Same Old Art

Tamara de Lempicka: Changing gender

“All right…I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.“ 

Daisy about her newborn in Chapter One of The Great Gatsby (1925)

When I get a chance to look at a Tamara de Lempicka painting, and so far I have not had many occasions to do so (the last time was in Rome in 2011), I wonder if she wants her viewers to look at foolish beauty or if she is fooling us to believe in beauty.

Nu adossé I, oil on canvas, 1925

On May 2nd of this year Edvard Munch’s pastel “The Scream” sold for nearly $120 Million. I won’t even bother to include a link here, since pretty much everybody has heard about it. In the shadow of this staggering number, a 1925 painting by Lempicka sold for a little over $5 million the same day. The curious story behind her painting is that it had been lost shortly after her 1925 solo show in Milan, Italy. The West Coast owner of the painting, who have had the painting in his collection since the 90s until he contacted an art consultant who then got in touch with Sotheby’s.   

But there is another aspect that makes Lempicka’s painting a rare find. It has to do with her signature. I have come across maybe half a dozen paintings that she has signed “Lempitzki” instead of “Lempicka.” By changing the Polish suffix “-cka” to “-tzki” the gender of the family name is changed, meaning that “Lempicka” refers to a woman, while “Lempitzki” stands for a man.

It is as if Tamara reverses viewing roles here or at least she points to the possibility to look at her nude through a man’s eyes. Tamara’s model avoids our glance, covering herself she turns away from us and thereby assumes a classical posture much repeated throughout painting and maybe closest to the sentiment of an Ingres painting.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Baigneuse, oil on canvas, date unknown  

In another work from the same year signed with “Lempitzki,” Tamara paints a model who lifts her right arm to block out a bright light source located outside the picture frame. The tip of her elbow reflects a glare of yellowish white and protrudes out toward the viewer’s space. Her gesture and the cast shade render her anonymous and faceless. Without meeting her eyes we can explore the rest of her body: down toward one uncovered breast and a strangely twisted left arm that unveils the full flesh of her upper thigh.

Lempitzki, The Model, oil on canvas, 1925

These reclusive nudes do have not much in common with the regular “Lempicka” women. In a painting like that of the “Dutchess de La Salle,” Lempicka’s subject demonstrates self-affirmation, confidence, elegance and an air of upper-class leisure.

Lempicka, Portrait of the Duchesse de La Salle, oil on canvas, 1925

There are also a couple of portraits of men signed with “Lempitzki” in Tamara’s set of 1925 paintings. In the end, one can only speculate what that all means and why she decided to introduce this twist to her signature. Going back to the introductory quote from “The Great Gatsby,” Lempicka must have been aware of the role that most women of her status and age were expected to fulfill. She could have become “a beautiful little fool” herself. But instead she painted some of these “fools” and signed her paintings as man. I like to think of this act as a performative gesture that is opposed to the role of her models: confrontational and engaging. 

Her explorations of sexuality with men and women alike, her proximity to the world of art, fashion and celebrities makes her less a woman starved for attention (although that cannot be completely denied). Why not think of her as a female dandy? Haven’t we talked about the male dandy enough already? Let’s end with one more quote. This one is taken from the 1893 play “A Woman of No Importance” by Oscar Wilde: “Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.” If there is something that can be observed in most of Lempicka’s work, it must be the abundance of excess.

The danger of underthinking painting

Pamela Rosenkranz’s first New York solo show at Miguel Abreu Gallery ended almost three weeks ago and my post might come a bit late. But the reason I decided to write about it has to do with Roberta Smith’s review of the show and Sharon Butler’s response to Smith’s critique. 

In short, Roberta Smith describes her visit to the exhibition and how at a certain point she must adhere to the press release in order to decipher some of Rosenkranz’s formal and conceptual decisions. Sharon Butler, on the other hand, wonders if Rosenkranz is “overthinking” her work, and entitles her response “The danger of overthinking.” The only danger I can identify in this case is when painting is being underthought.  

Everything is Already Dead (Sprite and Pocket Watch White), Ralph Lauren acrylic latex paint, soft drink, inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper, 2012

First of all, Pamela Rosenkranz’s “paintings” (they are rather applications or demonstrations) come off as amusingly old-fashioned as her work wants to promote some conceptual gravitas. Rosenkranz sticks to an old formula that deems the color white as most appropriate for conceptual art. How much I would have enjoyed seeing Yves Klein’s blue monochromes instead, or at least receive one of his famous blue cocktails upon entering the gallery! 

