Edmund de Waal's Atemwende

Atemwende (“breathturn”), Edmund de Waal's show at the Gagosian gallery, which takes its title from Paul Celan’s 1967 collection of poetry, is "the moment when words transcend literal meaning."

The author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes, de Waal has established himself as a gifted writer. I only realized he was a visual artist after coming across a reference to his artwork while reading the book and then Googling him. Aside from being impressed with his work, I was also struck by, though markedly different, how similar it was to the family collection of netsuke that forms the basis of his extraordinary family memoir.

For the Gagosian show, de Waal has produced a series of vitrines in which porcelain vessels in various groupings are placed. Painted white or black, the vitrines are either narrow rectangles, squares or large bookshelf-like pieces. The vessels are cylindrical, mostly the size of a shell cartridge, though some are wider and shorter. Their surfaces ranges from lustrous to matte and colors from white to pale celadon, to pale wheat to a gunmetal black. They are mostly smooth, but some are pitted. Having worked for Eva Zeisel back in the '80s, I know a thing or two about porcelain and I had to admire the quality of de Waal's—its thinness, its color and its lovely glazes.

My favorite pieces featured a deep rectangular vitrine with two "rows" of randomly arranged cylinders, one set up behind a translucent material that blurred them so that they appeared like shadows. There were also actual shadows, so in fact three different versions of the cylinders were visible. They made me ponder notions of presence and absence.

I also was drawn to some of the squares, especially the black ones, which had beautiful, subtly metallic backdrops against which the vessels were placed.

de Waal's work is austerely beautiful, as calming to look at as it must have been to make. All these individual hand thrown pieces...one imagines de Waal toiling in this endlessly repetitive fashion and reaching a kind of Nirvana in the process.

Though manmade, there is something organic about the vessels; they seem to have much more in common with bones, seashells and eggshells than vases and tea sets. And while the vitrines made me think of Donald Judd, de Waal's rough, handmade quality was very different from Judd's sleek hermeticism. de Waal embraces craft and his work represents a wonderfully recondite marriage between it and high art.

Imran Quershi

I think one of my favorite spots in New York is the roof garden at the Met. It's a glorious island surrounded by green with a nearly 360 view of the city rising above Central Park. It also has been the site of some pretty spectacular contemporary installations, such as the Starn Brothers’ Big Bambu and Tomás Saraceno's Cloud City. 

Recently, I set my alarm and got to the museum when it opened and hurrying back to the elevator was whisked up to the roof before the masses had made it through the intervening galleries. I was rewarded by having the place to myself save for a couple of guards and baristas at the coffee bar. It was a glorious morning. The city sparkled all around. 

The beautiful and classic vista of New York, my hometown, is reassuring and timeless, which is perhaps why Imran Qureshi's (born 1972), painted commission (his first large-scale installation in the United States) resonates so powerfully.

Thus far, 9/11 and the Boston Marathon aside, we have been spared the almost quotidian carnage happening in other parts of the world: Iraq, Israel, London, and Quershi's native Pakistan. The splatters and blotches in dried blood red powerfully evoke the ghastly aftermath of a suicide bomb. It's a powerful memento mori that hits you like a brick. And yet...within the awful splatters we discern delicate leaves emerging, beautifully rendered with chalk-like white highlights in the delicate style of the miniaturists who worked for the Mughal court (1526–1857). They're life and hope, civility and lyricism blooming from within the vestiges of violence. In Quershi's words: "Yes, these forms stem from the effects of violence. They are mingled with the color of blood, but, at the same time, this is where a dialogue with life, with new beginnings and fresh hope starts."

If only people could only cleave to these fragile fronds rather than the murderous hatred that rips us apart. 

Son et Lumière

What’s not to like about James Turrell’s installation in the atrium of the Guggenheim? His reimaging of Frank Lloyd Wright’s soaring circular spiral into gauzy ellipses of changing light is just plain beautiful. It’s otherworldly with the stacked diminishing ovoid shapes seeming to lead to some kind of portal. 

When I arrived, just after the museum opened, it was a tremulous, glowing white and I couldn’t help but think of accounts of near death experiences. Later, as I was leaving, it had turned to lavender and then a trippy hot pink with the Ganzfeld effect in high gear. Blissed out visitors lay on mats on the floor or draped themselves on benches around the space—an installation all on its own—it’s always great watching New Yorkers wrested from their protective carapaces.

The rest of the show I found rather lacking, certainly not up to the high standards set by Suprasensorial Experiments in Light, Color, and Space.  Curated by Alma Ruiz, it originated at L.A. MOCA; I caught it at the Hirshhorn. That show featured work by Latin American artists (Carlos Cruz-Diez, Lucio Fontana, Julio Le Parc, Hélio Oiticica and Jesús Rafael Soto) who were working with light in innovative ways a decade before the Light and Space movement emerged in this country. That said, if I lived in New York, I would return a couple of times, at least, to see the atrium awash in different colors.

