ANOTHER VISUAL TUMBLR

Jenny Holzer, Living: Some days you wake up and...

Tue, 08 May 2012 02:33:01 -0400

Jenny Holzer, Living: Some days you wake up and immediately… (1980-82)

Jenny Holzer, Living: More than once I’ve awakened with...

Tue, 08 May 2012 02:31:00 -0400

Jenny Holzer, Living: More than once I’ve awakened with tears… (1980-82)

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969copper, ten units with 9-inch...

Tue, 08 May 2012 02:11:00 -0400

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969
copper, ten units with 9-inch intervals, 9 x 40 x 31 inches (22.9 x 101.6 x 78.7 cm) each; 180 x 40 x 31 inches (457.2 x 101.6 x 78.7 cm)

Text from the Guggenheim:

In the early 1960s Donald Judd abandoned painting, having recognized that “actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.” His move into three dimensions was coincident with a growing acknowledgement among other artists of his generation of the physical environment as an integral aspect of an artwork. Minimalist sculpture broke with illusionistic conventions by translating compositional concerns into three dimensions, rendering the work a product of the exchange between the object, the viewer, and the environment.

In his 1965 essay “Specific Objects,” Judd championed recent work that was neither painting nor sculpture by a diverse range of artists such as Lee Bontecou, Mark di Suvero, Claes Oldenburg, and Frank Stella. His endorsement of “the thing as a whole” rather than a composition of parts stemmed from what he saw as the strength and clarity asserted by singular forms, the unitary character of which resulted from the conflation of color, image, shape, and surface. Judd’s earliest freestanding sculpture were singular, boxlike forms constructed of wood or metal. The simple shape of Untitled (1968), with its slightly recessed upper surface, is readily intelligible as a whole and thus avoids the compositional effects that for Judd diluted a work’s power. As the artist’s exploration of three-dimensional space became more complex, his aversion to such effects was manifested in a number of strategies designed to subordinate a work’s individual components to the whole.

LIke the rectangular shape with which he began, Judd’s rows and progressions are legible systems that reoccur in his oeuvre. In its repetition of serial forms and spaces, the vertical stack of Untitled (1969) literally incorporates space as one of its materials along with highly polished copper, creating a play between positive and negative that coheres as a totality. Similarly in Untitled (1970), the application of a dual Fibonacci progression (a mathematically based sequence in which each number is the sum of the two previous two: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and so on) imparts an internal logic to both solid and void alike, the anodized color of the boxes throwing the mathematical system into greater relief. While spatial concerns were foremost for Judd, color and materials always remained central to his conception of art. Sustained and rigorous investigations of space and form, his project is tempered by a rich palette of industrial materials, such as stainless steel, aluminum, and translucent Plexiglass, the varied surfaces and finishes of which lend a sumptuous air to an otherwise austere undertaking.

-J. Fiona Ragheb

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, New York City (1958)

Tue, 08 May 2012 01:50:00 -0400

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, New York City (1958)

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942

Tue, 08 May 2012 01:48:16 -0400

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954–55 Encaustic, oil, and collage on...

Tue, 08 May 2012 01:36:31 -0400

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954–55
Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood (three panels)
42 1/4 x 60 5/8” (107.3 x 154 cm)

Richard Serra, excerpt from Questions, Contradictions, Solutions, 2004

Thu, 03 May 2012 02:35:39 -0400

The “Verb list” established a logic whereby the process that constituted a sculpture remains transparent. Anyone can reconstruct the process of the making by viewing the residue. The sculptures resulting from the “Verb list” introduced two aspects of time: the condensed time of their making and the durational time of their viewing.

Both tasks and materials were ordinary. I was tearing lead in place, lifting rubber in place, rolling and propping lead sheets, and melting lead and splashing it against the juncture between wall and floor. The activities were experimental and playful. It wasn’t the question of how to accomplish this or that, nor was it the question of making it up as I went along: it was rather a free-floating combination of both.

