Bouquets to Art 2010

Cel snaps of the amazing floral designs on display at the de Young's annual Bouquets to Art event, in which designers from around the bay area create pieces based on works in the de Young's permanent collection. April 20-24, 2010.

Quick SF Gallery Notes

A quick note about some art I saw yesterday in a quick tour around a few downtown SF galleries.

First of all, there were beautiful landscapes. From the lush forests painted by John McCormick (Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, this is his Olema Valley, 60 x 48 Inches, Oil on Canvas on the left), to the suburbs of 1980’s Colorado by Robert Adams (Fraenkel Gallery), to the classic New York Street scenes by Elliott Erwitt (Robert Koch Gallery, all at 49 Geary).

There was pop art: A lovely group of etchings reproducing automotive emblems by Ed Ruscha at Crown Point Press, and a show of Mel Ramos’ nudes at Modernism. Ramos is a master of the female form, and I like the juxtaposition of these sleek bodies with commercial products, but I have to admit that I find myself uncomfortable seeing the heads of female celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Drew Barrymore stuck on a nude model’s body. I know this isn’t new, yet it still bothers me.

Also at Modernism, in the 2^nd gallery, were the hauntingly luminescent “imagined interiors” by Patti Oleon. Her grand ballrooms, empty theatres, and moonlit rooms were ghostly, yet realistic enough to have you wonder where everyone was, or that you had stumbled into the hush of a great and glamorous empty room by yourself. I wasn’t familiar with this artist, but will definitely watch for her now. Her work Double Curtains, 2009, oil on panel, 55 x 35" is on the left.

I went to YBCA, curious about Death’s Boutique, an installation by Marc Rios and Kara Tanaka (guest curated by Julio Morales). The artists created several interesting pieces on the theme of death, ritual and desire. Tanaka particularly explores the Swedish practice of Promessa (much like New Orleans, the body/and or ashes of the newly dead are mixed in a communal basin with their ancestors). When I think of how much history is discovered by studying tombs, I find her question a good one, “what is left for future study when we move away from individual burial rituals”? The one bone I had to pick with this exhibition, which also seemed to hurt the elaborate interactive installation downstairs (Renee Green’s Endless Dreams & Time-based Streams), is that YBCA didn’t seem to install identification labels anywhere near the work (that I could find, and I truly looked), aside from the main wall text posted outside the gallery. I felt that the materials used in Rios & Tanaka’s pieces were probably rich in symbolic meaning, but there was no way to know.

PCA/ACA St. Louis

I recently returned from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s national convention in St. Louis, MO. It’s taken a few days to get to writing about it, because I’ve realized that my feelings about this trip are kind of complicated. The PCA/ACA conference itself was amazing as usual. Hundreds of papers are presented on every Humanities topic imaginable, from Arthurian and children’s literature to vampires and bondage. This particular conference always has a huge contingent of comics scholars, and it’s great to meet everybody and hear their papers. My friend and travel buddy Hannah Sigur was researching and presenting on World’s Fairs (an appropriate topic for St. Louis) and there were interesting papers in her section as well. More about all this in a minute…

Although I grew up in Northern Michigan, travel over the last few years tends to take me to the edges of the country: west coast, east coast, New Orleans, Texas, etc… Except for the heart of Chicago, I haven’t been to the actual mid-west much at all. Like most of us, I’ve read horror stories about the impact of the economic downturn on the nation’s center, but I haven’t seen much of it. Things in California are complicated enough!

St. Louis is a proud city. Once Chicago’s equal in power, architecture and creative energy, the city has had a steep decline over the last couple decades. Block after block downtown was full of impressive and stately buildings, boarded up and paddle-locked. Even the Rams, a Super Bowl team as recently as 2001 (“The Greatest Show on Turf”) have been sucking and have the first round draft pick this year, much to the dismay of every cab driver I spoke with. The city is working hard to come back. They have converted many of the grand skeletons downtown into inexpensive lofts, and people are starting to move back. There’s a new sculpture park downtown, CityGarden, with an excellent restaurant (The Terrace View). The garden features a spectacular array of public art (the photo on the left is Untitled-Ring Figure by Keith Haring), and a series of terraced fountains meant to represent different regions of Missouri. The riverfront park around the famous arch was lovely, and busy. Baseball and casinos are popular. Everywhere trees were budding and blooming and it seemed that life was returning. I hope it does.

So, back to the highlights of the conference. I enjoyed Diana Green’s session, and also enjoyed getting to know her after seeing her name for so long on the comics scholars listserve. We chatted over drinks and dinner on many topics, and I was amazed by her encyclopedic knowledge of comics and her dry wit. The comics area chair, Nicole Friem, gave a sort of “state of the union” summary of how she’s seen comics scholarship evolve over the years she’s been the chair, and trends that she thinks are on the horizon. Randy Duncan (The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture), who moderated the session I participated in (I presented on my latest research on The Comic Art Show), focused on a 17th century Ethiopian illuminated manuscript telling the story of the miracles attributed to the Virgin Mary that he came upon while touring the Chicago Art Institute. He successfully tied the illustrations, sequential narrative and captions to other ancestors of modern comics, and as an art historian I loved it. Hannah's presentation with John Findling on the Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893) was excellent, and I also enjoyed getting to know John. We were also treated to a special artist’s presentation by Mark Newport, who KNITS life size superhero costumes (and wears them in photos and performance). He was organizing a knit-in at a gallery during the conference, and I'm sorry I missed it. On the left he's wearing his Spider-Man costume (Self-Made. Color photograph, 2004. Edition of 5. 24" x 36").

