Painting by Andy Warhol

The Berliner Hbf was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t really know what to expect but as I saw the Beuys stuff, and then the rest of the post 60s gang I was overjoyed because this was the art I knew least about and totally coincidentally had the least respect for. Finally here was my chance to look at Warhol in the face and spit on him. It didn’t really work out that way.

• Fluxus. “Art is life. Life is art.” This whole concept and the potential of conceptual, action art done in real life situation has become very interesting to me. The structure of reality is so set, that to break it in it’s reality is a powerful artistic action or event. The other day a guy dropped a chip on the Berlin subway. A chip from McDonalds. They were tourists. Cool, hipster tourists. I was sitting at the back with my bike. I stood up, walked over, and whilst checking my iPhone picked up the chip from the floor and started eating it. I wanted to see the reaction of people. Most turned away. Some laughed. There was a lot of fear around. Something unexpected happened. If this could happen, what else could happen. What else that is more dangerous. This stuff reminds me of the Improvisational theatre guys.
• Joseph Beuys has an entire wing here and it is amazing seeing how innovative he was and the boundaries that he pushed. He was constantly productive, in many medium throughout his time. Constantly thinking new things.
• He actually used video in a way which can compete with the film directors, by breaking the rules. He has one video of him looking scared and hurt and just looking at you with his eyes. It was effective. By learning the rules of a genre an artist has a base to break them and confound expectation in the most effective way. 10 points for obviousness.
• Read a great quote from Nietzche here. I need to read Nietzche again now that I have been thinking and acting in this new way to see if I can see deeper and longer into him.
• Idea: put a clock next to art works counting out the seconds in some gallery.
• I’d never tried to smell an artwork in a museum but I started to here. One of Beuys’ works didn’t smell so good. I didn’t like it.
• I still have so much left to learn. So much left to do. What do I do with all these conceptual ideas? The answer: do them. Work.
• The idea of impermanent art. Art that has to break into action is an excellent one.
• Beuys could draw too. Who’d have thunk it?
• Him putting his pantsuit on a canvas is awesome self explanation. He was so persistently creative.
• Had good, if grotesque, sculptural skill. He makes you wonder how he did such varied work with such apparent ease. A sign of the very best artists.
• His disrespect of everything, including the logistics of transportation was admirable. There were some cheese like granite pieces that must have taken a huge truck each to move. Spectacular. They were pretty shit though. My aesthetics don’t really gel with his at all.
• My urge to act up in a museum is so high. It should be the least quiet place on earth. It’s full of these amazing ideas which makes you want to make your own. A museum should be boisterous.
• The move to acting instead of reacting, or producing instead of consuming is one of the most difficult for people.
• Was there effort involved must be a key question of art.
• It is really difficult to shock an artist. There are beyond most barriers. Are torturers artists?
• Doing art to yourself because that is where it begins and where it ends. See Gunter Brus.
• Volleys are too loud for museums. Good!
• Keller’s dedication is impressive.
• Saw some busts which were intensely observed. Very close attention to detail. I wish I could have touched them. It’s not very hard to imagine that sculpture is the thing whose process would make you the most observant of what the human body actually looks like. Relevant for my photography.
• Kruger is a bit fucking obvious. Ripped tiny kids dresses stuck to distressed, bent metal? Give me a break. But A+ for effort and size.
• Warhol. Conflicted, conflicted, conflicted. The rather banal recontexualisation of our image soaked times is nice sometimes, but not that deep. Yes he is saying that our times are not that deep that culture has become a mainstream thing as opposed to previous ages where it belonged to the learned and cultured but surely he could have done it with more effort? I can’t quite like him, but want to know more. Want to see more of his work.The size of Mao was really impressive and it is pretty. I see after all these pieces why Gursky and other photographers went big. It’s hard to compete otherwise. What process did Warhol use to make his paintings? Did he use helpers? Does it matter? Doesn’t Helmut Newtown use assistants? I liked Newton’s portrait of Warhol. Feels right.
• Franz Gertsch had an amazingly modern subject of two girls getting ready for a night out in a large painting that was painted so photographically that it actually shocked you. Sheer skill, powers of observation, and patience. I wonder if skill and patience can sometimes be an impediment to good thinking in a work. You need to think too.
• What happens to a face when it is so seen. It says more than it says. I’m thinking of Warhol’s Elvis.
• It’s an ugly thing when the imagination has lost touch with a valid, intellectual (even if that is Dionysian) purpose.
• Rauchenberg. Dark and degrading. Don’t like his sense of proportions.
• Thomas Struth is funny. Technically very good.
• The woman urge must be hinted at. What are the details that make you feel like you do? Hair? Face? Movement? Is it all very boring? Is it pornography? Soft core? Gah!
• Baselitz sculpture of woman very good. Chips and red paint. Great size. Great restraint! Ha.
• Why would you make art for a music cover? So millions could see it you dumb ass.

