The Best Exhibitions of 2013 Part 1

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My list of the best shows that I saw this year is not very large, mainly because I didn’t see that many shows, or that many shows that I liked. I saw a lot of bad, mediocre or overrated exhibitions, and there were exhibitions by major artists that were anything but major. But to be fair It’s difficult to see everything because there is so much of everything.  Also of note were the really terrific works that passed in front of my eyes this year on Facebook, strong bodies of work by many of my facebook artist friends were at times more exciting and rewarding than what I saw in museums and galleries.  So in no order of preference is what I liked in 2013 These reviews originally appeared throughout the year on this very blog and on facebook.

 

Bill Traylor. The American Folk Art Museum

This exuberant, moving and vivid exhibition of the art of Bill Traylor consisting of about 63 remarkable drawings should be seen by every artist in the city and anyone interested in great art. I have always loved his simplistic yet sophisticated works that he made on cheap paper and cardboard that tell his story and what passed in front of his hard life.  Born into slavery in 1854 on the Traylor Plantation where he continued to live until 1938 raising some say over 20 children, and moving to Montgomery at the age of 84 where he picked up a pencil and started to draw.  Oh Bill I would hug you if I could I would buy you a drink or a coke and pencils and paints If I could. I would scrounge the dirty streets  of  racist Montgomery looking for discarded pieces of paper and cardboard for you to do your magnificent drawings on. These stunning images can be seen as autobiographical or relics of his memory caught in a frozen moment in paint and pencil on his ragged pieces of paper. What is amazing is that he didn’t start drawing until he was 85 and worked for 10 years before his death at 95, that  eye of his taking in the passing parade of African American life moving, running, and jostling in front of him as he did those drawings sitting  outside on a chair on Monroe Street. Your use of color and line is so subtle Bill I’m in awe with joy and envy when I look at them and love how you draw people moving, jumping fighting twisted with joy and sorrow their feet and hands stretched out and up reaching for no doubt what we all reach for. His palette was limited and consisted mainly of a sharp and strong acidy blue poster paint but there are also reds, and yellows here and there in the drawings and those deep deep blacks and those abstract shapes that morph into people, animals and objects many   filled in with loose colors and sometimes complex textures.  And then there are your animals Bill. I swear to God I had tears in my eyes looking at your pigs, dogs, cows and horses stylized. Big and little with dogs as big as cows and some of them looking like they could be on the walls of Chauvet Cave, outlined, colored, textured and washed. Did you ever do a bad drawing in your short art career and very long life?  I doubt it. Some 1,200 brilliant drawings are with us now, thanks to your great friend and fellow artist Charles Shannon, (The Museum Of Modern Art in the 40’s wanted to buy 16 of them for $1.00 and $2.00 each, Mr. Shannon turned them down) who discovered you late in your life, encouraged your work and saved your great accomplishment so that I can now bathe in their beauty. One of the great exhibitions of the year. 

 

Yayoi Kusama. I Who Have Arrived In Heaven. David Zwirner Gallery.

I walked out of this expansive and expensive looking exhibition with a big smile on my face. Filling up one of Zwirner's empire of his galleries the best part of this fun house show are the 3 dizzying installations that make use of flashing lights, shallow pools of water, lots of mirrors and inflatable polka dot covered forms. Small doors. I usually don't like going into rooms with small doors, but I got a glimpse of what awaited me if I dared to enter, and I couldn't resist. The one called Infinity Mirrored Room, The Souls of Millions Of Light Years Away is the one with all those lights, and only one person or two at the most can go in. I found myself standing alone on a small platform surrounded by large pool of water and all these lights flashing on and off, and it was really spectacular but also a little freaky and disorienting. There I was floating in this blasting room of lights, so of course I immediately started to take photos. Finally the door was opened by a nice young man, and I immediately wanted to get back on the ride for another spin. It was sort of like Disneyland. Instead I went into the next installation this one also had mirrors and all these funny looking inflatable polka dot forms hanging from the ceiling and coming up from the floor. This one was also very effective if you like to have your sense of space and perspective thrown helter skelter. I had trouble finding the door to move on to the final installation, which was my least favorite. Here was the artist in her bright red wig projected many times with the help of mirrors singing a song a little bit of overkill if you ask me. There were also galleries with 27 big paintings that were brightly colored, sweetly obsessive and pretty but were a little too easy and happy meal for me to really love. I prefer my madness a little darker. Still this was a delightful show, and you gotta love this 84 year old artist who is still going strong with bright and shinning art but be warned if you are planning on seeing this show on the weekend, lots of luck as the lines to get into the installations I was told are huge.