Because They Try to Bore Holes, 2012 (Installation view of the Pamela Rosenkranz show)

Looking at the installation shot of Rosenkranz’s show makes me shiver. This image conjures my worst stereotypes about contemporary art (hospital interior, dentist office minus a waiting room and medical equipment, fantasy loft of the 1%, etc.) and leaves me flabbergasted as to how exactly Roberta Smith arrived at the term “beautiful” to describe Rosenkranz’s exhibition. Similar to Glen Coco’s conclusions that he draws in his article “I’ m sick of pretending: I don’t ‘get’ art”, I find Pamela Rosenkranz’s work and the mode of Smith’s coverage underwhelming to say the least.

Secondly, I do not quite understand why Sharon Butler sees “overthinking” as a danger. I would argue that Pamela Rosenkranz’s work suffers from a lack and not an overabundance of thought. If you, as an artist, are interested in taking a position and giving it a visual expression, you need to take a position first and you need to give it some thought. The hints and tracks that we pick up and follow in Rosenkranz’s work (art as commodity, commodity as art, what separates “meaningful” from “meaningless,” materiality vs. immateriality, modes of production and so forth) remain unclear, undecided and under-thought. That is not to say that her work is ambiguous or open-ended. It does not have the necessary richness that is needed to allow multiple readings of a work of art. It is, to the contrary, anemic. 

I remain hopeful about the future of more soulful and thoughtful painting. Even though contemporary artists and particularly painters seem to enjoy making art about bad art, I would be happy about attempts to make good painting that stimulates thought.   

Mireille Blanc at Galerie Mircher

In the past two years, I have visited Galerie Mircher many times and often the painters shown there are not that memorable. There is Martin Kasper and his clunky interiors, Pat Andrea’s and Simon Pasieka’s illustrative retro-surrealism, and the teenage sensibility of Nazanin Puyandeh’s work. This time I was a bit more lucky and actually spent a good amount of time looking at Mireille Blanc’s paintings at Mircher. 

Mireille Blanc is a young artist who, according to the gallery’s press release, was “discovered” in 2011 at the Salon de Montrouge that is held annually in the city of Montrouge (a suburb of Paris) to recognize and support French emerging artists. The interesting aspect about this salon is that anybody can apply and by looking at the accepted artists (this year 80 from about 2100 artists were selected), the submitted work is all over the place. Whoever “discovered” Mireille there last year had to sieve through a lot of strange stuff.

I wish I could provide titles and dates with the paintings I photographed at her exhibition, but the gallery did not have a list of works anywhere and I did not feel like starting a conversation with the owner about the lack of information. Let’s just begin with the largest painting in the show.

Blanc’s largest painting (posted above) is installed in the back of the gallery and is easily visible all the way from the entrance door. While most of her paintings are fairly small or medium sized ranging from about 15” in diameter to maybe 30”, this one emulates the scale of a human body. To settle on a small, overlooked object that is a cross between a bottle and a relic is a paint-worthy decision. To enlarge this object and thereby give it a human presence makes the ordinary particular. As a viewer, I find myself unable to ignore this object and I start considering it as a fabricated and recently painted thing. It certainly has a history, but it comes without a story. It is clear - fully rendered and visually articulate - and yet it remains nameless. Often painting is best when it does not try to imitate language and instead points to an area devoid of words. 

Most of her other paintings in the show are not as disarming. One of the reasons is that Blanc bases her work on washed out, vintage polaroids that she buys at flea markets in addition to pictures that she takes herself (this is brought up in the gallery’s press release). Her overall palette draws heavily on a murky color range that appears in overexposed photographs.

Noeud, oil on canvas, 33 x 24cm, 2010

The surface of her canvases are polluted with browns and grays amidst pools of white. Often it looks like the objects in front of us have not been recreated but covered in paint. They are not painted objects, but objects disguised with paint. Her brushwork is very animate. It moves around and across her objects, but it never quite revives a sense of tactility, texture, or weight.