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• art

Posted 2 years ago

Drawing by Durer

The Albertina in Vienna is a lifeless showpiece of a mansion that you can tell was made to be lived in by the most boring people on earth. People who were far more interested in being impressive externally than internally. The exhibitions were small but interesting (modernists, naked women, and facsimiles of Austrian art through the ages).

• I moved through the gallery very aggressively. Last day in Vienna and I was a little over the whole decrepit, touristy scene of museums. The girls are not attractive in Vienna. The lack of class in the east European girls was especially distasteful. Pink tshirts with sparkles? Really? And when four of your friends are already wearing them?
• There was one print in the Naked Woman exhibition (I’m sure it was called like the Body and Image or something like that) from Helmut Newton, and at the time I wrote: ‘Newton lacked ideas. Having naked women to shoot makes life easy.’ But this was before I visited the Newton museum in Berlin. Will write about that later. Needless to say that he didn’t lack ideas.
• I liked the thoughtfulness and care of Kandinsky. He spent months on his crazy ideas.
• Jawlensky’s colour impressed me again.
• The way Picasso saw was so interesting. The way he could break reality and make lines not connect where they should but still create a highly coherent picture.
• Thought Chagall was very, very funny with his penis jokes. One picture had a girl lying on a dark blue hillside dreaming. Then off to the top left of the large painting there is a very random vase with bright colours that is supposed to attract the eye. But then off to the top right, in barely visible simple gray lines is a picture of the girl hugging this huge phallic dragon. Very funny. I still don’t like the way his things look, but I like him now.
• Art is a big joke played on society by those who don’t want to participate in the general interests of the masses. You can’t take it all to seriously. It’s just a way to live.
• Margritte. Tackily conceptual.
• Feininger’s The High Shore was very interesting. Nearly cubist.
• I realised that I should have some of the ‘strange’ pictures in my Night Set. It should be a cacophony of reality and unreality. Of the problems and dreams that happen at night and how difficult it is to tell between the two.
• In the last exhibit I was very impressed by some of the realist work by Karl Kuntz. Cartoon-like but amazingly detailed on the weight of light in a scene. Also not afraid to do a shaded dark place with very uneven, nearly oddly heavy light. Too bad these were facsimiles.
• Durer was fucking incredible. Total respect for the patience he had. Need to reproduce in myself.

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• art

Posted 2 years ago

Today I was blown away by Egon Schiele. He died at 28 but was amazingly productive for about 10 years and produced some of the most expressive drawings and paintings that I’ve ever seen. I loved it. He seems to have silenced those who came after him into awe. Here are some notes:

• He was masterful in shifting perspective to human scale, or human type. You see the human body at angles that are different but visually engaging.
• As opposed to Klimt I found him highly undecorative in reaction to Art Noveau, He had personal problems he was trying to solve rather than bourgeoisie reaction to what movement had come before.
• What struck me was his technical virtuosity. His control of line and ability to draft was moving. Off of this technical base he was highly expressive in terms of colours and in being ‘anatomical’. He shows the structures of the body and laid things bare rather than the prettying skin.
• Colours for landscapes are wintry, Klimptian gold, browns, dark greens. But he highlights certain things with extraordinary colour and the contrast is sparkling. His use of brightness on a muted dark background, or pure white works well for the portraits as well. His use of visceral blues and reds for skin is a little sickening but certainly gives the humanness of skin, the blood, and veins, and meat. The use of gold is so strange yet works so well when he does it.
• Was very impressed by Two Figures Leaning Towards the Right. Death makes you levitate. Float away rather than being buried underground. Moving in the light of Jeffrey’s death recently.His hands are very expressive, but angular, geometric. He loved making strange symbols with his hands.
• Also liked Seated male nude without hands or feet. No background. The torso and limbs are floating in space. Genitals, eyes, highlighted in a flat red. Demonic. Hair looks obscene in the context of the nakedness. Concentration on how the body reacts and emotes with no feet, hands, face. I need to look more closely at the shapes people’s bodies make in my photos. Maybe spend some time taking photos of dancers or sportsmen up close. Schiele bends the human body into expressions they feel.
• Exhibition was very well lit. At times the light was concentrated on even the correct part of the painting rather than the whole painting. Not enough places to sit, but they had strewn books around the benches that were there. Lots of spelling mistakes in the wall notes, but it was all jargon free and very interesting.
• Also liked Klimt and him in coat, the Hermits. Gay? It is a monumental masterwork. Triangular composition is overwhelmingly powerful when you stand in front of it. Klimt looks like a mad Dionysian drugged up leach.His perspectives and framing are lovely, lovely, lovely.
• Also Cardinal and Nun very good. The naked veined feet are so rude!
• In some of the paintings the perspective breaks down to be a cartoon nightmare.
• I wonder if a gallery is the best (or only) place these works should be seen. I need more time with less works. Embarrassment of riches in the gallery. Watching the facile reactions of others is entertaining though. Nice to have woman around.
• His drawings downstairs were very good in their spareness, their control, and their power.

