Thanks to the Louvre, but No Thanks to the Turkeys of Art

Thanksgiving Season Requires that We Pardon Even the Anti-Artists

Thanksgiving is a two-edged carving knife. First, let us be thankful for impressive art. The season also requires that we point out the turkeys that make jokes about art.

            In the thanks department, the Louvre museum in Paris has authorized a coffee table-sized book that, for the first time, shows all of the 3,022 paintings in its permanent collection. Of these, the book identifies 400 iconic ones. The Louvre: All the Paintings is the most convenient look yet at this historic repository.
            Large and heavy art books are still in vogue, and they still have the “large and heavy” drawbacks. The chore of flipping the 784 pages of this volume is assuaged somewhat by the quality of the images, though glare on the pages continues to be the the norm in color-reproduction art books. Since the book images must be smallish to fit the pages, it has been hoped that the computer CD that accompanies the book would offer large high-resolution images for closer study.
            Alas, the CD is somewhat low-tech and the images do not allow close up viewing in higher resolution. The reason for the limitiation probably is more a copyright matter than technology: if the Louvre handed out all its paintings in high-resolution digital form, it would lose control of its birthright. So we can be thankful to Black Dog & Leventhal, an imprint of New York’s Workman Publishers. The volume is perhaps the closest substitute to taking a trip to Paris, where 8.5 million people visit the Louvre every year (excluding millions more who now, arguably, can make the trip over their coffee table).
            Now for the turkeys.
            The seriousness of the art represented by the Louvre has given a class of contemporary artists a new shtick: making “art” that cracks jokes about art. They are comedians and non-artists, but they have come under contemporary art’s generous wing. Two of these artists have been profiled by New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, and their odd allure has fetched both of them New York museum retrospectives this year.
            The first is the French-speaking Belgian Francis Alÿs, who Schjeldahl reviewed in May for a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, “A Story of Deception.” This week Schjeldahl has written on the Italian Maurizio Cattelan, whose retrospective is now at the Guggenheim. Of all art writers, Schjeldahl surely has the largest and most colorful vocabulary. Thanks to that gift, he has not repeated himself even though Alÿs and Cattelan are very much the same.
            They are jokesters on art, now in their fifties. “I am not an artist,” Cattelan says, intending to mystify. Alÿs says that nobody needs to see his performance pranks: they just need to hear about them. What Schjeldahl says about Alÿs applies to them both. They are the artist as “public jester.” As with bookings at comedy clubs, they are given art shows at galleries and even biennales to “attract and entertain large, fickle audiences.” They make art as art world self-flagellation, the humorous kind.
            When Alÿs pushed a block of ice around a Mexico City street until it melted, he said the action was “settling accounts with minimalist sculpture.” Cattelan also parodies art: he joked on the marble sculpture of Constantine’s hand (which now gives the finger) and another artist’s white-slashed paintings (which he turned into the sign of Zorro).
            When humor is not enough, both Cattelan and Alÿs have used shock-value to keep the attention of art curators. The tall and gangly Alÿs, who videotapes his art events, strode ominously around Mexico City with a large revolver. This lasted 11 minutes until police intervened. Cattelan, who often uses wax museum-type sculptures to joke on famous people, ordered up, in 2004, three lifelike children to lynch from a tree.
            Perhaps appropriately, Cattelan’s 128 works, produced since 1989, are hanging by long cords in the six-story rotunda of the circular Guggenheim museum. It is, of course, a joke on “hanging” art. But as Schjeldahl says, even the good (and funny) Cattelan works lose their appeal in a “bland pulp” of too many dangling things.
            Cattelan and Alÿs rank as artists of the conceptual variety, those who “do things” rather than fit the traditional category of art: “the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria.” Curators say their pranks are serious commentary on world problems. The curators also shoehorn them into sophisticated new art theory categories. Alÿs is involved in “reception theory,” for example, while Cattelan does “relational aesthetics.”
            Instead, Schjeldahl argues that the two men essentially specialize in the art of making inside jokes. The appeal is that when viewers “get” the joke, they feel both very hip and very smart; they feel like a real insider to the art world. “The goof is all,” Schjeldahl says of Cattelan. In the case of Alÿs’s work, there is an “imperative to displace your love of art into a vicarious relish of somebody else’s pranks and caprices.”
            So on this Thanksgiving, we can be thankful for a Louvre volume. The artist twosome, too, can be thankful that the Louvre exists, for its legacy has created the target for their comedic barbs against all art. There’s a great Thanksgiving tradition of “pardoning” the turkey. In that spirit, we pardon Cattelan and Alÿs. By no fault of their own, someone in charge of the art world has invited them to walk, “gobble-gobble,” through the great art museums.

