Protesting The Painted Protest

Dean Kissick begins his essay, “The Painted Protest,” which appeared in Harper’s, by coolly describing how his mother lost both legs getting hit by a bus en route to an exhibition at the Barbican in London. It’s quite the doozy of an opener, galvanizing the reader’s attention from the get-go. But I can’t help wonder how Mom (or should I say Mum) feels having her personal calamity inserted so casually in a magazine article on art. But whatever. 

The premise of “The Painted Protest” is that contemporary art has destroyed itself by becoming too political. I think we can all agree that there’s been an overabundance of haranguing political tedium taking up far too much exhibition space in recent years, but I would argue it’s the quality of the work, not the subject matter that’s at fault. 

Frankly, I don’t see how an artist can be anything but political these days. Artists are our societal barometers, tapping into the general zeitgeist in ways ordinary slobs do not. Suffering isn’t new, but nowadays we’re connected in ways never before possible—things happening in remote corners of the world are front and center in our lives.

The notion that art used to be free from politics is simply ludicrous. There are plenty of examples of political artwork in the history of art. Aside from the obvious; Goya, Daumier, Picasso, Grosz, there are countless more—we just don’t recognize their work as political because its meaning has been lost over the years, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t deliver a potent message to its contemporaries. 

Most visitors to the Frick Museum in New York probably look at the Holbein portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell as interesting portraits of historical figures, perhaps focus on details like More’s sumptuous claret velvet sleeves, or the objects arrayed on the table before Cromwell. But there’s much more going on here. You can tell from the warm humanism emanating from Thomas More’s face, versus the pinched expression of beady-eyed Thomas Cromwell just what Holbein thought of each man. Given their prominence in government and opposing viewpoints, how can these be interpreted as anything but political statements? More recently, you probably couldn’t get more political than the 1993 Whitney Biennial—perhaps the most controversial in the Whitney’s history. That’s the one where the usual museum entrance tags were replaced with ones by artist Daniel Joseph Martinez bearing the legend: “I can’t imagine ever wanting to be white.”

It’s hard to convey the effect of this bold salvo back then. The button, and the show itself, which featured a diverse group of artists with white male artists in the minority for the first time ever, created a furor. Out of this, a conversation began to develop about culture and who controlled it. Whose province were museums? Did they belong to the white—at the time mostly hetero, or hetero presenting—elite, or were they open to everyone? Kissick may dismiss the identity focus of that show, but it caused a much needed sea change in the art world.

I guess it depends on what you’re looking for, but when I visited the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which I reviewed for Artillery magazine, I didn’t pay much attention to any of the artists Kissick cites, quite possibly for the very reasons he has problems with them. The one exception was Mapuche artist Sebastiana Calfuquero’s piece, which contrary to Kissick, I found both inventive and interesting—I didn’t realize it “was a thing” not having seen “Unravel,” or Antonio Pachijhillá Quiacaín’s version. 

But the point is there was PLENTY of other really compelling work on view—none of which Kissick mentions. The biennial has always been a mixed bag—as is contemporary art itself—it’s not some monolithic movement with all its members proceeding in lockstep toward a common goal. It’s a much messier affair, with all sorts of different things going on at the same time, and a whole lot of trial and error and experimentation of ideas, media, themes, etc. happening.

Kissick spends so much time dissing indigenous artists and complaining about the elevation of traditional “women’s work”, that the leitmotif playing in my head while reading his piece was, “you will not replace us.” Can’t we open the art world up to include marginalized people for a turn? God knows white men have held it in a stranglehold for centuries. 

Kissick looks back with nostalgia to a time ten years ago when he claims the art world with its art fairs and biennials was “a space of spectacle and innovation”. While I certainly agree with the spectacle part, I don’t recall seeing much innovation at any of the art shows I attended (granted, I am not as well traveled as Kissick, but I’ve been to a fair number), nor any “workshopping new cultural forms for a new millennium.” Actually, I’ve seen just the opposite: a lot of derivative or safe work, with artists basically phoning it in.

Kissick cut his teeth working for style magazines in London and it shows. For all his bravura writing ability and knowledge, it’s clear he’s far more interested in the scene than the art: “The art world was where you would find the broadest remit to do whatever you wanted. It was where you could find the most unusual and preposterous ideas—and open bars, sex, and glamour too. This was the art world that I was drawn to.” Interning at the tony Serpentine Gallery under Hans Ulrich Obrist whom he describes as “the preeminent aughts super-curator” no doubt helped cement this attitude of insular superiority. 

“Artists could do whatever they pleased: they were famous, respected, sexually desirable;” he continues. “they could turn anything into art and create their own reasons for doing so; they made huge amounts of money for not doing very much.” Wow. Nice work if you can get it. But seriously, that’s what floats your boat? Most artists I know would howl at the description which sounds like a 16-year old status-seeking boy’s wet dream. I think what Kissick’s describing is an art star, not an artist. And while there are some art stars deserving of the accolades—Gerhard Richter for one—not all artists are famous in their lifetimes. What’s hot now doesn’t necessarily last, and fame doesn’t necessarily equate with quality. 

I do concur that contemporary art is in crisis but the culprit isn’t politics, it’s greed. It’s corrupted the market, elevating mediocre artists, killing off creativity and amplifying the extraneous fluff Kissick finds so appealing. 

Kissick is clearly enamored with Tom Wolfe, using Wolfe’s highly controversial 1975 book, The Painted Word as inspiration for his essay’s title. It’s unclear whether it was Kissick’s decision or Harper’s, but Wolfe’s “Visual Tedium” (an excerpt from The Painted Word) appears directly after Kissick’s essay as a kind of addendum and additional link between the two.

The premise of Wolfe's book (an excerpt of which originally appeared in Harper’s) was that art theory a.k.a. “the word” had gotten completely out of control, taking over the art world and subsuming the actual art. 

It’s true, a good deal of criticism spends far too much time on theoretical bullshit, and far too little on the more challenging feat of analyzing the artwork. But I’d also point out that as art veered away from what Arthur Danto refers to as “mimesis”, becoming ever more nonobjective and conceptual, “the word” became necessary to understand what was going on. Wolfe disparages critics, but critics, especially in the modern and contemporary art fields, are interpreters of often very abstruse work. You may not agree with them, and that’s your prerogative, but even if you disagree, what they say can be catalytic, helping you form your own opinions.

There’s a smart-alecky, sour grapes quality to Wolfe’s writing that suggests he was personally affronted that his preferred style (representational art) was out of favor in the period in which he was writing. He refers to members of the art world (critics and gallerists), who he claims are controlling the art market, condescendingly as “art worldings.”

A highly successful writer, Wolfe pioneered New Journalism, which utilized fiction devices in nonfiction writing. It was revolutionary, but Wolfe himself was a conservative and traditionalist and this is borne out by his attitude towards art.

Wolfe’s piece for The New York Times, “The Artist the Art World Couldn’t See” (January 2, 2000) about American sculptor Frederick E. Hart who’d recently died, provides a real window into his way of thinking. It’s clear from the piece that Wolfe was as taken with Hart the man who possessed an irresistibly colorful southern backstory (which Wolfe describes in detail) as he was with the artist. 

But the real crux of the piece was that he was peeved that Hart had been largely ignored by critics and was passed over in favor of Maya Lin for the Vietnam Memorial commission. Wolfe was appalled by Lin’s design for the memorial, referring to it in braying Archie Bunker fashion as a "tribute to Jane Fonda" and a "nihilistic slab of stone”. He wanted a more traditional narrative  approach that showcased his idea of what a sense of honor and heroism associated with war memorials would look like. But the Vietnam War, widely considered immoral and certainly divisive demanded an unconventional approach. Lin's brooding minimalist design conveys the weight of those burdens, and by making the names of the fallen soldiers the focus, she deftly separates them, their honor and their sacrifice, out from the dishonor of the war. 