Foret Noir, oil on canvas, 27 x 50cm, 2011

Similar to Luc Tuymans and Josephine Halvorson, Mireille Blanc paints each of her works in one sitting. To work under a self-imposed rule that does not allow (or so we are asked to believe) for a second session of painting demands an economy of painting that is partly conceptual necessity as well as gimmick. Unlike Tuymans and Halvorson, Blanc does not manage to use this imposition to her favor. There are some occasional standouts, like her painting “Chateau” from 2011. But when Blanc’s paintings display passages of gestural accidents, they loose out in substance.  

Chateau, oil on canvas, 30 x 40cm, 2011

In the end, the art world loves its own “discoveries.” The value of a new discovery is more likely to outshine the quality and substance of any work - at least in the eyes of a gallery owner and eventually in the eyes of the public. I think that Mireille Blanc should be given some more time or should allow herself more time, so that paintings like that of her miraculous bottle keep appearing with greater frequency.    

   

James Castle in light of the Prinzhorn Collection

To “discover” an underrated artist and call this discovery your own is the dream of any art-enthusiast. It reminds me of some of my facebook friends who try to outperform each other on their you-tube findings of obscure musicians. It also reminds me of art critics, curators and art dealers who enter this odd competition with what seems to be a demonstration of their own capacity to decipher the good from the great. It is as if they secretly wish to claim some of their artist’s genius for themselves in unearthing and introducing an unknown artist to a wider audience.

The Galerie Karsten Greve in Paris is currently showing work by James Castle who used to be referred to as “outsider”-artist for most of his active career until the 1960’s when his first solo exhibition was held at the Boise Art Museum in his home state of Idaho.  Most of the works on display are no larger than a regular postcard. In some parts of the exhibition they have been arranged into larger clusters.

By grouping many drawings together, Castle’s works on paper reveal their incredibly diverse character. Seen from up close they look like charcoal drawings on cardboard that might have been exposed to sunlight and humidity at some point.

But this is not charcoal on regular paper that we are looking at. James Castle used sooth from a wood stove that he would mix with salvia. Using pieces of sharpened wood, he would then apply his “pigment” onto found paper and package materials some of which came from his father’s post office.

The subjects of his drawings were all to be found in his immediate environment. We see trees, sometimes animals, often barns, old farm houses, dim interiors packed with an array of tools, objects and basic furniture. Everything appears to be strictly arranged almost as if Castle’s priority had been outmost clarity despite the rugged surfaces of his drawings.

At first I did not even know that I was looking at work by James Castle. His name is not indicated anywhere (it is one of these shows where the only information on the walls are red dots) and my first guess was that I was looking at a French artist from the 1950’s who might have been a follower of Jean Dubuffet and Jean Fautrier. Finally, I found an information leaflet at the gallery desk and was excited to read that this is apparently the first retrospective of Castle’s work in France. The text also points out that Castle was deaf from birth and that he did not speak, write or read. This information prompted me to research if anybody had attempted to diagnose James Castle during his lifetime. In the book “Autism and Talent” by Francesca Happe and Uta Frith one chapter briefly mentions Castle and how he is unlikely to have been examined during his lifetime, although it can be assumed that he was autistic. 

The tradition of “outsider art” (not to be confused with the more specific “art brut”) is an entirely different phenomenon in Europe than it is in the United States.  Here, it is is basically non-existant. A common occurrence in France or Germany are exhibitions that show established and less established artists side by side in the many government sponsored city halls, institutions and art societies. Sometimes I feel like the true outsiders of the art market are the few blue chip galleries one can find in Paris. It is a rather sympathetic reversal of the contemporary art market hierarchy. The quality of these public exhibitions is a different story.

A common thread in declaring an artist an “outsider” is to assign him or her the uncanny ability to reference avant-garde trends without being aware of them. The exhibition text of the Galerie Karsten Greve is no exception: “The perfection of the drawings, Castle’s material aesthetics, and the numerous references to the avant-garde of the 20th century are all fascinating. Although he had never any personal contact with it at all, Castle’s paper works are reminiscent of collages of European art before 1945, and even more of pop art’s view of the everyday aesthetics and the commercial art of the post-war period in the US.” Wow. It seems like somebody was lucky to “discover” James Castle, right?