Up at The Cloisters, Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet (2001) provides a nice aural counterpoint. A sound installation that comprises 40 high-fidelity speakers on stands positioned around the perimeter of the Cloisters’s Fuentidueña Chapel. Composed by Thomas Tallis possibly on the occasion of the 40th birthday of either Queen Elizabeth l or Mary Queen of Scots, the motet, Spem in alium numquam habui (c. 1573?), which translates as "In No Other Is My Hope," is one of Tallis's most famous compositions.

Standing at the center of the speakers, one is met with a wall of sound as the full effect of the polyphonic music is felt. Cardiff has referred to the piece as aural sculpture and one can feel exactly what she means. The words seem to fall away and one hears blocks of sound. Putting an ear up close to the speakers, one hears the individual voices—bass, baritone, alto, tenor, and child soprano—one part per speaker. It’s so clear it feels like the person is right there inside. The Fuentidueña Chapel, which features the late twelfth-century apse from the church of San Martín at Fuentidueña, near Segovia, provides the perfect setting and acoustics for the 14-minute piece that plays on a continuous loop.

Not to be outdone, MoMA has its own sound show: Soundings: A Contemporary Score. To me it was too pedantic, missing the magic that an artist like Cardiff is somehow able to capture. It reminded me of More Than Sound, an exhibit I saw last year at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm that focused on how music is being used and created within contemporary art through the work of nine artists. Interestingly, in both shows, though sound/music is the focus, a good deal of attention is directed at how the objects making the sound look (not a concern of Cardiff who is a pure aural artist). And here (at MoMA), as there (Bonniers Konsthall), I'm afraid that the very best part was the Op-Arty acoustical tiles on the wall.

Paper

Back in June at the “Paper” show at the Saatchi Gallery in London, I discovered several knockout artists. Chief among these was Anne Kevans. Her series of portraits of 20^th century dictators as children (Hitler, Idi Amin, Bokassa etc…the whole rogues gallery) entitled Boys, hit all the right notes. 

Painted with a light touch in muddy greens and ochres, Kevans’s elegant little watercolors are appealing in and of themselves: she exercises admirable restraint both in her style and the information she imparts. The added helping of creep-out we experince recognizing in these scared little faces, the familiar features we have come to abhor, takes them over the top. While there is subtlety in Devans's approach: using a minimalist style to represent these monsters when they were children (maybe not so innocent, judging from the expression on some of their faces, but at least non-threatening), the sheer quantity of baby dictators (taking up three gallery walls) is staggering.

Anne Toebee’s bird’s eye views of rooms are odd and inventive. In these bizarro floor plans, things don’t obey the same laws of perspective with counters, chairs and appliances oriented every which way.

I love the way Toebee combines rather dry draftsmanship with painterly areas. She clearly appreciates vintage interiors and patterns. In fact, the mini brick linoleum she depicts in The Doctor’s Wife is what caught my eye in the first place being the very pattern my grandmother had in her kitchen in Maine.

Named for the daily newspapers they’re made from, Jodie Carey’s sepia colored arrangements of flowers look like dried flowers you would find under a bell jar on a mantle. There’s something Victorian and something slightly funereal about them. There’s a pleasing marriage between the humbleness of the material and the elaborateness of the execution.

Eric Manigaud’s drawings of photographs taken at the Nazi-run State Care and Medical Facility in Weilmünster, Germany where Jewish patients (mental and other) were forcibly sterilized or starved are incredibly powerful. Beautifully executed, these large-scale drawings of human suffering command attention. Portrait Clinique # 10, which shows a distraught girl, her face distorted by the rough grip of a nurse is particularly arresting. Manigaud’s drawings of bombed Cologne grab our de-sensitized attention in a way that the photograph from which they come never could. Here as well as in the hospital series, by doing the drawings and making them so large, Manigaud’s succeeded in imbuing the images with the power to shock anew.

Brion-Vega Tomb

I had pictured Carlo Scarpa’s Brion-Vega Tomb off by itself on a hill. It’s actually on a flat expanse surrounded by cornfields. Over the angled concrete wall, one can see a typical Italian view of the rosy roofline and spire of the adjoining village. Most amazing, is that the tomb, which I would say takes up about a half-acre sits smack up against the cluttered cemetery of San Vito d'Altivole.

The tomb itself is austere, tranquil and un-morbid despite the fact that there are two sarcophaguses under a curved concrete awning and several other headstones. One doesn’t really notice these though.