Noticed that more people were at the stand BMW had set up for their new car than at the exhibitions. Too easy. Also spent some time with Klimt (Leopold didn’t have much, I think the Albertina has a bit more):

• Very good proportionally but different. Unbalances everything his giant planes but doesn’t take it to the edge, leaves a little bit of space for balance. I liked his use of the square format. Certainly unique style.
• Klimt even decorates death. There is a lightness that comes from the the decorativeness of his work that is unique. Woman fit into their hair rather than the other way around.

Also saw some Jugenstil work which was pretty impressive mainly by Auchentaller. His early technical skill was to die for. The art is pretty and very middle class. Not my thing, but I can see why people like it. It was easy to like. He retired to run a hotel with his wife by the sea. Slowly stopped making art.

• egon schiele
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• gustav klimt

Posted 2 years ago

Photos by Bechers

So, I didn’t die. In fact, I lived. And with life I walked over to the Kunsthalle Wien to be utterly disappointed. No it’s not a giant hall full of vaginas, it’s just a damn art museum. It’s currently photography month of some such madness and who should it be but our old friend Thomas Ruff (mentioned earlier on this blog) with a no holds barred retrospective of his stuff. Overall it was pretty boring, but there were some nice details. Downstairs there was an exhibition of portraiture which was even less interesting. Here are some notes on Thomas Ruff:

• Pleasantly surprised by his interest in good modern architecture although because of his having been taught by the Bechers I shouldn’t have been. He has worked with Herzog and De Meuron and has also done a series on Luis de van der Rohe. I’d love to do some architectural or furniture photography. Go around the world getting decently paid to take photos of buildings that are pretty, what’s not to like?
• Very moved by the systematic work of the Bechers. The photos they took have great tonality and I’d love to have been able to see some larger prints. The book they had on the table reproduced the photos in a tiny size (necessarily because the first thing to notice is their comprehensiveness). The objects they took photos of look like they flew in from outerspace. Also, I liked how they recotextualised the various pieces with their own kind giving them a new, more focused meaning of what they are. I liked the straightness, the facing up to it, and approachability of their work. The straight on perspective is highly modern and I really liked the aesthetic. I wonder if they used a tilt shift lens, or used the twistability of the view camera. Need to research them more, and see who has good holdings of their prints. Probably Dusseldorf.
• Ruff’s colour prints are just beautiful. You want to touch them. But I guess it’s no better than what a good magazine prints these days. They important thing is to print and get my own work printed as large as it’ll go and still look highly detailed.
• Large format prints did not give the shock of endless detail that I expected and craved from him. Disappointingly blurred, and hazy up close. An interestingly reified experience a couple of steps back. Would prefer a bit smaller (1m) but with more detail.
• Need to read up on the New Objectivity. Bechers, Blossefelt, Dusseldorf School.
• He had some very cool Stereoscope pictures which were fun to view. Diorama like perspective but with good detail. You look down on a box with a mirror that combines two pictures at 45 degrees to your eye which have been taken slightly apart to reflect the nature of the distance between our two eyes. I want to do some work like this for sure.
• The portraits were not inspiring. Even though they are printed large they don’t have the punch of the detail that mine do. It’s not about seeing them large, but in detail, seeing something you usually can’t. His people did not have any personality. He didn’t open them up.
• His double printed portraits were slightly interesting but not in the sheer numbers that he has printed them in.
• He had some crappy designer space stuff that was boring that took up the main hall. None of his jpeg stuff was there.

Then I went downstairs to the portraiture stuff they had downstairs with keen professional interest. Mostly disappointed with what was there but got to see quite a number of the current practitioners. Roger Ballen was a highlight.

