Folks tend to think of ‘outsider’ artists as utilizing brushes and paints and installation artists as being more well-connected, so the back story of Georges Adéagbo – who developed his craft while held against his will in Benin after getting engaged in France – is as surprising as his installation. Down the hall in the first floor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where his Abraham, Friend of God, named after Abraham Lincoln and the biblical Abraham, hangs until April, I tend to seek out Pissarro to transport me to a visual consciousness that doesn’t involve billboards and SUVs, but Adéagbo demands that each of his completed works be site-specific, mindful of the culture around it. A reworking for Philly of a work originally made for PS1 in Queens, his traveler’s perspective takes root in the installation, as he juxtaposes found images from print media, entertainment, and everyday life to create a quilt of mental associations, structured loosely around slavery and colonialism in the two hemispheres but tending to focus on current events and cultural interchanges. Worth checking out.

Gallery 176 would be a great spot for Joseph Beuys’ Lightning With a Stag in its Glare, which is owned by PMA but I don’t think they've ever shown it. It’s at MassMOCA, listed as ‘ongoing.’

Review: Home Pics

Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh, which along with Peter Watkins’ Edvard Munch, Paul Leduc’s Frida: Naturaleza Viva, and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev make up the best quartet of artist biopics, comes out today on DVD. Pialat’s best known work in the US is his Depardieu-Huppert vehicle Loulou, a favorite of mine which takes the romantic genre to its full extension by depicting a couple that has absolutely nothing in common other than sex, and unflinchingly and comedically looking at the class dimensions of this relationship.

While Watkins’ masterpiece is a revering epic that wallows in the historical dimensions and personal anguish in Munch’s work, Pialat’s is historically irreverent enough to, for instance, imagine a fling between Van Gogh (Jacques Dutronc) and Dr. Gachet’s daughter (Alexandra London), who uses the situation to rebel against her only surviving parent and becomes a devoted champion of his art. There is none of the Lust for Life/ Vincent and Theo sensationalism and moralizing here: Van Gogh gets to be an ordinary person, socially functional and humorous, with depression and bitterness below the surface. He talks about art as little as possible, a trait perhaps useful for the tone of the film depicted as a result of years of contempt for his contemporaries’s viewpoints, as when he is criticized by a peer and when Gachet tries to talk shop with him, he reacts only with pained facial expressions.

A brilliant scene for the ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ / 'Musee des Beaux Arts' department is when right after Van Gogh dies and Theo and Gachet (Bernard Le Coq and Gérard Séty, who turn in the best of many convincing performances) solemnly settle his estate of paintings in the tavern of his low-rent inn, a storage chest closes on the foot of the innkeepers’ wife, causing the drama to move on immediately from the death of the then-unimportant Vincent. The film covers the period from his arrival in Auvers-sur-Oise to just after his death.

Le Coq’s Theo is an imperfect but magnanimous and self-effacing dealer whose loyalty to Vincent is portrayed as a byproduct of his passion for paintings, friendship depicted through bonding scenes in Paris bordellos, and bourgeois family pride. A revealing scene of Pialat’s imagining of Theo comes from this private conversation with his wife:

Theo: He could have been one of the great painters of his time. But he started late and rushed things. He always does. Like when he wanted to be a priest. He never learned. I don’t understand him. The truth is, deep down I don’t like his painting. I wish he painted like Renoir. I’d love that. No, I don’t want him to paint like Renoir. Not that either. But if Renoir painted like Vincent... I’d like it because my brother hadn’t done it. See?

Jo: What nonsense. You complicate everything. Life just happens, that’s all.

For people who want to hear more from Van Gogh’s mouth, Paul Cox’s ‘87 Van Gogh, which involves John Hurt reading from the diaries for almost the whole film, is recommended for those who may find the diaries full of pages of minutia and want striking images to go with the words. Watkins’ Munch has also been released on DVD within the past year, and another recently released artbiopic that uses a similar approach to Cox’s, about Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, is recommended. Also my summer pick, La Moustache, comes out next Tuesday.

A quote from Van Gogh's diaries (September 1889) that relates to the 'fear of faith' I have attributed to Robbe-Grillet: "I am astonished that with the modern ideas that I have, and being so ardent an admirer of Zola and de Goncourt and caring for things of art as I do, that I have attacks such as a superstitious man might have and that I get perverted and frightful ideas about religion such as never came into my head in the North."

