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This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing mainly because he is a very accomplished artist, looking at his work, I get a very strong sense that not only does he know what he wants to do, but he know how to accomplish it as well. There’s nothing namby-pamby about his work. Adjectives like forthright, bold, strong and direct are the ones that I would think of using in order to describe his work. It’s a bad thing because he only gets reviewed in local media outlets and his paintings sell for a song (The work in this exhibit was selling in between $800 and $15,500 depending on size, and how much (or how little) color there was). Both of these are examples of (apologies for repeating myself here) how little respect Canadian/Quebecois/Montreal art gets in the rest of the world. Mr. Hildebrand has exhibited in Auckland, Beijing, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, among other places, and will be exhibiting in London but there is nary a peep in anything other than the good old Canadian intelligentsia about his work. It’s frustrating. It’s getting to the point where I’m beginning to question if Canadian art really is truly good art. Or if what is being called good is merely a function of myopia. (As an aside, I think I should point out and say that it is a good thing that I wear glasses).
But enough about the politics (at least for the time being) and on to the art. In all the other reviews that I’ve read and in the artist statement that accompanies the show, a big deal is made out of the use of the color green. While I understand both the significance, historical antecedents and reasons Mr. Hildebrand states for using green (“the chalkboard, the cutting mat, or the green-screen”) given that almost 40% of the show were drawings in a sort of architectural bent. Simple gray lines on a cream colored paper, I’m not certain I’m drinking that Kool-aid. I’d much prefer to put my emphasis on the title and the works themselves.
Dil Hildebrand, Back to the Drawing Board (Reprise), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Installation view of Reconstruction 01 and Net Structures 01, 02 and 03.
I think I’ve always been a big fan of drawing. Maybe because I can’t do it to save my life, or perhaps because of the simplicity of the act, or maybe I’m just full of it, and in fact I never really liked drawing ever. But for purposes of this argument, let stick with the positive for whatever reasons. Mr. Hildebrand’s drawings are of some extraordinary objects that at first appear to be some kind of structure. Something like the plans for a house of cards, an aerial view of some maze or now that I think about it the kite like structures from John Horton Conway’s mathematical Game of Life a representation of Pick-Up Sticks.
Viewed from a distance (and from my memory) the polytopes seem to form some sort of pattern. Not quite Penrose tiling but close. And I’m certain if I stared at them long enough I would be able to come up with some kind of mathematical formula to describe what they were doing.
Dil Hildebrand, Back to the Drawing Board (Reprise), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Installation view of Replicating 02
By calling the show “Back to the Drawing Board,” Mr. Hildebrand is tacitly admitting that whatever was done prior didn’t quite work out the way he intended. I can’t help but think that the repetition of forms helped in finally getting the finished product the way he wanted. It’s almost as if you can see the process taking place even though the drawing in front of you is complete. Despite the simplicity of the drawings they are extremely powerful and even a full month after seeing the show I can still imagine them in my mind as if I had seen them half an hour ago.
The actual paintings in the exhibit, the things with the color green in them, did not affect me as strongly. It’s easy enough to see how they are related to the drawings, but I did not get a visceral sense of anything from looking at them. They almost appeared to be some kind of academic exercise, which is surprising as the drawings, when viewed from a technical standpoint could be considered by anyone’s definition academic exercises. I think that it might have something to do with the fact that, for the most part, the paintings are titled as objects (Compartment, Contraption, Module, Parabola, Spire) while the drawings, for the most part, are titled as actions (Reconstruction, Dismantling, Replicating). But then again, since grammar was (and still is) not my strongest subject and I’m picking a choosing titles that fit my theory, I could be very wrong.
Dil Hildebrand, Back to the Drawing Board (Reprise), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Installation view
And then there is Treehouse. A glorious painting if there ever was one. As you might expect I’m not entirely convinced it is a representation of a actual tree-house. To me it looks more like an imagined memory of what a tree-house was, or could be. Or more precisely like a collection of doors. Doors that are unlocked with the key of imagination.
But I digress…
Dil Hildebrand, Back to the Drawing Board (Reprise), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Installation view of Treehouse
More white than green, with some brown thrown in for good measure, it seems like some sort of gateway. I’m not certain how it fits in with the title, unless you go for the Helen Keller (or Alexander Graham Bell) quote about doors opening and closing, which I would have sworn was Zen or Buddhist and not American. But even then it’s kind of a stretch. I think the reason I like it has more to do with the form and structure of the painting than the actual content. It has a certain heft, that by extension makes it feel important.
I could kick in here with the cheesy puns and talk about how if Mr. Hildebrand doesn’t at first succeed, but I’ll avoid that. I also would like to try and figure out some way to link either his paintings or the drawings or both to some sort of hope or possibility of him being able to make it as a Canadian Artist (with the capital C and A) but I’ve been wracking my brain for the past hour and half trying to figure out some sort of way to tie things up neatly so it looks like I know what the heck I’m talking about. But I can’t, for the life of me think of anything. So I’m going to have to leave it like this, kind of dangling and not quite perfectly polished.
I’m not certain how best to describe Petit Mal by Racehorse Company. I think my friend Ken does a better job in three words than I will ever be able to do in 3,000 words.
Fortunately for me, his lacks a certain nuance, and does nothing to explain what or how they do, what they do. They being Rauli Kosonen, Kalle Lehto and Petri Tuominen, who I assume are all from Finland, as Racehorse Company is based there. But given my familiarity with Nordic names, for all I know they all could be from Greenland or someplace equally distant. But thankfully Nordic Names exists, and it is possible to verify that in fact their names are all Finnish. Ultimately though where they are from really doesn’t matter, from seeing what they do, for all I know they could have come from Jupiter or Timbuktoo or Rosemont and the performance would have still been utterly amazing and wonderful.
