Paper: Pressed, Stained, Folded, Slashed at MoMA, Part 2

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Last Friday Part 1 of this post appeared. I'd thought I was going to get to Part 2 sooner, but time has its own agenda.

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To recap: Paper: Pressed, Stained, Folded, Slashed contemplates the witty, sumptuous, violent and playful materiality of paper in work by some of the art world's big guns, who were merely pistols when these works were made, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Above: Robert Rauschenberg, Cardbird VI, 1971

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Standing in the anteroom, where Rauschenberg's Cardbird commands the first look, we peek into the large first gallery. I've included this image so that you can imagine entering the gallery and looking to your left. What you'd see is below: a crumpled drawing by Oldenberg--I'm surprised by how much I like it--and another work, in handmade paper (remember when that was the big thing?) by Rauschenberg.

Claes Oldenberg and Robert Rauschenberg, with closeups below

Oldenberg's Flag to Fold in the Pocket, 1961, ink and crayon on paper, 29.5 x 47 inches, above;

Rauschenberg's, Page 4 from the series Pages and Fuses, 1974, two sheets of handmade paper in plexi frames with twine, each 15 x 20 inches

Lucio Fontana, installation view of four of Six Original Etchings, 1964, portfolio of six embossed etchings; one of the works below


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If you take the time to access the exhibition website, click onto Fontana's Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept), a gold accordion book with a visual narrative of negative space. Fontana's work is almost half a century old now, yet it still bristles with enough energy to make you realize just how daring, even transgressive, it was when it was made.

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While you're at it, click onto the navigable view of Lygia Pape's Book of Creation, a collection of gouache-on-paperboard constructions, each 12 x 12 inches. To be honest, the installation suggests a design project, but there are some appealing elements in it, especially the geometry of the detail below:

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Lygia Pape, Book of Creation, 1959-60, gouache on paperboard, each 12 x 12 inches

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It's not all old school. This work by Nancy Rubins, while still 20th Century (1997), is much more contemporary. I hadn't realized how much it has in common with Rauschenberg until now. Good thing I shot the work and its label; it's not on the MoMA website at all. That's an oversite.

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Nancy Rubins, Untitled, 1997, pencil on paper
Detail below

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My favorite is the small work in the second gallery by Howardena Pindell. It's shown below. Hung in an installation with other small works, Untitled (#7) is a sculptural pastiche of the dots from hole-punched paper, thread, and other materials. It's a reconstruction of a deconstruction, a small sculptural plot of process and materiality preserved from the early 1970s. I love it.

Howardena Pindell, Untitled (#7), 1973, ink on punched and pasted paper, talcum powder, and thread on paper; 10 1/8 x 8 3/8 inches

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Wall installation, below, with Pindell's work at the middle right

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Geo/Metric at MoMa, Part 3

Geo/Metric at MoMA, Part 1
Geo/Metric at MoMa, Part 2
Geo/Metric at MoMa, Part 4

With Mary Heilmann’s cadmium yellow and ultramarine painting at your back, you're facing Gallery 3. This large space is the mirror twin to Gallery 1 (just as Gallery 4 is the mirror twin to Gallery 2). The walls are creamy white rather than gray, and the space at this end is dominated by color and geometry on a large scale.

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Left: Gabriel Orozco, Samurai's Tree Invariant, 2006, series of 672 digital prints with digital files, composition and sheet, each 21 7/16 x 21 7/16. Right: Martin Creed, Work No. 341, 2008, felt-tip pen and ink on seven pieces of paper, each 11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches

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Let’s enter. To your left, at the far wall, is an installation of digital print “wallpaper” by Gabriel Orozco. To your right, image below, Olaf Nikolai has the dividing wall that faces you; it’s covered with long rectangular sheets of commercially printed glossy paper arranged in a vertical “brick” pattern. On the other side of the Nikolai wall is a Daniel Buren installation, which you will see as we progress through the gallery. And at the far right wall is a large modular Robert Ryman, which you can just glimpse in the image below, but we’ll get to a better picture of it in a bit. All of these works are composed of smaller elements amassed and ordered to form a whole. The curatorial concept is beautifully thought out, as is the color: brilliant hues on the Orozco/Nikolai side of the room; a more muted palette—mostly white—on the other.

