William Kentridge: Last Days in San Francisco

By LIZ HAGER

Only two more viewing days remain before “William Kentridge: Five Themes” at SFMoMA moves on to its next venue.

It has taken me 6 weeks and 4 viewings of the show to feel as if I’ve even begun to appreciate this artist’s profound and wondrous imagination. It’s not that Kendridge’s work is hard to access; it’s that there is so very much to absorb. (The performances of The Magic Flute and Black Box, not to be missed under any circumstances, require 50 minutes alone.) More important, because Kentridge deals with non-trivial topics—tyranny, suffering, our notions of the heroic, seeing and perceiving the world, the destructiveness of modernity—it’s necessary to dive deeper into the work than one session permits.  Though the process of discovery takes time, ultimately reaching ever-deeper layers of meaning in this show has been supremely nourishing to the soul. This is art of the best kind; it has caused me to think about not only how the world is, but how it could be.

Kentridge’s exquisite drawings are ends in themselves, rather than means to an end in another medium.  Charcoal (the burnt stick so emblematic of Africa), black gouache and ink are his dominant tools. Black & white fits his subject matter well, and not just in terms of darkness and light, evil and hope. In their use, one sees an evocation of apartheid, a topic which has inhabited Kentridge’s artistic life for decades. Or the apposition of everything (black) with the reflection of everything (white), which speaks to the nature of perception, another Kentridge’s signature themes.

True, the drawings are exceptional works in their own right. But theater is embedded in Kentridge’s DNA, so it’s films and theatrical pieces that really make this exhibition sing. (Kentridge refers to his film as “drawings in four dimensions.”) Most of them are conceived as cells for his animated films or projections for his performed pieces.  Kentridge has no allegiance to the work; drawings are constantly erased and images re-invented. It’s a refreshing departure from the contemporary practice of holding every scribble sacred. (Picasso famously said: “Who am I to destroy what God’s gift has allowed me to create?”)

The emotional content of the installations covers broad ground. On the one hand, merriment is much in evidence (amidst angst) in the films of Kentridge at work that run in endless loops in the room designated “Artist in the Studio.” Papers fly through the air with the greatest of ease; creator melds seamlessly with his drawing; landscapes fall to the bottom of the page in heaps; the artist tries to leave his studio on a voyage to the moon. These films are simple (though not simplistic) and mesmerizing. We meditate on the joys and tribulations of making art.

On the other hand, Black Box is a dense and disturbing darkness. The artist has conjured up a multi-media interpretation of the German conquest and subjugation of present-day Namibia. Paired with The Magic Flute installation, Black Box is the dark side of the Enlightenment; it brings to life the 19th century Euro-centric (racist) view of non-Europeans as undeveloped in need of colonial oversight. It’s a view that hasn’t entirely disappeared from the world.

Elegant mechanized figures perform their lament to animation and music. If you have been through the rest of the exhibition before arriving at Black Box, many of the characters and images here will be reassuringly familiar. They are Kentridge’s icons, windows into his complex cosmos.

Though the subject matter is dark, Black Box is not all darkness. There’s a small measure of comfort in the hand-drawn animation; against the backdrop of anonymous history, the artist (an individual) is ever present.  Further, in its execution Black Box evokes what modern eyes have come to see in silent movies, a naiveté all but occluded by 20th c. technology—edited sound, special effects and computer animation.

William Kentridge, What Will Come (has already come), 2007,  steel table, cylindrical steel mirror, 35mm animated film transferred to video, 8:40 min, 41 1/4 x 48 x 48″ (courtesy Norton Museum of Art).

What Will Come (has already come) contains its own thematic darkness. Kentridge conceived it as a response to the Italian Fascist invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), a conflict notable for the failure of the League of Nations to protect member state Ethiopia against aggression, the Italian’s illegal use of mustard gas, and the Ethiopians’ opposition despite the most primitive munitions (including spears). Though about a specific conflict, this piece recreates the horror of every war.

