Gabriel Figueroa at El Museo del Barrio: More Cinematographer Retrospectives, Please

I have a new favorite subject for museum shows: the work of cinematographers. While I had only minimal expectations for "Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa --Art and Film," on view at El Museo del Barrior through June 27, the exhibition is without a doubt one of my favorites of the first half of the year,

Images are stills from Figueroa films, unless otherwise noted.

It had never occurred to me how aptly suited a cinematographer's art is for a museum to explore in depth--and how enjoyable/rapturous a well-executed show would be. It's the exact opposite, in fact, of the worst topic for museums (but an incredibly popular choice, nevertheless): architecture exhibitions.

When showing architecture, the best a curator can do is display a facsimile of the real thing--a photo, a model, a film of the building/design in question. And explain and attempt to replicate the architect's work with words, lots and and lots and lots of words. The object is always mediated through another observer's perspective--the photographer, the filmmaker, the earnest students who are inevitably recruited to create new models (in absence of ones from the architect's office). And endless wall texts. Hours of reading always have to be prepared for when seeing an architecture show at MOMA or the Museum of the City of New York.

It's a deeply unsatisfying experience, so far removed from the thrill of actually seeing/experiencing the built work.

But cinematography? Rather than showing a replica of a work, you can not only screen the art itself, but you have the opportunity to distill it to its essence. You don't need to project the whole work, as you would with an exhibition on a director. You can just select the choicest bits--scenes with the most dramatic lighting or innovative composition or sweeping camera movements. Nothing but highlight reels--it's like ESPN, but with art cinema instead of sports.

While I'm now convinced most any cinematography show would be worthwhile, the Figueroa retrospective demonstrates how important exhibition design and, especially, editing are in creating something exceptional.

From the second I entered the first gallery room, I knew this was going to be something special, About 10 large screens surround you, and the images flow in a carefully constructed rhythm: galloping horses giving way to dancing feet to intense close ups of beautiful faces and teary eyes to choreographed battle scenes to executions to dramatically lit landscapes and seascapes. It's a 10-minute presentation, and it floored me. I gave up any other plans for the rest of the afternoon: I was going to give this show the attention it clearly deserved.

Figueroa, whose mother died delivering him in 1907 and whose father basically checked out after that, got his start as a portrait photographer in the 1920s of Mexico's early cinema stars. He parlayed this role into an on-set taker of promotional and "making of" stills. The exhibition's second room -- a nice minor key counterpoint to the visual bravura of the first -- explores this facet of his career with dozens of black-and-white photos of screen sirens in sultry shadows.

The next room sets out the show's two main thematic points: 1) that Figueroa's movie images played an important role in establishing modern Mexico's visual identity of itself; and that his image-making both influenced, and was influenced by, Mexico's other great contemporaneous visual artists.

This argument is hammered home to dazzling effect in the exhibition's showpiece gallery: a long room with half-a-dozen individual screens mounted on one wall wall; vitrines in the middle; and a single painting hanging opposite each screen.

Each screen tackles a specific theme, and does so at a just-about-perfect length: four-minute edited clips from various movies to show how Figueroa depicted the city, religious rituals and, memorably, the all-important Mexican Revolution that began in 1910.

In the accompanying lithographs, drawings and paintings, you can see how Figueroa borrowed from and exchanged ideas with masters like Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco (one of my 20th-century favorites) and David Siqueiros (and, in the preceding gallery, from photographers like Edward Steichen and Tina Modotti). You also get clips of one of Figueroa's less-successful partnerships: with Luis Bunuel, whose surrealist sensibility wasn't a great fit with Figueroa's visual style.

The penultimate gallery gives you Figueroa's efforts in color and on TV. On these much tighter screens -- and with the constrained interior settings of soap operas -- these efforts pale next to his black-and-white epics--but they do show that Figueroa remained relevant well into the 1980s (and you get a little bit of gratuitous nudity, a surprise for Mexican media).

For those like me who fell hopelessly in love, a screening room shows longer clips (8-10 minutes) organized around themes like the night and Mexico's singing, swinging charros. This extended viewing time (combined, these clips run about 45 minutes) gave me room to reflect on this question: Are these movies (there are clips from dozens of the more than 200 films he shot) actually any good?