To explain where I am headed with this, it would like to bring the Prinzhorn Collection into this discussion. The Prinzhorn Collection started out as an institutional archive by German psychiatrist (and art historian) Hans Prinzhorn. When Prinzhorn joined the University of Heidelberg in 1919, he helped to expand an already established collection of art works created by patients of the university’s psychiatric hospital. Three years later, Prinzhorn published a book about this particular collection entitled “Artistry of the Mentally Ill.” Soon thereafter it became a relevant source for avant-garde artists like Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Jean Dubuffet and others. It is no big surprise, but nevertheless ironic that it was Dubuffet who coined the term “outsider art” in response to Prinzhorn’s publication. The fact that parts of the avant-garde incorporated “outsider art” into their visual repertoire draws a different picture of the role of “influence” than is suggested by Galerie Karsten Greve or even the Philadelphia Museum of Art that held James Castle’s first retrospective in 2009.  

Even though Hans Prinzhorn chooses to use the word “Bildnerei” (production of images) to describe the works of his collection, he sees most of the objects “reaching far into the realm of serious art.” On the website of the “Sammlung Prinzhorn” several remarkable examples demonstrate how James Castle is not a rare exception.

For one there is a collage piece from 1890 made by a woman who is only known as “Mrs. St.” Her collage measures 2.69m and is made out of smaller pieces of paper that have been glued together and painted with ink, graphite and water colors. Some parts of her work might recall quilts or hand-sown fabric, but the odd shape points to a less practical or decorative context. 

In 1894 this photograph was taken of Maria Lieb’s room. A patient at the Heidelberg psychiatric hospital, she was known to take apart blankets and bed linens to re-assemble these into geometric and organic patterns that would then cover large areas of the floor similar to what we would now consider to be an installation.  

When I see museums and in particular for-profit galleries resurrect forgotten or unknown artists, I cannot help but think that they are creating the desire and willingness among art enthusiasts and collectors to:

1) buy their narrative of an obscure genius artist

2) buy the artist’s work and thereby endorse a narrative with mythic content

I do not mean to denounce James Castle and question his ability by pointing to a possible clinical diagnosis as an explanation for his talent. Far from it. I think that the example of James Castle can teach us how an outstanding artistic ability is not something unique to artists. Why should artists be the only ones capable of forming visual responses to our daily realities? The ability to think and produce creatively is something we all share. Having taught art in a psychiatric clinic, in primary and high school and at the undergraduate level, I have come to accept what I thought was just a platitude: in the long-run, we often unlearn how to access the creative part of ourselves.

Some people decide to turn their ability into a career mainly because they receive the necessary support from an early enough age and partly because they might have more luck than other people (in being encouraged by people who can provide long-term support). I really believe that it is rather rare that a great artist is a great genius or a “special” person in any way. A great artist is always a great worker and similar to Prinzhorn’s speculations, it could have been the shift toward the intuitive in modern art that allowed the work of James Castle or Mrs. St. to intersect with that of Paul Klee and Jean Dubuffet. If all galleries and museums suddenly decided to display contemporary works of art without giving away the names of the artists, we would no longer be able to distinguish between outsiders and insiders; how much fun we all would have!

Wilhelm Sasnal and the problem of reduction

In 2010 I saw an exhibition of Wilhelm Sasnal’s work for the first time. It was at Anton Kern Gallery in New York and I remember looking forward to seeing his work in person. As much as the color white has been part of a large portion of conceptual work in various media for several decades now, the color gray seemed to have taken over Sasnal’s paintings. 

Wilhelm Sasnal, Hardship 1-4, 2010

One general observation that was shared by several critics in 2010 and continues to be addressed in his more recent work is his deliberate change of painting styles. Robert G. Edelman puts it this way in his 2010 review:

“What may set his work apart is that Sasnal’s response to each image seems to determine what kind of paint application he uses, whether hard-edge, soft-focus or impasto.”

Even though I agree with this observation, an impasto application of paint in an image like “Hardship 1-4” does not complicate or enrich its reading. The white paste of paint is similar to extra frosting on a cake: it does not necessarily make it more delicious, but it looks exuberant. And it reminds us that this is indeed a painting and not a photograph.

Wilhelm Sasnal has repeatedly been compared to Gerhard Richter and Luc Tuymans, but neither of these two artists makes work as graphic and rich in contrast as Sasnal’s. When looking at his paintings I often feel reminded of graphic novels and silkscreen prints, rather than of the suggestive paint found in Richter’s and Tuyman’s surfaces. 