But enough hyperbole, what exactly happened that would cause me (and others) to foam at the mouth so much? In a nutshell, they bounced. You know those exercise balls?
An exercise ball
Instead of using it to exercise, imagine it as a natural extension of your body. Kind of like une grosse bedaine, one of those magnificent beer bellies that is as wide as it is tall, or in other words a perfect sphere, and completely bounceable. Then use that bedaine to bounce all over the stage. After bouncing around for awhile imagine it more as a treadmill. ie when you go one way, it goes the other, but somehow everyone and everything stays in the same place. Then start to do back-flips and somersaults on it while bouncing. Then do more, higher and faster. Then wash rinse and repeat, often.
But Mr. Kosonen, Mr. Lehto and Mr. Tuominen don’t limit themselves to only using exercise balls. They also use old tires, pink feathers (lots and lots of pink feathers) a bunch of trampolines, a leaf blower and some other objects to great effect. It’s kind of like being back in grade two, and being given a bunch of crayons and paper by your teacher and told to make something. So you dutifully draw a picture that your mom still adores to this day. But then you turn to your left and you discover that your classmate has not only taken some of the crayons and used then to make an encaustic painting, but has also used the left over crayons to form some kind of artistically sculptural easel to support and properly display the painting. Or in short such a completely and thoroughly over the top and amazing exhibition of pure creativity that you kind of want to either become BFF or decide that it isn’t worth even trying to compete and decide right then and there to become a bookkeeper. Realizing that no matter how hard you try, your creative impulses will never even approach your classmate’s.
As an example, Mr. Kosonen, Mr. Lehto and Mr. Tuominen placed one old tire perpendicularly in a second tire that was lying sideways on the stage. They then put a 2 x 4 through the tire that was upright and turned it into a Korean Plank
I saw Petit Mal by Racehorse Company last week, over the weekend I thought long and hard about becoming a bookkeeper. Since I ultimately decided against it, maybe this means I get to be BFF with Mr. Kosonen, Mr. Lehto and Mr. Tuominen, I dunno, but whatever happens, I’ll let you know.
One of the ongoing themes throughout the performance is Bob Dylan’s song Highlands. It gets played at least three times, if not more. After looking up way too much information about it on Wikipedia and elsewhere on the internet, I’d love to be able to tell you that there were half-a-dozen connections, but after searching high and low for more than 90 minutes, the only thing I can make as a connection is the combination of Daniel Lanois’ guitar, Jim Dickinson’s organ and Mr. Dylan’s voice give a very swamp-like air to the proceedings. Which given the set design, is completely appropriate. While it works, and it works well, I’d hope that the fine folk who administrate at Racehorse Company are also familiar with the music of Ry Cooder, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Tony Joe White.
Another thing that they did that made the show so much better was how they handled the anticipatory bits. In every circus I’ve ever seen there are those parts which are more involved in the set up, getting things organized, making sure everything is safe, etc. Anticipation builds in the audience, and if the act is great then everyone is happy. But generally, more often than I would care to remember expectations are not met. Mr. Kosonen, Mr. Lehto and Mr. Tuominen were so “out there” that it for the most part became impossible to figure out what they were going to do next. There was no sense of “ok, here comes the trapeze.” It was more like “how are they going to incorporate that six foot inflatable shark into the show, and what the heck are they going to do with it?”
They’re means and method of thinking might be best shown when they brought out the leaf blower, ostensibly to create a cloud of pink feathers. But for whatever reasons (I think it had to do with a blown fuse) the blower wasn’t blowing, so without missing a beat, they pulled out a second leaf blower, and then when that one didn’t work (why I thought it was a blown fuse) they resorted to sweeping and kicking the feathers with their feet without missing a beat. Who else would not only come from Finland with two leaf blowers for a 2 minute segment, but then also have practiced what to do in case both leaf blowers failed?
Then before I forget, I should mention that they also manage to incorporate Scrooge McDuck
Dudley Do-Right
A Horse costume and some outfits that I couldn’t figure out if they were supposed to be like Prince or like Elvis.
But ultimately, how they dressed up really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they came out with an insane amount of creativity, that enabled them to do some awesome things with a minimum of props, all the while doing things that while on the surface appeared as if I could do them with my eyes closed, in fact were insanely hard and probably required decades of practice. In short, next time Racehorse Company shows up in your town, run, don’t walk to the box office and make sure that you don’t miss their show.
Last week I got to see Underman by Cirkus Cirkör at the Theatre National. If you want the short version, it’s quite good. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) if you want to see it now, you’re going to have to make your way to Europe, as the boys have returned home and are performing in a bunch of cities in Sweden and Düsseldorf for the rest of the summer. The basic schtick of Underman is three single guys who happen to be circus performers and recently single get together in order to do their own performance without any Y-chromosome challenged people.
As they are fond of pointing out, in the circus very frequently there are two person gymnastics where a Y-chromosome challenged person is lifted, held and supported by a guy. That guy is known as an Underman. In poking around the internet, I also discovered that Underman was was also a term from Nazi Germany used to describe all the people they didn’t like and thought were beneath them. When they’re in Düsseldorf are they going to change the title? Or has sufficient time passed? Either way, Mattias Andersson, Peter Åberg and Matias Salmenaho are anything but inferior.
For the most part there are two things which form the foundation of the performance. Kettlebells and monologues. I wasn’t able to see whether they used 12kg, 16kg or 24 kg kettlebells, but would guess that the 16kg versions were more than sufficient. At various points during the show all three of them did (both solo and together) some kind of act that wasn’t juggling because each of them only controlled one kettlebell and they didn’t transfer the kettlebells between them but for all intents and purposes looked like juggling one item.
