Henry Taylor: Skin in the Game

One of the many reasons I love PS1 is that it's one of the few museums that regularly introduces an old art addict like me me to talents with whom I'm not familiar. Case in Point: The Henry Taylor show on view now in the main, first-floor exhibition area through April 9.

Henry Taylor, "Huey Newton (2007)

The majority of the show is taken up with mid-sized paintings, mostly portraits and mostly of African-Americans. His subjects include athletes, both living and dead (Carl Lewis, Jackie Robinson); political figures (Huey Newton); his own family; self-portraits; and just plain folk whom he meets on the streets and whose look he likes.

Henry Taylor, "The Long Jump by Carl Lewis" (2010)

The style is faux-naif, with enough post-Modern touches (Carl Lewis is jumping at you, withe a white-picket fence and prison in the background) to make clear this is a trained, art-school grad. With so much black skin on display, I was reminded of something Jeffrey Deitch (former gallerist, now head of LA MoCA) told me in an interview: that no one paints black skin like Kehinde Wiley.

Taylor won't give Wiley (currently the subject of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum) a run for his money on this front, but I enjoyed the work, especially his use of unusual painting surfaces, including cereal boxes; and, in the second-best painting in the show, two side-by-side cigarette packs to form the "canvas" for a mini-self-portrait.

And collectors are certainly eating this up. I'm an avid reader of museum wall text to find out where the work is coming from, And a huge percentage of the Taylor paintings--I'd say north of 90 percent--are in the hands of private collectors. Very few are here "courtesy of the artist" or his gallery.

"Warning Shots Not Required" (rear left)

The best painting in the show? Hands-down: "Warning Shots Not Required," a 23-foot long giant that incorporates all of the motifs that recur in Taylor's work, including horses, prisons and, mysteriously, spaghetti.

"It's Like a Jungle"

But the best piece in the show isn't a painting, but a sculpture: "It's Like a Jungle" greets visitors in the exhibition's first gallery. It's a room-filling, highly vertical installation of brooms, buckets, black-painted jugs and bric-a-brac: a scary/inviting urban forest.

And in fact, PS1 does Taylor what is a huge disservice by emphasizing his painting. An exhibition on view until April 22 at a commercial gallery, Untitled on the Lower East Side, reveals Taylor to be a much more interesting sculptor/installation artist than he is a painter.

Henry Taylor, "March Forth"

The gallery (rapidly establishing itself as one of the best in town; it has been open now a few years and is batting 1.000 in my book--every one of its shows has been stellar) is covered in rich, brown dirt; in the center is an African hut made out of a wide array of scrap materials. It's a stunner.

Henry Taylor, "To Be Titled"

But even better: wall-hanging sculptures made entirely out of the black-painted jugs that make only a cameo appearance at PS1.

These jugs are amazingly evocative of African masks--found objects transformed, with just black paint and the right positioning, into powerful fetish objects. Spectacular.

--Bryant Rousseau

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Sculpture Center: Hidden Gem Is One of NYC's Coolest (and Scariest) Art Venues

I made one of my quarterly visits to Queens on Sunday, March 18, drawn primarily by the Henry Taylor show at PS1 (more on that in a later post), but I also swung by the Sculpture Center--one of my favorite exhibition spaces in the city.

Exterior view of the Sculpture Center

 If you don't like crowds or lines--indeed, if you like having art all to yourself--the Sculpture Center is for you. Down a side street about a 10-minute walk from PS1, the Center, housed in a former power-generation plant, rarely has more than a handful of visitors, and you're often the only one there.

I've been singing the Sculpture Center's praises for years, like in this post on Architectural Record's web site, a review of the "Happiness of Objects" which featured a 36-foot tall, 24-feet-wide, but just two-feet deep abode.

Interior view of the Sculpture Center

The main, upstairs space--with a soaring ceiling, brick walls and a column-free display area--consistently shows interesting work that tends to push the boundaries of sculpture. But what I really look forward to is the basement, whose exhibitions tend to conceptual extremes--and more important, it's probably the most unusual museum space in NYC.

I've only been truly scared in a museum twice, and both times were in this dungeon-like space: one of the unsettling shows featured a long corridor of locked doors and bright, white lights--very Shining like; the other involved walking through a pitch-black corridor, with odd drafts and disturbing sounds the only sensory experience.