Christo Gets Federal OK to Wrap a Colorado River in Silver

Much Work Ahead for Two-Week “Over the River” Event in August 2014

WASHINGTON D.C.—The environmental artist Christo swung through this city last week, but not to wrap the National Gallery of Art in orange fabric. Instead he came to celebrate the U.S. government’s green light on his project to suspend 5.9 miles of silvery fabric over the Arkansas River in Colorado.

            On November 7, the U.S. Interior Department approved his “Over the River” project. The next day, Christo appeared at a National Gallery press conference to give it two collages that visually describe the project. He has had the idea since 1992.
            Christo’s gift to the National Gallery is not really the newest thing. The newest thing is the federal involvement. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management oversees the river land in question. Thus, this was the first time it did an environmental impact study for a work of art. In the end, the federal and state agencies have agreed that the undertaking would not harm the wildlife and ecology of the river area. For its two-week run in August 2012, “Over The River” could generate $121 million in revenue (mostly tourist). It could also boost south-central Colorado—already a recreational favorite—and the state’s modern art scene.
            Obviously, Christo is grateful. After losing his devoted wife, Jeanne-Claude, 74, to illness last year, the 75-year-old Christo is now on his own (though surrounded by his usual team of professionals). This week, Christo was in the United Arab Emirates continuing his decades-long effort to win approval for stacking 410,000 color-painted oil barrels in the desert. Desert monuments notwithstanding, Colorado may end up being his last great project. At $50 million, it is one of his most expensive.
            In their revolutionizing of “public art,” Christo and Jeanne-Claude have created some of the largest pieces on record. They have waged some of the longest and friendliest battles with civic official—ranging from 20 to 40 years—to gain permission to unleash their giant fabric scenarios in Paris, Berlin, Miami, and New York City.
            Their real novelty, however, is their system. Once Christo became famous enough, he could sell sketches of his ideas to collectors. With tens of millions in sales, he paid for his outdoor projects himself. The projects, while taking months or years to install, bloomed as a few weeks of “experience” for viewers. “I don’t have any artworks that exist,” Christo once said. “They all go away when they’re finished. Only the preparatory drawings and collages are left, giving my works an almost legendary character.”
            It’s a remarkable art strategy that has served Christo and Jeanne-Claude well for their exemplary life together. A Bulgarian-born artist, Christo met Jean-Claude in her native France. In 1962 Paris, Christo’s first project was to pile barrels to block a street. It was a protest against the Berlin Wall. When the police came to stop him, they agreed to let the barrel-wall stand a few hours. That was the beginning.
            After the couple moved to New York, they decided their public art would no longer be a protest message. They decided that art is for beauty alone. “The artists’ goal has always been to create works of art of joy and beauty,” says their website. That is why they have succeeded against other odds. Some of their projects, like wrapping Paris’s oldest bridge and the Reichstag, or erecting giant blue and yellow umbrellas in California and Japan, have drawn millions of viewers. People do like joy and beauty. Politicians and zoning officials usually give in.
            In Colorado, the beauty debate has been waged. Opponent groups such as “Rags Over the Arkansas River” see Christo as a celebrity who gets his way, imposing his artistic vision on locals who don’t want three years of construction hubbub for a two-week art show. Christo’s vision of beauty won out (with a few minor permits to be had). The eight sections of see-through silver fabric, totaling six miles of stretched ceiling over 42 miles of river, will have this effect, according to Christo:
            “The translucent fabric will enhance the contrast of the clouds, mountains and vegetation. These waves of fabric will play off the natural lighting throughout the day, transitioning from shimmering pink in the morning light, to shiny silver in the mid-day sun, to golden as the sun sets. From the water level, the rafters, kayakers and canoeists on the Arkansas River will view blue sky, white cloud formations and the undulating mountain skyline through the fabric. Cars and buses on Highway 50 will also get a unique view of Over The River from the roadway, where the fabric will reflect the colors of the sky while moving with the wind like waves in the ocean.”
            Spoken like an artist. Most of what comes now is engineering. The longest part will be determining countless spots along the river banks to sink anchors for stretching steel cables. Then a few weeks before the opening (August 2014), six miles of fabric will be unfurled. Two weeks of enjoyment follow. Hopefully, wildlife will not have been scared away, and unexpected storms will not collapse the fabric. Next comes a few months of clean-up to restore the area to its pristine state.
            As in past cases, members of Colorado's stop-Christo faction may change their minds when it’s all over, if all goes well. And as Christo promises, nothing should remain but the legend.