The beauty of a show on cinematography -- and just one reason why there should be many more -- is that the answer is: It really doesn't matter. The whole could be sappy or didactic or dull, but who cares, when you're getting strung-together seconds of utter ravishment? Some of these scenes -- and this amazing show -- are going to stay in my mind's eye for a long, long time.

And a closing note on the exhibition's ending: This near-perfect show ends on a near-perfect note:The final scenes, of course, from some  Figueroa films.

FIN

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Ian Davis: Odd Paintings, in a Good Way, at Leslie Tonkonow

Ian Davis, "Projections" (acrylic on linen), 2014

By Bryant Rousseau

It's hard to pull off contemporary narrative paintings--that is, works that go beyond being merely figurative to actually hint at an unfolding story. Off the top of my head, Dana Schutz is one artist who consistently does this well. Another is Amy Cutler. Now, we can add to that list Ian Davis, whose "Rituals" exhibition is on view at the invaluable Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects through Oct. 25. (Cutler is also a Tonkonow artist.) 

Ian Davis, "Edict" (acrylic on paper)

I liken Davis's paintings to a good Neil Young song, where the lyrics are strange enough that you're not quite sure of the artist's meaning, but you have enough to go on to make some imaginative guesses.

Ian Davis, "Patronage" (acrylic on panel), 2014

So what's going on in his scenes? I have no freaking idea, but I know I liked looking close and long to try to figure it out. The settings are all different--at the edge of a pit, inside a swimming arena, outside an apartment building, inside an ice cave--but all the scenes feature groups of men (scientists, politicians, executives, construction workers) either engaged in some odd ritual (holding down a balloon; operating a large, menacing and bloody machine) or waiting for one to begin.

Another revelatory show at Tonkonow (whose artists include Laurel Nakadate, Agnes Denes and Kunie Sugiura), one of the best small galleries in Chelsea and perhaps the best gallery there that isn't on street level (it's on the sixth floor 535 West 22nd St.).

The See Everything, Sat Something Rating: 81.

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Note to Antony Hegarty: Quit Your Day Job (re: "Works on Paper" at Sikkema Jenkins)

Antony, Untitled

By Bryant Rousseau

With his piercing falsetto and maudlin sentiment, I find the music of Antony and his Johnsons largely unbearbale (I know this makes me a bad person). But he's actually pretty damn good as a visual artist, as his second outing at Sikkema Jenkins proves, where he is part of the gallery's "Works on Paper" exhibition, on view through Oct. 4.

Antony, Untitled

His small works on paper have a great sense of
color, texture and composition and are as pleasant to view as his songs are irritating for the ear to endure. Here's hoping he drops his singing gig to concentrate on producing more art--I'd be curious to see what he creates working on a larger scale.

Marlene McCarthy, exhibition view

Also in the show are large-scale drawings by Marlene McCarthy, an artist I first stumbled across probably more than a decade ago and have never forgotten, though her work is not exhibited that frequently. Her early works stuck in my mind because of their erotic power, drawings of youths wearing transparent clothing (and later, and less successfully, drawings of woman-gorilla love). The four works in this show are modest in subject matter--large drawings of a woman's head, seen from the rear or side. They lack a sensual punch, but confirm her status as an exceptional draftsman, with each strand of hair a lovely line.

An early work by McCarthy

The other three artists in the show are Jorge Queiroz, Marc Handelman and the gallery's superstar, Kara Walker. For a show on paper, my favorite medium, at one of my favorite galleries, it was overall a disappointing experience, with Handelman and Queiroz failing to impress, and the one work from the majestic Walker unable to save the day.

See Everything, Say Something Rating: 58

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Riotous Scatalogical Pop and Serene Suicide Paintings From Rob Pruitt at Gavin Brown

One of Rob Pruitt's couches at Gavin Brown

By Bryant Rousseau

The protean Rob Pruitt is one of the more interesting artists working today, and his comeback the last few years from having fallen out of favor in the art world for a 1992 exhibition (done in collaboration with Jack Early) that was deemed racist by some critics, seems complete.