Olaf Nikolai, 30 Farben (30 Colors), 2000-2005, portfolio of 90 offset prints, each app. 40 x 12 inches. To the left of the Nikolai wall, Dorothea Rockburne's folded prints; behind it, Robert Ryman's modular painting on paper

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Now the particulars. I’d seen the wall of Orozco’s work at one of the fairs (Basel Miami, I think). It initially caught my eye, but to be honest, it seemed more suited for a home show and I kept walking. I looked more closely this time, and while there are some interesting variations in the composition and in the colorways of blue, gold, white and red, it still looks and feels like wallpaper.

Martin Creed provided a nice counterpoint in scale. So, it’s not always about size. His seven small works are tiny color fields—color plots?—executed for the most part in day-glo felt-tip pen, each a different color. Any one might not make you stop, but the group of them holds the wall and your attention. This is the guy who won the Turner Prize for his [in]famous piece in which the lights in a gallery are switched on and off, so he understands how to get your attention. (Sorry I don't have closeups to show you; my images came out blurry and the museum's site doesn't have pics of them.)

One module from the Orozco installation

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Continuing our turn around this half of the gallery, we come upon the central dividing wall on which Olaf Nikolai’s work is displayed. I wrote about Nikolai in a recent post about color. Carolina Nitsch, the gallery that showed his work, is the publisher of these prints. The piece is 30 Farben (30 Colors), a portfolio of long rectangular sheets of offset-printed paper, each a commercially available hue selected from the Pantone palette. According to the wall placard, the artist encourages his collectors to arrange the portfolio to their own preference. If the curators devised this arrangement, kudos. I can’t imagine a better arrangement for the wall, or a better placement than on this wall. To me, the whole is greater than its parts.

Mark Grotjahn’s paintings are to the right, just out of view. We’ll get to them in a bit, but for now, let’s look beyond the Olaf wall into the the other half of the gallery. To the left: Dorothea Rockburne’s series of creased paper; to the right, on the far wall, Robert Ryman’s 12-segment print.

Here’s Rockburne’s wall, below, with closeups of two works below that. I love the quiet and subtlety of these work. And it’s no small feat that in a room of demanding color, this wall—indeed, each work within it— holds its own. The placard identified the work as an acquatint. I would have ascribed the tonal differences to the light hitting the various planes of the folded paper. Not bring a print person, I’m not sure when and how during the process they were folded.

Dorothea Rockburne, Locus, 1972, a series of six relief etchings and aquatints on folded paper, each 39 3.4 x 30 1/16 inches.

Below, two pieces from the series. Images from the MoMa website

Continuing around the second half of the gallery, below: Robert Ryman, Classico 5, 1968, synthetic polymer paint on paper, 12 units overall 93 1/4 x 88 1/2 inches. Three drawings from Agnes Martin are to the right

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The interplay of elements between and among the work of Rockburne, Ryman and Martin is captivating: Rockburne’s fractured planes, modulated so that they read as positive and negative space, vis a vis the Ryman panels, where a whiter rectangle is placed within the larger elements. It’s also fractured, but in the most formally organized way. Agnes Martin’s three small ink-on-paper drawings engage in a call-and-response with Rockburne and Ryman—well, make that a whispered exchange: her small individual grids vis a vis Ryman’s giant grid installation; her trapezoid drawing vis a vis Rockburne’s angles. Metaphorically, it’s like the grownups conversing quietly in the living room about art, math and music while the kids party at full volume in the the basement.