• Didn’t like Mapplethrope’s campness. The gay fuck. But one of his pictures of an old woman (Alice Neel 1984) was good.
• Tina Barney’s work was interesting for using medium format to capture everyday family action.
• Nan Goldin’s horribly dated 80s colours.
• Rineke Dijkstra had an interesting shot of a woman bleeding from her cunt whilst holding her baby. She works hard to be boring though. Succeeds.
• Tillmans was boring. Gets trust from the subject though. But he feels that’s enough and doesn’t really try to do anything interesting beyond that. I’m really not interested in letting people ‘reveal’ themselves in a photograph. It’s a mute medium which can only show surfaces. Eyes are eyes and can only express a hundredth of what’s going on in someone’s head. Much better to try to capture the whole face without the person knowing. Portraits are nearly always boring. Except my one’s of people you’ve never seen the likes of before.
• Had the thought: ‘What is needed know in this time of plasticity and photoshop is pitiless detail. We have the technology, and our culture needs it.’
• Roger Ballen is amazingly funny. Reminds me of a non-jewish Arbus. So not taking him seriously. And so taking all of us very seriously.
• Bernhardt Fuchs is a crappy colourful copy of Sanders (actually most people seemed to be copying Sanders, need to chase down a book on him). Sartarolist does a better job than Fuchs. Off course Sartorilist doesn’t give a crap about the person.
• Beat Struili is a bad street photographer. Doesn’t shoot from the viewfinder and shoots with a long lens. Really shitty compositions. Nice colours though. No tension in the photos. I’m so much better than these people. When will they realise? When I show them I guess.
• Anthony Gayton did some gay but interesting copies of pictures from the 19th C.
• Lost a bit of faith. It seems the standard is really low in art photography.

• kunsthalle wien
• thomas ruff
• review
• bechers

Posted 2 years ago

Paintings by Cy Twombly

I’ve begun my dutiful pilgrimage through the storehouses of human culture by beginning at the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. It’s a modernist building in gorgeous slate gray stone panels. Overall it looks like a badly cut chocolate cake. The main exhibition is a big retrospective of Cy Twombly.

I took some rough notes:

• He has an amazing sense of balancing colour. Of colour restraint. Of knowing that there is only dark because there is light. That a line only means something because there is white space around it. Despite the childlike scratches and smudges that make up the language of his art, they are done in such a harmonious way, with such continuity and wholeness, that a yuppie would find his paintings acceptable on their walls. And since he is in a museum, I guess they already do.
• What he is also good at is proportions of finding a way to create weight in the right places, and leave giant bits of white (or the lovely muted cream that his canvasses usually are) as a counter balance. His photos in Miranesi (sp?) are an excellent example of his use of ratios. He used isolation as a key way to please the eye. There are strong references to Japanese and Chinese ideas of placement and proportion.
• What comes through in such an in depth retrospective is the persistence and development of his art. He realised his vocabulary and began applying that to various topics. His work around 1985, a very late stage, is at the apex of what he did.
• It made me think of the childishness of modernist ‘expressive’ art, of its reflexivity. The art dumbs itself down to the basics of line, planes, and colours to express rather than illustrate. The traditional technique is wilfully thrown away so that a stronger emotional connection can be made. But there is a dark side. Often his art starts relying on meta knowledge (of a historical painting of the athenian philosophers) which is inelegant. In detail, his paintings have banal writings and sketches and jokes written into the paintings. He’s making a joke of it all. Making us question the worth of things. Or maybe he’s saying that the painting in its whole survives it’s details, and maybe even its motivations.
• His other work non-painting work is naive and frankly quite horrible. His sculptures are as hard to look at as they would be to shit out of your rectum. His photography is amateur and lack any form of tension at all and have terrible technique. Much is made in the catalogue notes of his Black Mountain College pedigree but the results aren’t encouraging that an artist can be first rate in more than one field. It must have allowed him to survive emotionally and so was necessary.
• His work is big which makes it easy to see. People like big just like they like loud.

I also came across the works of, and liked, Jawlinsky, and Valie Export. Here’s wikipedia on EXPORT:

EXPORT’s early guerilla performances have attained an iconic status in feminist art history. Tapp- und Tast-Kino (“Tap and Touch Cinema”) was performed in ten European cities in 1968-1971. In this avowedly revolutionary work, EXPORT wore a tiny “movie theater” around her naked upper body, so that her body could not be seen but could be touched by anyone reaching through the curtained front of the “theater.” She then went into the street and invited men, women, and children to come and touch her.

In her 1969 performance Aktionshose:Genitalpanik (Action Pants: Genital Panic), EXPORT entered a porn cinema in Munich with her hair in disarray, wearing crotchless pants, and carrying a machine gun. Striding up and down the rows of theatregoers, she brandished the weapon and challenged the male audience to engage with a “real woman” instead of with an images on a screen. Through these acts of artistic daring, EXPORT challenged the objectification of the female form by confronting voyeurs with a body that returned the gaze.

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• cy twombly

Posted 2 years ago

Johan Emanuelsson - "The Farm" (link)

Johan Emanuelsson

You don’t have to like how something looks to be moved by it. The set is sickening. And when you actually read about one of the central facts in this couple’s life, the pictures take on a further, ghastly significance. Emanuelsson’s edit is cruelly effective in telling its story, and it does it with a virtuosity and confidence that’s enthralling.

Click on the link in the title.

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• contemporary photographer

Posted 2 years ago

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