His latest show at Gavin Brown has one of the most appropriate titles I can remember: "Multiple Personalities." The first room is stuffed with works that exemplify Pruitt's scatalogical pop: a half-dozen are so actual couches whose every inch is covered by cartoons, many in the R. Crumb vein, of orgies, pop-culture icons and graffiti-style, art-world messages, like "Julian Schnabel is my life coach." This is the ultimate art for a couch potato who wouldn't even need a TV--he could spend many enjoyable hours just watching the Pruitt Show on which he seats.

Rob Pruitt Couch (detail)

Rob Pruitt's Studio Tables

This first gallery also offers upright tables, ostensibly from Pruitt's studio, whose entire surfaces are smothered with images.

Why is "Multiple Personalities" such a perfect title? Less so because of the numerous allusions to mental illness in the works' titles and subjects. More so because of one the most abrupt tonal shifts in art world history, something akin to the switch from black-and-white to color in "The Wizard of Oz."

Move from the first gallery to the second, and the intense, hyperactive mood gives way to a zen-like

Two of Rob Pruitt's "Suicide Paintings"

calm: Pruitt's "Suicide Paintings" series, displayed in a gallery covered with sand, are as serene as the couches are chaotic. Truly hard to believe these works are the output of the same mind, in the same time period. And contrary to their title, these paintings did not want to make me take my life, but to be thankful for my continued ability to see. I loved them, and I loved the overwhelming contrast.

A Rob Pruitt "Therapy Painting"

The final room of "Therapy Paintings" closes the show on a flat note. Having to spend too much time looking at these, which look like the work of a two-year-old in the midst of a temper tantrum,
would make me want to end my life. But even these failures engendered more respect for Pruitt--the guy is producing a ton of art, and it's hard to fault him too much for missing the mark with some of his efforts (though speaking of effort, he could have made all the dozen or so Therapy Paintings in the space of about, I don't know, two hours of frenzied scrawling).

See Everything, Say Something Rating: An A+ for effort, but the cumulative total nets a solid 68.  

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Gary Winogrand Retro at Met: NYC Pics Are Fantastic, Others Failures

Untitled, New York (1950)

I have an uneasy relationship with the most famous postwar American street photographers: Lee Friedlander, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand, the last of whom is the subject of a career retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, on view through Sept. 21.

Park Avenue, New York (1959)

In viewing their work, which is largely impossible to dislike, I always have the nagging if arguably unfounded sense that the key to their accomplishments is more about chutzpah than pure artistry--they were willing to get up in someone's grill to take a good photograph and, equally as important, willing and able to put in the time and shoe-leather required to come across the good shots. In short, I always find myself wondering if anyone with a halfway decent eye, a working camera, a bit of luck and the guts to confront an interesting urban denizen could also make a few decent photographs during a full day's shooting. (*****see my note at the end of the post)
 
But Winogrand's best work--images taken in New York City from the mid-1950s through the end of the '60s--is unquestionably a great achievement. In the roughly 100 photographs in the "Down from the Bronx" section of the show (Winogrand's birth borough, from which he ventured southward into Midtown Manhattan), not a single bum image is to be found--each one packs as much viewing pleasure in its square inches as a Pollock painting. (All the images in the show are small scale--ranging, approximately, from 8" x 11" to 11"x17".)

Utterly less successful are his images from the Great Wide American Open that he took while traveling the country on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Winogrand needed the concentrated humanity of NYC's streets to thrive--faces, bodies, gestures and intimate interactions, captured in close-ups. 

White Sands National Monument (1964)

He was the anti-Ansel Adams, incapable of taking a good landscape shot. And tellingly, almost all of his landscapes are still heavily populated; the ultimate people person, Winogrand just couldn't help himself--but they are at a distance from his lens, and the pictures suffer terribly as a result. Photographs of a cotton field in Arkansas and at White Sands National Monument would fail to impress anyone's eye, boring even in an amateur's book of snapshots. 

Albuquerque (1957)

There are two exceptions to the lousy landscapes rule: one of his iconic images of a diapered toddler in a New Mexico driveway, with an overturned tricycle in the foreground and and a foreboding, inescapably "nuclear" cloud in the distance--it perfectly captures the atomic anxieties of late '50s America (and look really carefully, and you can see the toddler's brother peeking out from deep in the garage's shadows).