The second unifying thing was that each of the performers did a monologue that kind of explained their situation, ie why and how they became to be single. While I’m certain there was a bunch of stuff borrowed from their real lives, this was the one circus show I saw where there were really and truly characters, character development and it wouldn’t be a stretch to pull a fancy two-bit word out of my hat and call them thespians.
In between and around all of those were some, what I call, “man-lifts” where one guy picks up another guy (or two) and uses him (or them) as props which then naturally lead to a “man tosses”. Some straw balancing, both with and without Rubic’s Cube solving. Some serious juggling (six clubs behind the back!) And something in a large and heavy hoop that you I thought could only be done by tiny adolescent women.
If I’m going to get nit-picky and find something to complain about it would have to be the seats. For some reason or another we were seated up in the balcony of the Theatre National (when given free tickets, I find that it’s really tough to throw a tantrum in public and insist on 8th row center on the floor, so I kind of politely say thank you and don’t worry about it too too much) and no matter which way I leaned, forward, backward, left or right it was absolutely impossible to see the whole stage from where I was sitting. But then about halfway through the show Mr Andersson, Mr. Åberg and Mr. Salmenaho addressed the audience and suggested (actually insisted) that everyone introduce themselves to the strangers sitting next to them and then go and switch seats with someone else.
So we were able to find better seats, on the center aisle, if I remember correctly one row closer, and my view was still blocked. Worse still in these new and improved seats, my companion was forced to lean as far away from me as possible in order to see the show, so instead of the two of us looking like an “A” if viewed from in front or behind as we leaned together to see what was happening on the stage, we looked like a “V” and it occurred to me that she might have well as come with the guy sitting on the other side as opposed to me (I unfortunately was on the aisle, if you remember, so it wasn’t like I could pretend I had come with someone else…) So it wasn’t the seats we were given, I think it’s just the seats at Theatre National. It’s an old theater, and when it was built people were smaller. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, “so it goes.”
But that’s enough of a digression, let’s see if I can focus back on Underman. The thing that was so cool about it was that for something like the first time, I was able to feel empathy for the characters in a circus show who weren’t clowns. From that I’m almost prepared to go the mat about how Underman is more play-like (as in Tennessee Williams, not Lego) than anything I’ve ever seen. But then I just spent over an hour and half searching through the Cirkus Cirkör website looking for anything that would further my thesis, and struck out on every front. I seem to have some memory somewhere that I saw something mentioning a writer and other titles that are not normally associated with the circus, but I’m having a whale of a time finding it again, which probably means that I imagined it. Pity.
I should also make mention of the music, all of the performers play at least one instrument, and while on the surface this seems like a good thing, to my ear they were competent but not up to the caliber of the rest of the performance. They played Suspicious Minds
but there was something missing. At the time I felt it could have used an accordion solo, but now I’m not so certain. For the most part it was used as background, except for Suspicious Minds. Thinking out loud here, maybe incorporating more music into the performance, a la Suspicious Minds, or incorporating the instruments into the act (juggling six clubs while playing the accordion!).
Then after the show was over, we were invited to stick around for a performance by Andreas Tengblad (the one guy in the troupe who was a musician and not a circus performer) and Anna Ahnlund, which while not bad, suffered because there were only 30 people in the audience and no matter what they did, after Underman, it was going to be a let down. Next time, I would strongly urge them to perform before Underman as an opening act. It would be much more favorably received.
Prior to seeing Underman I had never really contemplated anything about Swedish Circuses. After seeing it, I’m definitely going to keep my eye on it, as if other circus companies from Sweden are half as good as Cirkus Cirkör then run, don’t walk to the box office next time you hear that their coming to town.
[Author’s note: I took a bunch of pictures, but given that the Tom Wesselmann Estate has a large notice stating people publishing pictures will be prosecuted. And that the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal website for the exhibit has humongous (larger than the images) credits that involve Sodrac and a bunch of other organizations where lawyers rake in the cash by sending out cease and desist letters, unless I am discussing a specific piece and need to illustrate a point using Fair Dealing I’m refraining from posting anything because I don’t feel like making any lawyers richer than they already are. If you feel like seeing his art on your screen might I suggest Flickr, Tumblr and Pinterest. On August 13 I got an email from the museum explaining that pictures were in fact allowed because of a special agreement. My mistake.]
I first heard that the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal was going to be exhibiting a retrospective of the work of Tom Wesselmann way back in September 2010. As you can read, at the time, I thought it was a step down for the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal in the art world galaxy. I also had no clue who the heck Tom Wesselmann was at the time (my knowledge of art history, even relatively recent art history outside of Montreal is extremely sketchy). When I told a friend who is infinitely more knowledgeable on things involving international art she poo-pooed him, dismissing him, his art and everything else he ever did in his life with two mono syllabic words.
Given that it wasn’t all that important to me, I pretty much trusted her judgement up until the time I got to see the show. Or in other words, I didn’t do any research prior to going to see the show. As I’ve said numerous times, I’m extremely saddened to see what I can only imagine is a former member of the group Bizot fall so low, so fast. It’s all fine and dandy to tout how the show is a “traveling” show, but when it’s traveling to only the third largest city on Ohio, notorious for charging a local museum with exhibiting obscene photographs when they had an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos, I’m not so certain I would agree wholeheartedly. Then when you realize that the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal acquiesced when the fine folk in Cincinnati said they wanted to disavow any knowledge of it previously being in Montreal, I just cluck my tongue, shake my head and wish really hard that the descent stops, and sometime soon the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal begins it’s rise up the charts of museums in the world again.
(For more on the split, read between the lines where and how it is touring read these here and here and if you wish, email me and I can supply more details.)
[Edit August 14, 2012: To clarify, the show is traveling to Richmond, Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which I have heard from unimpeachable sources is one of the top 10 museums in the United States, as well as going to Denver, Colorado and San Diego, California. In Cincinnati, the art museum there will be using the catalogue from the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.