 

Claes Oldenburg at The Museum Of Modern Art

For me it was always Oldenburg who inspired me to make art. For me he was the one who made art look like fun, that art could be anything, could be made of anything and could be personal. For me he bridged the gap between abstract expressionism and Pop Art, and made me realize that I too could be an artist. For me Oldenburg said just be yourself, tell your story, it may not be accepted or liked but at least it will be all yours to tell. When I moved to New York City from Brooklyn in 1967 when I was 19 and just about ready to turn 20, Green, innocent and not knowing much about contemporary art, I had several roommates sharing our 6^th floor walkup in Chelsea. My favorite was John who was an assistant to Kusama and one night he took me to a wild party at her loft where I stood open mouthed and eyes wide open. John a hippie, gay, flamboyant and way ahead of his time would encourage me to make art, would offer his smart opinions about what I was doing and what I should be doing and told me about Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg  and above all Oldenburg. I’ve always loved Oldenburg’s art and this work of his that inspired me is now the subject of a beautiful and big (in more ways than one) 2 part exhibition now on view at The Museum Of Modern Art. It’s like a wonderful open faced sandwich with french fries on the side. The main show (there is also a 2^nd exhibition, a gathering in that awful atrium of his Mouse Museum and Ray Gun pieces), covers his seminal early 60’s work, the work of the street and the store, the raw and free cardboard, papier-mâché and plaster of paris sculptures of everyday objects and things, food, clothes and toys that are so ephemeral looking that its amazing that they survived. But of course they did, because they were bought and saved by collectors and museums all over the world and the artist himself. They look fresh new and beautiful. The show opens with his imposing large  “abstract” corrugated cardboard Art Brut Dubuffet inspired sculptures of street chicks, dolls and big heads along with a large hanging phallic “Empire (‘Papa’) Ray Gun” that looks like something from a sci fi movie.  These works  are threatening and scary but at the same time amusing and of course original. Reaching into his childhood and indeed ours, in 1961 he opens a store on the lower eastside and sells his brightly painted and splattered papier-mâché and plaster of paris objects many for just a song and a dance. Who of us didn’t play store when kids. At the same time he did performances and “happenings” and made fast Dubuffet inspired drawings and posters. The exhibit includes some of his oversize and soft sculptures that would soon become what he is most known and famous for, soft and large toilets folding into themselves, giant soft hamburgers and ice cream cones, soft and huge and all beautifully crafted and made. His work would eventually become monumental and off-putting to me all shiny and clean, new and improved, untouched by his hands, but that would come much later and for now we have this marvelous show of his street urchins and lower eastside chicks in their cheap plaster of paris dresses blowing in the wind, his scrappy and yes crappy looking pieces of food and signs, candy and toys colorful, splashy and rude and all are back for a much appreciated visit. Ah Claes. 

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity at the Metropolitan Museum

Fashion, and Modernity at the Metropolitan is a stunning show, actually its spectacular,  spectacular as only the Met sometimes does of art and fashion with some magnificent works by great painters including Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas and my new friend James Tissot, who has the most works (10) in the show. I was not really familiar with his paintings, maybe he’s the one that got away, under my radar, but I really loved his stuff no matter if a critic thinks that his paintings “are fit for chocolate box covers”.  Pass those chocolates over to me honey.  Scattered about here and there are the real fashions, 14 dresses, a few of which are the exact ones that appear in some of the paintings.  There are black dresses, white dresses and tiny waists, tiny shoes, tiny feet, tiny gloves and tiny hands, along with hats (tiny heads) and smashing fans. Adding to the exhibit was the smell of perfumes and colognes drifting around my nose that many of the women viewing the show were wearing, sort of like arty Smell O Vision. This is a nice touch unplanned by the curators but still this can be seen as appropriate since so many of the paintings were very large and cinematic, especially in the final gallery where the great “Paris Street Rainy Day” by Gustave Caillebotte reigns supreme. There is also a gallery devoted to men’s fashions, again more tiny waists, tiny hats and tiny heads and it is in this gallery that my toes curled and my knees got weak looking at Whistler’s “Arrangement in Flesh Color & Black, Portrait of Theodore Duret”.  Comments overheard mainly concerned what relative or movie star the subjects in the paintings looked like, she looks “like my aunt” someone said and that one looks like Selma Hyake and come to think of it Tissot’s portrait of The Marquse de Miramon sort of looked like John Kelly in drag.