The other is of a cow, in deep distress and falling dramatically to its knees, apparently struck while crossing a highway. Picasso and Hemingway both would have found this bullish pathos moving (and the timing, incredible).

Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77

Texas totally defeated Winogrand--more than a dozen Lone Star pictures in the exhibition are distressingly ordinary, and even urban Los Angeles, where Winogrand lived in his last years (he died young, of cancer, at 56), failed to inspire great work--perhaps because the city's streets lacked the density his work demands.

But oh those New York pictures!

Winogrand had an exceptional eye for the ladies and is one the most aggressively heterosexual artists in the postwar canon. His women are uncannily beautiful--not movie stars, but they should have been. 

Untitled (1961)

One of my favorites stands out for its hint of deformity--from a distance, a pretty woman's nose blends with the neck of the man behind her--look closely, and she's gorgeous; from mid-range, a monster.

And has anyone else remarked on the resemblance of this uproariously laughing woman (the lead image on the Met's website of the exhibition) and the Duke of Windsor?

El Morocco (1955)

Winogrand's interest in lovely females is well-known (one of his book of photos is titled "Women Are Beautiful"). 

But I propose his peak performance can be found in his photographs of middle-aged men. He absolutely owns this (overlooked) demographic as far as I'm concerned. We see dozens of great mugs, men of some authority chomping cigars, squiring dates, steering oversized autos, inevitably in suits (but not always in hats--one of the many pleasures of Winogrand's work is the forensic evidence it supplies of the Great Disappearance--hats on every man's head through 1967, completely gone by 1970).

New York (1962)

I also wonder if a small part of my increased appreciation for Winogrand has to do with its photographic annotation of classic Mad Men-era New York--it's easy to imagine Don Draper getting caught by Winogrand's camera on one of their mutual strolls down Madison Ave.--though he probably would have ignored the less attractive Peggy.

These images capture the swan song of corporate management white men--the last years of their overriding power and prominence before the keys (and the coolness) were handed over to a younger and more diverse and creative class.  

New York (1962)

With so many images, the show is also great for showcasing recurrent themes and compositions that Winogrand excelled at and cared about. 

He was great in airports and at pools (even taking two good pool shots in Texas). Live every street photographer (like every human eye?), he relished funny symmetries: the rears of three cowboys and three cows; a phallic cigar and a

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (1968)

phallic hotdog; a bovine boy next to his sheep, a woman with an ample bosom looking at a pair of rhinos. He also gets an A for his photos of the supersized cars of his era--the top example being one where the front and fins extend beyond the frame. 

Fort Worth (1975)

Other subjects that repeatedly caught Winogrand's attention and reward his viewers are bodies that have collapsed in the streets (in fact, one of the earliest images in the show is of a woman fallen at a man's feet, an image he unsuccessfully submitted as a student to a Life magazine photo contest). 

Also, there are two strong images where a handicapped man is overshadowed by tall and beautiful

women (the most Arbus-like photo in the show is of a shriveled man walking in the street while a young woman with a tall fur hat towers above him on the sidewalk (below: New York, 1969).

A Las Vegas pic presages our current day obsession with photographs of celebrity vaginas/panties spotted while emerging from cars: He snaps, with sheer lasciviousness delight, a woman's decolletage as she dips to exit her vehicle. (One trend he did not anticipate is the selfie--no self-portraits are in the show, other than fleeting images of him in glass when snapping a store window.)

And while that Vegas pic sees the future, a grainy photograph taken on a commercial assignment shows how different one cultural fixture was in the past--a professional football player in the mid-1950s sits on a grimy bench during a game, while fans mill about just behind him--a reminder that the N.F.L. then was a far cry from its status today as America's most important entertainment.

New York Aquarium, Coney Island (1967)

Winogrand also did well with animals and zoos (there is a great and sad image of an orangutan that looks like a lion). A zoo was also the site of one of his most iconic but also most controversial photographs: A black man and a white woman are holding baby chimps at the Central Park Zoo. As the Met notes, this was denounced by many at the time as a nasty joke on miscegeny.  

