresco “Goldstein,” she argues in an interview with Phong Bui in the Brooklyn Rail, is one way of doing this.

Feinstein’s other “room-encompassing work,” as the Jewish Museum describes it, is by definition maximalist and baroque, but also serves to highlight one of Feinstein’s most puritan pieces in contrast. Panorama of Rome (2012) wallpapers the entire second room of Feinstein’s show, reflecting the works within, as well as the viewers themselves. The mural is meant to mimic decorative 19th century wallpapers, and depicts aging Roman ruins alongside shining statues of heroes on horses, contrasting the aging glory of Rome and the mythological figures of that time with vibrant depictions of joyous everyday life. Like Goldstein, the energy of Panorama of Rome is grand and extravagant, reminiscent of a baroque 18th century depiction of a Dionysian feast or marketplace.

In contrast to this revelry, Puritan’s Delight (2008) sits surrounded by the panorama, but is a sobering ode to minimalism and the Puritan message and aesthetic. Puritan’s Delight depicts a monochromatic black, deformed carriage, symbolizing increasing Westward expansion and urbanization taking place in the “New World” in the 19th century. The vehicle’s wheels have come off, and some are warped, bending like a surrealist’s melting clock. Christian crosses jut out from the base of the statue, perhaps commemorating lost passengers. Puritan’s Delight is literally reflected in the mirrors of Panorama of Rome, but the panorama itself also depicts a nearly identical mirror image – another black carriage (this time intact), sits in the Roman plaza.

Like Panorama of Rome, Puritan’s Delight deals in mythology, or, we might say, fantasy. The fact that the passengers of the carriage are absent forces the viewer to construct their own narrative of what occurred, perhaps drawing on nationalistic understandings of American history and the extreme archetypes perpetuated in those tales. Implicit in the broken carriage and the memorial crosses is the myth of Manifest Destiny, and the idea that European settlers who lost their lives taking land from indigenous people were victims, themselves. Puritanism and the act of purification requires the existence first of people, ideas, or objects that are initially dirty, savage, sensual, or corrupt. Thus, the Puritan’s “delight” comes from the tragedy of the carriage disaster, itself, because without such a tragedy, the myth of American nationalism cannot exist. Feinstein’s use of the word “delight” – which calls to mind pleasure over shame – is again a contrast, forcing the viewer to contend with the opposing pieces in the room, sculptures that depict rainbow women in sexually provocative stances, as well as the grand panorama. In this way, Feinstein demonstrates one extreme giving life to another, calling to mind other Puritanical dichotomies like the slut and the innocent, or the witch and the saint.

If the room wallpapered in Panorama of Rome is Feinstein’s depiction of society and the warring ideologies that command conformity, the room that houses Feinstein’s video depicts the alternative: complete isolation. In Spring and Winter, Feinstein plays both a young slumbering seductress and an old woman emerging from hibernation. The connection between these two characters mirrors the link between the slut and the witch, two feminine archetypes that have historically been punished for their nonconformism. Seen through the lens of Spring and Winter, this storied tale takes on another dimension. The punishment of isolation becomes a gift – the freedom to embrace one’s sluttiness or witchiness without prying eyes.

The ovoid room that houses the film Spring and Winters serves as a meditation on isolation and its effect on women and artists, but also as a sort of love nest. Because Feinstein’s video, which deals so powerfully with the theme of isolation, is surrounded by sculptures of couples, it’s impossible not to draw a parallel between the strong influence Feinstein attributes to being alone and her understanding of romance, sex, and partnership. In Alice (2008), two flattened, biomorphic, stained-wood figures engage in sex. The visibly feminine figure, presumably Alice, sits with legs spread, atop her lover. Her face is bent, as if folded in half, creating both a profile and a frontal view. Alice’s hands are carved from negative space, and rather than reaching for her partner, they reach for her own body. Thus, Alice’s pleasure is fleeting – existing only for the viewer who sees her hands in the negative space. Because the sculptures in this room are the only depictions of consensual sex in the show, together they present the idea that romance, and perhaps the heterosexual romance in particular, can only thrive in isolation from, and in resistance to, sexist society.

Feinstein has said, in an interview for Gagosian Quarterly, that she believes in “a world of dualities,” and “Mother, Maiden, Crone” celebrates this universe. But, her show also questions the concept of the binary, embracing the slippery matter within overlapping opposites, and interrogating the ideological polarity within popular feminism that the feminist must choose between reclamation or resistance. Instead, Feinstein’s work manages to view feminine archetypes through the lenses of resistance, reclamation, and acceptance – sometimes simultaneously all within one work.