Hart was a technically gifted sculptor who as a young man apprenticed at the National  Cathedral in Washington D.C. and went on to produce the admittedly stunning “Creation of Mankind” for the sanctuary’s west facade tympanum. The quality of the carving and the conception of the design are extraordinary and it suits perfectly, its traditional ecclesiastical setting. Looking at it you can surmise that had Hart lived in an earlier century he’d have been highly acclaimed. 

Hart ended up being included in the Vietnam Memorial in the end after veterans groups lobbied to have a representational statue added to the design. (It’s important to note that they were reacting to the plans, not the memorial itself, which, when once built, people responded favorably to.)  

There’s no question that Hart’s “Three Soldiers” is skillfully rendered, but it also seems cheesy next to the quiet grandeur of the ineffably stirring monument. The real problem is the statue’s traditional academic style doesn’t relate to the late 20th century experience. As Jackson Pollack put it: "New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements...the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.”

The Vietnam Memorial and Hart’s statue provide a study in contrasting styles and the responses they provoke. On the one hand, there’s Lin’s abstract design and on the other, Hart’s narrative statue. Lin’s piece is open ended, asking the viewer to bring their thoughts and emotions to engage with the piece. The sharp V shape of the memorial is intended to resemble a wound across the earth and the long approach, “a journey towards an awareness of loss.” She understood the power in the names, how they would resonate with family members and strangers, and how the list presented the sum total—a grim receipt, if you will—of what the war actually cost us. Hart’s is more directed, with a set cast of characters, expressions, circumstances. It spells out in narrative form a characteristic post-combat scene, yet it seems hollow and trite, even hokey with the figures sporting modern clothing which looks a little silly rendered in bronze.

I’ve visited the memorial a couple of times and have noticed that few people pay attention to the sculpture (which was subsequently joined by a second sculpture honoring the 11,000 women who served in Vietnam). Instead, visitors are drawn irresistibly to the names carved in polished black granite.

I’m glad Wolfe lived long enough to witness the unfolding of the career of the young woman whose work he so denigrated. When he did so, Wolfe was in his prime, a highly lauded member of the white intellectual establishment, while Lin was a 21-year old Asian student. But in the ensuing years, Lin’s proved she’s got the goods, in high demand for both her architecture and artwork since 1981. By the time Wolfe died in 2018, she had attained the status of bona fide art world luminary. Meanwhile, during the same time period, Wolfe’s own star was growing far dimmer than it once was.

I get that Kissick saw similarities between his argument and Wolfe’s and that the play on the title was too tempting to resist, but the idea of turning to Tom Wolfe for insightful observations about modern and contemporary art seems terribly misguided. I wonder if Kissick just couldn’t resist Wolfe’s dashing literary star persona. There’s no question Wolfe, tricked out in his bespoke white suits and spectator shoes exuded that all important glamor.

But I don’t know how you can take someone in the modern and contemporary art fields seriously who’s so dismissive of nonobjective art, one of its cornerstones. In remarkably boorish fashion, Wolfe equates nonobjective art with lack of skill, unaware that most serious abstract artists have a great deal of art training under their belts. The choices that determine the outcomes of their art have to do with aesthetic and visceral decisions rather than a desire to showcase skillfulness and/or to depict the human form. It’s almost like Wolfe needs the figure to keep himself oriented. He also bemoaned the lack of beauty. But isn’t art supposed to encompass all human expression, the good and the bad? Should’t it provoke thought and reflect its era in profound ways? It’s not just decor. 

Wolfe was wrongheaded—and just plain wrong—about Lin’s memorial and about abstraction itself. Back when he wrote “The Painted Word”, he claimed abstract expressionist paintings were being mothballed in guest rooms in the Hamptons. But, these days—50 years on—they’re very much front and center in museums and still fetch astronomical prices at auctions. Meanwhile, the photorealists Wolfe championed in the same article, Richard Estes and Robert Bechtle, never really took off, and  Hart, whose fame Wolfe suggested would explode ten minutes after his death, remains in the shadows.

In his 2000 New York Times piece, Wolfe goes on to extol the work of long out of favor academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau whose idealized landscapes and overly sentimental figures exude a dull, bourgeois respectability. He also expresses dismay that the small, acrylic sculptures that Hart mass produced and which had "grossed $100 million” weren’t ever reviewed by critics. I don’t really know what to say to this. For so many reasons, it’s absurd, and along with everything else, should make you seriously question what Wolfe says about art.

I do appreciate Kissick’s writing chops. His virtuosic command of both language and ideas is impressive. I have no clue where he stands in the realm of connoisseurship. He extols work that I find pretentious, or even, meh while ignoring what’s really good. And I’m a little confused by how Kissick really feels overall. Despite his obvious love of the glamor side of the art world, early on in the essay, he acknowledges that by 2016 it had become “frivolous and decadent.” 

Similarly, after trashing indigenous/identity artists at the beginning of the piece, towards the end he makes a complete about face, referencing four (Rember Yuhuarcani, Santiago Yuhuarcani, Susanne Wenger, Xiyadie) whose work he admired at the 2024 Venice Biennale. “What makes these artists great is not that they are foreigners, but that their visions are so foreign.” I take foreign to mean fresh, and I agree with him that originality is one of the keys to a work’s success. But it’s not the whole enchilada. You need execution and something else which I will call soul.

Kissick’s essay created enough of a flurry that he wrote a response published by Harper's. In it he advocates making art that “explores how it feels to be alive right now.” For him that’s heavy on technology. He suggests “developing modes of art making that complicate artistic subjectivity” using things like MRI machines to scan people’s minds, or offering oneself up as source material for bots, as well as, “[creating] more complex models of identity to reflect our integration with media, avatars, and data in the twenty-first century.” Has he been talking to Elon?

It seems pretty unimaginative to think that artists are just going to use these things as tools. Isn’t it more likely they’ll provide a jumping off point for inspiration and subject matter? With Big Brother looming and AI being rammed down our throats, many of us have grown beyond weary of technology. That’s actually “how it feels to be alive right now.” We’re not all tech bros thinking this is peachy keen. I believe it’s far more likely artists will turn their backs on anything that looks remotely like AI and embrace a way forward that is human-wrought and human-driven. But Kissick and his ilk shouldn’t fret too much, someone’s going to produce art for the remaining billionaires and I’m sure there’ll still be plenty of spectacle.

Power and Identity: Andreas Mühe’s A.M. – Eine Deutschlandreise

In honor of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the United States and a return to sanity at the White House, I am posting a piece I wrote last spring when things looked so dire in this country. It felt like Bedlam here and observing the women leaders around the globe (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand)—who were successfully combatting COVID-19, one could not help but long for leaders who listen and are instinctual nurturers. 

Of the group, Merkel occupies the biggest role. As the head of the most populous nation in the European Union with one of the largest economies in the world, she’s smashed through the thickest glass ceiling to join the big boys at their G7 and G8 summits. 

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Merkel’s initial success with Covid-19 hit some snags, including a third Covid wave and her popularity plummeted as Germany struggled. It’s not the first time. Though she’s managed to hold on to her position for going on two decades, there’s widespread disapproval for her open-door policy towards refugees. But Merkel remains true to her convictions and is a paragon of steadfast, determination, hard work and principle. 