Agnes Martin, above and below

Above, Trapezoid, 1960, ink and pencil on paper, 9 3/8 x 11 7/8 inches unframed. Below, Tremolo, 1962, ink on paper, 10 x 11 inches unframed

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While we’re talking party, let’s swing around to the right of the Nikolai wall so that you can see Mark Grotjahn’s four framed colored-pencil-on paper drawings. Wildly energetic, their palette has everything in common with Nikolai, yet their crystalline compositions have much in common graphically with Riley and formally with Rockburne. How I wish there were a catalog for this show. I’d love to know what precipitated these particular acquisitions, and if they were made with one another in mind, and how the show was selected from MoMA’s stash.

Back in the chromatically assertive half of the gallery, we see four high-energy drawings by Mark Grotjahn. (Barely visible in Gallery 4 is a wall of Albers's prints. We'll get to them in the next and final post)

Below, Grotjahn's Untitled (blue and yellowish cream), 2002, colored pencil on paper, each 24 x 19 inches unframed

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To reorient you, below is a view of where we entered--from the doorway on the left. Ryman is to our back, Rockburne unseen on the right, Martin on the left. Ahead of us is Daniel Buren’s installation. Grotjahn is visible to the left, Creed to the right. Orozco is out of view at the far wall.

Daniel Buren, Framed/Exploded/Defaced, 1978-79, aquatint cut into 25 squares

What is the sequence here in Buren’s installation? Is there a message? Trying to “decipher” a meaning from this installation of stripes and spaces is like trying to read a newspaper in, say, German. I recognized the elements, but I just didn't know what it was telling me until I went onto the exhibition website. In fact the work is about expansion and contraction and your perceptions of space. This is an aquatint that the artist cut into 25 equal squares that must expand to fit whatever wall is chosen for them. So this wall, both sides, is heavily weighted with curatorial decisions. (If only there had been an essay!)

Despite the "explosion" of the title, the energy of the work is contained securely within each module. That's an interesting push/pull. Formally I love the relationship of this work to Grotjahn's angularities and Creed's more-or-less deadpan drawings.

We're about to enter Gallery 4, whose entrance is just to the left of the Grotjahns

Next and last post: Gallery 4.

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Geo/Metric at MoMA, Part 2

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Geo/Metric at MoMA, Part 1 

Geo/Metric at MoMa, Part 3  

Geo/Metric at MoMa, Part 4 

The entrance to Gallery 2. A Bridget Riley print is flanked by a grid of nine ink-on-paper works by Tony Smith, and a gouache-on-paper drawing by Jo Baer. Most of the work in this gallery is from the Fifties and Sixties

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If my first post reads more like a travelogue of the gallery than a discussion of the work, it’s because I really don’t know how to talk about that early-in-the-last-century work.  Here in the second gallery, my art history is a bit better. This is more contemporary work—though by “contemporary” we’re talking late Fifties and Sixties. Work in black and white is installed in the four corners. The dialog between and among these works, mediated by everything else in the gallery, is animated. You join in visually, the way you might join a conversation at a cocktail party, a bit here, a bit there. Because the space is small—and because this unsung show is almost deserted—it is easy to maneuver, and there are many such conversations to join.

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Bridget Riley. Untitled (Fragment 1) from a series of seven screenprints on Perspex, 1965

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So let’s enter the gallery. The optically invigorating screenprint on Perspex (that’s plexiglass to you and me) by Bridget Riley is crisp and fresh, though it dates from 1965. Riley has mellowed in recent years but I remain enamored of the painter who muscled her way into the art scene of the Sixties with her retinally explosive Op paintings. This print, all aggressive angles and vigorous energy, is a fitting metaphor for what it must have taken for a young woman to create a place for herself back then. Plus it’s fabulous.

Over your left shoulder is a black and white work by Myron Stout, one of the great albeit not-so-well-known painters of modernist geometry (or is it geometric modernism?). You’ll see it in a bit as we swing around the gallery. Visible to your left is a wall of gouache and ink works by Ellsworth Kelly. I’m lukewarm about Kelly’s mature work, but these early paintings and collages I love. Their small size and wonderful color, and Kelly's exploration of related shapes and hues, and the dialog between the color and the black and white is still snappy after all these years.

