Art History My Way

I've been lax around these parts lately, doing most of my small posts on Tumblr instead of here. It's a simpler, cleaner, quicker interface for short-form posts and other than sketches and TV reviews, that's mostly what I've been cranking out lately. Really short pieces, barely longer than what I might Tweet. If y'all aren't already following me over there, you should - either through Tumblr's follow mechanism if you've got an account or through the RSS feed.

But anyway...

I've been doing this series of pieces that I think are worth reposting here, so below are the first three. Hope you enjoy.

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In September 1938, Mondrian left Paris in the face of advancing fascism and moved to London. After the Netherlands were invaded and Paris fell in 1940, he left London for New York City, where he would remain until 1970 when his agent, Ruben Kincaid, suggested he and his five children could find some success taking their painting act on the road.

Mondrian was the most accomplished artist of the group, but the contributions of his children should not be overlooked. His youngest daughter Tracy for example, while possessing none of the skills of her father or older siblings, was quite adept at stretching canvases and skins, even pioneering a technique for stretching animal skins across a ring-shaped frame called a tambourine. The eldest child, Keith Mondrian, eventually became a bigger draw than his famous father as young women flocked to see him paint in tight pants.

The Mondrians toured successfully for four years thanks to the shrewd decisions of Kincaid and middle child, Danny. Danny Mondrian’s later problems due to his violent temper and sexual proclivities have been attributed by many to his atypical teen-aged years, but no one can question the quality of art he produced during that period.

—Laurence Funderkirk, The Modern Dutch Masters (Weehawken: Bergen County Community College Press, 1997), 212.

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The breakup of Ernst and Guggenheim sent shockwaves through the New York art world that would have repercussions for years to come. All throughout 1946, the question on everyone’s lips at cocktail parties and gallery shows was, “Are you Peggy or are you Max?” The factions that formed that spring and summer stood aligned against one another until decades past Ernst’s death at the hands of Czech Neo-Expressionists.
The tempestuous heiress brooked no quarter, destroying the futures of dozens of promising artists for no more than expressing sympathy for Ernst. However, for confidants such as Miró, Guggenheim showed even less mercy.

Blacklisted, the Spaniard was unable to find work through the 1940s and ’50s. Not until the mid ’60s did he finally secure a position working on background cels for Hanna-Barbera. While he worked under a pseudonym, astute observers on Guggenheim’s payroll did eventually spot his signature on a single frame and brought it to her attention in the autumn of 1971.

—Emily Rothschild-Messerschmitt, The Story of Miró (Batemans Bay, NSW: Eurobodalla Adult Education Centre Press, 1983), 669.

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Recent scholarship by renowned art historian Al Jaffee has shed new light on Hieronymous Bosch’s masterpiece, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Focusing on the grisaille on the back of the panels, Jaffee has concluded that the famed triptych was conceived of as a pentaptych.

The Garden was recently on loan to the William Maxwell Gaines Gallery in midtown where Jaffee is employed as the chief archivist. He examined the panels under the gallery’s electron microscope and discovered evidence that a message was cleverly hidden, only visible when folded shut in the appropriate configuration.

“Without the missing panels, I couldn’t say what Bosch’s message was,” Jaffee said. “It’s enough to drive me mad.”

Even if Jaffee can deduce the missing message on the back of the panels, the larger question remains as to what graced their fronts.

“Knowing those panels are out there means we might be able to find them someday,” Jaffee mused over lukewarm coffee in his office. “I hope whatever’s to the right of hell is really raunchy.”

—A. E. Neuman, “Five Wooden Panels,” New York Times, May 7, 2009, Arts section.

Jigsaw Building

There's video above, FeedReader. HT to Urban Prankster.

Watch carefully. You might not notice anything at first, but eventually you'll see the video being projected onto the Hague City Hall.

Aliza Shvarts: Crappy artist, brilliant marketer, or both?