What most people don’t know is that in addition to her position as Chancellor of Germany, Merkel also serves another more surprising role as muse to German artist Andreas Mühe. Power has been a source of fascination for Mühe, so it’s not surprising he’d choose Merkel as the subject of a photographic series. What is surprising is the work. Sumptuous to look at, it conveys Merkel’s power and essence without coming across as jingoistic, trite or banal. 

Mühe possesses deep theatrical roots. Mühe’s mother is theater director Annegret Hahn and his late father, the highly acclaimed late actor Ulrich Mühe who played the central role of Gerd Wiesler in the powerful Oscar-winning 2006 film, “The Lives of Others”. Ulrich Mühe was 36 when the Berlin Wall came down and so had plenty of personal experiences of living under the cudgel of East Germany which he brought to the role of the Stasi captain. In fact, as a young man, Mühe held the awful position of border guard patrolling the Berlin Wall. The posting exacted a heavy emotional and physical toll, causing the stomach ulcers that would ultimately lead to the cancer that killed him at just 54. 

In an ironic twist that presaged the plot of the “The Lives of Others”, Ulrich Mühe discovered in his own Stasi file (accessed following Reunification), that his second wife, actress, Jenny Gröllmann, had allegedly been informing on him. She denied the charges and was backed up by her former Stasi controller. She even won an injunction preventing the publishing of the senior Mühe’s book detailing the circumstances. But whether her version is correct doesn’t really matter because Mühe believed she betrayed him. When asked how he prepared for the role of Wiesler, Mühe famously replied, ”I remembered.” This burden of trauma not only informed his life, but it is also a profound legacy of angst passed down to his son.  

The blurring of truth and illusion is the business of both theater and police states and they are themes central to Andreas Mühe’s work. He epically tackles these dual forms of reality in his moving, complex and slightly creepy, “Mischpoche” (from the Yiddish “mishpokhe”, meaning tribe or clan), producing an unusually comprehensive pair of family portraits. The work comprises way more than the finished photographs; the laborious process entailed in their creation is a hugely important aspect. This is because Mühe’s portraits include not just his living family members, but the dead ones as well, carefully recreated by him in lifelike silicone. Mühe uses old photographs to fashion his remarkably realistic three-dimensional versions—theatrical props, if you will—of his deceased father and two stepmothers, Gröllmann and actress Susanne Lothar. 

Mühe’s foray into the realm of sculpture afforded him a lengthy period in which to ponder family, and life and death. The resulting dolls, as Mühe calls them, are simply staggering in their lifelikeness. And the lushly beautiful photographs he took of them during the course of their creation are so strange and startling, they stop you in your tracks. We don’t know what to make of these partial humans with the mechanical parts and pieces of their construction exposed. 

But this is just one step in a arduous process. After completing the dolls, Mühe arranges them together with his living family members into a kind of tableau vivant that he photographs. 

Mühe uses a large-format camera which has a uniform field of focus and thus produces prints of terrific clarity. It’s not how the eye sees and so everything looks a little artificial. This leveling of the playing field between inanimate and animate objects serves Mühe well, visually equating the living and the dead. Coming upon these photographs without knowing the backstory, one wouldn’t think anything of them. And in a way, they aren’t that much different from an ordinary photograph. Photographs aren’t family members after all, just representations of them. And the same can be said about the dolls.

The two family portraits appear to have been taken on a stage in mid-scene of a performance, as if the action has suddenly been arrested. Mühe’s stopped time, or at least manipulated it—suspended both the living and dead in an artificial reality. 

Except for their large size, the photographs recall production stills like the ones put up in a theater lobby during the run of a play. The theater conceit is a reference to the family members’ occupations, but it also underscores the artificiality of the whole thing. To emphasize this even more, Mühe intentionally includes camera equipment and camera tracks in the foreground of the photographs and he even appears in shadow on the right side of “Mühe II”, a Christmas scene complete with decorations and lavish tree. 

With “Mischpoche”, Mühe has done something we’d all like to do: he’s breathed life into family members who have died and also mended their fractured relationships. It may be pure fiction, but the intention and effect are really quite moving.

But to return to Angela Merkel, I want to discuss Mühe’s series, “A.M. – Eine Deutschlandreise” (“A Trip to Germany”) from 2013. The portfolio of 11 photographs presents a riveting and unconventional portrait of power. The inspiration for the project came during a trip to the U.S. Mühe took as official photographer accompanying Chancellor Merkel. At one point, he asked one of her bodyguards if he could take a picture of her inside her limousine, and was told no, for security reasons. So, he decided to recreate the effect himself. When “A.M. – Eine Deutschlandreise” initially came out, it caused a big stir in Germany as people thought the chancellor, who had been photographed by Mühe officially, had actually posed for it.

To produce the “A.M. – Eine Deutschlandreise” series (the A.M. stands for Angela Merkel, but it could just as easily be Andreas Mühe), Mühe returned to his theatrical roots, casting his mother in the role of Merkel. He took her to a number of significant sites around the country representative of German identity. These aren’t your garden variety spots familiar to tourists, the Reichstag, Neuschwanstein, the Brandenburg Gates, or a beer garden, but subtler places that you almost have to be German to recognize. In the photos, Mühe’s mother wears a wig and clothes that evoke Merkel. She is either sitting in a car looking out the window, or standing in front of the vehicle taking in her surroundings. 

Dressing up like another person is a central conceit of Cindy Sherman’s work. But I’ve never been able to shed the sense that it’s all an enormous vanity project. Mühe avoids this by training his camera on someone other than himself. 

Unlike Sherman, Mühe photographs his subject from the back. This is necessary to assist with the impersonation, but it also adds a mysterious, almost voyeuristic quality to the photographs. As has been suggested, Mühe may be referencing the great German Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich in his use of a Rückenfigur, “Figure from the back” composition. The visual conceit was popularized by Friedrich and his cohorts as a means to give the viewer a you-are-there experience. Like Friedrich’s existential icon, “The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog”, Mühe’s “Angela” is all alone gazing at some resonant part of Germany. Is she just taking it in, or looking for answers? The locales are varied. Some seem hospitable and easy, while others complicated and unknowable. In either case, they’re fitting metaphors for the leader of a country confronting its many challenges.

The two standouts of the series are “The Villa Hügel,” a study in contrasts, with the lush peonies held by the woman in the car offering a soft and delicate foil to the imposing gray structure—the residence of Germany’s powerful Krupp Family—visible through the rain-blurred window. The frilly pink flowers also suggest romance, as does the ornate façade of the building at which the woman stares so wistfully, deftly conveyed by the incline of her head. Is the image hinting at some unknown past, or does it depict yearning for the Germany that existed before 1914? Or, maybe, given the Krupp Family’s ties to steel and armaments, an acknowledgement of the inevitability of war?

The second, “Audi on the Zugspritze”, looks more like a painting than a photograph. In this image, the woman holds a metal thermos cup in both hands for warmth as she stares out at the Zugspritze, the highest peak in Germany. This shot required herculean efforts on the part of Mühe and his assistants who had to lug the door of an armored Audi A8, weighing nearly a ton, up to the site for the photo.

The “A.M. – Eine Deutschlandreise” photographs have an appealing retro look. It has something to do with the quality of the light and the somewhat washed-out colors that seem reminiscent of old ads, vintage postcards, or mid-century travel posters. In any case, they thrum with nostalgia.

Having been born in East Germany and ten years old when the wall came down, Mühe experienced living under the harsh conditions of the GDR followed by a very different experience of Germany post-reunification. This can’t help but give him a deep understanding of his country, its people and what it means to be German. 