Ellsworth Kelly. Line Form Color, 1951, ink on paper (the black and white work) and colored and pasted colored paper on colored paper. Kelly described the works--from a group of 40 that he created--as "an alphabet of plastic pictorial elements."
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Below: Tony Smith, 4/26/61 (a suite of nine drawings), 1961, ink on paper. (Beyond the wall is a peek at one of a series of small works by Martin Creed in the next gallery)

The gridded installation format continues with the ink-on-paper works of Tony Smith. Is it me or do the photographs of Berndt and Hilla Becher come to mind? Certainly it’s the installation, but it’s also the architectural quality of the images, the black and white, and the slight variations, each worthy of close viewing, within the theme.

A doorway to the large third gallery comes next, but we’re going to continue our tour around Gallery 2 and stop at the two gems by Jo Baer, both gouache on paper. You see the small one on the right when you enter the gallery; it and a partial view of the Smiths flank Riley’s print in a pas de trois of angular black and white.

Up close you can appreciate the energy of the lines in Baer's small work, brushed on confidently with a free hand—and that red line, not quite tentative, yet not fully assertive, traverses the length of the inside space just under the defining upper edge. There’s just the tiniest bit of space between the light red line and the bolder black swipe above it. Then you notice its counterpart at the bottom of the frame. It sits atop the black line there. Is it resting or lying in wait? What energy and equipoise contained in such a tiny space! (See Carol Diehl's review in AiA of what Baer has been up to more recently.)

Two by Jo Baer, both untitled, from 1965 and 1963, gouache on paper. ( Peeking into Gallery 3, we see Gabriel Orozco's digital print wallpaper)

Below, the untitled work from 1963, 5.5 x 7 inches sans frame

Continuing around, we see works by the Brazilians Helio Oiticica, most gouache on board, that are beauties of modernist geometry, and Lygia Clark, whose two black-and-white collages are placed in the diagonally opposite corner to the Tony Smiths and opposite the Jo Baers. The balance of content and placement is this exhibition is staggeringly good!

Work in gouache on board from 1958 and 1959 by Helio Oiticica, above
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Below, more by Oiticica and by Lygia Clark in cut and pasted paper on paper. (To orient you: just to the right of the Clarks is the entrance to this gallery)

Now we back ourselves almost into Gallery 3 so that we can take in the foreground and background of this space. On the wall behind the Bridget Riley print is this gouache-on-paper painting by Mary Heilmann, below. Look at the dialog of blues between it and the Oiticica on the left. Pulling back farther, you see the Myron Stout drawing which had not been visible as we entered. The Stout work faces the Tony Smith grid; the exchange of positive and negative planes and spaces between these two installations is so compelling that you might be at a tennis game for the amount of head swinging you do. Through the doorway into Gallery 1 you can see the Hans Arp collage which I showed in the previous post.

Mary Heilmann, above and below, Davis Sliding Square, 1978, synthetic polymer paint on paper, 29 7/8 x 22 1/2
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Above, work by Oiticica is to the left of Heilmann's painting. Below, Myron Stout's choarcoal and pastel drawing is visible to the right, and beyond that, a collage by Hans Arp in Gallery 1

Heilmann is a personal favorite. I find her particular brand of geometry and color both rigorous and sensuous. Neither a minimalist nor a materialist (or perhaps a little of both), she knows exactly how much to put into every painting—or maybe exactly how much to leave out. This work, from 1978, is more recent than most of the other work in the room. Presumably that’s because it leads you into the large Gallery 3, the site of the newest work in the exhibition.

Heilmann's work faces this view of Gallery 3, which is where we’re going in the next post.