Charlie Stross and Warren Ellis are both defending Aliza Shvarts as an artist, saying she's obviously faking.
Stross:

...the most inspired publicity-stunt debut in the art world since Damien Hirst unleashed himself with a display of freeze-dried aborted foetuses as earrings in the mid-1980s.

Ellis:

My money says the physical “art” doesn’t exist, not as described. I mean, I’m open to being wrong. But right now, I think the press release itself is the art piece. In fact, I would imagine any final presentation would be a collation of the media responses to the press release, broadcast as it was during a visit from the Pope to her country of residence. She’s going to be hoping someone sticks the PR in front of scary old Ratzinger.

(And if there is a physical piece, I bet you it turns out to be food colouring, latex and bits of chicken. I mean, use your heads.)

Okay, so let's say that's true for a minute. Let's in fact, review the possibilities here:

• Shvarts is pulling a PR stunt and framing the reactions as art...
• Shvarts self-aborted several times over a nine month period and will be displaying the results

The latter is several things: physically difficult (it's hard to impregnate *that* easily) and physically taxing; disgusting on many levels, though it is her body to abuse as it pleases her; while not derivative, not wholly original, either. If true, she's a sad excuse for an artist with severe emotional problems.

What of the former? What of the "most inspired publicity-stunt debut" since the 80s? Really? That's art now? First off, it's derivative of several conceptual artists. Secondly? It's derivative of every fucking April Fools website ever created. If all it takes to make it in today's art world is the ability to Punk people, than Aliza Shvarts is a piker compared to Ashton Kutcher.

Personally, I hope Shvarts is a true (if untalented) artist in need of serious psycho-pharmacological help. While I'd be disgusted, I could at least respect that. If instead, her piece is just a massive scam intended to produce vitriolic reactions, she's got a long career ahead of her in PR. Maybe when she graduates, she can get a job as a publicity flack for Tom Cruise.

Oh, who am I kidding. Some jackhole art critics, sorry "art" critics, will proclaim her a genius and she'll have a long and lucrative career.

Update: So it turns out Aliza Shvarts is just a future crappy PR flack.

Disturbing. Disgusting. Dismal.

I've tried three different times to frame this story out of Yale and three different times I've deleted what I've written. Art is dead.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

via Warren Ellis (and I think this might even have shocked him a bit)

Holocaust Art

Living in an era where Iran's President can spew his lies and Mel's dad still gets a soapbox, it's more important than ever that we never forget. For that reason, I not only think we need Holocaust memorials, but believe we should force the Huttons and Ahmadinejads of the world to visit and confront the harsh realities of our past, lest we repeat over and over again.

While I believe these museums and memorials need "rare artifacts and important evidence of the Nazi genocide", this should not come at continued pain to survivors. Those who survived - a rapidly aging and diminishing pool of brave, lucky souls - should be honored.

Dina Gottliebova Babbitt is a survivor. She just wants her paintings back.

The Auschwitz museum, which considers the watercolors to be its property, has argued that they are rare artifacts and important evidence of the Nazi genocide, part of the cultural heritage of the world. Teresa Swiebocka, the museum’s deputy director, wrote by e-mail that the portraits “serve important documentary and educational functions as a part of the permanent exhibition” about the murder of thousands of Gypsy, or Roma, victims. The portraits, she added, “are on permanent exhibition, although they have to be rotated to preserve them, since they are watercolors on paper.”

She added that “we do not regard these as personal artistic creations but as documentary work done under direct orders from Dr. Mengele and carried out by the artist to ensure her survival.”

The fact that the paintings were created by slave labor does not lessen the artist's ownership claims. If we are to learn anything from this horrific period of our history, we must recognize that Babbit's claims of ownership are strengthened by the dual facts of her confinement and duress.

The museum serves a noble and necessary purpose; however, it should not emulate those it villifies by denying victims their basic humanity. Nothing is more central to humanity than the act of creation.