Hollywood and Modern Art (and Drugs, Sex, and Rock n’ Roll)

New Book “Rebels in Paradise” Reveals L.A.’s 1960s Pop Patrons

When the Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper died last year, he took a piece of modern art history with him. In the early 1960s, the very hip Hopper began to buy the wild new modern art in Los Angeles, art works that nobody else seemed to care about.

            That has made Hopper more than an actor. According a fascinating new book by art writer Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, he was part of a Hollywood network, galvanized by the 1960s ethos, that ended up making an entirely new “art scene” in America possible.
            Artistically, the scene had southern California characteristics. As Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s explains in a superbly written narrative, this included shiny colorful objects, plastics and lacquers, Pop art simplicity, paintings of swimming pools and palms, and tableaus made of detritus.
            The real story, however, is sociological, and that is where Hollywood and L.A.’s entertainment industry played a crucial role. None of the innovative artists coming out of the 1960s were actors or producers, where the money seemed to be. None of the artists had rich parents or a natural business sense. But all of the players did attend the same parties. It was sun, money, and excess that created the bond. Art was as good an excuse to party as any. In this chemistry, Hopper—who went to the bars and galleries of the beatnik artists—was the exemplar.
            Some Hollywood actors, such as Vincent Price, collected art. But it was Hopper who brought friends and neighbors in on the enthusiasm. He was a link between the new gallery art of “LA cool” and the already burgeoning movie, fashion, and music industry. For the art, one of the emblematic events came in 1962, when the Pasadena Museum of Art held a “New Painting of Common Objects” exhibit. It was probably the first Pop art show in the U.S. Andy Warhol was just one of the painters on the roster.
             Enter Hopper, who essentially hosted the party atmosphere of those early Warhol-meets-the-L.A.-artists days. As incarnated in Hopper, it was an art scene fueled by “drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll.” He’d done plenty of movies, but his new vision culminated in Hopper’s surprise blockbuster movie, Easy Rider (1969). Art scenes do not live on drugs alone, however. To get it going, L.A. still needed a New York boost. That came in the form of professional art dealer Irving Blum. He tutored the laid-back L.A. artists—attached to such humble operations as the Ferus Gallery—in reaching out to collectors, educating them about “contemporary art,” and then closing the deal.
            Drohojowska-Philp is a fine wordsmith. Backed by extensive research, and by way of her many interviews with the old hands (including Hopper, just before he died), she says a lot with a little, capturing the characters and mood of the L.A. sixties. At one point, a group of three artist who specialized in lacquers, room moods, and lighting, competed for who among them was the real founder of “Light and Space” art. Or, as Drohojowska-Philp says, “who did what first.”
            Besides good art, there was also a good deal of human wreckage produced by an art scene that was characterized by Hopper at his wildest. On this, Drohojowska-Philp sweeps nothing under the rug. We’ve heard of “Hollywood Babylon” before. But this is the 1960s art version: fleeting hook-ups, drug addictions, bitter divorces, and a network of copulating people that mingled artists, rock stars, wealthy collector-housewives, and high school-aged femme fatales.
            According to Rebels in Paradise, not quite all of them descended into debauchery. Overall, though, it is amazing that a core group of the innovators could succeed financially, given the haze that surrounded their artistic lives. What saved them, of course, were the hard-nosed art dealers and the wealthy collectors—collectors who in the spirit of the 1960s began to come out of L.A.’s otherwise conservative woodwork.
            Through her extensive interviews of the artists, their families and friends, Drohojowska-Philp found that the most alluring thing about southern California to them was its freedom from all conventions of history, ordered cities, or institutions. In sum, it was freedom from the Midwest and from New York City. Plus the weather was so good. It was easy to get along. That was the “paradise” part. It was unique to Los Angeles in those days before crammed freeways and super-smog.
            What gave birth to the L.A. art scene—now a major player with four contemporary art museums and an international reputation—was the same coupling that gave birth to every great art scene. It was a handful of determined artists, usually intoxicated, and a handful of very wealthy patrons. Such was the story of Montmartre (Paris) or Greenwich Village (New York). In the L.A. story, a few rebels survived in their ambitions. Fewer still boasted financial success. Very few, if any, had success and an admirable record of human relationships. Along with Hopper, who ended up in rehab, the L.A. crew constantly battled indulgence and excess.
            Some interesting art remains. Still, there must be a better way.