Next stop: Gallery 3

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Geo/Metric at MoMA, Part 1

Geo/Metric at MoMA, Part 2

Geo/Metric at MoMA, Part 3

Geo/Metric at MoMA, Part 4

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If you’re in New York this week and you have even a passing interest in geometry, get over to the new work-on-paper galleries on the second floor at MoMA to see Geo/Metric, up through the 18th. Travel is not in your plans? Well, get comfortable here in front of the monitor, as I have a lot of images to show you. The work in this show is from the MoMA collection, which means visitors were free to photograph it. I did, from every conceivable angle. The installation is beautifully thought out, so every angle permits visual connections between and among the works.

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A hallway on the second floor at MoMA leading to Geo/Metric. This work is from the untitled Forms Derived From a Cube, by Sol Lewitt, from a portfolio of etchings and aquatint

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The wall text describes the show as “an informal survey of the impulse toward geometric abstraction in visual art over the past century.” It’s a worthy premise represented by a wonderful selection of work. A wide-ranging show in four large galleries, it begins with the Cubists and Suprematists in the early 1900s; continues on to Minimalism, Op and hard-edge abstraction; and ends with new work by younger artists like Mark Grotjahn and Olaf Nicolai.

Starr Figura, the associate curator of prints and illustrated books, and Kathleen Curry, assistant curator for research and collections, are to be commended. Not only is the show beautifully selected, it’s installed in a way that from any vantage point you may see something of the historical range on exhibition. Moreover, they did not exclude the contributions of women artists to this genre. Sophie Taeuber Arp, Hannah Hoch and Lyubov Popova are in the first gallery; Bridget Riley, whose acute-angled print on plexiglass opens the second gallery, is followed with work by Jo Baer, Lygia Clark, Mary Heilmann, Agnes Martin and Dorothea Rockburne.

If you follow this blog, you know that color and abstract geometric work are two elements I seek out, so this exhibition is a little slice of heaven.

To orient you to the space as I take you around, know that the galleries for this exhibition are laid out geometrically. Envision a square divided in thirds horizontally. The bottom third is Gallery 1, where you enter (the two images below). The top third is Gallery 3. The middle third is divided in half vertically into the smaller Galleries 2 and 4. Galleries 1, 2 and 4 are painted light gray; the large gallery 3 is creamy white. Got that?

Here we are in Gallery 1. Above: The entrance to the exhibition is behind us, and we’re looking toward the right. (Pay no attention to the Albers prints; they’re in Gallery 4 and we’ll get to them later.) Arranged around the wall to the right of the Albers prints are works by Kandinsky, Malevich and Alexandr Vesnin

.Below, the view continues on the far wall with work by El Lissitsky and, on the right wall, Moholy-Nagy. I particularly like the drawings by Malevich and the lithos by Moholy Nagy. In the vitrine are small works by Aleksei Kruchenykh and Vasilii Kamenskii

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Two from Kazemir Malevich, above: Suprematist Elements: Squares, 1923, pencil on paper, 19 3/4 x 14 1/4; and Suprematist Element: Circle, 1923, pencil on paper, 18 1/2 by 14 3/8

Below: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Untitled from Konstruktionen, 1923, lithograph, 23 9/16 x 17 5/6 inches. This is one from a portfolio of six lithographs

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Turning to the left side of the room there’s work by Lyubov Popova and Frantisek Kupka. I find the installation of these works jarring. The placement of the sixth Popova on the wall above the line of five seems like an afterthought, and I would have liked a more formal installation of the Kupka works, in keeping with the rest of the show. (Pay no attention to the glimpse of Ellsworth Kelly gouaches in Gallery 2; we’ll get to them in the next post.)

On the wall at left, gouache and ink paintings on paper by Frantisek Kupka from 1912. On the wall at right, linoleum block prints with gouache and watercolor by Lyubov Popova. (I never heard of them either, but it was interesting to see the work in the context of this exhibition.)