But thankfully, what’s on the walls, and written about in the catalogue has nothing to do with museum politics and is 100% the opposite of what my friend thought. In short it’s a pretty kick-ass show, it’s up until the beginning of October and you really should go see it, honest. Plus for a variety of reasons they are desperate for visitors so they are offering this sweet deal
In July, enjoy 2 FOR 1 admission to the Tom Wesselmann's exhibition! Applicable upon presentation of the promotion code TOM2004
(between you, me and the screen in between us, I betcha dollars to doughnuts that the sweet deal continues through August as well) So you really have no excuse not to go see it. But as long as you’re sitting on your duff reading what I have written, I have some more things to say.
The first question I had, and still continue to have is why isn’t Tom Wesslemann a better known artist? While an awful lot of the quote Pop Art unquote movement didn’t age terribly well – Peter Max. Anyone? – an awful lot of it actually has not only aged well, but become more than significant and important. If Mr. Wesslemann was worthy of a significant and important retrospective at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal shouldn’t he previously be know as a significant and important artist? Well, every time I asked someone who knew more about art than I did, I got a bunch of bafflegab and gobbledy-gook. Anything from “he was independent,” and “the feminists beat him up” to “he wasn’t exactly the most diplomatic of people” or [insert your choice here]. None of them really held (or hold) any water but despite that I get the sinking suspicion that he is going to go down like so many other artists as a footnote in history. It ain’t like the Met, the Louvre, the Hermitage and the Prado are beating down the doors wanting to exhibit his stuff. I figure at some point I will either find an answer or Mr. Wesselmann’s work, despite how good it is will fade into the background of my memory, like so many other artists.
In the really pretty, but badly bound catalogue (the binding on mine split after one reading) Stéphane Aquin, one of the co-curators, writes things like The success of Wesselmann’s early works would eclipse the brilliance of those that were to come, and the Pop label associated with them would distract critics from the real aesthetic challenges with which he grappled. He goes on to hypothesize that the conservative climate in the United States of America during the 1980s might be to blame for the lack of recognition or going out on a limb he postulates that the lack of fame might be due to his not being a party-animal. More likely it is some combination of all of them along with a bunch of other stuff that I can’t even begin to contemplate. Although it occurred to me, since the museum showed the film on Henry Geldzahler, Who Gets to Call It Art? that perhaps there was some kind of falling out between the two of them as Mr. Wesselmann was not included in Mr. Geldzahler’s highly influential exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 and the Met doesn’t have a single painting or sculpture. (Then after re-reading Constance Glenn’s essay in the “really pretty, but badly bound catalogue” I realized that she probably put that thought in my head, although with just a little bit more poking around, you can discover that Mr. Geldzahler was head of the Visual Arts department of the NEA from 1966 to 1969, just at the time when all the other Pop Artists’ careers were exploding, while Wesslemann’s appears to have plateaued).
While it is possible to get “famous” on one’s own, for the most part it really really helps to have someone else championing you and your art (or whatever other discipline you want to get famous in) and from my cursory and limited knowledge of New York art and artists in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s Mr. Geldzahler was the go to guy when you needed a champion. But enough about me hypothesizing about stuff I don’t know. What about the Art?
Ostensibly a complete retrospective, it somehow misses, avoids and otherwise glosses over the fact that Mr. Wesselmann was a cartoonist before he became a painter. Given that the previous fancy and big exhibit at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal on Lyonel Feininger included the early cartooning work, I can only guess at the reasoning behind the omission. However, it’s a minor complaint, as I wrote above, it is a glorious show. For those of you who aren’t aware, when speaking I tend to start my sentences “No, but…” So even if I do say something negative, remember, this is a really good, if not great show, despite its faults. The show itself is grouped into six sections (seven if you include the music, I’ll get to that later) titled, Early Collages; American Beauty; Still Lifes; Form, Focus, Scale; Lines Made Object; and The Final Years. I would presume roughly chronological, I did not study the tags too, too closely.
I’m not going to get much into his history, or biography, there is more than enough of that sort of stuff available elsewhere on sites such as wikipedia, The Tom Wesslemann website, Haunch of Venison and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. Suffice it to say born in Cincinnati, moved to NYC, became artist, married, had kids, made art, died. As for the art theory stuff, I’ll leave that up to the big guns with the multiple diplomas as well. The quick and dirty version would be: adored De Kooning, studied real hard, figured he couldn’t do abstract as well as De Kooning, so did figurative. Using modern techniques tried (and lots say succeeded) in doing modern old masters (ie still lifes and nudes). Over time his work got larger and larger. In the 1980s discovered the technology for laser cutting steel and became a sculptor while still calling himself a drawer and making art completely and utterly different from what he did previously. Ultimately returning to painting, but in a much more abstract form while still retaining a figurative nature, before his death.
There are (if my memory serves) six or seven rooms, one almost three times the size of the others. In the first room there are a bunch of his tiny collages mounted behind acrylic masquerading as bulletproof glass. Despite the excessive security, they are utterly charming. In the second part of the room are a selection of his nudes, including one large scale preparatory drawing for one of them. Given that the museum had the “full support of the Estate of Tom Wesselmann, New York” there are a bunch of these drawings and maquettes for a wide variety of the paintings and sculptures. Unfortunately they are all ghettoized in a separate section for the most part making it extremely difficult to compare the preparation to the finished product.