Review: Museum shows

I took off yesterday to see the ‘Cezanne to Picasso, Ambroise Vollard’ show at the Met, which ends tomorrow. It was rather crowded for a Friday and will be very crowded this weekend, but if you can get there, say, first thing in the morning tomorrow (a cause which may be helped by two NY playoff football games) it’s most worthwhile, as it has a few major paintings (including a few Van Goghs) from Russia and elsewhere. Most of the art is from the US, so a little driving will get you to it. I’ve never been to the Albright-Knox in Buffalo and have never seen Gauguin’s Spirit of the Dead Watching in person, which made for quite an event yesterday. The display cards discussed collecting, which kept the curators from making irritating comments about the paintings (the cards at the Ernst show were unbearable).

Also I saw the Glitter and Doom show of Weimar Expressionist portraits, there until Feb. 19, which was also very crowded, no doubt as a result of it being written up by both me and Charles Bernstein. I hope to return on a slower day. The show sheds light on how caricature functions in general as a descriptive device. Grosz's Weimar paintings and Beckmann’s War series, which has recently been in a couple places nearby including the Met, are really the best paintings about the US from 9-11 to last November, despite being painted long ago.

I’m a little jealous that David is going to China and India, and in general I often go first to the crowded temporary show there, anticipating it will be more crowded later in the day, and then chill out in the serene and less trafficked Asian galleries. In the Japanese section I realized that I wanted caffeine. I visited the new cafeteria there for the first time, and though it is larger and more functional, with the same overpriced museum food you find elsewhere, I long for the old days when you could caffeinate below an ancient bas relief (in Philly you still can). On the way back I drove to Iselin, NJ, which has the best Indian food outside Asia, to get a large Mysore thali.

OK I’ll do the meme:

I have loose jointed fingers and toes.

The first poem I wrote was ‘John Dean told a lie/ to the FBI’ as a preschooler.

I’ve gone through two events in little over the last three years where I felt for certain I was going to die (one hiking, one health-related).

I’m not a trust fund baby, but when I was a teenager my Dad bought me a tuxedo to meet Richard Nixon.

When I’m in Baltimore, I always confuse North with South and East with West.

I tag Andy, Shanna, David (if he has a chance before he leaves), Lorraine (when back from camping).

Thief's entrance

"(Felipe Calderon) is not coming in the front entrance (for his swearing in today). Thieves come in through the back door" - Congressional Deputy Adriana Diaz. Bush was there for the swearing in. (Video)

"El Caminante (The Traveller)" by Gerardo Bonilla, who is currently being held in a maximum security prison outside his home state for standing in the street in Oaxaca at the wrong time.

BTW, despite photographic evidence of federal paramilitaries shooting Brad Will, the government’s investigation is focusing on the theory that the activists who rushed him to the hospital killed him.

Review: American Art Museums

This covers just the museums I saw on my drive to Texas (five days on the road) and back (four days). I don’t think that blogs should always be ranking things, but I’m doing it here.

1. Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX. I had always thought that Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound was in a private collection somewhere and I would never see it. The first part is true but this collection is now public. I wish the sculpture were positioned against a blank wall instead of a window so that I could look at it better, but as it is you can look at its back, which looks like nothing but a sculpture of a penis, see on the corner of your left eye Picasso’s equally totemic Marie-Therese, and across the room make out Miro’s feminine Caress of a Bird. Don’t mess with Texas!

As is the case with an outdoor Serra in Fort Worth, the Texas sky is put to use by a James Terrell installation which frames it in a square sitting room. Angry post-WW2 David Smiths, two Jonathan Borofskys: one that can be seen from the outside of people walking into the sky and another of the Hammering Man series that frames actual crane construction nearby, Dubuffet’s The Gossiper, a Barbara Hepworth fountain, Giaciamotti drawings, and I’d say this joins the new National Gallery sculpture garden as besting previous sculpture gardens in this large and prosperous land, this one being the more unforgettable of experiences.

2. Saint Louis Museum of Art. Construction was going on and my only criticism of this free museum is that there is not enough space. This is one of those places where everything is a masterpiece. Has two of Van Gogh’s last paintings in Auvers. The Beckmann collection is without equal in this hemisphere, but only one room is devoted to him, others, I presume, are in storage, and the pickings tend to privilege studies over allegories. Beckmann’s contemporary compatriots are well represented along with a spirited effort of keeping the new Teutonic canvases coming to St Louis.

3. Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA. This is the granddaddy of the warehouse museum concept that went onto physically bigger things at Dia Beacon and Mass MOCA, but the curating here is still unmatched by the new kids. A wonderful permanent Turrell installation that takes twenty minutes to be seen. In residence are Huang Xiang, a poet banned and persecuted in China that speaks no English (I tried) who painted a poem on his house (pictured, MF in background), and the Tom Museum, where you visit the house of twentysomething artist Tom Sarver with the amiable artist hosting you. Free parking, which is something the Warhol and the Carnegie don’t have.