One last thought, as usual, about the St. Louis Museum of Art, a small museum set in Forest Park in one of the last remaining buildings preserved from the St Louis World’s Fair in 1904. They had a nice collection for a small museum. I was pleased to find an altarpiece by the Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo for the private chapel of his patron Francesco del Pugliese, who are a peripheral part of my arm & hammer project. I was also fascinated by this 1887 painting by John Fredrick Peto (to the left) of a wall posted with mail and a newspaper (Rack Picture, c 1887, oil on canvas). I couldn’t help thinking of pieces like Stuart Davis’ 1924 painting Lucky Strike or recent paintings by Mark Stock (who paints in the trompe l'oeil genre and references comics frequently). If you ever go to this museum, however, avoid eating in the restaurant, it’s really awful.

The Bodies Are Back - Show Extended

Back in January, I posted about the truly astonishing exhibition of the art of feminist/pop art pioneer Margaret Harrison at Intersection for the Arts The Bodies are Back, which has just been extended through April 16, 2010. On the left is her Ejaculo, 2007, Watercolor, colored pencil, and graphite on paper (courtesy of Intersection for the Arts, © 2007 Margaret Harrison).

I am fascinated with the use of comics characters and other pop culture references to comment on gender and sexuality in these thought provoking works. Her dramatic story of censorship (her first showing of these works was shut down in by the police for indecency in 1971), success and eventual return to this theme is very interesting. I plan to write a longer article about this.

In the meantime, there have been many reviews including an interview with Jolene Torr on ArtSlant, SFGate, StarkSilverCreek, Mission Eyes (includes video), SFStation, and SF Weekly.

Harrison also tells me that some of her work has been selected to be included the Tate's Rude Britania show this summer (my post is below).

Marc on KCBS about ipad

Yesterday Marc (law professor husband) was interviewed on KCBS talk radio about a potentially sticky dilemma faced by people developing content for the ipad. The ipad, unlike the Kindle and other tablet format reading devices, allows images. How will rights and permissions work on this new platform? The question was sparked by this article in the New York Times by Mark Aronson, suggesting that image creators be paid by the download. Complications galore!

British Comic Art at the Tate Britain

I wish I could see this exhibition, it sounds amazing! Comic at left is Gerald Scarfe, Ptorydactul 1989 (© Gerald Scarfe).

LONDON.- In summer 2010, Tate Britain will collaborate with a host of comic talent to present Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, a ground-breaking exhibition about the role of humour in British visual culture. Through a great diversity of art forms – including painting, drawing, sculpture, film and photography – comedy, the comic, and visual humour will be explored in their many dimensions. The exhibition will be presented and interpreted by some of the country’s best-known cartoonists and comedy writers including Steve Bell, Harry Hill, Gerald Scarfe, and the team at Viz Magazine. Their expertise and opinion will offer visitors a fresh take on comic traditions from the 1600s to the present day, and encourage debate around the wider role of humour in British life.

Drawing on material far beyond the traditional realm of visual satire, Rude Britannia will bring together sculptures, installations and performances. Works by contemporary artists such as Angus Fairhurst will be contrasted with key historical pieces by Gillray and Cruikshank. Radio, film and new media will play a part in the show, reflecting how technological developments have consistently reinvigorated the genre and engaged new audiences.

Rude Britannia will focus on a group of key topics, devised in collaboration with the guest curators. These will show the wide variety of ways in which Britain’s thriving tradition of comic art has taken shape, and the links between comic practices of the past and present. Donald McGill’s saucy seaside postcards will be shown alongside works by Aubrey Beardsley and Sarah Lucas, in a section devoted to all things bawdy. Meanwhile, Britain’s love of the absurd and the visionary will be represented by such diverse material as Edward Lear’s illustrations and David Shrigley’s sculpture. Politics, social commentary and morality will each be explored, from Hogarth’s satires of Georgian society to Gerald Scarfe’s caricatures of the Thatcher government.

Harry Hill said: "I love comedy and I love art. The absurd is my area of expertise and it will be good to get the disparate strands under one roof, from Edward Lear to Spike Milligan to David Shrigley, plus a few surprises on the way. We have all laughed at art for one reason or the other, this time it will be for the right reasons! It is a thrill to be asked to curate a room for this Tate Britain show."

Martin Myrone, Curator of 18th & 19th Century British Art, Tate Britain said: “The comic has always been thought of as a key aspect of British culture, but while other exhibitions have looked at the classic story of graphic satire, Rude Britannia will offer a much bigger picture. The result should be a rich, exciting, and sometimes challenging, new vision of British art.”

Celebrating the vivid history of comical images, the exhibition will ask some provocative questions about humour in the visual arts: Is satire truly effective as a means of political messaging? What role have cartoons played in spreading and reinforcing prejudice? Are some things in life truly beyond a joke? Rude Britannia will explore these and other complex issues, reflecting the way that changing social attitudes and identity politics have always played an important role in both comedy and art history.

Rude Britannia will be curated by Martin Myrone, Curator of 18th & 19th Century British Art, Tate Britain; Cedar Lewisohn, Programmer for Tate Media; and Tim Batchelor, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain.

Genesis at Hammer Museum

Terrific blog post by Charles Hatfield about R. Crumb's Genesis show at the Hammer Museum in LA, with exhibition photos and analysis. http://www.thoughtballoonists.com/2010/02/genesis.html Enjoy!

Crumb spoke about the Genesis project at the SFJCC on Halloween night 2009, here's my post.