Was that Winogrand's intent? On one hand, in his defense, anyone with a camera would have seen that as a great shot--an attractive couple carrying cute baby chimps? Hand me the camera, Ma! It's like Winogrand's famous shot of another couple in a fancy convertible driving down Park Ave. with a monkey--what photographer could reasonably resist?

Central Park Zoo (1967)

But on the other, disturbing hand, there is a far less famous image in the show that has to make you worry that Winogrand was on the wrong side of history when it comes to interracial relationships. A black man and a white woman are demonstrably holding hands in the foreground--while quite noticeable behind them is a movie marquee with "Disgraced" in huge letters, and beneath that word, "Girls Gone Wild." The sign is far too prominent to be a coincidence. I don't want to accuse Winogrand of opposing black-white couples based on two photographs (a much more neutral third image shows a black man and white woman conversing on a bench in a group at the 1964 World's Fair), but the evidence is enough that the question at least warrants asking. 

New York (1969)

And it is pretty easy to find a cruel streak in Winogrand--there's more than one image of an unattractive third wheel watching others kiss--and he liked juxtaposing young and sexy women with the old and wrinkled.

But the exhibition in its totality offers a remarkable visual record of American street culture over two transformative decades, and because of Winogrand's wide-ranging, eclectic and ultimately very democratic eye, it's all there: from high society to lowlifes, from politics to parties.

So go to the Winogrand show. I guarantee you'll discover at least a dozen images that you'll love--and at least a handful where you'll be prompted to say, "I could have taken that"-- or would have known not to.

See Everything, Say Something Rating (100-scale): 76.  
------------------------
 
*****Of course, I could have put my questionable theory about just how "easy" good street photographs are to the test in the stroll I took in Central Park--one of Winogrand's favorite stalking grounds--immediately after leaving the show. Yes, I'd argue that I did see in less than 30 minutes at least 3 or 4 Winogrand-esque moments--the glum, fat boy having his portrait painted, the shaggy dog with his shaggier owner-- but since I lacked the courage to click on my iPhone, we'll never know if these scenes would have looked remotely Winogrand worthy.

But I do know that I myself would have made a good subject for an up-and-coming Winogrand, trolling Central Park, and shooting in color--a balding middle-aged man with a swirling red-and-blue popsicle stain on his white button-down shirt....

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Louise Blouin and Hillary Clinton: Separated at Birth?

By Bryant Rousseau

The New York Post's media columnist, Keith Kelly, loves picking on my former boss, Louise Blouin, owner of Blouin Media, the parent company of ArtInfo, the website I helped launch as its original executive producer in 2005.

Louise could be spacey, whacky, and she was ultra-high-maintenance (not much surprise for a multimillionaire), but for the most part, I liked her -- and I certainly wanted her vision of creating an art world publishing empire to succeed.

But Louise has definitely provided Kelly with plenty of fodder for his column, with the company's well-documented penchant for payment problems with vendors.

Of late, Kelly's columns have been using the same red-blazer picture of Louise--and her resemblance to Hillary Clinton is striking -- and a little unsettling, since I always considered Louise kinda hot and never felt that way about our former Secretary of State.....

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Back to Eden, at the Museum of Biblical Art (Barnaby Furnas on Fire)

Fred Tomaselli, "Study for Expulsion" (2000)

By Bryant Rousseau

The Museum of Biblical Art is one of New York's underrated art outposts, in one of the city's least-appreciated museum districts. The area around Columbus Circle, overshadowed by the performing arts at Lincoln Center, also includes two other Top 20 museums: the Museum of Arts & Design (a Top 10er) and the American Folk Art Museum.

Despite being located inside the American Bible Society's building on Broadway at 6lst Street, MOBIA, as the museum perhaps too trendily wants to be known, generally features exhibitions that emphasize earnest scholarship and avoid any sort of unwelcome evangelicalism or proselytizing. Still, I doubt we'd ever see Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" displayed here. And as a resolutely atheist New Yorker, I confess to always feeling a little awkward when entering the lobby--my god, what if someone sees me and mistakes me for a closeted Bible thumper?