4. Dallas Museum of Art. Saw this on the way there, and Ft. Worth on the way back. On my previous trip to Texas, I had skipped Dallas for Ft. Worth. This is nonetheless chock full of masterpieces and has good temporary shows like a Russian modernist book show when I was there. Really wonderful early Mondrian landscapes. Design flaw is the lack of a central hall that forces you to see the whole museum in sequence, and the Reves Collection that puts major impressionist paintings across a blocked off period room which calls attention to the opulence and keeps you from a close inspection of the masterpieces. This is the monkey on the back of Texas art, that it functions to show off money and the cosmopolitanism of collectors and has to stop there.

5. Kimbell Gallery, Fort Worth, TX. This is a great, free, small museum, though the building commonly called Louis Kahn’s masterpiece is one of those layouts that puts the architect’s ego behind only the prominence of the gift shop, followed by showing paintings at a distant third. Every painting is a masterpiece and the budget is so hard to contemplate that more gallery space would surely offer a lot more to look at, especially for the locals. One of my favorite Watteaus to go with my favorite Caravaggio and an early Gaughin self-portrait (pictured) painted for his new friend Van Gogh.

6. Cincinnati Museum of Art. Like St. Louis, it’s free, with free parking in a wonderful park, and has a bunch of Van Goghs from his last year. Major John Singer Sargents.

7. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK. The best of the three Western Art Museums I saw. Western art museums have a lot of Remington and Russells and Native American art, with a section on the Taos school of which they try to reproduce a period workshop. This one is free, has the most paintings, and is surrounded by colorful gardens.

8. Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK. In a incredibly opulent section of town, the background gardens here that highlight the Palladian Mediterranean villa are arguably without equal in this country. Collection minor.

9. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA. Rather irritating design but a well-financed collection with a major Munch, a few major Gaughins & Van Goghs, and a good contemporary collection with many of the usual suspects. One unique feature is John White Alexander’s 1905 mural The Crowning of Labor, commissioned by Andrew Carnegie for a fat sum to illustrate his views, which predates the age of populist murals and does so with an Art Nouveau allegorical look that vacillates between the sublime and the silly.

10. Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, TX. A truly wonderful building by Tadeo Ando which frames the skyline, its pools of water, and provides square-shaped rooms for this collection of mostly contemporary paintings.

11. Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN. Costs admission and parking but has especially good display of the Taos school and had an excellent exhibition of contemporary Native American art up for a while.

12. Indianapolis Museum of Art. I was all set to see the Turners, and no, they weren’t up. I tried to arrange a warehouse visit, but got the runaround. The female guard that initially broke the news to me said, ‘We have a Rembrandt show, and he’s European.’ Truly, showing the art of a foreigner is big stuff in this museum across from the Lilly mansion that’s only concession to the world out there an unfortunate architectural resemblance to a fading 1970s Brazilian office complex. A Nam June Paik that was commissioned by the state ergo the images of Larry Bird flickering on the TV sets. A wonderful Acconci.

13. Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, TX. Well curated temporary shows, including the fandango show I excerpted earlier.

14. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX. This is being renovated into a big thang and only half of the place was open when I visited. Specializes in the Western Hemisphere and as such its strengths are a few choice Argentinian works like Luis Felipe Noé’s 1963 Nueva Figuración canvas (below) Cerrado por brujeria (Closed for Witchcraft), the best painting about TV I can recall ever seeing, and Mexican muralist-era prints. The rest of the collection is minor and uninspired.
15. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX. Yet another museum in Fort Worth, yet another museum of Western art and the Taos school. Free and is right next to the other two museums if you are in Fort Worth. I was the only person on a tour with a very knowledgeable and gregarious tour guide and had to break the news that I had to leave to meet someone at the Kimbell coffee shop, a heartbreaking moment.

16. The Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, TX. Asian gems right next to the Nasher and the DMA. If ‘the world’s largest landlord’ has a museum named after himself in his building, it had better be free, and it is.

17. Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, IN. This small, free collection across from a charming old movie theater had as its first curator John Rogers Cox, an American ‘regionalist’ influenced by the Surrealists (pictured, a painting of his in Cleveland).

18. Five Civilized Tribes Museum, Muskogee, OK. Display of local contemporary Native American artists starring Johnny Tiger.

19. Contemporary Gallery, Harmony, IN. Trotsky said Utopia wouldn’t need art, and it’s a good thing, because this isn’t for those in need.

Review: Photography

This is not a pipe.

Glitter and doom

I was watching TV on Sunday (the Iggles game) and I noticed a great deal of military recruiting ads. Election-related? In case you missed them, you can catch Otto Dix's The Card Players at the Metropolitan Museum starting today. It was here two and a half years ago, but so was the war.