Animated drawings have been projected from the ceiling onto a circular disk. The first images emerge from drafted primordial soup. As the disk picks up speed, images fly around its core: birds morph into planes, figures explode only to be reconstituted in the next revolution, a gas mask floats above the ground like an elephant dirigible. The cyclical nature of the projection is reinforced by the title, and one is reminded of George Santayana’s oft-quoted phrase: “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In an inventive twist, the drawings are anamorphic—that is, they appear in a conventional manner only when viewed through the mirrored cylinder in the middle of the disk. The anamorphic technique, which dates back to the 16th century and has been widely used in motion picture lenses, has long been an interest of Kentridge’s, playing as it does into his fascination with machines and our modes of seeing. The two image planes, conventional and distorted, make the viewing experience chaotic. That’s only fitting for this subject matter.

“William Kentridge: Five Themes” is the most exciting display of imagination in recent memory.  Do not delay, run to MoMA before Sunday’s close.

From San Francisco, “Five Themes” travels extensively:
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth—July 11-Sept 27, 2009
Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach)—Nov. 7, 2009-Jan.17, 2010
Museum of Modern Art (New York)—Feb.28-May 17, 2010
Jeu de Paume (Paris)—dates TBD
Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam)—dates TBD
Albertina (Vienna)—dates TBD
Israel Museum (Jerusalem)—dates TBD

Wider Connections

You Tube—William Kentridge videos

John Coleman—Art as it Really Is

Richard Lacayo —Artist William Kentridge: Man of Constant Sorrow

The Art of Anamorphosis

Kipling “Take Up the White Man’s Burden“

On the Grid: Plain Weave, Crosswords and the Paintings of Agnes Martin

Plain weave is the simplest of weave structures. Warp and weft alternately interlace, forming a tiny checkerboard pattern. Plain weave is elegant, strong and wears well. If unadorned with a surface pattern, there is no right or wrong side. In its simplest form, when the warp and weft are of equal weight, tension and spacing, all the threads are equally visible. It is a model of harmony and balance. It is also the underpinning of the more elaborate overshot weaves–plain weave is the grid underneath the floating pattern that holds the whole thing together. Plain weave is incredibly versatile–variations in yarn weight, fiber content and spin, spacing and tension create infinite textural possibilities. Vary the color in warp or weft and you have stripes, checks, plaids.  One of the most interesting possibilities of plain weave is called color-and-weave, in which various arrangements of color in warp and weft create intricate patterns–equally effective in black and white as in color.

Ann Sutton, Structure of Weaving (color-and-weave)

The designing of color-and-weave patterns is often done on that other elegant and deceptively modest substrate–graph paper:

A piece of empty graph paper is simplicity itself yet it provides a way to sort and work out a lot of very complex ideas. Like plain weave, it provides a jumping off point, gives us a stable, reliable background to build on.

Weaving charts have a lot in common with the crossword grid. Another backdrop, this time for words and associations, not pattern and color. A good crossword clue will set off a chain of memories, associations and retrieved scraps of information–as you fill in the answers, the grid changes and shifts, the answers form their own unique pattern.

Thinking about the ways we perceive, design and visualize patterns brings to mind the work of Agnes Martin, whose entire oeuvre since 1961 involved the magical intersection of horizontal and vertical lines. Large or small, these paintings have a monumental grace. There is an expansiveness to her work, a sense of completeness, stability.

Martin said: “my paintings have neither objects, nor space, nor time, not anything–no forms. They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down form.” In her work, the patterns interlock–viewing one section, you see the whole. Her grids are anything but static. Martin’s canvases are always somewhat rectangular, so whatever grids they contain are thrown slightly off balance. Her grids and patterns can evoke textiles–stitching, quilting, pleating–and particularly weaving. Many years ago, at an exhibit of Martin’s work, I was standing in front of one of her large paintings, a luminous grid in soft blues and browns. I stepped back to see what happened when I moved a bit further away, and a man came and stood in front of me. To my extreme delight, he was wearing a wool sports jacket, woven in a subtle plaid in exactly the same colors as the painting–it seemed as though a piece of the painting had popped into another dimension. The man was loudly complaining to his companion that it was a painting about nothing, it was just a bunch of lines. He was oblivious to the magical connection between his jacket and the painting and, sadly, completely unable to see the serenity and power in the beautiful painting in front of him.