Below, a work from Popova's Untitled from Six Prints, 1916-1917,13.5 by 10.25. This image from MoMA's feature on the artist

The wall on which the Kupkas are hung is a divider. (Each of the four galleries has a divider, however those in the other galleries are placed in the geographic center, whereas this one is placed so that it creates a vestibule for the second entrance to the exhibition. We'll get behind the wall in a moment.) To the left of the Kupka wall are small works by Jean (Hans) Arp, Hannah Hoch and Sophie Taeuber Arp.

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Left: Jean (Hans) Arp, Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance), 1916-17, no size given but you can see the scale in the installation above

Right: Sophie Taeuber Arp, Echelonnement Desaxe, 1934, gouache on paper, 13 7/8 x 10 5/8. Both images from the MoMA website

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Mondrian before the boogie woogie: Pier and Ocean 5 (Sea and Starry Sky, 1915, charcoal and watercolor on paper, 34 5/8 x 44 inches

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On the other side of the Kupka wall is the Mondrian. I love the intersecting verticals and horizontals in an oval field, the whole contained with the horizontal rectangle of the frame placed against the larger vertical rectangle of the wall.

Behind your left shoulder as you look at the Mondrian are a collage each by Braque and Picasso, continuing their eternal conversation about Cubism. To the right of the Picasso is the entrance to Gallery 2, which is where we’re going in the next post.

Above: Georges Braque, Guitar, 1913, cut and pasted printed and painted paper, charcoal, pencil and gouache on gessoed canvas, 39 1/4 x 25 5/8 inches. Right, Pablo Picasso, Guitar, cut and pasted paper and printed paper, charcoal, ink and chalk on colored paper on board, 26 1/8 x 19 1/2 inches

Below: The entrance to Gallery 2, with a screenprint on plexiglass by Bridget Riley. This is where we'll begin next time

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A Gift From A Friend

The first week of 2008, I received the e-mail below from Chris Ashley, a good friend from Oakland (and my writing partner in the now-languishing-because-we’re-both-too-busy blog, Two Artists Talking) to announce an online solo show, I Made This For You, at the Marjorie Wood Gallery. Here’s his e-mail. Pay special attention to paragraph four:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Each day during December 2007 I made an HTML drawing for my online exhibition I Made This For You at Marjorie Wood Gallery. The final drawing was uploaded on December 31, and all thirty one drawings are on view until January 31, 2008.

The exhibition was reviewed by Timothy Buckwalter for San Francisco public television station KQED's Arts & Culture blog: Art Review : Chris Ashley: I Made This For You.

I'd like to extend special thanks to artist and MWG proprietor Chris Komater for this opportunity, and for taking on daily upload duty.

Special offer: in keeping with the spirit of I Made This For You, I'd like to offer a free 11 x 8.5 inch inkjet print to the first ten people on this mailing list who reply to me with the date of the print they'd like and a mailing address. . . . .

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I didn't read more than that. I got right on line and sent Chris an e-mail, hoping to make it into the lucky 10.

I am a huge fan of these drawings. (I curated his work into a summer show last year for the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta--similar name but different venue from the one that hosted the online show). If you follow Chris’s work, you know that he makes one HTML drawing a day, which he posts on his website. These geometric images are made on computer using code, and originally they were meant to be seen only on a monitor. Eventually they migrated to the wall via inkjet prints. As a painter, I love the tangible as well as the visual, so I was delighted with the way pixels of light became spritzes of ink on paper. When Chris posted his offer, I knew exactly which one I wanted: December 27th.

I lucked out!

My print arrived on February 1. The paper he printed it on is velvety and thick, so the work looks very much like a gouache painting. Two weeks after it arrived, I had a mat cut at the framer. Since then it has taken me some weeks to actually frame the piece, but here it is—in tangible form—in my loft:

A home for Chris Ashley's print; a print for my home. December 27th, 2007, inkjet print

Thanks, Chris, for your splendid gift!

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