Suzanne C. Ouellette
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Mexico in Philadelphia

12/8/2016

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Rufino Tamayo, Homage to the Indian Race, 1952.
PictureDavid Alfaro Siqueiros. Portrait of the Bourgeosie, 1939.

Just through January 8, 2017, the Philaelphia Museum of Art is presenting a wonderful exhibition of Mexican Art, Painting the Revolution:  Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950.  The show offers a lot.  On display for you to think about are Mexican history, politics, and social-cultural change;  the work of larger than life individuals, including artists, politicians, and heros of the people; several different art movements; Communism; Fascism in its many forms; the movement of artists across borders; and more.

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Seeing the art makes me want to go back soon to Mexico City.  I want to see this art and more of it in the place where it was produced.  For example, although the video and film representations of the murals of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros are very powerful,  they leave the viewer wanting to see the "real thing," up close --  wanting to stand in front of the actual murals in the special sites for which they were commissioned.  
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Jose Clemente Orozco, The Epic of American Civilization. 1932-1934.
Same is true for the murals by Jose Clemente Orozco that are in the library at Dartmouth College, no matter how gruesome many of his panels are.  The above is a rather shocking depiction of the academic system.

Particular pieces that I know I will find myself thinking lots more about in the future include three marvelous pieces by Frida Kahlo.  One is her first self-portrait that she called her "Botticelli."

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Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress, 1926.
This portrait, long neck and all, is just lovely.  Maybe not quite as lovely but certainly very thought provoking are two later pieces that Kahlo did while in the United States.  Through both, she expresses her strong criticism of life in the north and one offers a striking contrast between her view of life in Mexico and that in the U.S.

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Frida Kahlo, My Dress Hangs There, 1933-1938.
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Frida Kahlo. Self-Portrait on the Border between Mexico and the United States, 1932.
PictureElizabeth Catlett. Sharecropper, 1952.
Close to the end of the exhibit is a large room filled with political prints, many produced by two very active artist collectives, with messages that shout at the viewer.  Printmaking as an art form that is especially well-suited to political commentary and action has strong roots in the work of Mexican artists.  No punches are pulled here.  The artists' naming of evil in the world and their calls to eradicate it fill the room.  






















Among all the pieces in this room, one that quickly caught my eye and wouldn't let it go was a linocut by the US artist, Elizabeth Catlett.  In 1946, Catlett traveled to Mexico to work with the Taller de Grafica Popular (The Workshop for Popular Graphic Art).  The philosophy and goals of this group of Mexican artists well-suited Catlett's aim to make art of and for working people.  Catlett found in this workshop a safe space, without the prejudices and inequality she faced as an African American woman in the US.  

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Portraits of Some Human Interest at the Whitney

12/7/2016

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Can't say that I was thrilled by the exhibit, Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney's Collection (runs through February 12, 2017).  The geographical limitations of the American collection are a problem:  One yearns for some portraits from outside our borders.  I also wished for more paintings.  The photographic contributions are important but I missed paint and the very special thing it can do when an artist works with another person in a studio.  And maybe there are simply too many pieces spread over these two floors.  Although the curators created a thematic scheme that should have provided some sort of guide and order, I too often wondered why a piece was in one section and not in other sections I had just seen.  Too many pieces fall into too many of the curators' slots. Their scheme is not very useful.  No question, there are interesting ideas about American portraiture at work here, but they didn't strike me as especially original.  I have read these ideas before and seen them effectively illustrated.  

One last complaint:  The prime grand gallery space given to the larger than life statue of the artist Julian Schnabel.  These days, I have had my fill of larger than life male figures.  The only thing that drew a smile (or maybe it was a smirk) is that the statue is actually a burning candle and will someday melt down to nothing.  But then, when it does, the curators with replace it with yet another larger than life male figure.  At least, I can be thankful that the statue candle doesn't have orange hair.

All that said, I can't say I wasn't glad to have seen the show.  There were some pieces that inspired long looking and new ways of thinking and feeling about how people depict other people; pieces that I wanted to learn more about after leaving the museum.  Here are just a few of those from the exhibit.

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Grace Hartigan, Grand Street Brides, 1954.
Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) is known as an abstract painter but, given her use of everyday objects in her work, is also connected with the pop movement.  The above is a painting of mannequins from one of the many bridal shop windows Haritgan saw in her Lower East Side neighborhood. I like the combination of the abstract and the figurative in her work,  the way portraits emerge out of the swirl of big, bold gestures, and wild, experimental brushwork.   There is lots of drama and energy here, you see a painter working hard to get it right. I also like the monumental quality of the painting. That involves more than just its large size of 72 9/16" by 102 3/8".  It reminds me of those grand old master paintings in art history -- those portraits of aristocratic family groups.  I read later that Hartigan based the composition on Goya's portrait of the Royal Family of Charles IV, circa 1800.   She was well recognized as a painter and as a teacher of painters.  
                 