I cannot overemphasize the need for play, for in play you don’t extract yourself from your activity. In order to invent I felt it necessary to make art a practice of affirmative play or conceptual experimentation. The ambiguity of play and its transitional character provides suspension of belief whereby a shift in direction is possible when faced with a complexity that you don’t understand. Free from skepticism, play relinquishes control. Play allows one to accept discontinuities and continuities; it also allows one to happen upon solutions or invent them. However, even in play the task must be carried out with conviction. It’s how we do what we do that confers meaning on what we have done.

Torqued Ellipse II, 1996. Weatherproof steel, 12′ 29′ x 20’5″...

Thu, 03 May 2012 02:30:56 -0400

Torqued Ellipse II, 1996. Weatherproof steel, 12′ 29′ x 20’5″ (3.66 x 8.83 x 6.22 m); plate thickness: 2″ (5 cm). Dia Art Foundation.

Photograph published in The Matter of Time, Richard Serra : Hal Foster : Carmen Giménez : Kate D. Nesin, Steidl, 2005

"To be able to enter a steel mill, a shipyard, a thermal plant and extend both their work and my..."

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:28:49 -0400

“To be able to enter a steel mill, a shipyard, a thermal plant and extend both their work and my needs is a way of becoming an active producer within a given technology, not a manipulator or consumer of a found industrial product.”

- Richard Serra lecture at Yale University, 1990

Richard Serra, “The Fox and the Hedgehog” (1999)

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:25:49 -0400

Richard Serra, “The Fox and the Hedgehog” (1999)

Maya Lin’s original competition submission for the Vietnam...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:02:00 -0400

Maya Lin’s original competition submission for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Architectural drawings and a one page written summary.

Click image for HQ version.

"Art and Photography: The 1980s"

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 03:30:00 -0400

French Chris on the Convertible, NYC, 1979
Nan Goldin (American, born 1953)
Silver dye bleach print

Text by Douglas Eklund
Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In contrast to the reticence and insularity of art influenced by Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 1970s, much art of the 1980s assumed the form of public address—from Jenny Holzer’s use of the Times Square news ticker to broadcast elliptical and vaguely threatening strings of text, to Krzysztof Wodiczko’s night-time projections of symbolically charged imagery onto the facades of museums, public buildings, and corporate headquarters. The infamous “culture wars” that raged at the end of the decade—pitting conservative politicians such as Jessie Helms against artists such as Andres Serrano and organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts—reflected this increased visibility and the socially directed nature of its subject matter: sexuality and identity, repression and power, commodities and desire.

Yet painting also returned with a vengeance after languishing in relative obscurity during the 1970s, reasserting all the myths of originality and authenticity that were under attack in the media-based works of thePictures Generation from the same moment. Painters such as Julian Schnabel and Sandro Chia mixed expressionist brushwork with a panoply of historical references comparable to the stylistic pastiches seen in the “postmodern” architecture of Michael Graves and Philip Johnson. The art world expanded accordingly to accommodate the return of salable art: galleries groomed their “stables” of artists like racehorses, while collectors jockeyed for the inside track on the next big thing, and the auction houses provided a perfect arena for conspicuous consumption.

At the same time, however, artists’ collectives, alternative spaces, and artist-run galleries sprang up, with activist groups such as Gran Fury or Group Material (the latter whose members included Felix Gonzales-Torres [1996.575]) staging guerrilla events or multimedia exhibitions that focused attention on topics avoided by the mainstream media such as the AIDS crisis or U.S. military intervention in Central and South America. There was also fluid and fertile interplay between the worlds of art, music, film, and performance seen at venues such as the Mudd Club and the Kitchen in New York. Nan Goldin’s photographs (2001.627;2001.336.1) of the early 1980s summarize the underlying ethos of the period: the schizophrenic alternation between a cool detachment and an aggressively confessional style, an exuberant do-it-yourself attitude that masked formal dexterity with the enthusiasm of the amateur, and the recognition that the way one lives life is an inherently political act.

