On Kawara, Guggenheim Museum

It's March 2015 already and time is marching on.  That is the very simplistic message of the work of On Kawara. After ten years of going to New York for "Arts Week" (as it is now called), a week full of auction previews, art fairs, gallery and museum exhibitions, the Art Girls have a certain sense of deja-vu - wake up at the same hotel, coffee and bagel, take a walk/run in Central Park, go out to experience art at a gallery, fair, or museum, dine in a lovely restaurant with art people to talk about art.  Wash and repeat the next day. During our week of March Art Madness, we viewed the first retrospective of the artist On Kawara who died last year during the preparation of this exhibition.  We had all been familiar with his date paintings and his "I Woke Up" postcards but we were not prepared for the overwhelming elegance and, dare I say, obsessive-compulsive nature of the manner in which this enigmatic artist dealt with the idea of time and its passing.

Imagine to document your daily activities over the course of a lifetime, what time you woke up, what you did every day, who you spoke to, and make a painting all in the course of a day.  Oh, and, without the snapping of a photo on your phone and posting it on Facebook.  You do this every day for 50 years!  Now organize all of those beautiful documents in a linear progression, to be viewed as you spiral up the ramp that is the Guggenheim Museum, and there you have the life of a human being all laid out for the world to see - the personal meets the global.  It was sort of a beautiful, conceptual "Groundhog Day." We were all deeply moved by this profound and poetic exhibition.

If you want to read more about On Kawara, here is a link to his obituary by Roberta Smith as well as a review of the exhibition from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/arts/design/on-kawara-conceptual-artist-who-found-elegance-in-every-day-dies-at-81.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/arts/design/the-guggenheim-shows-first-on-kawara-retrospective.html

And if you still can't get enough, click on the Guggenheim's website for a daily dose of On Kawara:

http://exhibitions.guggenheim.org/onkawara/#!/about

John Soane and then Some

Sir John Soane's Museum is a little jewel of a museum located on Lincoln's Inn Field. It is the former home to the British, neo-classic architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837).  Comprised of three homes that Soane joined together over the course of his career, it contains Soane's library (6,000 volumes), endless architectural drawings (30,000 in number) and sketchbooks, plaster casts, 252 architectural models, paintings, sculptures, antiquities and even an Egyptian sarcophagus. Through narrow passageways that sometimes seems like the Barnes Collection meets the Winchester Mystery House, the museum is devoid of one inch of unadorned space. The museum was established during Soane's lifetime by a private act of parliament in 1833 which took effect on Soane's death in 1837.  It was not meant for the 600 visitors it gets each day and consequently, took us three attempts to get in. Visiting the Soane's Museum was definitely a unique experience and offered a window into the collecting habits of one of England's most accomplished architects.

Full disclosure, there are no photos allowed inside the museum.  These images are scanned from the museum's souvenir book. To learn more about Sir John Soane's Museum visit their website:
http://www.soane.org/


And then there was this.  Anyone who studied Art History has seen an illustration of the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait painted in 1434 by Jan Van Eyck.  For our non art historian friends, here is just a little snippet of why this painting is so important:

" The illusionism of the painting was remarkable for its time, in part for the rendering of detail, but particularly for the use of light to evoke space in an interior, for its utterly convincing depiction of a room, as well of the people who inhabit it.  Whatever meaning is given to the scene and its details and there has been much debate on this, according to Craig Harbison the painting is the only fifteenth century Northern panel to survive in which the artist's contemporaries are shown engaged in some sort of action in a contemporary interior.  It is indeed tempting to call this the first genre painting - a painting of everyday life - of modern times."       --Wikipedia

And then there is all the symbolism, the little dog, that amazing mirror, and who is Arnolfini anyway? There is so much to talk about looking at this little, beautiful painting. Seeing this art historical icon in person at the National Gallery was, as they say, priceless.

Pip Pip and Cheerio, Art Girls in London!

With one Art Girl now living in London, we are hoping for more posts from Europe.  Let this be the first. Over the Christmas/New Year holiday we went on a little road trip around the English countryside to visit Stonehenge and the converted farm house that is Hauser & Wirth Somerset.