In his series of backdrops, Mühe offers a contemporary spin on the German idolization of its ancient culture, tradition and land. There is both pride and unease in these photographs made manifest by the introduction of the Merkel character. We see and sense the beauty, the power, the history, but there are also implicit questions prompted by Merkel’s presence. She seems to be looking for the answers as much as anyone, which suggests a person who is thoughtful, conscientious, responsible, humble. All exceedingly admirable qualities in a leader. They engender confidence and a feeling that whatever the future brings, you're in competent hands. Merkel may not please everyone and might put a foot wrong now and then, but in balance, she has led her country through extraordinarily challenging times with decisive shrewdness and compassion. Some may think a great leader deserves a statue in a square. I think there is no better monument than these curiously compelling photographs that function both as stand-alone artworks and tributes to this remarkable and powerful woman.

Taken by Surprise: Recent Works on Paper and in Oil by Dean Dass

In September 2018, Dean Dass made a pilgrimage through northern Michigan into Ontario, following a route that paralleled the one taken by the Group of Seven. Like Dass, this cohort of Canadian artists was drawn to the particular qualities of the north, its rugged austerity, subtle palette and distinctive light. And like him too, they were influenced by the Nordic artists Edvard Munch, Jonas Heiska and Akseli Gallen-Kallela, artists whom Dass has been studying for 25 years. There is something undeniably elegiac about the landscapes Dass painted after the trip. The works created by the artists who came a century before were essentially tributes to the scenery, but Dass’s images of pristine nature are loaded. We cannot look at them without being reminded of how threatened such places are.     

Dass’s body of work follows two distinct directions. There are the exquisite, lush renderings of rivers and forests in oil. And then there are the ethereal, stylized pieces on paper that appear both ancient and contemporary with their heavily worked surfaces that incorporate such organic materials as graphite, gold leaf and mica together with washes of pigment. Dass considers these two approaches closely aligned and part of a unified continuum. 

You can see this alignment in his recent abstract (but based in reality) paintings, Fireflies and Seven Clouds. Fireflies is a painting of a photo of a television screen paused on a sci-fi film, while Seven Clouds, features luscious earth-tone shapes that derive from video game stills set against an inky backdrop. Both paintings are based on early collages included in the exhibition, Räjähdyksiä Maisemassa (Landscape with Explosions), Galleria Harmonia, Jyväskylä, Finland. “I want these kinds of paintings to do two paradoxical things simultaneously,” says Dass, referring to the pleasurable visceral reaction to an aesthetically appealing composition that’s also tinged with unease upon contemplation. “So that we’re stuck vibrating in the connotative space between two terms.”

Dass is enchanted by the nesting fish which abound in the creek that flows by his house. This little stream runs into the Mechums River, which Dass has painted for over 20 years. The Mechums goes into the James and the James, into the Chesapeake Bay and thence to the ocean. In the passage of water and fish, one could say Dass is “Looking upstream, maybe in the sense of looking further, more closely, into the depths as it were.” In Chub, he uses gold leaf for the little fish, capturing the effect of sunlight hitting their silvery skin. In the almost abstract work, he fractures the mandala—an image of truth that recurs in Dass’s work—transforming it into something entirely different. In this case, “a joyous little swimming creature.” 

Dass uses his practice to explore, not just the media he uses, but to take deep cerebral dives into history, mythology and philosophy. “I am interested in asking what do we see,  what do we know, what do we understand?” he says. Having come to painting at the age of 40, Dass brought with him the methodical, process-rich approach of the printmaker he’d spent the first part of his career being. Dass is constantly exploring new and old media and techniques. His glazes are the same ones used by northern Renaissance artists and yet, he is not averse to using an inkjet printer. He works with intention, but also leaves things up to chance, allowing media to mix, and ebb and flow on their own.

Dass’s landscapes are mysterious and romantic. He captures the elements of water and air with extraordinary sensitivity. Just look at the limpid stretch of olive, steel gray and black in the foreground of Chippewa Falls. The river comes alive in his hands—you can almost hear it, feel it and smell it. Or, the way sunlight filters through leaves or branches creating coronas of yellow, pink, or orange radiance. 

In Bog Near Sault Ste. Marie, Dass has dotted the water’s surface with bold squiggles of yellow pigment to indicate sunlight dancing off water. But, the marks also jar us out of our complacent perception of a scenic image into a more profound appreciation. It’s part of what Dass is after when he says he wants landscape painting to take the viewer by surprise. Or, to extrapolate from German philosopher Theodor Adorno, to engender a “shudder” in the viewer. This involuntary, primal response is similar to the awe and fear central to the 19th century notion of the Sublime. To convey this, contemporaneous painters chose as subjects places of natural magnificence, which helped hammer home the point. Dass prefers more low-key settings. In both works on paper and in oil, Dass finds the awe, the shudder, and he ensures that we find it too.

Catalogue essay commissioned by Dean Dass and Les Yeux du Monde gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia. Supported in part by UVA Arts & the Office of the Provost & the Vice Provost for the Arts. 

Ne Plus Ultra #2

I’d booked the only reservation left to go up in the glass dome of the Reichstag. It was for 8:00 am. The night before, I set the alarm for 6:30, looked at the subway map to cement the right stop in my mind and went to bed. 

Somehow, I’d got it wrong and the stop I thought was correct was miles away from the Reichstag. There was no way I’d make the reservation. Disappointed, I was even more determined to see the Nefertiti bust. With visions of the Mona Lisa gallery at the Louvre filling my head, I high tailed it over to the Neues Museum to get in line for tickets. There were seven people in front of me at the kiosk set up in the forecourt shared by the Neues Museum and the Pergamon. 

You can buy entrance tickets for each museum and also tickets that get you into all of them. The people in front, purchased the latter and headed over to the Pergamon. I rushed over to the entrance of the Neues where there were two people already waiting. The doors opened, and we were admitted. They headed over to the coat check. I asked the guard where the Nefertiti bust was and hurried up the stairs. On the second floor, I asked directions from another guard. Normally, I would never do that. Normally, I’d want to convey that I wasn’t superficially fixated solely on art history’s “greatest hits”, and would feign interest in the cases leading into the main attraction. But this time, I cut straight to the chase. As the guard waved me in the correct direction, she all but rolled her eyes. 

I sped walked over to the room in which Nefertiti is displayed. It is a chamber fit for a queen with a series of arched niches forming the walls. The walls are green and look frescoed. The floor is elaborately inlaid polychrome and there’s a domed coffered ceiling. (The entire Neues Museum is beautifully appointed with painted walls, inlaid floors, elaborate ceilings, creating a semblance of a palace from antiquity.) 

For a scant few moments I had Nefertiti all to myself before two guards came hurrying in. Almost immediately I began to weep. Beyond the absolute beauty of the thing, the fact that it is so lifelike and life-size is simply gob smacking. There is something comforting about her eternal beauty and serenity that has endured through millennia. There’s also an intimacy to this one-on-one encounter between Nefertiti and me. She lived over 3,300 years ago and was an Egyptian Queen—I am a 21st century American woman. What could be more different? And yet, all I could think was she was a person and female so experienced many of the things I have. 

Present also in the experience of standing there with Nefertiti is the weight of all the history that has transpired between her lifetime and mine. It’s impossible not to feel the enormity of the difference and yet the commonality of being human. My time with Nefertiti was brief—I felt awkward lingering too long with the guards there—but it was one of the most profound experiences I have ever had.