Paul Thek and His Circle-The Leslie Lohman Museum

I saw the very good exhibition "Paul Thek and his circle in the 1950s" at the Leslie Lohman Museum of gay and lesbian art yesterday and say yes to everyone seeing it. Personal and touching there are lots of wonderful photographs of the handsome young Thek and his friends including Peter Hujar and the painter Joseph Raffael, including many by Hujar that are being shown for the first time. There are also paintings, drawings and artworks mostly by Thek but also by some the members of his "circle" I met Thek once a year before he passed when my old friend the sculptor Ed Shostak brought Paul to meet me where I was working because Paul liked my work and wanted to meet me. We had shown at the same gallery in Germany. We were both shy but I was delighted to have the chance to meet him and sad when he died the next year. Of course we had his very good retrospective at the Whitney a couple of years ago, but this show is different because it focuses on Thek's close gay relationships and the political and social Milieu of the time. The show was curated by Peter Harvey who was a close friend and lover of Paul's and Jonathan David Katz and the free very nice 20pg. brochure includes essays by both. This place is one of the treasures of New York City and they generally put on really interesting shows while maintaining a permanent collection of more than 20,00 works "spanning more than three centuries of queer art."

Llyn Foulkes at the new museum

I went to the Bowery with a friend the other evening for the New Museum’s free night to see the exhibitions of Llyn Foulkes (very good) and Ellen Gallager (good but flawed) This was my first visit to this pile on the Bowery, and to me it looks and feels like another corporate museum, hell even the very large elevator as big as my living room has a donors plaque on it. It’s also a rather bland and sterile place with some awkward spaces and galleries. Some of Ms. Gallager’s very lovely “Watery Ecstatic” embossed and delicately color small works are installed in a tight claustrophobic alcove off a dollhouse like staircase going from the 3rd to the 4th floor, and if one decided instead to take the donor elevator instead of the toy like staircase you would miss seeing these pieces. Now since it was a free night there was a longish line full of mostly hip and cool good looking young New Yorkers out for some free culture, but it moved fast once they opened the doors, and I love being the oldest person in a large crowd of pretty pretties. The Llyn Foulkes show is robust, eccentric, hilarious, inventive, angry and charming tracing a 50 year span of output from this much loved L.A. artist who has remained pretty much unknown on this coast, but I’m sure this will change now that he is the subject of “the long-overdue career retrospective” as the New Museum puts it in the intro to the show. Loaded with about 100 works by this wild and wooly artist it includes very early small black and white drawings that have an underground comic book feel to them, (of course they were done way before these kind of comics appeared) some strong early large assemblages and constructions along with pop like paintings based on postcards and photographs that incorporate both words and images. The layout of the exhibit is somewhat cramped and confused, in fact as we were about to enter a room that had black curtains hanging down the entrance and seemed like the next logical space to enter a guard stopped us and said that we should see this room last as it contained his most recent works. In another gallery on one wall are lots of different size strange painted portraits some of them quite harsh and violent with blood running down the faces, eyes blocked out and small collaged additions glued to parts of some of the faces all elaborately framed. Foulkes who is an old fashioned good old lefty goes back and forth in his work from the very personal (there are several self-portraits) to the very political. He especially has it in for Ronald Reagan (who can blame him), Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse, art critics (again who can blame him) and the destroyers of our environment all of whom are pictured and torn apart in many works. Probably the strongest later work in the show is titled “The Lost Frontier which is a large tableau like almost 3-D work that is set in its own dark private gallery that is vivid and disturbing. One would have to say it was both beautifully constructed and painted. It’s an almost breathing tableau of an apocalyptic nightmarish scene, a dead Landscape with a city (Los Angles) dying in a sickly yellow smog in the background while a Buddha like blackened figure sits on the side with an empty bowl and a mummified cat or some kind of animal lies on the other side while a man (Foulkes?) sits in front of a TV or a computer screen or a microwave oven surrounded by mounds of garbage and craggy hills. Cars on an elevated highway move by in the distance and a creature in a dress with a Mickey Mouse head stands guard on one of the craggy hills a rifle in its hand. Other pop figures from Superman to the Lone Ranger also make cameo appearances and even Jesus Christ drops in for a visit. One would never accuse Foulkes of being a subtle artist that’s not what he’s about, his long career is full of art that is emotional and deeply felt, colorful, harsh, tactile and lush and sometimes brilliant.