Agnes Martin, Starlight, 1963

Recommended reading:
Agnes Martin (Dia Foundation)
Agnes Martin: Recent Paintings 2000
Agnes Martin by Barbara Haskell, Anna C. Chave & Rosalind Krauss
In Pursuit of Perfection: The Art of Agnes Martin, Maria Martinez and Florence Pierce by Timothy Robert Rodgers

Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when galleries and museums are closed. Every Monday we highlight a few current exhibitions, new installations, or art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

Modernism, 685 Market, SF—Gottfried Helnwein, The Murmur of the Innocents, through June 29.

San Francisco Center for the Book, 300 De Haro, SF—Once Upon a Book (illustrators Elisa Kleven, Remy Charlip, Maira Kalman, David Macaulay, Chris Raschka and Brian Selznick), through August 7

Toomey Tourell, 49 Geary St, SF—Gregg Renfrow, Atmosphere through May 30.

Bay Area FAV—George Rickey at the Main Library

By LIZ HAGER

We’ve hunkered down into an indeterminately long recession. We’re tightening our belts, in the process shifting our discretionary dollars to less expensive entertainment options or forgoing some culture/entertainment items altogether.

Currently, most Bay Area art museums charge entrance fees in the double digits (the Oakland Museum is a notable exception). Not more than the climbing prices of movie tickets, to be sure, and still a deal, when you consider the amount of content that is available for the price.  And yet, with scores of art galleries closed or closing, the opportunities to consume art are shrinking. These are exactly the kind of times that ought to make art lovers appreciate San Francisco’s commitment to art in public spaces.

Venetian Red has covered some pieces in the “public domain,”  both permanent works (such as Michael Stutz’s Peplos Kore at SF Airport) and temporary installations (such as Patrick Dougherty’s Upper Crust resident in the Civic Center plaza until November). Today we initiate a more formal round up, periodically posting on the many of our Bay Area FAVs (aka Free Art Views).

George Rickey’s Double L Eccentric Gyratory sculpture (one of several versions he created) is located rather inauspiciously on the northwest corner of Larkin and Fulton at the edge of the Main Library’s footprint. Given the crowd of street habitués usually in residence on that corner, one might be forgiven for passing that point as quickly as possible, head down, etc. Still, we say, brave the crowd, pause and watch, Double L will make you forget (at least temporarily) its less beauteous surroundings.

One of two major American sculptors to make movement an integral part of his works (the other was Alexander Calder), Rickey produced kinetic sculptures as early as the 1950s and was the first to move his sculptures into outdoor environments. The stylistic influence of his early teachers Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant on Rickey’s later sculptural work seems self-evident; Rickey was heavily  interested in the geometric minimalism practiced by the Constructivists (e.g. Malevich, Tatlin, Gabo, et al.). He wanted to make public art that could be appreciated by people who understood the beauty of machines, although his machines don’t have a work purpose.

Double L is executed in Rickey’s signature style—braised and polished stainless steel geometric forms, whose movement is facilitated by a system of pendulums, fulcrums, rotors, gyros and pivots. Propelled only by the action of gravity and wind (lots of that in SF), the two giant heavy “L”s twirl almost inconceivably in effortless synchronicity, appearing to come close to, but never once colliding. (Of course this adds a lot of drama to the experience of viewing.)  After a few minutes in front of this sculpture,  you will realize that the pair is engaged in an ancient human rite, the courtship ritual.  It’s hard to believe that two large beams of steel could generate such a profound and ethereal experience.