The latest exhibition in the space, which just ended today ("You never look at me from the place from which I see you") was typically eclectic and heady. The best works took advantage of a pair of tunnels which veer off from the main corridors--they are creepy rooms, inevitably making me think of concentration-camp ovens whenever I see them.

Sculpture/installation by Takashi Hirosaki

In one of the tunnels: sculptural installations from Takashi Hirosaki, made of wire and scraps of construction debris. They looked like the sort of electric-colored spider webs you'd expect to see from the oversized, irradiated bugs you'd expect to live here.

Christine Rebet, installation view

The other tunnel: Sculptural maquettes of imaginary, unfinished monuments from Christine Rebet, work very close in concept and execution to objects by Iman Issa, currently on view at the New Museums 
"Ungovernables" Triennial.

Christine Rebet, installation view

The highlight of Rebet's work: a blue mask/face shield made out of what appears to have been a garbage can.

--Bryant Rousseau

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Chuck Close Has Face Blindness!

Irony of ironies--Chuck Close, perhaps the most-famous painter of the human visage of the past 50 years, apparently has "face blindness," according to the latest 60 Minutes--that is, he can't recognize famous or familiar people.

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Lichtenstein/China: Powerful Surprise

Roy Lichtenstein is an artist who's easy to like, but hard to love. I've always considered his bright, Pop confections, crafted with his signature Ben-Day-dots, cheery but shallow--worth a look but not a linger.

But my standard assessment was shattered by a show (through April 7) at Gagosian's 24th Street emporium of Lichtenstein's "Landscapes in the Chinese Style." I was utterly unfamiliar with these late-career paintings (and a few related sculptures)--and totally taken with them. I actually said "wow" out loud when I entered the main space.

Exhibition View: "Roy Lichtenstein: Landscapes in the Chinese Style"

It's a perfect combination for me: ink-on-silk-scroll Chinese landscapes are one of my favorite genres (and really the only work from before the 1860s that I get into) and to see them rendered with such an appropriate contemporary spin, was an enchantment.

Roy Lichtenstein, "Landscape with Scholar's Rock" (1997)

Lichtenstein's dots, in various degrees of opacity, are ideally suited to mirror the obscuring mist so central to the romantic melancholy that I shamelessly admire in the original inspirations. The patches of in-your-face color, judiciously used, give the paintings a punchy vibrancy that the ink scrolls, with their faded pigments and inevitable display in darkened galleries behind glass, never can achieve (although the earthy, faded tones are also a part of their appeal). The sheer size of Lichtenstein's paintings also work to their advantage and emphasize their art-of-our-lifetime provenance (the work above is 13 feet long).  

Once again, I find myself feeling in debt to Larry Gagosian. Though by many accounts a deeply unpleasant person, the man is owed a medal of some sorts for the string of hugely entertaining and enlightening string of exhibition wonders he has put on over the last couple years--everything from works from Bob Rauschenberg's private collection to Picasso and his muse Marie-Therese to a Manzoni retrospective.

(As a concluding footnote, while it's common to spot such semi-celebrity gallerists as David Zwirner or Andrea Rosen prowling their spaces, I had never laid eyes on the Great Man himself, despite many dozens of visits to all three of his Manhattan outposts.

Larry Gagosian

I finally saw him a couple Friday early-evenings ago, on the closing weekend of the Damien Hirst dot-painting travesty, leaving through the lobby his Madison Ave. flagship. He was alone, without the entourage I would have expected. I bowed slightly, as only fitting God; and was totally ignored, again only fitting. Still, his solo status made him a little endearing as he headed off for the weekend. A loner, like me?)  

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MoMA's Glenn Lowry Is a Pervert: Cindy Sherman

OK, so Glenn Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, isn't really a pervert--or at least, I don't know if he is or he isn't. But he did make quite a  risqué, sexually confrontational choice (some might say a "courageous" pick, in the current critical parlance) for his favorite of all the photographs by Cindy Sherman currently on display (through June 11) at MoMA.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #263 (1992)

His selection as Best in Show at the Sherman retrospective? A very Hans Bellmer-esque pic of two conjoined mid-sections of a male and a female doll (with two severed heads on the side for good measure). Saying the doll parts are anatomically correct doesn't do their graphic nature justice: the extra-hirsute vagina has a tampon string protruding from it; the male member sports a cock ring.    

How do I know this is Lowry's No. 1? He tells us so in a video. In a laudable touch, the museum has scattered QR codes around the exhibition which link to clips of various art-world heavyweights discussing the pics they most admire (though MoMA's spotty wireless connectivity makes watching an exercise in patience). You can view the 10 vids here.