Luc Tuymans, The Secretary of State, 2005

Wilhelm Sasnal, Magic Johnson, 2006

If you compare Tuymans’ “Secretary of the State” to Sasnal’s “Magic Johnson” their difference becomes quite apparent. While Tuymans infuses his portrait with psychological depth, Sasnal’s painting evokes generic likeness. Now, as so often with painters, Sasnal could argue that he intentionally avoids any deeper visual examination of his chosen subject. In the end, we are looking at a representation of Magic Johnson and not at the actual person, right? But I have to admit that I much rather look at Elizabeth Peyton’s painted celebrities than Sasnal’s decal images.

I do admire Wilhelm Sasnal’s attempt to cover a diverse range of private, historical, political and pop-cultural images. In his current retrospective at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, about 60 paintings and some of his video work are on display until May. One of the most striking and wholesome paintings in the show is a portrait of his son Kacper.

 Wilhelm Sasnal, Kacper, 2009

Sasnal often leaves out the faces of his painted protagonists. But instead of an obliterated, gray face as seen in “Hardship 1-4” (that is somewhat reminiscent of a crash dummy’s head), the features of Sasnal’s son in the painting “Kacper” are consumed by sunlight and make him unidentifiable. By replacing Kacper’s face with a painted glare, Sasnal does not have to impose a concrete shape (crash dummy head) on an abstract idea (the absence of an individual). In this painting, Sasnal has found a productive and convincing balance between what has been removed and what has been added.

With regard to his larger body of work, this particular painting uncovers a problem that lies in Sasnal’s reductionist approach to painting. If you make a painting by reducing a photographic image to its bare essentials, you simultaneously have to introduce a new perspective in your painted image. When you emphasize a reductive process alone, you might end up with a gimmick like the non-descriptive dummy heads. In the painting “Power Plant in Iran”, Sasnal’s gimmicks are the inverted (upside-down) drips of paint.  

Wilhelm Sasnal, Power Plant in Iran, 2010

The excessive reduction of the Iranian power plant and its appearance as an outlined rectangle does not seem to refer to anything other than its status as painting. What would otherwise be an image that resonates with our current political atmosphere, becomes an exercise in empty formalism. Sasnal’s reasoning seems to be that stripping a charged (photographic) image of its meaning will create a painting that opens up numerous new interpretations. The problem is that by adding drips of white paint, Sasnal pushes his image further toward a painterly context and away from its political realm. This painting is now an object engaged in an inner monologue, completely unaware of its source and oblivious of the world it originated in.

 

Wilhelm Sasnal, Gaddafi, 2011

In Sasnal’s political work (or rather his paintings with political overtones) the formal experiments often develop a dynamic of their own and thereby raise the question why they had to originate in politicized topics. Would they not be better without their implied subject matter? By reducing and simplifying his paintings, Wilhelm Sasnal ends up with equally oversimplified content. To replace Gaddafi with an array of different-colored dabs of oil paint is neither radical nor enlightening. The videos and photographs of Gaddafi’s last moments show a tyrant turned victim. How can we depict his opposed roles in one painting? Aren’t these questions worth asking for painters?

If all painting can do is to demonstrate its powerlessness in face of history, maybe it should try again and fail better. Being unable to form a clear picture of an event like Gaddafi’s death does not mean that as a painter Sasnal can only evoke painting’s materiality as if to say: maybe I cannot paint this scene, but maybe the paint I use can speak for itself. In matters as complex as history and politics, painters are better off not to rely on their medium for guidance. Instead an artist’s chosen subject matter could have the last word and thereby change how a painter views and uses painting.  

Elizabeth Peyton - “John Lennon Recording Abbey Road, 1969”, 1997

Anselm Kiefer - a permanent guest

If I am not mistaken, I have posted about two exhibitions at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. I think it is time to say something more positive about their contemporary art choices. Whenever I visit Ropac, I go downstairs to their basement that has two small exhibition spaces. So far, on each of my visits, I have encountered at least one Kiefer work on display in the second room. It is curious that Kiefer seems to be on exhibition there on a permanent basis, but I am quite thankful for that. 