Valeska Gert

I had never heard of Valeska Gert, but there was something about her pixyish face, with its rubbery, slightly bruised features that called to mind other clowns with melancholy overtones: Judy Garland as photographed in clown make-up by Richard Avedon, or Pagliaccio. A Sally Bowles meets Carolee Schneemann hybrid, Gert was a prominent figure in the cabaret life of 1920s Berlin and would go on to make a name for herself as an envelope-pushing performance artist who would be a muse for both the Dadaists and the Punks.

Gert was fearless, taking a provocative and anarchic approach to performing, using her body to confront societal conventions. Informed by Berlin’s cabaret scene and the nascent film industry, Gert developed a performance practice that combined theatre, dance, cinema, poetry and song. She loved burlesque and the grotesque, the marginal and the unexpected, incorporating all this into her performances. 

Born Gertrud Valesca Samosch to a well to do Jewish family, Gert began taking dance lessons when she was nine. Acting classes would follow. World War I adversely affected her family's fortunes, forcing her to earn her own way. She joined a dance group and created revolutionary dances that were performed at various theaters around Berlin. 

In the 1920s, she used dance to express such unconventional subjects as a traffic accident or an orgasm. Pause was performed at a movie theater during the interval when film reels were changed. Gert came onstage and literally just stood there doing nothing in an effort to showcase inactivity and silence amidst the chaos of modern life. It was revolutionary.

At the same time, Gert was also performing at Berlin's famous cabaret, Schall und Rauch (Sound and Smoke). She toured with her dances: Dance in Orange, Boxing, Circus, Japanese Grotesque, Death and Whore.

Gert appeared in several early films including G. W. Pabst’s Joyless Street (1925), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) and The Threepenny Opera (1931). 

In 1933, Gert was banned from the German stage because she was Jewish. She left Germany and lived in London for a time where she worked both in theatre and film, including a role in the experimental short film, Pett and Pott.  

Gert emigrated to the States in 1938, settling in New York. She supported herself by washing dishes and nude modeling. Cabaret remained a focus and in 1941, she opened Beggar Bar. Living Theater founders Julian Beck and Judith Malina worked for her, as did Jackson Pollack and Tennessee Williams.  

Gert returned to Europe in 1947, spending time in Paris and Zurich. She returned to Berlin, opening the cabaret Hexenküche (Witch's Kitchen) in 1948. She moved to Sylt, an island in the Frisian Archipelago where she opened Ziegenstall (Goat Shed). 

In 1965, Gert had a role in Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits. She also appeared in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s TV series Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day and Volker Schlöndorff’s Coup de Grace. In 1978 German film director Werner Herzog asked her to play the real estate broker Knock in his remake of Nosferatu. She died two weeks before filming began.

In 2010, Valeska Gert’s importance was finally acknowledged with Pause: the Art of Valeska Gert presented by the Berlin Museum for Contemporary Art, Hamburger Bahnhof.  

Lotte Laserstein

Lotte Laserstein would never be considered an avant-garde darling, but as the show of her work at the Berlinische Galerie reveals, Laserstein was a great painter. Her work is very much rooted in 19th century naturalism, but she took a modern approach when it came to her formal choices—composition and color, and even to her selection of subject matter, wielding her brush with enormous confidence and emotional sensitivity.  

Laserstein enjoyed a good deal of success during the Weimar Era in Germany, but because she was Jewish, she all but disappeared from the German art scene after 1933. In 1937, she fled to Sweden. 

Laserstein’s particular interest was portraits. These are not formal commissions, but rather character studies of people who interested her. She clearly enjoyed capturing their visages and dress and also, conveying the psychology of the sitter. They provide a wonderful window into the storied world of 1920s and early '30s Berlin. Take for instance, Portrait of Polly Tieck, which depicts a pleasant looking woman wearing a chic hat with a perforated brim that allows the sunlight to dapple her face. In edgy Weimar fashion, she sports a monocle on one eye. Or, the seductive lovelies portrayed in Woman with Red Beret and Girl Lying on Blue. Traute Rose in Green Pullover and Spanish Woman are looser, more indistinct renderings, but with dramatic compositions. The hands in the latter painting are just gorgeous.

Laserstein painted a series of Russians, emigres who had settled in Berlin following the Russian Revolution. Their existence hints at the international flavor of that city in the 1920s. She favored women as subjects and was drawn to the “new woman” whose androgynous look was reflective of their growing independence and presence in the workplace. 

Laserstein painted many portraits of herself. Some show her at work with a model and sometimes an easel. They are mostly unflinching studies. She stares intently out, her face serious, almost confrontational. Laserstein has a plain, Northern European face—a face that could have been painted by Rembrandt or Reubens. It's fleshy with thick lips, slightly bulbous nose and hooded eyes. She renders it with great technical flair and with a complete lack of vanity. Self Portrait with Headscarf (pictured) from 1923 is deceptively simple. A nearly monochromatic study of paint and line working together in a special alchemy to form flesh and soul, the painting is on a scrap of un stretched canvas, framed under glass. Whether intentional or not, this treatment underscores the unvarnished, casualness of the image. Like the headscarf, or the woman depicted, it adds false simplicity to the work which serves to convey the exact opposite. 

Laserstein remained in Sweden until her death. She survived the Nazis and the war, but she was isolated from the international art scene and her oeuvre suffered. She supported herself with portrait commissions, which paid the bills, but left her unfulfilled. And with good reason, they have none of the pizzazz of her earlier work. 

Hilma af Klint

I know. I am in the minority, but I was really underwhelmed by Hilma af Kilnt's work.

First of all, I find all that mumbo-jumbo medium stuff off-putting. It seems cultist and whacky. Since I wasn’t on board for that, it was hard to get excited about work, the focus and raison d’être of which, is the mumbo-jumbo medium stuff.

All I could think of when looking at af Klint’s work were doodles in a high school kid's notebook. They obviously meant something, but were unintelligible, aesthetically unremarkable and completely lacking in any sort of soul. More like diagrams than art. Unless you’re a follower of her beliefs, there didn’t seem to be a lot of there there.  

It’s hard not to like the large Paintings from the Temple (pictured Youth), they are beautiful things. But appealing as they are, they’re pretty bland and really quite decorative. In fact, to me, they are precursors to the great Swedish (primarily textile) designer, Josef Frank’s designs. I love his work, but I wouldn't put him in the same class as Kandinsky, or in a show at the Guggenheim. 

While I was going through the exhibition, I took a detour into the gallery with selections from the Guggenheim's permanent collection. Among the works on view was an abstract Kandinsky. I stood in front of it for a while, so struck by how much energy and richness it had as compared to the anemic af Klints hanging just outside. It completely dispels the suggestion that af Klint beat him to abstraction—a silly construct anyway. I also would argue that af Klint’s work isn’t really abstract because the symbols and equations in the work are not purely formal embellishments, they have actual meaning. Picasso and Braque famously inserted words in their later Cubist works. The words were nonsensical, or more accurately, words that make sense, but didn’t have any meaning as relates to the subject of the painting. They were used solely as visual tools to stop the eye from going into space, keeping everything on the flat surface of the picture plane. This focus on the painting as object and not a window into an illusory 3-D world was a concept central to abstraction.  

Don't get me wrong, I applaud efforts to bring stellar female artists (and others previously overlooked) out of the shadows, but let it be someone really extraordinary like Katarzyna Kobro. The problem with her is there's not enough extant work for a big ass museum show and its attendant merch—and that I think hits at the crux of the matter—marketing. (Speaking of which, I almost went for the very Swedish set of two plastic little trays emblazoned with two of the Paintings from the Temple—a perfect place for them. I didn’t end up getting them as I was a little troubled by the scale.) 