Edward Hopper. The Whitney Museum

 

I just saw this magnificent exhibition at the Whitney today and I can't tell you how much I loved it, well actually I can tell you how much I loved it, I loved it a lot. Hopper has been one of my favorite artists for as long as I can recall and in this beautifully installed exhibition we get to see via a couple of hundred of his drawings and sketches just how he thought, and worked. Many of the drawings easily stand on their own as drawings, finished intimate and superb and there are also loose working sketches of details and ideas. I was surprised by how many of the drawings looked like storyboards for movies, especially Noir movies but then again many of his New York paintings are indeed“noirish in mood and light. The show also has a lot of his very early work including student work and pieces that he did in Paris when he was a young man. I especially love the wonderful large Soir Bleu from 1914 with smart Parisians sitting at a long table with a woman hovering over them and Japanese lanterns hanging over their heads and what is that scary clown doing there? Some of my favorite paintings of his are also in the show including "Early Sunday Morning" that always makes me feel melancholy (it must be the light) and is exhibited without a frame on his original easel so startling that at first I thought it was a reproduction, "New York Movie" finally I now know what movie theatre in New York City Hopper based the work on, its the Palace also the great "Night Hawks" which is probably the most parodied painting second only to "American Gothic" and "Gas" with his amazing dusk light falling on the trees and the lone figure at the gas pump. This is a breathtaking show that almost moved me to tears several times. One of the best exhibitions of the year.

Rene Magritte. The Museum Of  Modern Art

I just saw this magnificent show of 80 works by the great surrealist Rene Magritte, and although I know that his work might not be everyone's fur lined cup of tea I was totally enthralled, but then again I've always loved his work. The show features many of his most famous works along with many that were unknown to me, this is classic stuff which suddenly makes the entire world and the moma itself  look like a surrealist joke. Mr. Magritte's work is grotesque, funny, puzzling and very sexually charged. His paintings are also cinematic, in fact he might be the most cinematic painter of the early part of the 20th Century. There are all those frames that look like film images or even comic book strips and storyboards some with puns and play on words, crude jokes and floating body parts. Then there is his use of textures, and his delight in frustrating the viewer, by not showing us what we expect to see. The show opens next week, (I went to a member's preview) and sure it was a sunday, but it was just crawling with people, so be prepared for big crowds including some of the usual irritating ones who park themselves in front of a work, and stand there and chat about their travels, grandkids, and what they want to have for lunch, but don't look at the work, and think nothing of getting in the way of you looking at the painting. A cough and a dirty look works wonders with these idiots. 

 