As we probably all know, Stonehenge is one of the most important, prehistoric monuments in the world. They say it was built approximately 5,000 years ago and is thought to be a site where prehistoric people buried their cremated dead.  As we discovered, it is also visible from the highway south of London and creates quite a traffic jam.  Up close and personal, the stones did not disappoint.

For more information on Stonehenge, go to the website of English Heritage:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/history/

From the prehistoric to the contemporary, about an hour south of Stonehenge is the newly renovated Durslade's Farmhouse (c.1760) aka Hauser & Wirth Somerset.  An impressive compound, H&W Somerset boasts a beautiful gallery space with changing exhibitions, a garden designed by Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf, outdoor sculpture, a farm to table restaurant, community art programs and artist in residency quarters.  

For more information on Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, go to their website:

http://www.hauserwirthsomerset.com/

@Large, Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz

Art girls and friends recently went to San Francisco to experience @Large, Ai Weiwei's monumental installation on Alcatraz Island.  It was a great day to visit a prison.

Left to right: Muchane, Kevin, Sonja, Scott, Linda, Todd,
Becca, Willard, Karen and Sharon.

The exhibition is composed of seven installations; With Wind, Trade, Refraction, Stay Tuned, Illumination, Blossom and Yours Truly.  Each work was created specifically for Alcatraz and responds to the island's layered legacy as a military fortress, a notorious federal penitentiary, the site of Native American heritage and protest.  The works in @ Large use Alcatraz as a space for dialogue and reflection about how we define liberty, justice, individual rights, personal responsibility, and freedom of expression. The artworks balance political impact with aesthetic grace and address the situation of people around the world who have and are being deprived of their freedom for speaking out about their personal beliefs - people like Ai Weiwei himself.

With Wind, Trace and Refraction are three works in the New Industries Building.  The work that was done in this building was a reward to a prisoner at Alcatraz.  This work awarded the prisoners the ability to escape their isolation, break their boredom and experience physical activity.

With Wind, Ai Weiwei greets the viewers to the New Industries Building with an enormous Chinese dragon kite. A mythical symbol of power, this dragon is made of individual kites on which political prisoners from 30 countries are quoted.

Trace, in the next room is an enormous carpet of legos with which Ai Weiwei and his army of assistants have fashioned portraits of over 170 people from around the world.  All of these people have been imprisoned or exiled due to their beliefs, most of whom are still incarcerated.  Ai was quoted saying that he was drawn to the use of lego from his 5 year old son and that he likes the fact that an image can be easily imagined, destroyed and then re-imagined.  We thought it was very powerful and looked pretty cool!!  Fun fact: it cost $460,000 just for the legos to make this work.

Adjacent to the installation was a notebook containing photos and descriptions 
of the people  highlighted in the lego portraits. Conspicuously absent frm the 
roster of lego portraits was Ai Weiwei himself.

Refraction was the third installation in the New Industries Building.  It is a giant wing made of Tibetan solar panels and tea warmers.  It was only visible from walking the gun gallery above the giant work room below.  

We couldn't resist the kodak-moments and/or maybe we just
needed some comedic relief from the intensity of the work.

 

We continued touring Alcatraz and the remaining art installations.  Yours Truly invited the visitor to send postcards to those who continue to be incarcerated while Stay Tuned and Illumination were audio works. Illumination juxtaposed Tibetan chants with those of Native American Indians while Stay Tuned utilized audio recordings of past political prisoners or those who spoke out for freedom of speech or injustice around the world.

Blossom was perhaps the most poetic and haunting of the 7 works and was staged in the hospital of Alcatraz, an area that is normally not on the tour of the prison.  In an area that one would associate with comfort and sympathy, Ai Weiwei used the remaining basins, toilets and tubs to plant small gardens of white ceramic flowers.  

All in all, the 7 works in @Large were incredibly moving and thought-provking and well worth the trip to San Francisco for the weekend. If you are interested in watching videos about the works, hearing the words of the political prisoners, listening to some awesome music by Fela Kuti or learning more about Ai Weiwei @Large, here is a link to the website:  Check it out!

http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/