One thing I discovered, was that while the nudes at the museum are extremely tame, even for Cincinnati moral standards, if you scroll through Flickr, Tumblr and Pinterest there are a bunch of nudes he made, not in the exhibit, that are slightly, if not much more explicit, and not only could be considered NSFW in Cincy, Virginia, Denver, San Diego and beyond, but also by their exclusion from the show here end up giving a certain amount of credence and credibility to the quote feminist theories unquote that apparently were the major reason why Mr. Wesselmann failed to be as well known in the art galaxy as his other contemporaries. It would have been nice to see the gamut of the nudes so that you could judge for yourself whether knee-jerk feminist criticism held water against the paintings or not, instead of just being told that the criticism doesn’t hold water.
Personally, given the lack of wall space and the lack of controversy, I wasn’t all that impressed with the nudes. I can definitely launch into all sorts of conspiracy theories right about here, but how about I don’t, and instead point out that the second room, filled with still lifes, not only left me slack jawed, but knocked my socks off, left me gasping for air and pretty much set the tone for the rest of the show. All of it is Big Art. And as I have said before, and will say again, big art (especially in a museum) is pretty much guaranteed to be great art. Obviously there are going to be some exceptions to the rule. But when you have the space to present it, the time to explain it, and the budget to do so with a flourish, I don’t think you’re going to get many complaints, nor is it likely that those complaints that do get heard will be given any weight.
I had heard of (and probably seen) some of Robert Rauschenberg‘s combines so I wasn’t shocked that Wesselmann had incorporated televisions, sinks and refrigerators into his paintings. But the way he did it was, unlike the Combines not done in an abstract manner, but completely figuratively. If I were writing some PhD thesis, this would be the place to go off on some 2,000 word aside about how his collages and the combines led to the still lifes, but I’m not so consider yourself saved. My complaint (small, tiny and insignificant, remember this still is an awesome show) is that on the tags, each and every one said “working” whatever – however none of them were working in the museum. Along the lines of a “look, don’t touch” or “trust me on this one” line. It would have been nice to see the light on, or the TV showing the Honeymooners or something along those lines instead of just once again having to take the museum’s word that in fact the antiques were still in working order (when you buy something off of Craigslist or Ebay, do you trust the seller or do you make sure for yourself that everything is in working order?)
Then we get into the space where I start losing track of the number of rooms, and exactly what’s happening, as I just end up trying to concentrate while consistently picking my jaw up off the floor. At this point in his career Mr. Wesselmann has completely bought into the idea of “Go Big or Go Home.” While the previous stuff was large in size, the stuff in these rooms is larger still, and it’s kind of easy, in retrospect to see how he got into sculpture (even though he called it drawing). At this point everything has a very nice gloss on it, there are a bunch of lips, cigarettes, cars, Ray Ban sunglasses (so what are the odds that the producers of Risky Business saw Still Life No. 60? And did John Pasche influence Tom Wesselmann or was it the other way around? Or were they both unaware of each other?) and other paraphernalia representing the luxury life.
Installation view of the Steel Drawing/Really Shiny Floor room in Tom Wesselmann, Beyond Pop at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.
The next room is what I’m calling the Steel Drawing/Really Shiny Floor room, and yes, the steel drawings are everything they’re cracked up to be and then some. I don’t know whose idea it was to slap down some seriously reflective floor tiles, but they should be given a raise and whoever it was who said “no you can’t do that in the rest of the show.” Should be demoted to mopping the floor of the Really Shiny Floor room for the duration on the exhibition. The steel drawings play on so many senses, concepts and ideas to begin with – especially the whole thing about how do you handle negative space – that in effect doubling it by making the floor shiny is absolutely brilliant. In my standard issue curmudgeon state, I only ask not only why they didn’t do it for the rest of the show, but in this particular room why they didn’t do it on the walls and ceiling as well.
Then (I think, I’m going to have to go back for a fifth time and write down some stuff instead of just taking it all in by osmosis) we get to the room I love and hate. The museum, for whatever reasons (personally I think it has to do with the need for cash) has decided that any Fine Arts (notice the capital F and the capital A) exhibit not only needs, but requires a musical component. To that end the powers that be have decided to stick a whole bunch of Mr. Wesslemann’s musical noodlings on an endless loop that blares at about 55db as you attempt to look at his sketches and maquettes. Nothing personal, but if Mr. Wesselmann had been even a halfway almost decent composer he would have gotten his due long ago – especially since he apparently (I stuck my fingers in my ears) only wrote country music – after all it ain’t like “A Boy Named Sue,”
or “Okie from Muskogee,”
or “They Ain’t Makin Jews Like Jesus Anymore”
are on a par with either Shakespeare or Moliere. But they are all great country tunes, and head, hands and shoulders better then anything Mr. Wesselman wrote, Brokeback Mountain soundtrack or not (and apparently according to this Wikipedia article the song “I Love Doing Texas with You” sung by Kevin Trainor didn’t even make it into the final cut of the film). I have gone off elsewhere about how the last darn thing the the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts should be doing is music, and I will continue to rail against this dictatorially enforced synesthesia until I either go hoarse or someone else shows up with more money and is able to show the Board of Directors the error of their ways. – Rant, off.
The last room is actually the penultimate room (as the MBAM always makes sure to end an exhibit in a sales annex) and while Mr. Wesselmann’s later works are good and still carry some oomph, I kind of felt that the great stuff had been in the middle. Not to slight his later works, after all it’s really nice reading how he was finally able to reconcile his love of De Kooning and Matisse before he died (I’m probably simplifying things too much) and it ain’t like they’re bad paintings. But like his much earlier collages they only suffer in comparison to his other work.