The current show, "Back to Eden," on view through Sept. 28, is part of a broad trend where museums of every stripe are bending over backward to show audience-attracting contemporary art; the show's subtitle is "Contemporary Artists Wander the Garden."

I was curious about what we'd get--how much cynicism and irony would be served up, if any, and would we get A-list or G(od)-list artists, the equivalent of contemporary Christian rock?

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, "The One That Carries Fire"

By chance, the first of the 20 objects in the show that I chose to visit left me thinking, uh-oh, we might be in for a quick exit--but not because of an in-your-face religiosity. From a distance, and with my weak farsightedness, the style seemed familiar--was it a Matthew Ritchie? Up close, I saw it was work by an artist I've never heard of, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. Nothing wrong with the large-scale, mixed-media drawing's swirling pinkish-reds, clump of actual hair and plant motifs, but "The One That Carries Fire" (2011)--that "One" would be the woman of color in the bottom rung of panels, from whose head a tree sprouts--was small-gallery ordinary and its theme struck me as only distantly related to Eden: a broadly mythic tree of life, more Earth Mother than Eve.

But then my eye was drawn to a large 7'x8' painting across the room. Before I really looked at the work, I glanced at the wall text--the artist was Barnaby Furnas, one of my favorites. The prospects for the exhibition immediately improved: So if artists of this caliber are in the show, what else am I going to find? Then I really looked at the painting--and it turned out to be a showstopper in every sense of the word: I spent the next 15 minutes absorbing the deep visual pleasures of "The Fruit Eaters" (2013), one of the best works I've seen this year.

Barnaby Furnas, "The Fruit Eaters" (2013)

Since I knew right away I was going to be spending some time here, I switched on the (free) audio guide, and the exhibition revealed another surprise: It had produced a top notch tour. Each work gets an oral essay, and each has an insightful artist interview.

Furnas proves a charming raconteur. In his telling, one of the punishments endured by humans after the expulsion from the garden is gravity, and he wanted this work to depict its effects. He combed his gessoed canvas, giving it grooves his transparent colors would flow through and puddle, producing an overall sense of a downward, distorting tugging.

The painting is rich in highlights: the sun-bright fruit, the juices dribbling down Adam's body and echoing Eve's watery, golden hair; the sinuous, seductive curves of the snake and its horned face (a face that Furnas says largely formed itself during the initial pour of paint); God Himself peeking from behind a tree, the old perv; two wholly original volcanoes spewing dark blue fumes (does any other story of Eden include volcanoes?); and a garden rendered in more opaque colors: The ground, as it were, grounds the painting. Furnas says he turned to Biblical stories looking for an inspiration for something new in our oldest tales, and he clearly found a creative spark in this story of creation. 

The rest of the exhibition, inevitably, pales next to this, but there are still plenty of interesting minor notes, from some major contemporary artists. And each stop is abetted enormously by the audio guide, which should win an award (why aren't there such awards?). Since each artist is allowed to speak in-depth about the work, no overarching curatorial argument emerges, but that's just fine. The Edenic theme is obviously an, ahem, fertile one for artists, offering multiple, exploratory avenues: the loss of innocence; cerebral (Tree of Knowledge) and sexual desire; feminism; the destruction of the natural world; and, of course, the chance to riff on art history itself, which has long tackled this subject. 

Masaccio's Expulsion (detail)

That's the path chosen by Fred Tomaselli, whose "Expulsion from Eden" (see work at the top of the post) takes its inspiration from Masaccio's 1425 fresco. Tomaselli's work features all his signature collagist moves: layers of resin in which are placed photos of insects, actual pills and paint. His usual trippy, fun, easy-on-the eye stuff. (Note to curators: Because Tomaselli's work invites such close viewing, you might want to wipe the dust off the surface every other day or so.)