                                   "Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the
                                world that has been given to me in chaos."  
                                                                                                              Grace Hartigan

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John Sonsini, Byron & Ramiro, 2008.
Since 2001,  John Sonsini has been painting mostly Latino short term day laborers who work in and around Los Angeles.  He finds the men at hiring sites and contracts them to pose for him at hourly rates. The two men he portrays here are breathing.  They have none of the lifelessness, alienated gazes, and anonymity of Hartigan's brides.  These two men are two distinctive people who connect with us.  The viewer feels immediately engaged with them as individuals.   We want to know more about them and about their suitcases.  What are these men trying to tell us with their eyes and stances?  Where are the men coming from and going to with those large bags?  What is in the suitcases?  We feel concerned about them, and know their lives are not easy.  This is also a large canvas (80" x 84").  There is room in it for the men, the painter, and for us.  
                                          
                                               "...painting a portrait is already political."
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                                               "For me painting the portrait is about recreating
                                           the sensation of presence, the experience of having
                                           the sitter in my studio."
                                                                                                                   John Sonsini
                                                          

​And then, there was this portrait:
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Andrea Zittel, A to Z 1993 Living Unit, 1993.

Andrea Zittel (1965-) is an artist living in California who explores objects and spaces for living, interested in displaying structures that speak of who we are through what and how we live.  I am intrigued by this as a form of portraiture -- a person depicted through the objects that constitute her or his living environment (remember the suitcases in the Sonsini painting).  For Zittel, who was living in a 200 square foot Brooklyn apartment when she made this piece, the installation represents the necessities:  Only just what one has to have in a living space (folding bed and seat, toaster oven, two notepads, a sweater, digital clock, two bowls, etc.).  

There are anti-materialist, anti-consumerist statements here that are well spoken to a society that needs to hear them.  And Zittel's portrait provokes other political questions and the hope for other political statements through portraits.  

Here are my musings.  This piece was done in 1993, many years ago, when there were not as many people forced to live nomadic lives, forced to carry only just the essentials with them, if they are lucky enough to do that.  What might a portrait dedicated to the living environments of refugees look like? 

                                          "Art, to me, is all about perception.  Historically, it
                                    was usually a form of visual perception, but now this has
                                    expanded to a more cognitive kind of perception. An artwork
                                    allows you to understand something in a new way."
                                                                                                                                    Andrea Zittel
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A Visit with Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim and the Death of an Egyptian Woman

12/4/2016

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Until January 11, 2017, the Guggenheim Museum in NYC presents a marvelous retrospective of the paintings of Agnes Martin (1912-2004).  Climbing the circling ramps of that unique space, the museum visitor not only looks at paintings but feels very up close to a person working.  It is like having a visit with her and probably getting as close as one could have gotten to Martin in life. 

It is not unusual these days to come upon video elements in an exhibition, including films in which the artist speaks.  This exhibit offers film of Agnes Martin painting and being interviewed about her work.  The video teaches a lot about the artist in her work.  Watching her paint and listening to her words,  I could go back to viewing the paintings thinking I better understood them and why she did them  I also felt certain that no one else could have done them.  Her paintings are a complete, or near complete, self-representation of Agnes Martin by Agnes Martin.   

One particular piece of the film has been in my thoughts since I viewed it.  The interviewer asks Martin if she ever painted a negative emotion.  Martin unequivocally says "no," that her aim has been to paint positive emotions -- joy, gratitude, friendship, etc.  She wants to have the viewer feel "elation" in front of her paintings.  She adds that tragedies are bad enough when they happen and asks: "Why would you want to repeat them in painting?".  I think Martin gets what she wanted.  The emotions I felt while standing in front of her work were positive. They have a calming, peaceful effect.  Looking at them carefully, quietly, for an extended piece of time, I felt relaxed.

But what about my own painting?  Not the still life paintings, but my depictions of current events.  Martin's strong statement about tragedy gets my attention.  She wants to provoke "elation" in the viewer, I paint images of dead children being carried out of the rumble in Syria, and refugees held back from freedom by metal gates. 













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I spend time with photographs of the world's horrors to recapture and repeat the events.  I don't leave that tragedy.  I make it my job to put on paper and canvas the image and a record of the feelings the event provokes.  Instead of Martin's list of joy, gratitude, and elation; I have a list of sadness, hopelessness, and despair.  My aim is to evoke a sense of connection with the people in the event and a sense of responsibility to them.  I want the art to be a call, to provoke a determination that something needs to be done about the horror-- that I, the viewer, need to do something in the face of events like this.   

Recently, I have been working on a series of prints compelled by the murder of Shamaii el-Sabbagh, a 31 year old Egyptian woman killed by the police as she participated in a small peaceful memorial gathering,  The masked riot police were said to have used birdshot to break up the procession as the people carried flowers to Tahrir Square.  Shamaii el-Sabbagh was the mother of a 5 year old boy, an accomplished poet, a recorder and preserver of Egyptian traditions, and a left-leaning activist.  Photographers and videographers captured a moment to moment account of her murder on January 24, 2015.  The internet was filled with images of her death and the efforts of her friends to support her, to keep her from falling to the pavement, to carry her to a safer place, and to cradle her and place her down gently as she died.

I thought it important to have her image on paper in a form that can be held.  Here are four of the prints.
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Seems we have gotten far away from Agnes Martin's luminous, order-inspiring, and elevating art.  I hope not. We need her paintings and their encouragement of calm and peacefulness more than ever.
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