RegardingDesign

MWPAI part two

The hub of the downtown scene in Utica -- in addition to the aforementioned brewery -- is a scruffy stretch of Genessee Street with the glorious Stanley Theater on one side and the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute on the other. In addition to its association with Pratt, the Institute includes a museum, a performing arts series, and a school of art for community members. We recently visited the museum, which includes Fountain Elms, a restored 1850s Italianate mansion that was one of the homes of the founding family and contains their collection of decorative art. Connected to this display of lush, overwrought, Victorian splendor is the high contrast of a 1960s Philip Johnson-designed museum wing that displays the more modern pieces of the collection as well as changing exhibitions. The permanent collection contains basically one of everything, as noted in this description from their web site:

"The art collection features more than 25,000 American 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century paintings, drawings, sculptures, 19th-century decorative arts, photographs, European paintings, and European and Asian works on paper. There are works in the collection by Copley, Dali, Frankenthaler, Kandinsky, Mondrian, O'Keeffe, Picasso, Pollock, Prendergast, Rothenberg, Stella and Whistler. Also featured is the popular "Voyage of Life" series by Thomas Cole. Decorative arts makers included are John Henry Belter, Herter Brothers, Alexander Roux and Tiffany & Co."

While we were there, we enjoyed a fascinating show called "Picturing Eden." which "...features the photographic work of 37 internationally recognized artists who examine Paradise as a mythic, many-faceted place, one of contemplation and restoration as well as loneliness and despair." While there were plenty of expected forms of photography, from traditional to hyper-realistic digital manipulations, some of the most beautiful, subtle, and memorable work -- to me, at least -- were the two photographers who used nature directly in their work. Nope, not as a subject, but as a participant. One photographer left photosensitive paper outdoors and let the acids and chemicals of decaying organic matter form patterns of great complexity and fragility through natural chemical reactions. Another printed ghostly images from the Vietnam war directly onto live leaves which then dried and were entombed in glass.

Photography has often left me a bit cold -- it seems to me more a record of something than an expression of something. This exhibit changed my mind profoundly by showing me some of the new ways creative people are using this old technology to express feelings and stories of humanity's dreams, hopes, and failures.

The Cool School

I recently saw a great art documentary, "The Cool School." It's about the artists associated with the legendary Ferus gallery in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Los Angeles. But more, it's about how LA developed its own art "voice".

The Ferus Gallery was begun by an art lover named Walter Hopps. He was eventually joined in the enterprise by Irving Blum, who was the deal maker, schmoozer, glad hander that put the fizz into the art drink. The artists who showed there included the then-very-young John Altoon, Craig Kauffman, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Ed Kienholz, Robert Irwin, and others. These macho, cowboy artists, are pictured here:

The gallery – and the whole scene – got a big boost when they brought an until-then unknown artist from NY to show a collection of his soup can paintings. Yup, Andy Warhol had his first show at the Ferus. The film documents not just the art, but the whole hippie, iconoclast, anti-establishment, anti-NYC vibe that was going on and fomented at places like the Ferus and its after-hours hang-out, Barney’s Beanery. The movie has used some interesting techniques to aid in the storytelling, as described by a review from the New York Times: "The movie’s director, Morgan Neville, tells what followed through an often fascinating, visually charming and intelligently edited mix of found footage, home movies, still images and contemporary interviews, ably assisted by a jazz score and narration from the actor (and photographer) Jeff Bridges. The older footage is particularly delightful, including the sights and sounds of a grinning, goateed Mr. Kienholz bargaining with a junkyard dealer to buy a 1953 Cadillac door that probably ended up in one of his amazing assemblages." They also include interviews with Frank Gehry, who apparently found, as he was coming up in the world, the local architects a bit stiff and this crew much more simpatico. You'll also find an interesting trick during some of the interviews: they are filmed B&W, in keeping with the archival footage they have, but they let bits of color pop up, for example, in the bright cherry of a cigarette or the red shoes of an artist.