Alexis Rockman, "Gowanus" (2013)

Man's corruption of the natural world is the too-blatant topic of Alexis Rockman's "Gowanus" (2013), a work I first saw in a solo show at his gallery, Sperone Westwater. The 72"x90" painting was inspired by a news story of a dolphin swimming into Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, and quickly perishing in the toxic stew. The various visual elements represent a pastiche of Rockman's "favorite moments" of the canal (graffiti, drainage spouts spilling spooky liquids), and the canvas has a lot going on. Rockman's mother worked at the Museum of Natural History, and his frequent visits there clearly seeped into his aesthetic psyche: the painting has dozens of creatures (the museum helpfully has a guide to each), including a fishy composite made up of a zoo's worth of other animals, a la Arcimboldo. The composition is dominated by an oversize cat, a "cute monster," as Rockman says, with the rapacious habits of felis catus an apt stand-in for human depredations.

Jim Dine, "The Garden of Eden" (2003)

Sculpture and its currently more prominent cousin, installation, are the exhibition's main mediums, none worthy of exclamation, none too execrable (though one is close). In the rear of the main gallery (the museum only has two), Jim Dine's "The Garden of Eden" (2003) is the size and shape of a Japanese room screen, this one made out of steel and bronze instead of paper and wood. It's crammed with two of the objects he returns to again and again in his work, across mediums: tools and a headless Venus de Milo. The bright colors were too kitschy for me, but the backstory is touching: Dine spent a lot of time as a child in his grandfather's hardware store, which for him was an early paradise.

Lynn Aldrich, "Serpentarium"

And while Home Depot is seen by Dine as a great source for artistic material (and I agree with him), Lynn Aldrich takes a more typically negative, or at least anxious, view of consumerism: In "Serpentarium" (2002), she's created a vagina dentata-like bucket entirely out of garden hoses which, she notes, often have the color and texture of snake skin. To me, it's a one-note joke, but someone else disagreed: It's owned by mega-collector Peter Norton.

By far the most disappointing work in the show is from Mark Dion, an artist I admire enormously. His work usually puts a sharp, compelling conceptual twist on how the natural world is archived in institutions. In a

Mark Dion's four-legged snake

work commissioned for "Back to Eden," he offers a too-literal (and too-Literalist) interpretation of a snake before God cut off its legs. It honestly looks like something you'd see in the Creation Museum--which is probably Dion's point, but if any work needs a healthier dollop of irony to make it go down, this one does.

As is now apparently required by law, the show includes a smattering of video. The whacky and wonderful Pipilotti Rist has a shelf-size installation of fresh cut flowers in a vase, a watering can, and a soft-edged video playing on the vase of a woman's hands arranging flowers; the wall text says there are moments of eroticism and violence; I watched the whole clip and detected nothing of the sort. The piece, "Sparking of the Domesticated Synapses" (2010), is a bit of a

Pipilotti Rist installation and video

throwaway, and, as the mouthful of a title indicates, it's at best a stretch to include this in an Eden show. But the audio was again a saving grace--interesting to hear Rist say that she views the individuality of her camera moves as being as distinctive as an artist's brushstroke.

Nearby, and also out of thematic place, was a small bronze sculpture of a tree by Rona Pondick, "Dwarfed Blue Pine" (2009-10), with miniature casts of the artist's head at the end of branches. Note to curators: Not every artwork with a tree equates to Eden.

Rona Pondick, "Dwarfed Blue Pine"

The museum's small, second gallery was given over to a single video work: a psychedelic/spiritual muddle by (the unknown to me) Sean Capone, "1000 Paths (To the Divine)" (2014).   

But let me end on a positive note about a show which I left with generally good feeling (thanks mostly to Furnas): Two ink and acrylic drawings on mylar (always a great surface) by Naomi Reis, Vertical Garden (Falling Water) and and Vertical Garden (Weeds), from 2008 and 2007. Imagine Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Fallingwater stacked as a modernist skyscraper, and you get the idea. The pair of works stand on their visual merit alone, but again kudos

Naomi Reis, "Vertical Garden (Weeds)" (2007), detail

for extra insight to the audio: the visible undersides of some of the structures have runic, or geometric shapes, that look like cracks. According to Reis, they were glitches carried over from the architectural software program she used to help make the drawings. She kept them because she liked the way they looked, and so did I. What to leave in, what to leave out--one of the essential questions of art.

The Rousseau Rating on a 100 scale for "Back to Eden": 79 (55 without Furnas and 46 without the audio).

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