Wider Connections

My SA Entertainment—“George Rickey’s moving sculptures make a stir in McNay retrospective”

Flickr—McNay retrospective

George Rickey in Indianapolis

Pink Martini—La Soledad

Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when galleries and museums are closed. Every Monday we highlight a few current exhibitions, new installations, or art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

SF MoMA roof garden—Ranjani Shettar, Me, no, not me, buy me, eat me, wear me, have me, me, no, not me, 2006-2007.

Michaëla Gallery, 49 Geary Street SF—In Camera (Taliaferro Jones, Douglas Freed, Josh Herman), through June 27.

Caldwell Snyder, 341 Sutter St, SF—Greg Miller, through May 31.

A Woman Rewrites History—the Venus of Hohle Fels

By LIZ HAGER

The Venus of Hohle Fels. (Credit: Photo by H. Jensen; Copyright: Universität Tübingen)

Uncovered last fall in a cave in the Swabian province of Germany, the Venus of Hohle Fels has caused quite a stir in both the anthropology and art worlds since her official unveiling yesterday.  Made at least 35,000 years ago, she is the earliest known example of carved figurative art, predating her more famous cousin, the Venus of Willendorf, by some 10-15,000 years.

In unapologetic school-boy titillation style, some reporters succeeded in embuing a venerable and sacred ancient notion of fertility with debased modern-world associations. Egregiously, The Huffington Post headline screams out—Venus of Hohle Fels: PREHISTORIC PORN. Lest we be too hasty in our condemnation, however, let us note that even normally staid Nature captioned its picture of the figurine as “Prehistoric Pin-up.”

All the tittering generated by this depiction of a “traditional model” female (to steal a well-turned moniker from Mma Precious Ramotswe, owner of the  No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) is in danger of overshadowing to the public the truly revolutionary nature of this find—that one tiny woman (she’s only about 2 1/2 inches long) has radically changed our views on the origins of not only Paleolithic, but figurative art.

Venus of Willendorf, stone figurine,
approximately 25,000 years old (courtesy Naturhistorische Museum, Vienna)

Given the strata in which she was found, scientists conclude this Venus was made in the earliest part of the Aurignacian period (for the Aurignac cave site at the foot of the Pyrenees where Paleolithic paintings artifacts were first discovered in 1860s). Often touted as the first “modern” humans, the Aurignacians were a clever people, whose development of a wide range of innovative tools guaranteed the survival of their genes and their culture. Relatively sophisticated tools allowed them to create the bold monumental paintings of Altamira/Lascaux , as well as tiny body ornamentation—pendants, bracelets, and talismans—found throughout the caves of France, Spain, and Germany.  The hook where her head should be makes this figurine a fertility amulet. But worshipped and worn by whom, woman or man or both?

Until the discover of the Venus of Hohle Fels,  female imagery was entirely unknown among the Swabian Aurignacian peoples. Animals and human/beast figures have predominated among the small caches of articles of adornment from this area, naturally leading anthropologists/archeologists to speculate that the Swabian Aurignacian culture was aggressive and male-oriented.

This Venus throws that notion onto its head. One hopes that the study of this relic will shed more light on the early cult of Magna Mater, Mother Earth, equally important as a force in human life.  We moderns have a lot to learn from this diminutive woman.

Photo: Courtesy The Martian Chronicles.

The Venus of Hohle Fels forms a center piece for a major exhibit Ice Age Art and Culture
September 18, 2009 – January 10, 2010.
Stuttgart, Germany

Connections Beyond

Venus of Dolní Věstonice

Venus of Brassempouy

Venus d’Aix

Ivar Lissner—Man, God, and Magic

Don’s Maps—Paleolithic figurines

Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when galleries and museums are closed. Every Monday we highlight a few current exhibitions, new installations, or art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

Scott Nichols Gallery, 49 Geary Street, SF—A Tribute to Don Worth (1924-2009), through May 30.