Anselm Kiefer, Title and dimensions unknown

When I came to see Banks Violette’s work, I went to Ropac’s basement afterwards just to see if another Kiefer might have been put up. And there it was. About three meters wide and one meter twenty high it easily filled out the small space it was installed in. The top part of his painting featured a quote from Wolfgang Goethe’s poem “Ein Gleiches” (Wanderer’s Nightsong II) that Goethe wrote on the wooden wall of a mountain hut in 1780. The inscription on Kiefer’s painting reads as follows:

“Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh, in allen Wipfeln spuerest du kaum einen Hauch…”

“Up there all summits are still. In all the tree-tops you will feel but the dew…” (The English translation is wordy and mentions “dew” while Goethe describes a subtle stir in the tree-tops.) 

In Germany you will most likely hear this poem for the first time in primary school as an early exercise in national identity. In his painting, Kiefer contrasts its idyllic image with charred mountain tops. It is a truly remarkable experience and once you approach the canvas to look at it from up close you can no longer tell if you are looking at oil paint or burned wood. This is not just some lame analogy, but you can actually not tell the difference. Only touch could resolve the paint’s ambiguity. 

Detail of Kiefer painting

There have been many paintings in past and recent years that utilize paint’s materiality to emulate textures from flesh to smoke. Some names that come to mind include Allison Schulnik, Annie Hemond Hotte, Jyrki Riekki, or Katy Moran. But only few of these painters manage to infuse their medium with the trauma of a violated surface as Kiefer does. Instead most of the mentioned artists produce tender and somewhat nostalgic celebrations of their medium by employing the rhetoric of “bad” painting.

When Gerhard Richter was asked about Anselm Kiefer’s work, the former compared Kiefer’s paintings to the fake foreground of nineteenth-century panoramas. Although meant as a pejorative comment, Richter’s comparison is an appropriate description of what we are dealing with when looking at one of Kiefer’s paintings. On the one hand, we have to admit to their embrace of the spectacle and their quality as staged and highly charged works. On the other hand, they effectively extend the notion of painting without becoming a sculpture. His work has sculptural qualities as the paintings have incredibly tactile surfaces. That alone does not qualify them as sculpture though. In art reviews I often come across the idea that works of art, and particularly paintings, are caught in-between media, as though they are not one medium or another, but both at the same time. This observation usually indicates an excitement about the dual nature of painting. But we do not have to point our finger at post-modern theories to conclude that paintings are both image and object. For instance, the early-modern “icon” has embodied painting’s twofold state for centuries now.

Procession in Amorgas, Greece

I do not suggest taking an Anselm Kiefer painting on a walk around the block (although that is something painter Chris Martin has done many times with his own work) or that it should be adored with religious fervor. I just think that what makes a painting exciting is not to call it something else or assigning it the role of a different medium such as sculpture. The excitement lies in realizing that ultimately a painting has always been and will always be exactly that: a painting.

One of the reasons why painting has been declared dead so many times is that artists seemed to grow concerned with calling it by that name. The fact that one painting might be gestural, or provisional, performative or sculptural, an installation or part of a multi-media piece and so forth, does not mean that it appropriates these other strategies in order to distract from its own shortcomings. To the contrary, these characteristics describe to what extent newer and new media have incorporated painting into their visual language. So keep in mind: next time you visit a performance or installation, think about its painterly qualities.

Banks Violette, Elodie Lesourd and Black Metal flirtations - Part 2

A few days after my visit to Banks Violette’s exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, I stopped by Galerie Olivier Robert. In the back of the gallery I saw a yellow painting that immediately got my attention. It was just incredibly yellow and hard to overlook.

Elodie Lesourd, The Dead d (courtesy of A kills B), acrylic on MDF, 2010  

I had never heard about Elodie Lesourd before so I wrote down her name in order to find out more about her work. When I finally looked up her website I was surprised to discover that she was yet another artist toying with stylistic and aesthetic elements of Black Metal. I think that settling on a subculture or musical sub-genre like Black Metal can absolutely result in interesting art work. But it depends entirely on how it is done. And that is exactly the issue with Lesourd’s work. When I described Banks Violette’s work as appropriation art I had no idea how Lesourd would actually wring every bit of validity from the concept of “appropriation.” By making a painting from a photograph that depicts Violette’s installation “Church,” Lesourd suffers from an acute case of “referentiality.” Nobody outside an already small circle of contemporary art lovers will get it. And even if you count yourself as part of this devoted inner circle, you still might not get it. Maybe there is nothing to get, right? I have heard that phrase in an awful lot of MFA critiques and artist lectures. Sometimes, when an artist feels the pressure of having to justify their work, they might decide to say nothing.  Looking at Elodie Lesourd’s exhibition history, I wonder if the galleries and institutions who showed her work decided not to ask any questions and to go with the dark and mysterious look of her work instead. Do they even know what Black Metal is?