The “Master Painters of India” Tell Their Ancient Stories

The Met's Medieval Miniatures Mix Religion, Royalty, and Remarkable Detail

The story of Hindu and Muslim art had once been fairly simple. Hindu art illustrated the stories of the Bhagavad Gita and its hero, Krishna. Islamic art banned images of God or the Prophet. Thus, it developed elaborate designs and renderings of animals and nature.

            Eventually, the Hindu and Muslim approaches to art crossed paths in a very big way in India, as a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art vividly illustrates. The exhibit of about 220 works by 40 artists—nearly all “miniatures” done in ink or watercolor—covers almost a millennium, from 1100–1900 C.E. Given India’s history, it also illustrates how wars of empires and religions fueled happier wars between artistic styles.
            At first blush, the average visitor to the exhibition, “Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India,” will see the works as akin to medieval Europe’s illuminated manuscripts: small bright pictures that accompany texts. This medieval-to-modern period of art in India had patronage from Hindu and Muslim courts and, similarly, the patrons wanted small works of art in books or as visual delicacies. The earliest works of this period were done on palm leaf, moving to paper and, for this exhibition, ending in photography, which migrated to India by the end of the 1800s.
            The novelty of this exhibit—emphasized by its scholars and the many enthusiastic reviews—is that it kills off an old notion about medieval Indian art. The old belief was that paintings were done by anonymous members of court schools. However, since the 1990s, the new approach to Indian art has been to track down actually artists, as if named Renaissance figures, who in their day were the most accomplished painters, indeed famous in India's cultural circles.
            In the words of the curators, the exhibit “counters the long-held view of the anonymity of Indian art.” The Indian emperors knew who these individuals were and sometimes included their names in royal histories. Others were just called the “master” of a court. Some emperors called their top painter the “wonder of the age,” and hence the exhibition title.
            Around the world, the modern scholars of these exhibited Indian miniatures (works brought in from India, England, and the U.S.) have been finding enough clues—in texts or hints on the paintings—to name names of the artists. This is very new. According to the show’s curators, for the first time they have been able to “reveal the identities of individual artists and their oeuvres through an analysis of style.”
            That style also reflects the turmoil of India’s long-ago history (begun among Hindus, then “invaded” by Muslims, Mongols, and the British). It was a history of oscillations. Once an ancient ruler expanded an empire here, and then over there it broke into parts, either as Hindu kingdoms or Islamic Sultanates. This was complicated further by the invasion of the Mongols. As rulers they tended to adopt the religion of the population. Similarly, a Muslim Sultan often had a Hindu wife. Religions mixed.
            As regards art, the first significant stylistic influx to act on the native  approaches—Buddhist and Hindu storytelling mostly—came from Persia, with its ornate patterning and naturalistic rendering. Then the Europeans came by ship (around 1500), followed by the East India Company (1600). European topics and styles were imitated by the Indian court painters.
            Through it all, however, the dominant Indian characteristic was the small narrative painting illustrated, inch by inch, with sharp, colorful detail. The artists also experimented with flat space and perspective, creating a kind of Indian “cubism” in which several views or senses of dimension and depth can be evoked in a single tableau.
            If at first the sources of the new styles were the Hindu schools of north India, the later Sultanates, and the still later a renaissance in the Hindu courts (1650-1730), a new wave came with the East India Company. Its commercial concern produced a “Company School” style of painting, still of the highest quality. Indian art always liked detail. So when photography arrived, the clash was head on: what is more detailed than photo crystals? The result was a strong Indian court trend in color-tined photographs, as illustrated by the exhibition.
            Two brother artists were at the crux of this collision of painting and technology. One tried to outdo photography by painting a traditional  “miniature” that was five feet long, a veritable mural. The other brother opted for professional photography. Thus, a period of Indian art and its “wonder of the age” artists came to an end.
            Our knowledge of who these artists were, however, has just begun. Their names will boggle American minds: Farrukh Beg, Balchand, Pahari, and Chitarman, to name just a few of the forty who scholars have now identified “according to identifiable hands.” The exhibit has four or five works by each of these “master painters of India.” It may be by their “identifiable hands” (and not by their difficult names) that we can try to go back and meet these Indian masters, once faceless, as individuals who excelled at their meticulouis craft.