Fraenkel Gallery, 49 Geary St., SF— Bernd & Hilla Becher: A Survey: 1972-2006, through July 3.

Robert Koch Gallery, 49 Geary, SF—Kenneth Josephson, through June 27.

Ten plus One from the Musée d’Orsay

Inspired by your “Fortune Smiles” blog post, I took myself on a tour of the collection of the Musee d’Orsay. I thought it would be impossible to choose, but it was easier than I imagined. There were ten clear winners–well, with an 11th thrown in for sentimental reasons. There were also a few I’d love to see as runner-ups, all oddities for one reason or another. Vuillard’s Au lit–a completely monochromatic, pattern-free study, more like a Morandi than a Vuillard. Tissot’s Faust and Marguerite, a quite wonderful pastiche that somehow combines the monumental quality of a procession from Piero della Francesca with the formality of a history painting—all in a theatrical format. And then there is Renoir’s portrait of my favorite composer, Wagner, odd because it has a softness and tentativeness so uncharacteristic of Wagner and so unlike any portraits or photographs of him that I have seen. As a curiosity, I’d be interested to see August Strindberg’s painting, Vague VII, predictably moody, dark and filled with anxiety. And I have to admit to a fondness for Gustave Moreau’s Galatea. It’s a bit overwrought but it has that quality of myth turned psychological study that I like.

This exercise is a bit of a Rorschach test. As I review my choices, the dominant themes seem to be the enclosed space and pattern. Clearly, I am drawn to interiors—the dark inhabited space—at home, in the theater, even the outdoors—or a portrait that draws you in to someone’s soul; they all have an element of drama and psychology—something has happened and we’re not sure what.

Pierre Bonnard, Dejeuner sous la Lampe (Lunch by Lamplight)

Love the dark and light, it is tender and funny and I love the way he framed the image, it is so intimate, you’re right there, in the space…

Paul Cezanne, Portrait of Madame Cezanne

I know this is heretical, but I have never been drawn to Cezanne’s landscape and still life paintings. But I love his portraits. This one is a different type of interior, we enter into her stillness, her sense of peace, tranquility. The simplicity, the ethereal color palette, every brush stroke of this painting is in the service of creating a deep moving portrait, he must have loved her.

Camille Corot, Une Matinee, danse des nymphes (The Dance of the Nymphs)

Very drawn to the inhabited landscape. This painting is mythological in its inspiration but doesn’t get stuck there. The humans and the landscape are one, distinctions blurred—it manages to co-exist on two levels—it is almost like a stage set and yet has a very primeval landscape-as-memory quality.

Gustave Courbet, Le ruisseau noir (The Black Stream)

Another interior landscape. It is dark and intimate, no panoramic views, nothing larger than life that causes you to simply step back and admire. This is a path you could walk in solitude or quiet companionship. Gorgeous rendering of foliage, so evocative with such a light touch.

Edgar Degas, La Famille Bellelli

This painting is wonderfully subtle and sinister, so much tension and discomfort. A family portrait, yet everyone is so separate. The father, somewhat indifferent, turning his back to us; the mother so cool, her right hand on her daughter’s shoulder conveys no more affection than her left hand placed on the table. That daughter is already the image of her mother—the other girl looks ready to run off with the dog. I love the way he divided up the room, angles and partial glimpses of doorways–makes you feel that much more hemmed in. And then, there’s the wallpaper…

Henri Fantin-Latour, La liseuse (Woman Reading)

What a beautiful painting. I love Fantin-Latour’s portraits. Here is an interior within an interior. She is so absorbed in her book, it is so peaceful, meditative. The whole image is so beautifully framed, the pile of books, the painting on the wall, the hint of detail in the wallpaper–and then that gorgeous curve of the sofa, its deep red, the only really warm color, enveloping her. Not only the reader, but every object in this painting seems to have an interior life.