I would classify af Klint as an outsider artist akin to Henry Darger. They each created an immense body of work within a self-imposed vacuum. I find Darger’s work far more compelling. It has a passion that is completely absent from af Klint’s. Looking at it, you feel that passion and when coupled with the circumstances of his life, the work becomes a bigger, exceedingly moving story of perseverance and triumph. It's certainly noteworthy that af Klint created an only recently discovered, enormous body of work and belief system, but it’s primarily a human interest story. I object to the slavish adulation surrounding the show, that has given af Klint a stature she really doesn't deserve.

Siri Aurdal

The largest and first solo exhibition of Norwegian sculptor Siri Aurdal since 1980, Continuum at the Malmö Konsthall presents Aurdal’s breathtaking work in a long overdue tribute to this visionary artist.

After a decades-long hiatus, Aurdal reemerged to great fanfare during the 57th Venice Biennale when her Onda Volante ("Flying Wave") was exhibited at the 2017 Nordic Pavilion. This monumental work of graceful, looping forms is made from reinforced, fiberglass-coated, polyester tubes intended for use in the Norwegian oil industry. With the tubes, Aurdal is able to explore her interest in modular sculptural systems. 

Aurdal is known for her interest in industrial materials, drawn to them because of the engineering possibilities they afford—strength, flexibility and lightness. But she also clearly revels in and is aware of the power of taking something humble and unpretentious and imbuing it with beauty and grace.

The two other pieces, Interview (1968/2018) and Conversation (2018) are hung together suggesting a fluidity inherent in the show’s title. The sheets of colored Plexiglas that comprise them are cut into different shapes that are suspended from the ceiling. One can walk amongst them in a kind of kaleidoscopic maze of color. As you move through, colors (red, green, and pink for the former; deep blue, light blue, and orange for the latter) and figures overlap creating new forms and hues. 

It was very interesting seeing this show hot on the heels of the exhibition on Katarzyna Kobro at the Moderna Museet, Malmö. I thought at first it must be intentional, but I never saw anything linking the two women.The connection between the two seems pretty clear. According to the accompanying literature, Aurdal, like Kobro was interested in the relationship of art to architecture as well as its social context. But more striking was something I could see with my own eyes: how their sculptures occupy and interact with space. They don’t sit within it like separate masses, but actively engage with it. Above and beyond this, the two women share an artistic courage and unwavering determination to create art on their own terms in a field of men. 

Aurdal took her sculpture to a much larger scale—she was part of a generation that did this—but, as a woman, it took a certain uncompromising bravery to be so bold. Because let’s face it, especially in the 1960s (the date of the original iterations of this work), monumentality was considered the province of men. Aurdal deftly co-ops it, while managing to hold onto her female identity. You look at these pieces and know they could only have been done by a woman.

One hopes from the title of the exhibition, Continuum, that what we see here—the brilliance of the past and present work—will carry on into the future and more will be forthcoming from Aurdal.

More Than a Tea Cup

Meret Oppenheim is a name familiar to anyone who has taken an Art History survey course. Her brilliant, edgy and whimsical fur-lined tea cup, Object, is perennially trotted out as the emblematic symbol of the Dadaist movement. But as Mirrors of the Mind, a comprehensive retrospective of Oppenheim’s oeuvre makes clear, Oppenheim was far more than a one-shot wonder with a long and interesting career. 

The show at EMMA (the Espoo Museum of Modern Art) includes 200 works by Oppenheim and other surrealists like Man Ray and Daniel Spoerri, as well as photographs of Oppenheim herself. Oppenheim died in 1985, but she remains a leader in the field of Surrealism and an icon of feminism. 

In her 50-year career, Oppenheim created paintings, sculptures, drawings and graphics. She also designed and made jewelry, as well as furniture and garments, and if all that wasn’t enough, she also wrote poetry.

The exhibition is beautifully curated and displayed in a series of small galleries that suit the work’s aesthetic, scale and era. Particularly effective, is the room featuring glass vitrines placed within plywood walls that are both warm and perfectly attuned to the work on view—it would behoove the people at the soulless shopping mall-like institutions masquerading as museums to take a look at this presentation and see the power of intimate spaces.

I was charmed by Oppenheim's paintings and works on paper. The Earl Queen is a mysterious, somewhat haunting painting of a strange headed figure holding an infant with the same sort of head but with elongated crossing horns. The heads are kind of sinister, almost satanic. The two figures are next to a bushy tree that seems illuminated. In the background one can see the lighted windows of a train. The dreamlike scene is nocturnal and rendered in grays and blacks. The exceptions are the min figures' red and blue clothes. These are nearly diaphanous and suggest an apparition. Moth is a nearly abstract work of beautifully modulated grays, white and black. These two works reveal a subtlety and range surprising if all you have to go on as far as Oppenheim's work is Object. Her etching, Schoolgirl's Notebook is a replica of her math notebook in which she drew "x = hare", a nonsensical equation meant to illustrate her aversion to both math and school is simple, witty and striking. 

Giacometti's Ear, a true-to-life size bronze rendering of an ear is a marvelous object. You don't really notice at first, but Oppenheim has used something that looks like a tree trunk, or perhaps the silhouette of a woman's body, two lilies and a fist to form the anatomy of the ear. Traccia her famous bronze table with its funny bird legs is here, a delightful union of elegance and farce. I didn't see My Nurse at EMMA, but later in Stockholm during the same trip, a confection composed of a pair of white pumps neatly trussed and served up on a platter. The piece de resistance are the manchettes stuck jauntily onto the heels like the shoes are a proper crown roast. One is drawn to the materials, the humor and also the enigmatic quality. The photographs, taken over many years, are testament to Oppenheim's fearlessness and commitment to art. 

Man Ray's elegant swirl of a lampshade and Spoerri's Transvestite in a Blue Picture with a Glove Holder (from 2001) were two works by Oppenheim's circle that stood out. 

No Ordinary Moments: Visit to EMMA

EMMA, the Espoo Museum of Modern of Art is located in Tapiola in the suburb of Espoo, a short subway ride from Helsinki on one of its spotless and punctual to a fault, tomato red trains. You know you’re at the right stop when you step off the train and are greeted on the platform by Emma Leaves a Trace, a monumental white sculpture. Kim Simonsson’s sculpture is actually bronze painted completely white except for one hand that’s splashed with color. Blotches of the same colors. suggesting the girl’s handprints, appear around the station. There are also a series of digital animations showing the girl’s mischievous antics as she paints the streets of Tapiola in rainbow colors.

The largest art museum in Finland, with over 50,000 square feet of gallery space, EMMA is housed in a former printing company designed by Aarno Ruusuvuori (1925–1992) in 1967. A classic example of 1960s brutalism, the concrete building is a long, low rectangle. From the outside it’s a foil to its woodland setting, and inside, it invites those woods in, thanks to the windows running along the rear wall. This inclusion and reverence for nature is very much part of the Finnish ethos where modern design and nature happily coexist.

You enter the museum on the ground level where the café and shop are situated. Out back behind the museum is a Futuro House. Designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen (1933–2013) in 1968, the living structure was made out of fiberglass-reinforced polyester plastic. It looks like a flying saucer. The one at EMMA is bright yellow, but they came in a variety of colors—white, orange, blue. One can picture it in a snowy landscape out in the woods or in the desert looking quite cool. Unfortunately, Suuronen continued his UFO-theme inside with a row of ugly bucket seats ringing the edge of the main circular room. I kept thinking how much better it would be gutted and filled with natural materials. This also might have helped alleviate the peculiar odor—possibly plastic degrading that made lingering inside for any length of time impossible. Still, the inclination for a small modular house was spot on as evidenced by the explosion of the tiny house movement today. Of the original 100 Futuro houses that were made, only around 60 survive. Several are in the U.S.