As per normal, I’ve kind of foamed at the mouth here. The show is more than worth the $15 the museum ostensibly wants to charge, it’s a bargoon at $7.50 which is what they are effectively charging, and I’m 100% certain that if you got as creative as Slim Stealingworth you could actually get the museum to pay you to go see it. In passing, why hasn’t anyone noticed the level of emotional insecurity in Mr. Wesselmann’s pseudonym? In reading the catalogue for the show, I must’ve gone over 10,000 dense words about his art, maybe 20,000, I didn’t count. But while each and every author quoted “Slim Stealingworth,” not a single author transliterated the name which means Not worth an awful lot of money if you steal it. And since Slim Stealingworth was the pseudonym for Mr. Wesselmann personally I venture a guess that the main reason why Mr. Wesselmann’s art isn’t better known is because of his, you want to call it insecurity, his reticence, his shyness, whatever – but if he chose to hide behind a facade that emphasized the lack of value in hos work, it probably ends up in a self serving result, which is unfortunate, because despite whatever he thought about his art and whatever I think about how the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal exhibits it, the stuff he made really is kick-ass.
Due to the generosity of a bunch of folk I was able to see Les 7 doigts de la main latest and greatest show, Séquence 8, not once, but twice. The first time at the opening last week and then a second time on Tuesday night. I’m going to have to try to make a point of seeing more performances twice – it is extremely helpful in trying to get a handle on what’s happening. As I have pointed out before, all too frequently, the show that I see at a première and the show I see at the end of the world tour are two completely and utterly different beasts. Being able to see a show a second time allows for a certain familiarity and comfort, I kind of know what’s going to happen next, instead of jotting notes furiously trying to just keep up with what’s happening on stage – in effect being the play-by-play announcer, it affords a certain perspective so that I can also take notes that are the equivalent of the color commentary as well. In short a more well-rounded perspective, which in the case of a review, really can’t hurt.
To begin with, the logistics; at the première (where I was told by someone who seemed reliable) that every last ticket was comped (my back of the envelope math placed it about 950 to 1,000 seats). I couldn’t quite get a hang of where I fit in the Montreal performing arts hierarchy, other than understanding I’m in the top 1,000, because on the downside, the seats were in the absolute last row, so if I had any insecurities, I would have been absolutely crushed by having to walk up all of those stairs. But on the positive side the seats were pretty much as close to the center as they could be, so not only were there other people who were also in the back row, but they could only see the show from an angle, or in the worst case from behind the performers. If I had tried to I could have tripped myself and fallen into the laps of Shana Carroll and Sebastien Soldevila the two non-performing folk who were most responsible to the show. Something called Mise en scene and direction artistique (basically directing and artistic direction in the Devil’s language). And while I’m at it, Ms. Carroll was wearing a particularly smashing outfit, one of those tuxedo tail-like suit coats from like the 1880s or a Fred Astaire film, unfortunately she was nowhere to be seen last Tuesday. For the life of me I can’t remember at all anything that Mr. Soldevila wore.
I don’t know if it was because we got to Tohu earlier last week than this week, or if there is a significant difference in the traffic on the 40 between Thursday nights and Tuesday nights, but before the show on Tuesday and again at quite points there was a very distinct low rumble that could be heard. On the Tuesday night performance it wasn’t there, and I don’t know why. But at the time I guessed that it was from the large and particularly busy elevated highway that runs right beside the theatre. But since I wasn’t able to hear it on the Tuesday performance, it might be something else entirely, I dunno. But no matter how nice, good and sweet circus stuff and circus performers are, I’m still not to certain I would want to be working that close to cars and trucks going 60 miles an hour.
But enough about the stuff that has nothing to do with the show, despite any desires I have to discuss the atmosphere before the show, who else was sitting next to us, how slowly the crowd moved, the vaguely museum like display in the hallways or why it appeared that 75% of the people entered from stage right, I will refrain so that I can in fact get to the meat of the matter; Séquence 8.
Now this was my first time seeing Les 7 doigts de la main, and if you weren’t aware, they are one of these “new-fangled” circuses that don’t use animals and focus on the body, as in acrobatics, gymnastics, contortion and other stuff like that. After seeing the show twice, I’m trying to wrap my head around how exactly I would define a circus and a circus troupe. Because for the most part, it seems that a circus troupe is a collection of freelance performers who happen to be available to perform for the duration of whatever tour has been organized. As far as I am able to figure out, continuity of performers is not something that is a priority with a 21st century circus troupe. Similarly, it seems to me that a “new-fangled” circus is a loose collection of things that the performers can do, seemingly linked together by a director. Now that I think about it more and harder, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen (or more to the point heard, since I really haven’t seen tons of circuses) a circus that uses Frisbees and/or pogo sticks – after all there are tons of circii (that’s just pretentious, the plural of circus is circuses) which use hula-hoops, hacky-sacks and other products popularized by Wham-O. But if you haven’t noticed, I’ve digressed. Apologies.
The show itself starts when someone I think is Colin Davis plays at being some sort of host/presenter part starts reciting in badly accented French while dropping papers that look like those you get from fortune cookies something that after having seen the show twice I am completely and utterly unable to remember at all. Then it quickly becomes obvious that this is one of those “new-fangled” circuses as the seven other performers quickly run on stage and do an awful lot of tumbling, acrobatics, gymnastics, jumping around and rolling. After having seen the show twice, I get the distinct sensation that Ms. Carroll and M. Soldevila were the ones responsible for the parts like that trying to use the mass movement as some kind of unifying undertaking that makes it obvious they are all part of one unit and not disparate parts.
While the jumping up and down and the gymnastics were very well done, I’m not quite certain I buy into the concept of it making them all one unit. But I’ll get to that in more detail later. In total there are about 15 vignettes that for the most part spotlight the specialties of the performers. Because of them being very distinctly separated, any kind of half-assed, after the fact attempt to group them together is going to obviously come up short. Not only because the rolling and tumbling isn’t anybody’s specialty, but also due to the fact that by getting everyone to do kind of the same thing they all end up going down to the lowest common denominator, which is never a good thing, and when being juxtaposed against everyone’s best is only going to suffer, and suffer badly.