After passing through the gate one comes to the chapel “floating” in its reflecting pool. The structures have a vaguely Asian, vaguely Art Deco, vaguely Mayan quality. Ridged protrusions, serrations and gaps that create a dynamic interplay between negative space and positive space, light and shadow. 

In addition to the chapel pool, there is a lovely chute of descending water reminiscent of the one in the garden of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice and a lily pad-covered rectangle of water at one end.

The famous red and blue intersecting circles are as beautiful and dramatic as they appear in photographs, providing two different effects depending on which side you are on.

As usual, Scarpa’s steps are wonderful. There is a simply nifty geometric set near the beginning of the tomb and at the end, a gracious stairway accesses the rest of the cemetery.

I noted the tomb looked a little shabby in places with mold creeping up a wall and there was an interesting concrete gate that didn’t work. While Scarpa’s work can stand up to a little decrepitude, I worry that the tomb is not being taken care of.

Castelvecchio

Yesterday I spent several hours in Castelvecchio, the Scaliger Family's 14th century fortress that is one of the architectural landmarks of Verona. It is an extraordinary structure: enormous, brick and stone with a vast interior courtyard, towers, massive sundials and its most notable feature: imposing crennellations that are both severe and fanciful with their monolithic looking Y-shaped volutes. This distinctive design is also continued on the city walls that are visible at various points throughout Verona and at Sirmione's fortress (also a Scaliger construction) on the shores of Lake Garda.

The purpose of my visit was to see the Carlo Scarpa renovations that were executed between 1959 and 1973 and, in particular, his amazing concrete staircase composed of triangular risers. Scarpa also designed all the exhibition props: inventive bronze mounts for paintings, floating bases for statuary and light fixtures.  

In addition to what may be the coolest staircase ever designed, there are at least four additional ones, not counting the wonderful slabs of steps outside. Looking at the famous one, I was struck by the dramatic play of light and shadow, which once I noticed seemed everywhere, a potent leitmotif that was reinforced by the play of intersecting planes in Scarpa's additions. 

Though a couple of the staircases are similar, each is unique, ranging from the COR-TEN steel curved bans to the polished lace-like stone steps edged in cork. I love the fact that Scarpa is not locked into one uniform approach, but expands and stretches his range again and again. 




The other thing I loved are Scarpa's surfaces. The occasional gleam of polished walls, the rough concrete indented with the grain of its wooden molds. The measured use of color: a rust panel here, Necco wafer gray concrete above pink brick there, or the unexpected dash of an indigo ceiling.

Scarpa's contemporary-meets-ancient approach is exactly right in this austere complex, bringing an elegant sleekness to what could have been an unmitigatingly grim, or at least boringly martial environment.    

Castelvecchio has a superb collection of medieval and quattrocento art as well as incredible wall decorations that emulate elaborate tilework and fabric that date to the building's origin. But I was so dazzled by the Scarpa, I barely looked at them. Next time!

Urban Renewal

Arnold Circus in London’s East End is a charming residential area consisting of handsome brick apartment buildings surrounding a raised green on which sits a bandstand. Though all is serene here now, the circus and buildings occupy the site of Friars Mount, London’s most infamous 19^th century slum. Indeed, the mound that forms the center of the circus is composed of the rubble from the demolished slum and the, now very much in demand, apartment complex was arguably Britain’s first council estate.

Back in its slum heyday, around 5,700 souls lived here in a rat’s nest of dwellings, unpaved streets and alleyways. Sanitary conditions were horrendous with little or no sewage oversight, and running water available for just 10–12 minutes each day. On Sundays, there was no water. To add to the misery, noxious ponds formed in the cavities left behind when earth was removed for brick making. Although there were shoemakers and tailors here, there was also “boiling tripe, melting tallow, or preparing cat’s meat and slaughter houses, dustheaps, and ‘lakes of putrefying night soil.’” In addition to these “reputable” trades the area was crime-riddled, thick with street gangs, thieves and prostitutes.

The transformation of Friars Mount can be attributed to the Reverend Osborne Jay. Jay took over the local Holy Trinity parish in 1886 when one child in four died before his or her first birthday and the entire death rate was four times that of London. Jay worked tirelessly to improve conditions, raising the amazing sum of  £25,000 to build a new church, social club, gym and lodging house, and in 1890 he convinced the London County Council to replace the slum with flats.

The horrified court of Victorian public opinion was won over when writer Arthur Morrison published A Child of the Jago (1896) a fictionalized work that laid bare the shame of Friars Mount. Indeed, when no less than the Prince of Wales opened the new development in 1900, he cited Morrison’s book: “Few indeed will forget this site who had read Mr. Morrison’s A Child of the Jago.”

Sadly, when the estate was completed, it wasn’t the Friars Mount residents who moved in; it was too expensive for them. They were pushed further out into the surrounding area producing overcrowding and more slums.