Back in the museum building and up a flight of stairs are the main exhibition galleries. Here, the ceiling is suspended from eight massive columns; there are no structural walls, so the enormous space can be easily manipulated to accommodate different types of art and exhibitions. It feels both expansive and intimate, with a warmth and graceful flow between spaces.

No Ordinary Moments, a curated exhibition of Finnish and International works from the museum’s collection of contemporary work required large open space to display the work. A retrospective of the work of Merit Oppenheim occupied a suitably scaled area of intersecting spaces, situated away from the windows, towards the center of the building. Softly lit and rather cozy, it really enhanced the experience of looking at this type of art. In one or two instances, in this show, the exhibition areas had been delineated by many strands of fine twine hung from the ceiling to form a “wall”, which was both exceedingly beautiful and also afforded a cheap solution to separating space.

No Ordinary Moments provides a wealth of new discoveries. With the exception of Olafur Eliasson, not one of the other featured (mostly Scandinavian) artists was familiar to me, but boy was I impressed by the caliber of their work. The very first piece, Apokalypsis 1918, Hennala 4 (pictured) by Heikki Marila is a commanding piece by any standards. From a formal standpoint the painting has enormous presence with frenetic red scratches and squiggles covering a soft monochromatic background that could almost be photographic. Violence and blood are suggested by the strident overpainting and one begins to see the mounds and shapes as people. This is as it should be for the painting references the Hennala prison camp. Originally built as a garrison, during the Finnish Civil War, it was turned into one of the most infamous prison camps of the conflict.

Crystalline and shiny mirrors have a spare purity that is endlessly appealing. Olafur Eliasson uses them for their reflections but also for their lucent quality which references elements—water, air, ice that are the frequently his subjects. His Pentagonal Mirror Tunnel is composed of five round mirrors on stands facing each other in a circle that suggests a cosmic arrangement. Stepping within the circle, one begins to see the infinity tunnel phenomenon of the title. But more interesting, is the cubist effect of the reflections. These visually fragment the mirrors, producing intersecting planes and discombobulating the viewer’s sense of space.

Julian Opie’s striking Woman Walking in the Rain with a Headscarf has a graphically bold composition and snappy Good N’ Plenty palette. Opie is known for his highly stylized versions of ordinary people walking on the street. In his animated versions, he pairs an anonymity and emotional blandness—the faces are usually circles—with lifelike movement for a curious effect. Here, the hijab adds a charged poignancy to the composition.

I was drawn to Irmeli Hulkko’s Variable by her combined use of linear and painterly approaches makes for an interesting dialogue between the two, but also the spindles and lines floating “above’ the background enable her to create an illusion of space within a nonobjective work. She allots equal weight to each approach and also manages to integrate them to produce a cohesive whole. Hulkko’s unexpected palette of watery yellow and gray with a dash of Kelly green was curiously appealing.

Denise Grünstein’s creepy video All Flesh is Grass features a man dressed in a suit, standing in front of a table—you only see his chest and arms—his head is out of the frame. The interior, the figure and the quality of the light recall a Vermeer. Soon a tress of strawberry hair falls on the table in front of the man. Several more begin to drop slowly at first and then more and more frequently larger clumps of hair begin to fall. Pretty soon there is a horrifyingly large pile of hair accumulating in front of him. Throughout it all, the man continues standing there, his hands resting on the linen table cloth.

Saara Ekström’s large format color prints are simply luscious meditations on form and color. Method of a Cloak and Brim were irresistible with their acid 1960s Cadillac palettes and inspired pairings of objects.

Tina Heiksa’s little gem From the Series Pink Coat reminded me a bit of Gerhard Richter’s blur paintings. Heiksa renders the coat with such audacious confidence—the forceful stokes of paint on the left forming the edge of the garment and the left sleeve, and then, the swirls of paint that form the folds on the other side, are marvelous examples of control and panache. Other areas to admire Heiska’s talent are the sheen of the hair, the light on the shoe and the way the window in the background is created through gradations of color.

From high on a wall in one gallery, Pauliina Turakka Purhonen Kibitzer (a sewn and embroidered head of a woman) stares down at the viewer. There is something ancient, earthy and Northern European about her, like a creature out of folk lore or an extra from a Hieronymus Bosch or Bruegel painting. But the material, technique and her disembodied state is decidedly contemporary. I noticed when I enlarged the photo I took that there are tears falling from her rather manic eyes.

It was such a refreshing experience to step into this previously unknown to me corner of the world and fine such a high level museum filled with such exciting work. When the art world has been distilled down to a few huckster technicians that seem to grab all the attention, it is wonderful to discover not only many, many strong artists, but an institution that is willing to support them.

Fantastico! Italian Art from the 1920s and 1930s

                 

A dazzling and comprehensive exhibition, Fantastico! at Helsinki’s Ateneum sheds much needed light on the Magical Realism movement that flourished in Italy between the two World Wars. The Magical Realists used extreme realism to depict everyday subjects, conveyed in such a way—using light, space, strange juxtapositions of objects and just plain glorious painting—to endow them with a sense of mysterious power. It was a revelatory show full of ravishing work by artists who, with the exception of de Chirico, were all unknown to me.

Where have Baccio Maria Bacci, Felice Casorati, Bruno Croatto, Antonio Donghi, Ubaldo Oppi and Cagnaccio di San Pietro been all my life? The richness of these artists' oeuvres in terms of subject matter and technique is simply staggering, harking back to a tradition akin to the great masters of the Italian Renaissance. But the Magical Realists put their own spin on painting, using a modern approach to composition, color choice and subject matter, and infusing their work with deep psychological or enigmatic drama, and sometimes, humor.

The very first work, a strange allegory by Felice Casorati, Young Ladies (1912) depicts four women Dolores, Molante, Bianca and Giocanda together with a turkey in front of an expansive pine tree that takes up the background. Three of the women are dressed, one rather plainly (Dolores), but all quite chic (I question the date because the hemlines are way too short for 1912), the fourth (Bianca), a waif-like creature, is nude. She extends her arms in a kind of supplication. Three are solemn and one (Giocanda), a plump blonde, is grinning. Dolores has her hands at her face in either surprise or distress, Molante holds an embellished porcelain or enamel box and gazes shyly sideways at Bianca. At the women's feet various objects—fruit, flowers, small vases and pots, fans, jewelry, a large silver fluted box, books and scrolls of paper on which the women’s names appear—are arrayed across a green blanket. The juxtaposition of objects, moods and dress is ambiguous and the effect is both curious and haunting. 

With their velvety surfaces and palette of rich color, Antonio Donghi’s paintings have a sumptuous quality that is irresistible. He places his highly-detailed subjects within relatively spare compositions creating an otherworldly, dreamlike effect. This is on full display in The Juggler (1936), with its elegantly attired man in purple plus fours balancing a top hat on a cigar in a stage-set of a room. Donghi revels in his textures, artfully rendering the sheen of the patent leather dancing pumps, the silk stockings and the plush knickers, each perfectly keyed to its distinctive material. The background has a peculiar artificiality with stilted table and vase of flowers on the right and monolithic gold-fringed curtain on the left. 

A splendid study in the use of color, Donghi's luscious Vase of Flowers (1928), is a tightly packed arrangement of jonquils, narcissus and purple hellebore in an olive glass vase. His Laundresses, a more down to earth subject, features monumental figures that recall Diego Rivera.