Elodie Lesourd, Vargsmal (courtesy of B. Violette), acrylic on MDF, 2007 (screenshot) 

It turns out that the yellow painting that I initially liked is based on photographs taken at a performance by the two-member artist collective “A kills B.” As much as I was perplexed by Violette’s relatively lame use of source material in his Ropac show, Lesourd manages to produce something even more tedious. Her work is in dialogue with other contemporary artists and musicians (If you look at Lesourd’s website, you will discover paintings of music and band paraphernalia - and plenty of drum sets). That alone is not a point of criticism. But her lack of critical distance to her sources is.

 

Elodie Lesourd, Wilso/n (courtesy of R. Wilson), acrylic on MDF, 2009 (screenshot)

Several of Elodie Lesourd’s works (such as Ornament and Crime, War, Black Pointing, Vargsmal, and Riley Serie: Daudi Baldrs) reference the band Burzum and its founder Varg Vikernes who I wrote about in my previous post. Making references to Burzum via highly aestheticized paintings that do not consider his ideology in any way is a naive and convenient decision. Varg Vikernes has been involved with the Heathen Front (by writing articles for their magazine) and other similar-minded organisations although he tends to deny any such ties. His manifesto “Vargsmal” that he started writing in prison is filled with - to just name some very few - anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Immigrant rants. If you want to get a taste of Vikernes’ distorted view on the world, you should read his “essay” on Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik that he published in July of 2011.  

I have been following Black Metal since the mid 1990s and the thoughtlessness going into Violette’s and Lesourd’s work on this subculture is a clear shortcoming. The fact that both artists focus on the more extreme spectrum of Black Metal and particularly Varg Vikernes, appears like a calculated provocation. But to provoke exactly what? I am not sure what that could be.

Would it hurt if both artists were to take further steps in their work and actually dare to formulate a position or at least an idea of why they are doing what they are doing? Artists who raise questions about inconvenient and underrepresented issues have been able to make strong work. One example would be Ken Gonzales-Day’s series “Erased Lynching” for which he manipulated historic images of lynchings by removing the victims.

Ken Gonzales-Day, East First Street (St. James Park), 2006

Instead, we get to endure another round of Black Metal art in shape of the exhibition “Black Thorns in the White Cube” on display in Kansas City and later in Chicago. Curated by Amelia Ishmael eight artists will demonstrate their take on this subculture:

“Engaging with the symbols, history, and myths of the Black Metal music subculture, their images explore haunted Germanic forests, descents into the void, visual translations of sonic experiences, ontologies of Black Metal band logos, and barren western landscapes.”

What about the other, darker issues of Black Metal? I guess the newer generation of artists no longer wants to get its hands dirty.

Damien Hirst at Gagosian

Banks Violette, Elodie Lesourd and Black Metal flirtations - Part 1

I would like to return to a gallery that I covered here fairly recently, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. The day I visited their Alex Katz exhibition I also went upstairs (the gallery’s official “drawing space”) to take a look at Banks Violette’s “Nine Patriotic Hymns for Children.”  The overflow of former Columbia University MFA students in Parisian galleries is remarkable and - at least to me - quite annoying. I haven’t looked into the situation in Berlin, but I am interested to find out what the ratio of former RISD, Columbia, and Yale students is there. I am not implying that Columbia does not produce good artists. But schools like Columbia are capable of equipping their students with a network that most art schools or art departments cannot keep up with. Is this an example of unfairness or is this simply a fact? All I know is that it helps to make mediocre work look sexier. That said, let’s have a look at Banks Violette.