The scale and ambition of photographically based works also increased in the 1980s in recognition of the medium’s inextricable ties to mass culture in advertising and entertainment. Jeff Wall made his highly staged pictures to be shown as light-filled transparencies of the kind seen in airport terminals and bus stops; he composed his images with all the obsessive detail and narrative suggestion of a film director on location, while also referring to the socially oriented canvases of nineteenth-century French masters such as Courbet and Manet. Wall’s work straddled the worlds of the museum and the street, and was enormously influential later in the decade, especially for the work of Thomas Ruff and the German photographers of the Düsseldorf School. Other artists, including John Baldessari and Christian Boltanski, appropriated banal vernacular photographs—from movie stills to family snapshots, respectively—and integrated them into larger arrangements that commented on the erasure of cultural memory.

Recently the subject of much critical reappraisal, the art of the 1980s can now be seen in retrospect as a powerful synthesis of the personal and political, as well as an implicit rebuke to the hollow conformity and historical amnesia that characterized the Reagan era. Films such as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) explored the dark underbelly of the American dream, while artists such as Robert Gober (2000.115) and Mike Kelley pioneered the nascent form of installation art in works that dealt with repressed infantile fears and wishes—the explosive material that haunts the unconscious psyche. It is this art that becomes relevant again in the context of our own troubled time.

Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC, 1983Nan Goldin (American, born...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 03:22:00 -0400

Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC, 1983
Nan Goldin (American, born 1953)
Silver dye bleach print

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1657 - 1658 Walter...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:38:00 -0400

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1657 - 1658

Walter Liedtke
Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Milkmaid was painted by Johannes Vermeer in about 1657–58. The small picture (18 x 16 1/8 in., or 45.5 x 41 cm) could be described as one of the last works of the Delft artist’s formative years (ca. 1654–58), during which he adopted various subjects and styles from other painters and at the same time introduced effects based on direct observation and an exceptionally refined artistic sensibility.

In The Milkmaid, tactile and optical sensations coexist: nowhere else in Vermeer’s oeuvre does one find such a sculptural figure and such seemingly tangible objects, and yet the future painter of luminous interiors has already arrived.

Influenced by the detailed realism of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675) and his followers in Leiden, Vermeer created his most illusionistic image in The Milkmaid. To modern viewers, the painting may seem almost photographic in its realism. However, the composition was very carefully designed. This is evident from several revisions made in the course of execution, and from the finished work’s subtle relationships of light and shadow, color, contours, and shapes. As in the Woman with a Water Pitcher (89.15.21), of about 1662, Vermeer restricted his palette mainly to the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow, and he favored geometric shapes (in The Milkmaid, the right triangle formed by the figure and the table are balanced within the rectangle of the picture field). A low vantage point and a pyramidal buildup of forms from the left foreground to the woman’s head lend the figure monumentality and perhaps a sense of dignity. Indeed, several authors have speculated about the activity and character of the “milkmaid” (who is actually a kitchen maid pouring milk) in terms that would be more appropriate for a saint or an ancient heroine.

The steady performance of domestic chores was often praised in Dutch literature and pictures of the period. It has been suggested plausibly that Vermeer’s kitchen maid is making bread porridge, which puts stale bread—there is an unusual amount of bread on the table—to good use by combining it with milk and a few other ingredients to make a filling mash or meal. And yet, like milkmaids and kitchen maids in earlier Netherlandish art, and like other young women in Vermeer’s oeuvre, his kitchen maid was meant to encourage the male viewer’s amorous musings, and to have her own thoughts of romance.

To the lower right is a Delft tile depicting Cupid brandishing his bow. The box on the floor is a foot warmer with a pot of coals inside; foot warmers frequently suggest feminine desire in Dutch genre paintings (because they would heat not only feet but everything under a woman’s long skirt). To the right of the foot warmer is a Delft tile decorated with the image of a traveling man, to judge from his walking stick and knapsack. This may suggest that the woman is thinking of an absent lover. (The image on the Delft tile to the far right appears to be deliberately indecipherable). Finally, in earlier Dutch and Flemish paintings of cooks and kitchen maids, including comparatively understated works by Dou, a pitcher tilted forward (as here) or held in some suggestive way refers to female anatomy (17.3.1771).