Eva Gonzales, Une loge aux Italiens (A Box at the Theatre des Italiens)

Here we are, another enclosed space, another mystery. I am not familiar with Gonzales’ work but I see from this painting that she learned her lesson well from Manet—present the relationship, don’t explain, leave the storytelling to the viewer. Beautifully painted curtain and flowers, wonderful light and dark. I love the way her arm is resting on the edge of the box, just the right amount of pressure, and the luminously painted skin, glove and jewelry just glow against the rich, dark velvet.

Gustav Klimt, Rosiers sur les arbres (Rosebushes under the Trees)

I’ve only recently become an admirer of Klimt’s landscapes. I love the shimmering, decorative quality and the subtle way the greens play against the pinks and mauves of the roses. It comes so close to abstraction but still keeps you firmly grounded in landscape. Especially like the patterns on the tree trunks and the little patch of sky in the upper right corner.

Edouard Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)

Edouard Manet, L’asperge (Asparagus)

Ideally, I would include every Manet in the world in this list, so I could not limit myself to a single one—so it’s a tie for my ninth pick.
I had to choose Dejeuner because the first time I came face to face with it, at the Jeu de Paume, I was absolutely thunderstruck by its beauty and power. I thought that a childhood and young adulthood spent gazing at masterpieces at the Frick, the Met and other great museums of New York had inoculated me from being knocked off my feet by seeing in person a painting I had so admired in reproduction. I can’t add anything to the volumes written about this painting, except to say that the crazy theatricality, the abstract light and dark, the sense of it being out of time and place, all combine to make it a painting you can never tire of looking at, there is always another mystery to unravel.

L’asperge is to me one of the most beautiful paintings ever made. In a way it has the quality of his late flower paintings, the still lifes painted as he was dying. Not their elegiac quality exactly, but the sense of clarity and light in every stroke of those flowers, is here in this asparagus. The luminous, infinite tones of white, the way it is hanging off the edge of the marble towards the dark wood of the table—it is one of those small paintings that manages to combine an amazing intimacy with a sense of monumentality, like a Turner seascape.

Edouard Vuillard, Le salon aux trois lampes, Rue Saint-Florentin (Interior with Three Lamps)

This painting has it all—pattern everywhere you look, a wonderfully theatrical sense of space, lights and darks, an ambiguous mood. The figures are in repose but the room is animated with energy,  light and pattern. There are all these wonderful angles, recesses, a wonderful cool palette, set off by the glow of those three lamps. If they send this one, I am going to have to steal it.

Fortune Smiles: Thoughts on Musée d’Orsay and Picasso Collections at the deYoung

By LIZ HAGER

Last week’s breaking news that both the Musées d’Orsay and Picasso will be sending a part of their collections to the de Young next year, while they renovate their facilities. The news made me want to shout for joy. How lucky can a provincial metropolis be?  Praise be to John Buchanan and Dede Wilsey for closing the deal.

The prospect of this once in a lifetime exhibition set me to dreaming. No doubt only a small number of the choice holdings will come our way. Still, if by some stroke of unimaginable luck, I were to have a say in the matter, which of the works in these glorious collections would I include?

I’m aching to see my best loves again, Manet’s Olympia for starters. Further, all things being equal, I’d prefer to view works from artists not generally well represented in the Bay Area. That is why there are no Rodins on my list, even though he counts as one of my favorite sculptors. Also, I’d want lesser known works from well-known artists included, which is why there aren’t any Picasso Cubist pieces on the list. (OK, I’ll admit: while I always found Cubism intellectually exciting, actually enjoying the work has always been challenging.)  Though it’s hard to limit the list, for the purposes of this space, limit I must.

My “Fortune Smiles” Top 10 list (in priority order):

#1.

Edouard Manet,Olympia, 1863,
Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay.

Of the French painters at d’Orsay, Manet will always top the list for me. Olympia is the most fetching of his works—the first truly-naked nude in the history of art. That brazen stare says it all.

#2.

Pierre Bonnard, Twilight (or The Croquet Game), 1892,
Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay.