Banks Violette, Pick Your King/Amphetamine Overlord, 2011 

From the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s press release, we get a few pieces of information on some of the drawings included in his show. For instance, the portrait of Jesus is taken from the cover of an album by hardcore punk band Poison Idea. Ok. Fine. And then we learn that the sheets of aluminum are “hand-made.” This additional information left me as confused as looking at the work itself. I can’t follow any of the formal decisions: Graphite drawing taped onto hand-made aluminum sheet. Since Violette often refers to musical subgenres I get that he references certain bands that likely have some kind of biographical significance to him. But how is that enough to constitute an interesting or evocative work? This is not minimalism; this just offers too little substance.

Banks Violette, Untitled (Church), 2005 (Bonded salt, salt, polyurethane, polymer medium, ash, epoxy, wood, galvanized steel, steel hardware, 366cm x 488cm x 732cm)

In 2005 Banks Violette’s installation “Untitled (Church)” was part of his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The story surrounding the making of “Church” goes back to the burning of the Fantoft stave church near Bergen, Norway in 1992. Varg Vikernes, the then 19-year-old founder and musician of the Black Metal band Burzum, was linked to the burning and later convicted of four other arson attacks. He is also believed to have taken photographs of the burned Fantoft stave church that he then used for the cover of his EP “Aske.”

Burzum, Aske, 1992/93

More importantly, one year later Vikernes killed fellow musician Øystein Aarseth and was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment (and subsequently released after 16 years in 2009). His friend Snorre Ruch who drove Vikernes to the scene of crime and back from it, received an eight year prison sentence (Snorre Ruch also composed the soundtrack that accompanied Violette’s installation). During Vikernes trial more information on the Norwegian Black Metal scene surfaced and was picked up by national and international media outlets. Aside from over-exaggerated and sensationalist “facts”, some disturbing aspects included Vikernes belief-system. It turned out that he was not so much dedicated to a Satanist and anti-Christian ideology but more involved with what one could call “Neo Social-Nationalist Paganism.” I have no idea if such a term even exists, but if you feel like obtaining some more information on the radical right that has been and continues to influence certain groups and fractions within Black Metal, then you will be surprised at the amount of hair-raising ideologies cultivated in these circles. For more insights you should watch the 2009 documentary “Until the Light Takes Us.” 

Banks Violette’s installation is effective as an artifact of a youth counterculture (and in this case one individual) that decided to act out a violent and discriminatory aspect of its ideology. As interesting as this incident is for a potential work of art, one thing bothers me greatly. Why did Violette not take his work further and explored the wider implications of this event? Books, crosses, churches or synagogues going up in flames are not only acts of expression, but always acts of censorship or at least signs of suppression. Would that realization have harmed Violette’s vision? I think it would have only enriched it.

Sterling Ruby, BUS, 2010

Aside from the aesthetic appeal and theatrical impact of “Church,” one soon discovers its limits. I am reminded of Sterling Ruby’s “BUS” that was on display at PaceWildenstein in 2010. What both works share is their status as spectacle. I felt like walking onto the set of a movie when I visited Ruby’s show two years ago and some commentators who reviewed the installation linked its appearance to a prop from “Mad Max.”

John Chamberlain sculpture (Title and Year unknown)

There is a difference between a John Chamberlain sculpture that never takes on the literal dimension of its source (wrecked car) and Violette’s incredibly literal embrace of his (burned church). Violette’s decision narrows the scope of “Church.” His installation could have been transformative by giving life to a twisted, dark fantasy that became reality. Instead his piece merely mirrors its source without dissecting what later became a symbol of Vikernes followers. Violette’s use of salt and his forced hint at minimalist aesthetics does not rescue the work from being a particularly flashy piece of underwhelming appropriation art.

The sculptural element continues to dominate Violette’s work. In his show at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac it is impossible to look at the drawings without registering the “hand-made” aluminum sheets. And reaching not so deep into the hipster tool box, he decides to lean three of the aluminum sheets against the wall. 

 

Banks Violette, Budweiser Triptych, 2011

Leaning objects against the wall has become a completely risk-free affair. In the past few years I have seen this method applied all over Chelsea and to a lesser degree in Paris. If I can think of one artist who not only gets away with it, but manages to make it look casual, improvised and really fun and not pretentious, then that would be Chris Martin.

Chris Martin, Installation View of “Paintings” at Sideshow in 2005. 

As disappointing and bland as Banks Violette’s drawing show was, it got even worse when I discovered the paintings of French artist Elodie Lesourd.

(To be continued soon.)