Roswell Rudd 1935-2017

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What's up for five more days, v. XLVII

I should chime in here to mention that Serkan Özkaya’s reconstruction of Duchamp’s Étant donnés as a camera obscura is open til Satuday at 54 Franklin.  Convinced that the light of the diorama beyond the eye holes projected an image in darkness, he naturally received no cooperation from the folks at the Philly museum, so he remade the entire work.  Duchamp welcomed interpretations of his works that he didn’t intend, but Özkaya has managed to produce, for himself, the gallarists, the adoring critics, and the contributors to the literary journal devoted to the discovery, a matter of faith: did he or didn’t he mean this?  I count myself amongst the faithful: he was, during these years, keeping regular company with Man Ray, with whom he endlessly discussed optical and cinematic devices, suggesting cinematic projects early on that didn’t come to fruition.  He produced films like Anemic Cinema, but as with the chocolate grinder and the bicycle wheel he was interested in the machine itself.  Save for an installation manual, he left no explanations of the work and kept it a guarded secret, but the title came from his Green Box notes of 1912-15.  Cabanne wrote “Given.. is neither painting, sculpture, environment, nor an exercise in mechanics or optics. It offers a synthesis of several recurrent themes in Duchamp’s work” but the camera obscura angle commences a whole new realm of speculation about it’s meanings.  I didn’t see the face (below) as Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy so much as I saw, standing in the dark room for a while, a ‘portrait’ of works by two friends: the faces of Brancusi’s marbles and the African masks photographed by Man Ray, illuminated by a lantern of what d’Harnoncourt and Hopps called ‘the allegorical view of human forms as the molds for invisible aspirations (gas).’

I first saw the David Smith show at 548 22nd right after arriving early and waiting an hour and a half for Yayoi Kusama, a line of two blocks mostly consisting of new outfits donned for the Instagram, about which the staff lectures the viewers ‘take the picture immediately; the time inside goes fast.’  Whatever concessions this show has to easily absorbed psychedelia it is real art and worth waiting for.  The paintings on 19th street of her micro/macroscopic imagery can be seen by those in a hurry, I think, a rope separating them from rooms promising Infinity, while the uptown gallery of dot paintings is a quiet place to think.  I see the Infinity Rooms primarily as collective portraiture for the internet age.  A sculpture of hers is in the Delirious show at Met Breuer along with two scrolls of Spero’s Artaud Codex.  Nothing is really “Must see,” one would be forced by such a voice to “Think” of infinity were it possible, an impossibility that is in general what I make the trip up for - other people’s tragic consciousnesses.  But, as David Smith appears in the topic sentence, one predicts that I will lament (or rejoice) how quiet the show seems after the Yayoi scene two blocks away where the line ends.  Predictable, but astonishing nonetheless - the Smith show is a huge offering of his early sculptural paintings and painterly sculptures.   As it is the early work of a vital mind, you don’t have to recall earlier works to verify that it’s ‘real art.’  At 541 22nd do check out Rita McBride’s Particulates early and often - it will be there til June.  On 24th there’s Pistoletto til Friday, Pace’s tribute to the 1964 collaboration between Richard Avedon and James Baldwin which displays no quotations from Baldwin, and til Jan 9, Jim Shaw’s Hillary Clinton as Mad Meg.. 

..along with various contortions of Trump’s face, a tribute to Courbet, Titian, The Cute Behemoth and religious ceremonies at 519, and Anna Conway’s narrative tableau at 514 West 26th til Saturday.  At Goodman Guiseppe Penone places fossils and grains of sand next to their reproductions.  But most of all, if you haven't seen the landscapes from the last five years of Arshile Gorky's life, mostly from private collections, put that at the top of your list (32 e 69th til Sat).

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Muhal Richard Abrams 1930-2017

What's up for one more day, v. XLIV

A reminder to readers that two Piri' Miri Muli' recommended shows that were the second and third links at the bottom on 28 September (after the frequently and aptly praised, now closed, Kara Walker show) are ending this Sunday.  Recently I did in fact revisit them both in the same day.

The estate of Afro-Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) helped organize a retrospective of her work for the Fowler at UCLA and it's had a few months at the Museo del Barrio. It is rare to see something this unique: collograph prints, all black and white after early stabs at color, of the mythology of the traditionally all-male Abakuá secret society, comprised of Nigerian emigrés living in the west of Cuba.  Princess Sikán finds the magic fish that can bring peace and prosperity to the world by embodying an ancestor's voice, she is forced by her family into hiding but conveys the secret of the fish to her boyfriend from the enemy tribe, for which her family hands her over for sacrifice. The fish died, the boyfriend tries to craft a drum to conjure the voice and, thinking her blood would help, kills her, and when it didn't help a male goat's skin formed the drum, leading to the society's rituals.

From the beginning she was identifying her individual experience in the figure of Sikán, its feminization of Christian sacrifice hit home by the setting of Cuba, and the citation of the particulars of her life within the myth accelerated in the years before her mysterious suicide.  Cristina Vives, her friend who curated the show, recalls "as for the critical commentary to date, most of it is regrettably devoted to narrating the Abakuá myth.. The art establishment can make or break and artist.. Belkis was simultaneously 'made' and 'broken.' For Belkis, a change was necessary, and she needed to divest her work of the Abakuá myth in what was tantamount to a form of exorcism.. She did everything she could to achieve and to have us come closer to a level of social performance that was ultimately impossible.. She was excessively idealistic.. not well prepared to accept mediocrity.. questioned each of her actions and works.. immensely frustrated when she had to acknowledge that the reality she hoped for doesn't exist."

Nlloro (Weeping), 1991

Also, the poet Franck André Jamme made several trips to India over the course of of sixteen years to find in Rajastan the tantra paintings he was looking for, so you can see a selection of them in one room at 33 Orchard.

Moorkerjee and Khanna explain “as images of primal energy yantras reveal the varying scales of reality which denote cosmos, infinity, time, space or the play of polarities.. ‘Transcending the tattvas [elements] is the Bindu' (Yamala) .." the central point that serves as “the vehicle of the mind, an area which is the meeting-ground of subject and object." Here one finds a four painting suite of The Expansion of Bindu, beginning with such a point and accumulating images left to right.

Gunas

Another depicts the three gunas (luminosity, dynamism, and inertia) in differing colors; two others are ‘an exercise to identify the precise shade of color’ in groups of three, and another illustrates ‘energy traveling through, and regulating the colors of the world.’ Jamme filled a whole book with paintings he found of Shiva lingas; here there are two including one containing 'the dance of the atoms; also the alliance between Vishnu and Shiva.’ A black square with a triangle depicts Kali, the goddess of temporality about whom Ramakrishna said “You see her as black because you are far away from her. Go near and you will find her devoid of color."

Poems of Jamme's from Charles Borkhuis' translations:

T O D I G

I N O N E

' S C O R

N E R W I

T H O N L

Y O N E E

Y E W H I

L E T H E

O T H E R

L A U G H

S A T I T

T O T H R O W

T H E D I C E

E V E N B E F

O R E T H E U

L T I M A T E

Q U E S T I O

N