The first significant vignette, is Alexandra Royer‘s Russian Bar act. She acquitted herself very well, doing a bunch of double flips (which is about two more rotations than I am capable of doing) but what I found particularly weird was that the audience applauded on the simple flips and was pretty much silent on the more complicated ones. I also was able to take advantage of a thought I had towards the end of the first performance, that was to note how many times acts required spotters. Under the presumption that no spotters meant that whatever was being done was relatively easy, and spotters meant that, while not necessarily difficult, potentially dangerous. Ms. Royer had spotters. In between the first time I saw the show and the second time, there were (obviously) some changes made, most notably being the talk-show portion at the beginning between Mr. Davis and Eric Bates in French. I can’t say I missed it the second time around, and it left me wondering why they even thought that it was a good idea in the first place.
There’s a short segment that effectively kills some time while they play around with the pole during blackouts (the stage was made rather bare. Six large wooden cubes, one pole that was probably 15 to 20 fee tall, a desk with some very funky legs, and a backdrop made of some empty but ornate frames). Imagine assuming a pose on the pole, and then when the lights come back on there is another person or persons in completely different poses on the pole. Easy laugh. Which doesn’t quite lead into or progress naturally, but is succeeded by Maxim Laurin‘s trapeze act. Which is quite spectacular. On both nights it got the biggest round of applause up to that point, and I noted his stomach, which not only was the major muscle he used to manipulate his body, but was also very flat and made me realize that I probably could use a little bit more exercise than I am getting.
At various points all of the gentlemen performers performed shirtless, and there was an entire time killing segment where three of them (including one lady performer) very slowly disrobed, after putting on a bunch of excess layers. For the most part it was what I called the time killing segments that while not bad per se, didn’t really seem to me to serve any purpose other than possibly allowing some folks to catch their breath. Specifically the thing with the tape, the thing with the loop machine and the previously mentioned cut talk show bit. I could understand how initially they might have been put there to either establish character, or further the plot, but when they finally put the show together, there wasn’t any plot and beyond being themselves, there weren’t any characters. The only time killing segment that even came close to working was the ring the bell one, where Mr. Davis asked questions of the audience and M. Laurin had to climb the pole to ring the bell.
I also was unable to figure out any connections between the music played and what was happening on stage. The music veered from a really bad lounge jazz version of Cry Me A River by Lisa Ekdahl
to a pretty pathetic attempt at hip hop sung and performed by the performers themselves. Note to future show producers, if you have cast members who know how to juggle and/or do acrobatics in the air and on the ground, it doesn’t mean, and in fact is extremely unlikely, that they also are great singers and musicians. If you haven’t noticed when you’re even a halfway decent singer you get paid an awful lot more than being a great circus artist. If I had a choice between doing flips in the air and singing on how I wanted to express my creativity, the songs would win out every time, and while I recognize that I don’t think like everyone, in this particular case I do think I am in the majority.
But enough of the negativity, despite the past couple of paragraphs, it really was a good show. Besides the Russian Bar and the Trapeze, there were five other circus vignettes. Mr. Bates juggling cigar boxes, Devin Henderson and Mr. Davis doing a Chinese hoops act, Tristan Nielsen and Camille Legris doing some hand-to-hand act, Ugo Dario and M. Laurin on a Korean Plank and Ms. Royer on and in an aerial hoop. All of which were particularly good. If you want to get a general sense of the circus-y stuff that was in the show, I would suggest watching the videos that I put in the preview article I wrote about the show.
While watching it the first time, it seemed like each performer brought their specialty to the table and then someone else tried to link them together into some whole. It ended up giving the performance a sincere but naïve sense. Sincere in that all the circus stuff was dead-bang on, drop dead amazing. Naive in that it almost seemed like the performers had written the show.
On the second night I saw it, everyone seemed to have a case of the dropsies, although on both nights when the Chinese hoops were lined three high it took the same number of tries for Mr. Henderson to make it through the triple high stack, which on one hand-made me question the possibility that he missed on purpose. And on the other caused the audience to become incredibly sympathetic, actively cheering for him each successive try, until he got it. Which led to the evening’s largest and loudest round of applause. On Tuesday Mr. Bates dropped boxes, the trumpet failed during the rap number and there were a couple of other non-scripted moments.
Despite that, I thought that the second performance I saw was much tighter. I don’t know if that would be due to the revisions made in between, or if it only seemed that way because I had seen everything before, or if my concept of “tightness” as it applies to a circus performance is woefully outdated. Personally I prefer the first one. I also should point out that on the first night I was almost sitting next to Teklieng Lim who had been hired by the 7 doigts de la main to draw some sketches of the show,
Teklieng Lim’s sketch of Alexandra Royer of Les Sept Doigts de la Main in Séquence 8
The actual circus stuff in Les 7 doigts de la main’s Séquence 8 is quite good, actually even better than that. I think I could easily watch Mr. Bates, Ms. Royer, M. Laurin, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Davis, Mr. Nielsen, Ms. Legris and Mr. Dario do their stuff many more times than the twice I have already. However, I have no real need to hear them sing or watch them act even if it was something written by Shakespeare sung to a tune written by Bach. Trying to link various circus acts together with characters and plot just doesn’t work in this case, I’d almost go so far as to say that it would be better titled as Eight Séquences instead of Séquence 8.
If you haven’t seen it, it is still playing here in Montreal until Sunday, and then after that you’re going to have to go to Monte Carlo, Graz, Philadelphia, Boston or Toulouse to see it (although judging by the schedule there will be more performances added, there are some holes
Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997Maurice “Rocket” Richard by Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau, 1997
The film is called: Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, not The Voodoo Gods of Haiti (and after reading a little about Maya Deren, it looks like it could be a very interesting film). He then proceeds to spell David Michael Levin‘s name wrong, and finally he obviously hasn’t spent all that much time around street artists, because graffiti is anything but spontaneous. When was the last time you “just happened” to be carrying some cans of spray paint around “in case” you suddenly had the urge to be artistic in public?