Balthus At The Metropolitan Museum

I must say that I’ve never given this painter much thought or attention, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed his sparse show of 34 paintings now showing in some of the large galleries of the Metropolitan Museum. I still don’t think he is one of the great artists of the 20^th century, his subject matter is too insular and “special” to really take a place in the pantheon of 20^th century art, still there are pleasures to be found here even though his subjects mainly young girls, (Thérèse Blanchard in particular who was his favorite young model and whose many portraits fill the first gallery) in provocative poses might unhinge some people. Basically these works are very conservative in technique, lush and beautifully painted, but if the technique is mild mannered and acceptable his subjects are not. I can only imagine what people thought back in the 30’s & 40’s of these reclining young girls and Lolitas some showing undergarments and much flesh, and even today no doubt they will raise some eyebrows and maybe embarrass some of the matronly ladies who are flocking to the show. Then there are the cats, which becomes clearer when you enter the gallery holding the original wonderful 40 small black and white ink drawings of his adventures with his cat Mitsou. These were done when he was 11 and are as I said intimate and wonderful. I’ve known these drawings for a long time, having had a small book of them that was published in 1984 by The Metropolitan Museum. The guy obviously loved cats and they make appearances in many of the paintings, serving as a sort of a memorial to his beloved Mitsou. One of my favorite paintings by him is not in the show, its a double portrait of the painter Joan Miro and his daughter, which I loved as a teen when I would see it at the Moma.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From The Sidewalk to the Catwalk. The Brooklyn Museum

This is a marvelous side splitting eye popping sometimes Androgynous extravaganza that literally moves shakes, rattles and rolls. I admit I'm not much of a fashion person, but I can certainly admire a great dress or someone who knows fashion and knows how to dress, unfortunately this fashion sense usually takes lots of money to pull off, and when it comes to flash and expense this show has it all, and not only in the astounding clothes (I even hesitant to call them this) as they are really more like costumes which figures since Gaultier has designed for many films and pop divas most notably for Madonna. The exhibition is big, rowdy and gorgeous and looks like it cost a zillion dollars to mount and in fact it got lots of monetary support from Lexus, The Wall Street Journal and other big money pockets. There are rooms that have moving mannequins with interactive faces that are funny and creepy at the same time (the one of the designer even speaks with his French accent included) and at times the show takes on a circus or bordello like ambiance depending I guess on where one is coming from or going, and I can't recall a show where it is equally as much fun to watch the viewers as what is on view. Fashionistas galore. The fashions themselves are fabu, simply wonderful, full of rich details, fabrics, textures, elaborate designs, beadwork, glitter glamor and a very vivid imagination as to what a dress can be. Sure some of it is over the top and gimmicky and how the hell can anyone actually wear some of them, they look so uncomfortable and even silly, (the ones inspired by Rabbis are a bit too much), but all in all I laughed, I didn't cry but I had a wonderful time. This is one wild ride that I highly recommend, however be prepared for crowds, the rest of this great museum is largely empty and forgotten by the patrons so you can always take a breather and visit some of the other galleries. It will be on view until the end of February so there's plenty of time, and be warned that they are charging $15.00 to view it, but I saw it for free thanks to one of my students lending me his membership card. I don't think the pay what you want will work with this show.

 

Ad Reinhardt. David Zwirner Gallery

I absolutely positively enjoyed this wide ranging career spanning exhibit of Mr. Reinhardt's that is now residing at one of the many Zwirner galleries that line Chelsea. I especially liked all those marvelous cartoons and drawings that he did for some of the aggressive left leaning magazines and newspapers of the 30's and 40's and the first gallery is full of them. What was impressive about them, (besides their political learnings) were the intricate details of these small illustrations, he didn't work large and then have them reduced, these are really small, charming and ferocious Ad took no prisoners especially those in the then much smaller and intimate New York art world. He also did book covers and posters, and then presto he was on to making these black paintings which aren't really all black, and the second gallery is lined with them. I've always liked them, black has always been more interesting to me than white. Under the right viewing situations you can start seeing the delicate squares of different tones of black that make up the works, even sometimes seeing some blue black patches, that's if as I said the viewing situation is right. Unfortunately I found the installation here uncomfortable and not at all to my liking. I know that Reinhardt wanted to keep viewers at a certain distance from his work but its way too extreme at this show with those annoying barriers and annoying guards getting in the way of the works. I felt like i was in a corral, and by being so far away from the paintings I couldn't really make out all the subtleties of the works. I think some of those nice clunky low wooden platforms painted white would have worked much better and in fact thats how his show at Betty Parson's was installed, (no I wasn't there in 1965, but there is a photo of the installation in the very nice free brochures that you can pick up at the gallery). The final part of the show is a big slide show of his photographs that he took on his travels that he would force on his artist friends whenever he could. These are absolutely of no interest to me, and after looking a a few I left.

To Be Continued