Hans Bellmer doll (1936)

What I find interesting about  Lowry's full-frontal choice is that NY Times critic Roberta Smith, in her review, took the curators to task for not staging a "riskier, more rigorous" exhibition; Smith laments that "there are only three examples of Ms. Sherman's jarring sex pictures." Apparently, Lowry, at least, was ready for many more.

The image of the hairy hermaphrodite appears in the sixth gallery of the exhibition, the one set aside for Sherman's least family-friendly work (and the only ones where she herself is absent from the images): the photographs here include an old-lady doll with sausage links going where they don't belong; a pronouncedly pimply butt; and pics with plenty of flies and vomit.

The room also features the image I'd nominate as the show's breath-taker: Untitled #193 from 1989 that I've dubbed the Chocolate Beast (or Feces Face?) It's an unforgettable image that I couldn't stop staring at (raising suspicion among the guards); it definitely rewards extending viewing, with new details constantly revealing themselves (the fact that a face is hidden there isn't even immediately perceivable).

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #190 (1989)

My overall take on the exhibition? Sherman is one of the contemporary artists with whom I have the longest relationship. I first became familiar with her work in the mid-1990s when I was planning my own series of series of staged movie stills--until I learned that Sherman had beaten me to the idea by some 20 years.

So with nearly 20 years of experience with the work behind me, I went into the show feeling pretty confident that I had a solid understanding of her oeuvre and importance--but I was looking forward to spending time with an old friend.

And no, the show didn't really manage to surprise me or significantly alter my evaluation of Sherman (unlike, for example, a 2003 Lucas Samaras show of his self-portraits at the Whitney, which caused me to undergo a conversion from Samaras naysayer to worshipful kneeler).

But the show did underscore for me that Sherman's work delivers on that essential, contemporary art two-fer: the ideas driving the images are conceptually interesting--and they also succeed as purely visual objects.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #223 (1990)

And the curators earned my kudos for bringing to my attention a pair of crucial points: First, that Sherman, unlike so many of today's top artists, works alone. The makeup and prop placement alone must be grueling; but knowing that Sherman is going into these characters all by herself deepens for me the sense that these pics are created during a fraught psychic journey. 

I also appreciated that the curators' wall text points out just what a good actress Sherman is--always getting that mysterious smile just so.

Cindy Sherman, Film Still #27 (1979)

After a giant mural that greets visitors to the sixth floor (with a giantess Sherman in various awkward costumes), and then a sort of intro/ante-chamber room that gives one-off samples of some of her most popular series, the exhibition starts with a complete set of her 70 groundbreaking film stills. My own never-done series of staged scenes from imaginary movies would have included snippets of a script; Sherman's pics, unadulterated by titles or text, force the viewer to supply their on context--and are undoubtedly stronger for it.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #299 (1994)

It was the gallery after the film stills I enjoyed the most--a room dedicated to her Fashion series--work commissioned by major designer labels, with Sherman putting couture clothes on some of her most disturbed characters. I knew of the work, and had seen plenty of examples previously, but seeing eight of them together in close proximity really smacks you in the face with just how strange and striking the photos are (though you also get the somewhat depressing feel that not even Sherman can out-"subversivize" the fashion houses--the more edgy/ugly/anti-beauty the images are, the more happy the self-congratulating sponsors probably are). Look out for the image (Untitled #132 from 1984) where Sherman (in stripes) is a dead ringer for Ellen DeGeneres--or at least what DeGeneres would look like after a rough night.

The next gallery features Sherman's Centerfold series--arguably her strongest work, but too familiar for me to spark any frisson (I was jealous of those getting to encounter these for the first time). And as much as I admire these photos, I can't help but feel that they must have an even added meaning and power for women--that I'm shut out from fully empathizing with the emotions on display.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #92 (1981

Following galleries are dedicated to her Clown series--my least favorite, not because I'm one of those people frightened by clowns, but because I'm turned off by the garish, candy-colored background swirls; her (underrated) History pics; and then, closing the show out, her latest series: Society Portraits, pics of upscale matrons in their native environment.

But the penultimate gallery is worth a special mention. It's the only one not dedicated to a series but to a theme: the "uncanny, monstrous and carnivalesque impulses" in Sherman's work. We do get a lot more clown photos--but also one of Sherman's most beautiful and haunting, with which I'll close this post:

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #296 (1994)

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