Vermeer may or may not have intended his pitcher as such an erotic allusion, but he certainly meant for the sophisticated viewer to recall earlier paintings of comely milkmaids and kitchen maids, and the reputation of milkmaids in particular for sexual availability. In real life, their impromptu suitors were often “proper” gentleman, not social equals, and of course the intended viewer of this painting (and those by Dou) was not a servant but a man of society and a connoisseur. Compared with the sort of ideal women we see in Young Woman with a Water Pitcher and other mature works by Vermeer, his “milkmaid” exudes a very earthy appeal, with her pushed-up sleeves (revealing pale skin normally covered), her ample form (similar to that of women in slightly earlier works by Rubens), and her faint smile. For a male viewer of the time (in this case, Vermeer’s patron Pieter van Ruijven), the hints of sexuality would have given the painting an element of fantasy as subtle as the shadows on the whitewashed walls.

In terms of style, The Milkmaid stands on the threshold between Vermeer’s early work and his mature style. In his earliest known paintings, Vermeer reviews various subjects and styles in Dutch art, as if considering alternative paths he might pursue. In Diana and Her Companions, of 1653–54 (Mauritshuis, The Hague), Vermeer, as might be expected of a young artist in Delft, treats a mythological subject in a manner favored at the nearby court in the Hague. Tales of Diana and her virginal band were popular with members of the Prince of Orange’s circle, partly because they enjoyed hunting and partly for the spectacle of nudes in nature. However, unlike court favorites like Gerrit van Honthorst and Jacob van Loo, Vermeer presents the goddess as chaste, her companions as loyal and serious, and the pregnant Callisto in the right background as ashamed.

In composition and to some extent in palette and execution, the mythological painting recalls Van Loo, but in Christ and the House of Mary and Martha, of about 1654–55 (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), Vermeer emulated more famous masters: Hendrick ter Brugghen, the Caravaggesque master from Utrecht; and the internationally successful Fleming Anthony van Dyck. The white daylight and the sculptural figure of Mary in the foreground recall the Dutch painter, while the fluid folds, agitated contours, and elegant pose of Christ recall Van Dyck. Again, feminine virtue comes into question: the fussy hostess Martha as opposed to the deeply thoughtful Mary, of whom Christ gently approves.

The Procuress, dated 1656 (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden), looks back to bordello scenes that Van Honthorst painted in the 1620s, which were well known in Delft. But in the play of light, textures of cloth, still-life details, and especially in the figure on the left (a likely self-portrait), Vermeer’s interest in direct observation has become more intense. The same may be said for A Maid Asleep, of about 1656–57 (14.40.611), where Vermeer’s point of departure—in subject, the warm palette, the rich shadows, and the rectilinear design—was Nicolaes Maes, the former Rembrandt pupil who in the mid-1650s painted popular genre scenes in Dordrecht (somewhat south of Delft). Finally, in The Letter Reader, of about 1657 (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden), the exquisite young lady and her reflection are inspired by Gerard ter Borch, the most refined Dutch genre painter of the day. The illusionistic setting recalls Leiden masters such as Dou and Frans van Mieris, although the large scale of the canvas and the curtain in the foreground are typical of Delft (Hendrick van Vliet’s views of Delft church interiors often feature a curtain in the foreground, as if covering the painting itself).

In the pictures of about 1657, one senses Vermeer’s growing independence, although various artistic sources may still be named. The arrangement of the figures at a table and the receding window in the Cavalier and Young Woman(Frick Collection, New York) are ideas shared with Pieter de Hooch (29.100.7) in Delft, while Dou and the Leiden master Gabriël Metsu (1982.60.32) (who had a strong interest in naturalistic effects of light) come to mind in The Milkmaid. But in these illusionistic works, Vermeer reveals a new confidence: the compositions become simpler and more effective; the space recedes naturalistically, without any props at the picture plane; and the attention to effects of natural light are remarkably convincing. In The Milkmaid, tactile and optical sensations coexist: nowhere else in Vermeer’s oeuvre does one find such a sculptural figure and such seemingly tangible objects, and yet the future painter of luminous interiors has already arrived. As if conforming to the play between optical and tactile qualities throughout the picture, the pointillß pattern of bright dots on the bread and basket, Vermeer’s most effusive use of the scheme, suggests scintillating daylight and rough textures at the same time.