Ever since reading Michael Kimmelman’s essay on Bonnard (“Introduction” to The Accidental Masterpiece), I’ve been hooked on Bonnard’s unique ability to make great art out of the seemingly monotonous details of his life.

#3.

Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers, 1875,
Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay.

The technical aspects of this painting—the perspective, the sheen of light captured as reflection off the floor and backs of the worker, the interacting poses of the workers, the stripes of the floor broken up by the circular curls of shaved wood. . . Stop me,  I could go on forever about this painting! And, on top of it all, a groundbreaking example of urban “realism,” to counter all those rural Courbet scenes.

#4.

Pablo Picasso, Two Women Running on the Beach (La course), 1922,
Gouache on board, Musée National Picasso.
I’ve always loved Picasso’s big chunky, neo-classical figures the most. Though thoroughly weighty, these two nymphs move with the spriest of strides.  They are joy personified.

#5.

Edgar Degas, The Tub, between 1886-1889,
Bronze, Musée d’Orsay.

There are lots of Degas paintings around the Bay Area, but one of his sculptural works would certainly make my d’Orsay list. Not the young dancer—she’s everywhere—but a bather, another of his other emblematic themes. Like da Vinci, this form is squeezed elegantly into the circumference of a circle. See how her toes gently violate the frame. . .

#6.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler,Variations in Violet and Green1871,
Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay.

Whistler’s place in the pantheon of great artists is finally assured. Bets are that the de Young will want his more famous Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, known colloquially as Whistler’s Mother, but I’m hoping the d’Orsay sends this one instead. Since viewing Whistler’s Six Projects at the Freer, I’ve been inexorably drawn to his more ethereal works.

#7.

Paul Gauguin, Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ, 1890-91,
Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay.

The d’Orsay doesn’t own the original Yellow Christ (luckily, however, this painting is at the Albright-Knox and Buffalo is not nearly as far as Paris), but I hope we will get the next best thing, Gauguin’s self-portrait with the Yellow Christ.  I never tire of Gauguin’s palette, which gave a later generation of artists—Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter in particular—the permission to go wild with color.

#8.

Gabriel Loppé, The Eiffel Tower Struck by Lightening, 1902,
Paper print photograph, Musée d’Orsay.

The French were instrumental in the birth of the photography, so it seems only fitting to include a representative of this medium on the Top 10. Loppé’s photograph achieves several aims—it uniquely speaks to to the role that photography played in the 19th century in documenting the natural sciences; it portrays this most most French of icons in all its majesty (the Tower built in 1889 was the tallest man-made structure until 1930); and ultimately it depicts unending the battle between the hand of man and the forces of nature.

#9.

Pablo Picasso, Groupe de Saltimbanques, 1905,
Pen, ink, gouache and traces of charcoal on vellum, Musée National Picasso.

I like the Picasso renderings of the Saltimbanques (acrobats), but frankly any of Picasso’s drawings would do nicely as demonstrations that the artist was in fact a master draftsman. Picasso famously noted that he spent a lifetime learning how to paint like a child.

#10.

Henri Rousseau, Portrait of Madame M., 1895-97,
Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay.

In this case, Le Douanier’s naive style of painting reminds me of the rigid and unpretentious folk portraits created by itinerant painters of 18th century Colonial America. Rousseau’s stylized treatment of the flora gives this painting a naively decorative quality not found in most other paintings of his day.

Dark Day Picks

On Mondays Venetian Red celebrates the day of the week when galleries and museums are closed. Every Monday we highlight a few current exhibitions, new installations, or art world tidbits. Get a jump on a week filled with art.

Museum of the African Disaspora—Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits (photos from the National Portrait Gallery) through June 14.

Velvet di Vinci, 2015 Polk Street, SF—Ford + Forlana: Back + Forth, through May 31.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts—Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth, through July 5.  40 “soundsuits”—wearable sculptural suits made from variety of materials, manmade and natural.