The post Fairy Tales and Feminism: Rachel Feinstein at the Jewish Museum appeared first on artcritical.

Robert Gober’s work calls for spare words to match its minimalist form, quiet contemplation to match its understated yet striking affect. “The Heart is Not a Metaphor” is the artist’s first large-scale career survey in the U.S. It includes about 130 objects spanning mediums, including drawing and photography, and features a small selection of work by artists with whom he has worked or collaborated with as a curator. The exhibition is loosely chronological, following Gober’s development of ideas around home, the quotidian, violence and sex, faith, purification and ritual. And like the work, the exhibition design is didactically understated — there is only one panel in each gallery for general context — while the walls are unpainted, and in some cases unfinished, with panel beams exposed on one side making everything look and feel generic, like a television playing mindlessly in the background.

Gober’s meticulously crafted sculptures of common objects like paint cans, ice skates, or cribs are familiar, even though something is always a little bit off about them. These are things we use, things we have, things that are a part of us. But his limbs never seem to connect to complete bodies: they jut out from walls, contain odd protrusions and indentations, or end up where they normally would not be, such as a fireplace. The cribs are dangerously slanted, oddly shaped, and “butter” sometimes “sleeps” in them; the sinks cannot function, and closets are surprisingly shallow. He places us in the familiarity of the home — our private spaces, places where we cleanse, rejuvenate, define and refine ourselves. Through his work, Gober wants us to learn about the places where our hearts truly live.

Well, maybe not our hearts, but certainly his. The sculptures and environments as signifiers of origin and daily living are meant to be familiar, but too much of it feels willfully insular and self-focused. In Gober’s world, everything looks like a neutral, but not too much seems to match.

Gober came to prominence in New York during the 1980s when the city was being ravaged by the AIDS crisis. Much of his work responds to and comments on that moment. Two of his wallpaper installations are on view, and Untitled (1989 – 1996) still unsettles me years later upon viewing it in person again. A sketch of a sleeping man with brown hair alternates with the image of a man with dark brown skin and white knee-length pants hanging from a tree by a noose, over and over again from floor to ceiling. A white wedding gown hanging on a chicken-wire-frame seamstress’s mannequin in the middle of the room would seem to signify purity, promise, hope, passion, and violence. Sculptures of bags of cat litter are placed here and there against the walls. Gober has talked about this installation being inspired by the collision of our country’s shadowy past and present: the domestic terrorism of lynching and the denial of rights to same sex marriage. The work highlights the lengths to which we go to sanitize situations and make something undesirable tolerable and tame.

But I find it difficult to take these juxtapositions seriously as provocation. It feels like a curious “default” representation of queer history, which is often depicted through the experience of white gay men. I was much too young to really understand what was happening socially then, but I imagine that in the mid-1980s and early ’90s — the height of the American AIDS crisis — the right to marry was not the most pressing issue on anyone’s LGBTQ agenda, although it appears the issue was important for Gober. His environments created for the Dia Chelsea in 1992 that featured sinks with working plumbing, sculptures of rat poison boxes also included bundled stacks of photolithograph print newspapers interspersed with advertisements of him wearing a wedding dress. But while too many people were unable to share their last moments with their loved ones at this time, to compare the ban on same-sex marriage to the terrorism of lynchings doesn’t feel right. In fact it feels like privileged, self-referential navel gazing.

A response to the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks, Untitled (2003-2005) features a headless Jesus-like fountain from which cleansing water flows from the nipples into a gaping hole in the floor. Framed photolithographs of the September 12, 2001 edition of The New York Times line the walls, the pages having been overlaid with pastel drawings of humans embracing, and pallets aligned to recall church pews complete the space. If we are to seek comfort in times of sorrow, be washed by the holy water, and covered and cleansed by the blood of the lamb, why does this installation feel so cheeky? Gober was raised Catholic, but later left the church, disillusioned. Nonetheless he says he created this environment as a place for contemplation in a time of tragedy. This installation doesn’t offer comfort, however, but seems to provoke. This work isn’t about a collective spiritual crisis of “we,” but about something very specific to Gober’s experience.

As I wandered through the exhibition studying the early paintings, reference drawings, sinks, and other sculpted objects, I sighed deeply and repeatedly. Gober’s visual insistence on bland universal definitions of roots, home, values and mores, and even faith is exhausting. I can sense that the work is about him, that it is specific, but everything I see tries so hard to fade into the proverbial woodwork while coyly inviting me to acknowledge and congratulate its difference.

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