In Bacci Maria Baccio’s Afternoon in Fiesole (1926-29), two couples linger around a table after lunch. The remains of their meal, a bowl of figs and peaches, some red wine and a roll sit on the tablecloth. One of the men is playing the guitar. A woman is standing lost in thought before an arched window through which one can see a distinctive Italian landscape. In the foreground, the other woman is seated, her back to the viewer, her head inclined towards the music. To her right, the second man is looking with such wounded longing, not at the guitarist, but directly at her, adding a powerful note of romantic intrigue. There is a degree of spirituality and nostalgia to the scene, but with the man's expression and the obscured woman, Baccio has taken an anodyne domestic scene, and imbued it with such mystery and emotional intensity, it piques our interest and stays with us long after we have moved on.

Ubaldo Oppi’s Artist’s Wife with Portrait of Venice in the Background (1921) made me laugh out loud on account of Signora Oppi’s “don’t-give-me-that-again” expression. This is a wife who has been given the run around once too often and I love the fact Oppi captures that. You wonder how she felt about being represented so. Did it land Oppi in the dog house yet again? Or was she dazzled by the beauty of the painting in which she resembles a modern day Bronzino. The striking teal of her velvet, possibly Fortuny, gown matches the canal behind her and provides the perfect tonal contrast to the salmon brick campanile. Once again, the background is spare, but Oppi does a masterful job of conveying Venice with so very little. He doesn't forget the important details, paying careful attention to his wife’s jeweled rings, the elaborate lacing of her sleeves and the fringe of feathers on her cuffs.

Bruno Croatto’s portraits are stop-you-in-your-tracks arresting.The austere and detailed Portrait of Rodolfo Fogolin (1932) presents the architect and friend of the painter on the terrace of his Roman villa with ruins in low horizon line beyond. In front of him lies an open volume of "I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura" by Andrea Palladio. Fagolin has an interesting face (he bears a striking resemblance to the Shah of Iran imho). It's oblong with soulful eyes, a large, slightly bulbous nose and thin, set lips bracketed by deep lines. Clearly a man of style, he sports an eye-catching saffron colored jacket and a devil-may-care, askew black bow tie against a blue shirt. He towers over his surroundings, Palladio, ancient Rome, a metaphor perhaps of Croatto’s very high opinion of him.

Un "Adagio" de Schubert (1937) is a portrait of Croatto’s wife. He uses the conceit of painting her listening to music as a means to tell us something essential about her. Clearly, she is enraptured by Schubert’s music. She leans in towards it, her bird like fingers in black gloves stretch out to it, their shadows falling on the wall behind. Their expressive shapes provide a counterpoint to the ruffles of the white jabot at her throat. She is painted in profile. An atypical approach that is dramatic and maybe designed to show off her best features: those high cheek bones and perfect nose. Her hair is swept back, held in place by a tortoise shell headband, to further reveal her visage. A handsome woman, past youth, she is serious about music and serious about life and this is conveyed not only by what she is doing but also by the stripped-down composition and monochromatic palette that recalls a Whistler.

Croatto’s intense Self-Portrait in the Studio (1931) conveys the gravity with which he takes himself. An odd looking man with piercing blue eyes and exaggerated lightbulb shaped head, he is deadly serious about what he does. He holds the tools of his trade, brushes, a mahl stick and a palette in his left hand, his right arm is gracefully crooked on the chair with a brush held like a pen in his right hand. He is pausing in the act of painting. On the table in front of him, next to a tube of paint, are cigarettes spilling from a package, a lit one is balanced on the table. They are both important to him and add visual interest and a grounding reality to the work. As with the portrait of his wife, the palette is reduced to a minimum. And here, like a low voice that captures your attention in a room full of chatter, the beige and tans add emphasis by virtue of their subtlety.

Cagnaccio di San Pietro’s After the Orgy (1928) (pictured) is a stunner that showcases Cagnaccio’s photorealist style and compositional brio. It’s a titillating subject matter for the 1920s, but it’s more bark than bite. Despite the title and the nudity, the painting is quite tame. Legs are crossed or backs are turned so the naughty bits aren’t visible. And there's something staged about the figures passed out on the floor in different posesas if the whole premise for the painting, in addition to conveying some bad boy cred to Cagnaccio, was to provide a means for him to showcase his anatomical knowhow. 

Texture and hue are used to great effect. Alabaster skin and muscle, bone and sinew have a substance and quality that stands out against the other inanimate materials. Cagnaccio makes such interesting color choices: gray, rust, carmine and a mossy green. Subtle "off colors", they have a depth and intensity that is just gorgeous, which sets the tone for the work and also comprise what there is of the interior decoration: carpet, curtain, blanket, pillows. If we admire them today, just think how fresh, and even bizarre they would have looked when originally painted, when much of the domestic environments would still be in the grip of a heavy-handed 19th decorative aesthetic.

Littering the floor are two champagne bottles and glasses, some cards and several cigarette butts, one with a cigarette-length ash suggesting it was dropped soon after being lit when its owner became, er, distracted. A lone dress shirt cuff complete with cufflink lies amid the disarray, suggesting abandon and haste during disrobing. Neatly placed on a cushion, a man’s homburg rests on a pair of white gloves. It’s all so studied and decorous as to be amusing. Still, it doesn’t detract from the visual power of the painting. Indeed, it provides the magic unreality of the realism.

Cagnacico’s Zoologia (1928),a nude self-portrait with a female nude is more erotic, and disturbing. It’s not just the way he’s pinning the woman down, but the perspective and lighting add a sense of discord. It's also incredibly modern. Though more refined, or romantic than the nudes of Philip Pearlstein (who would have been four when Zoologia was painted), it has his degree of exacting realism, deemed pretty darn daring when he was painting them 40-odd years later (and post-Sexual Revolution). The title refers to the book on the bed, but also suggests our biological drives are no different from those of animals. If you look closely you’ll see that the authors of the book are Adam and Eve and at the bottom the English translation reads: “Edition revised and corrected by modern society”.

There are several striking Cagnaccio still lifes in the show including Still Life with a Spider Crab (1933) and Play of Colors (1941), a study of transparency that features colored liquid in glass containers.

Portrait of Signora Vighi (1930) is a visual delight with all the details—her smart, red gown, her strapped court shoes, the book on her lap, the rings, the armchair and pillows—rendered with precision and flair. Poor Signora Vighi, though painted in oil, is no "oil painting”, despite her elegant clothing coiffed hair and highly plucked brows. She has a rather lost, bovine look about her. In an oddball visual flourish that adds a dash of quirk and makes the painting so modern and relevant to today, Cagnaccio has included two funny brightly colored toys, a dog and a chicken on the polished table beside Signora Vighi. Perhaps they're a reference to her maternal status, but judging from Cagnaccio's other works, more likely they're a waggish comment on the sitter. 

Cagnaccio’s Self-Portrait (1938) takes a completely different tact from Croatto. There are no props to tell you he’s a painter. He’s depicted from above with very little extra space around him. He rests his chin on his finger and gazes out with a pensive, almost quizzical look, not sure what to make of what he sees. You’re not sure if he’s about to burst out laughing. It’s an apt self-portrait for the painter of After the Orgy and Zoologia, someone who seemed to enjoy mischief making.

These works provide a delicious window into early 20th century Italy, its people, fashion, domestic interiors, etc. They are also tour de forces of painting: lush, elegant, technically accomplished with narrative aspects that are equally developed. There is intensity, fervor and spirituality with roots that can be traced to the Renaissance and the Catholic painting tradition. Here, the religious dogma has been subverted by the secular, with the focus on psychological and existential concerns. But the same degree of drama and emotion are there, along with the technical bravado that marks them as distinctly and irrefutably Italian.