In later works, Vermeer would minimize the sensation of textures, volumes, and receding space (although there are a few conspicuous displays of linear perspective). The Museum’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher and the slightly later Woman with a Lute (25.110.24) describe figures and interiors largely in terms of light and shadow; frontal forms are carefully balanced, to tranquil and contemplative effect. In a sense, it becomes more obvious that Vermeer creates idealized visions of reality, like dreams of what the next day would bring. But such a vision—close at hand and forever out of reach—is already seen in The Milkmaid.

The painting was probably purchased from the artist by his Delft patron Pieter Claesz van Ruijven (1624–1674), who at his death appears to have owned twenty-one works by Vermeer. When these pictures were sold from the estate of Van Ruijven’s son-in-law Jacob Dissius, in 1696, The Milkmaid was described as “exceptionally good” and brought the second highest price in the sale (Vermeer’s celebrated cityscape, A View of Delft, was slightly more expensive). “The famous milkmaid, by Vermeer of Delft, artful,” was auctioned in 1719 and then went through at least five Amsterdam collections to one of the great woman collectors of Dutch art, Lucretia Johanna van Winter (1785–1845). In 1822, she married into the Six family of collectors and it was from the heirs of Lucretia’s two sons that the Rijksmuseum, in 1908, purchased The Milkmaid, with support from the Dutch government and the Rembrandt Society.

Johannes Vermeer, A Girl Asleep, 1657 From The Met: Gallery...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:27:00 -0400

Johannes Vermeer, A Girl Asleep, 1657

From The Met:

Gallery Label

This canvas of 1656 or 1657 is the earliest work by Vermeer to depict his usual subject of one or two figures in a domestic interior. The wine glass and unsettled objects on the table suggest that some social occasion has passed. To the upper left, the corner of a painting of Cupid (known from other pictures by Vermeer) includes a fallen mask which refers to the woman’s unguarded expression. Radiographs reveal that Vermeer originally included a man in the background and a dog in the doorway; these motifs were replaced by the distant mirror and the chair with a pillow to the lower right. In changing the composition Vermeer made its amorous theme less obvious, just as his remarkable passages of observation obscure his borrowing of ideas from other genre painters, such as Nicolaes Maes.

Catalogue Entry

This picture is possibly Vermeer’s first effort in the field to which he devoted nearly all of his mature career: scenes of domestic life, usually focusing on a woman’s personal surroundings. It probably dates from 1656 or 1657, following Diana and Her Companions of about 1653–54 (Mauritshuis, The Hague), Christ in the House of Mary and Martha of about 1655 (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), and The Procuress, dated 1656 (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden). It is likely one of the earliest works by Vermeer to have been acquired by the contemporary Delft collector Pieter Claesz van Ruijven (1624–1674), who owned all or at least most of the twenty-one paintings by Vermeer sold in the estate sale of his son-in-law, Jacob Dissius, in 1696.

It is known from technical examination [see Additional Views] that Vermeer made several changes to the picture. An x-radiograph reveals the figure of a man in the rear room, his head coincident with the mirror which, like the table below it, was added at a later stage. The man’s face appears to be seen in profile, and two different hats were tried on his head. The larger hat is seen from the front, indicating that at one stage the man was coming toward the viewer. A dog stood by the open door, looking at the male visitor. The still life on the table was also substantially revised [see Ref. Liedtke 2007]. Thus, the implication is not that a visitor is expected, but that one—to judge from the open door and the disorderly array of objects on the table—has recently left the room.

The corner of a painting on the wall above the maid shows the leg of a Cupid and a theatrical mask. Similar paintings appear in other works by Vermeer, and may be based on a painting of Cupid (or Amor) listed in the 1676 inventory of the artist’s estate. The mask may have been included in the MMA painting to suggest that love is here unmasked.

[2010; adapted from Ref. Liedtke 2007]

Photo

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:58:00 -0400

Photo

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:57:00 -0400

Photo

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:56:04 -0400

Raging Bull (1980)

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:54:00 -0400

Raging Bull (1980)

Edward Furlong and Arnold S. filming Terminator

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:10:00 -0400

Edward Furlong and Arnold S. filming Terminator