But despite all the excess baggage and nonsense that he adds to the show, Ms. Zugler’s work is up to the task and came through with shining colors. (The show itself was on exhibit at the McClure Gallery from June 1 to 23, this year). If you ‘d like to see some of her work, she is currently exhibiting at the Eleanor London Côte Saint-Luc Public Library.
Installation view of Vrtlar by Mirana Zuger at the McClure Gallery, showing Fooling and Hibou.
Her name blipped on my radar when I was doing some research on Coriolis by Maskull Lasserre. She took some of the pictures to document the making of Coriolis, and something clicked when I saw her name come up as exhibiting at the McClure. Thankfully I was able to get over there slightly more than a week before the show closed. It consisted of ten paintings of various sizes and one small sculpture, the pieces had titles like Beet Root, Betty, and Hibou, or in simpler language, not exactly the most helpful in trying to decipher her paintings. There was one called The Tough Guy and the Texan which at least gave me a leg up on trying to figure out something.
The idea that Mr. Campbell would then go as far as to add another thick and very opaque layer between a viewer and the paintings just made me see something that resembled Zelena. I much preferred the piece written by Françoise Sullivan at the back of the catalogue. Simple, direct and to the point. It made it clear that Ms. Zuger is an abstract painter in the grand old tradition of the Automatistes. While she does guidelines and a framework for painting what she paints, it is at the opposite end of the scale when compared to someone like say, a Guido Molinari or a Claude Tousignant. Not quite spilling and brushing the paint any which way but loose, but close.
Precipitation by Mirana Zuger
There are some of her paintings that kind of remind me of something that Mark Rothko could have made, others remind me a little bit of the work of Leopold Plotek. There was one painting done on paper and another small bronze sculpture, Baseline and Wish respectively. Had I been asked, I would have suggested that they be left out of the exhibit in place of two other paintings. Back when I had Zeke’s Gallery, I would try to keep the shows as focused as possible. I would mention to the artists that when they were 80 years-old, it would be fine and dandy to have a retrospective that incorporated painting, sculpture, drawing, video any gosh darn thing that they pleased. But at the beginning of a career it is extremely helpful to present a fairly uniform body of work. I imagine it is part of the reason Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello did not compose classical music until they had already established themselves. Why Elvis Presley did not record Gospel music until his name (and voice) had been firmly established.
Baseline and Wish make it obvious that Ms. Zuger can and does work using lots of different materials, I can’t help but think that being able to see two other paintings would have helped enormously in furthering the understanding and comprehension of her work. And besides when you’re dealing with abstract paintings that large, things can get pretty hairy and fairly powerful – when they’re done up right, it kind of feels like how I would imagine being in the eye of a hurricane would feel. By exhibiting the sculpture and paper, it brings down the intensity to something more akin to a really strong thunderstorm.
Installation view of Vrtlar by Mirana Zuger at the McClure Gallery, showing Zelena and Baseline
One other nit picky point, some of the paintings are labelled as being on “rabbit skin sized canvas.” Being the hardheaded blowhard and duffer that I am, I was initially going to call her on what I thought was a large bluff. Not even if I skinned Harvey would I be able to get a canvas that was five feet by six feet. Besides while bunnies are delicious, I can’t quite believe that leather made from their skin would make for a great object to paint on. But thankfully I went to her website, and things became clearer. She uses something called “Rabbit Skin Glue” to do something similar to priming her canvases. Sizing being something you do to protect and glaze a piece of paper or textile.
Installation view of Vrtlar by Mirana Zuger at the McClure Gallery
I can only guess at why Ms. Zuger decided to call the show Gardener (in Serbo-Croat). There is obviously some sort of connection to her culture (if I remember correctly, her grandfather came to Canada from Yugoslavia, back when it was still called Yugoslavia) but whether she thinks that the painting Vrtlar was the best one in the exhibit and therefore worthy of naming the whole show, or it has something to do with the bright colors reminding Ms. Zuger of flowers, or the care and work she took in making the various paintings was similar to that which she would have done in creating a garden, or something completely different I have no idea. Nor does it really matter, because as Ms. Sullivan so eloquently writes Ms. Zuger’s “brushwork, her vigorous form and colour come with a sense of renewal, a feeling that it is right.”
RE: I’m-hungry-let’s-go-for-lunch-no-I-don’t-care-where-I-just-want-a-sandwich
maskull lasserre Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 9:40 PM
To: zeke@zeke.com
Dear Chris,
I must admit that I am seldom moved to respond to the types of postings that appear on your blog, but when someone teeters, publicly, so perilously between being misinformed and ignorant, I can’t help but try to right the balance in the public interest, and in so doing give you the benefit of the doubt.
I came upon your piece about Coriolis when I was forwarded your post on Vrtlar, at the McClure Gallery, earlier this summer. I will not be as exhaustive in my redaction (and I apologize for the “fancy-ass” words, but you can look them up here and here) as you were of Mr. Campbell’s text – although you should really have a look to see that he was correct in his reference to the Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti, Chelsea House / Delta, 1970. I will, however, suggest the following links to, albeit after the fact, inform you that:
1) Coriolis is in a private collection, and does not belong to Quebecor,
2) the Coriolis effect does register on every falling mass, though measurable more easily on a planetary scale, and
Although these posts are probably more embarrassing to their author than they are to the people they exploit for their petty picking of criticism’s low-hanging fruit and the disingenuous slights that border on adolescent slander, maybe you should stick to writing about sandwiches.
Sincerely,
Maskull Lasserre
The comments about Coriolis are in response to an article I wrote about a month before this one on a piece of art that M. Lasserre made.