 I have a personal interest in this crew because I spent a lot of time as a toddler in the mid-60s wandering around the Ferus gallery and Barney’s Beanery, weaving my way through the forest of adult legs, whining and wishing I could go home and get away from all these lunatic, slowly-getting-drunk, so-called grown ups. Because to me, then, that’s all that they were. My mother attended Chouinard Art School, now part of CalArts, with John Altoon – in fact, they were each other’s first love – and all these now-famous artists were just the paint spattered, cigarette smoking, cheap-beer drinking guys that hung around our house on the weekends and whose antics scared the pants off the shy little girl that I once was. So it’s rather interesting to look back from my mid-40s vantage point and see what became of them all. And for your viewing pleasure, I will share with you some never-exhibited early John Altoon paintings ( the colors are just a tad off ) that have been passed down to me after my mother died – Altoon destroyed tons of his work, but fortunately, she salvaged these from the garbage. The artists may have frightened me, but even as a little girl, I did love their work…

The surfers is still my all-time favorite painting in the world.

This is a portrait of my mother, by Altoon.

He was famous for his bawdy sense of humor – this is a drawing he made in one of her sketchbooks in the mid 1950s.

 

BeechNut

Last week as I was driving home from visiting a young friend and a poetry reading she organized at her college, I decided to drop by the Arkell Museum, just a couple of towns over from here. (I'd tried to stop by Dia:Beacon, the uber cool sculpture museum on the Hudson in the up-and-coming town of Beacon, but for not the first time, I was thwarted by their only occasional hours. Sigh.) Anyway, the Arkell proved interesting enough, if not quite so ambitious or grand.

The Museum is mostly given over to collections of art from the family that founded Beech-Nut Packaging. "The American painting collection was established by Bartlett Arkell, the founder and first president of the Beech-Nut Packing Company. The paintings he collected are recognized today as some of the best works created by leading late 19th- and early 20th-century American artists. Arkell built the art gallery attached to the Canajoharie Library in 1927, and worked with MacBeth Galleries in New York to acquire a remarkable collection of American paintings. The collection includes 21 works by Winslow Homer, and important paintings by George Inness, William M. Chase, Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth, Maurice Prendergast, Robert Henri, and other members of The Eight", also known as the Ash Can group of artists.

Some of this artwork was commissioned to be used in advertisements for various Beech Nut products. And some of it was dedicated to showcasing the "wholesomeness" of the valley where these products were packed. And where I now live.

Sadly, this plant is closing and moving downstate to a more modern building. The good news is that the new building is going to be LEED certified and supposedly Beech Nut is committed to working with the town to repurpose this old plant and all the jobs it contains.

The museum also had a fun, interactive exhibit where you could combine a digital image of one of the pieces of artwork with a Beech Nut product and type to create your own ad, which you could then print out as a postcard. Ah, the glory days when high art and commerce were combined....

Stencil Street Art

I have been fortunate to have found some really wonderful -- and not too expensive -- artwork in various little galleries and at "art nights" here in Albany. Some of my favorites are from a street artist named Chris Stain, who currently resides in Brooklyn. He does incredible stencil work, inspired by his family's working class roots and growing-up environs in Baltimore. While buildings are clearly a preferred medium, he also does stuff on old signs, wood, and other materials. The pieces I own are stencil on pieces of metal that are framed out in wood. I wanted to share his work with all of you because I think it's wonderfully nuanced and powerful.

Through Chris, I've also learned about an interesting artist's collective, Just Seeds. "Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to both sell their work online in a central location and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Our website is not just a place to shop, but also a destination to find out about current events in radical art and culture. Our blog covers political printmaking, socially engaged street art, and culture related to social movements. We believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society."

Wow. Sounds so positively 60s radical! Seriously, the various members have been involved in some interesting activities you can find out about on their site, but regardless of the political content, there's some wonderfully graphic and colorful and bold artwork there, especially for fans of stencils, blockprinted, and silkscreened stuff. Check it out.

Inspiration

Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working. Pablo Picasso

(Image is of kids' art from the Albany Art Room where I've taken drawing classes.)

Advertising becomes art

I was recently introduced to this artist, Bill Barminski, a California, self-taught painter and former cartoonist who extrapolates images from consumer culture to make his work, which simultaneously evokes 50s positivism and the darker, more nervous themes of our contemporary times. He also directs music videos and did an "Absolut" billboard. He teaches at UCLA in the Lab for New Media. Cool stuff. Check it out.