A Visit to the “About Face” Exhibit at the Blanton Museum
Chuck Close
Self-Portrait, 1999
Relief etching
Yesterday we checked out the “About Face” portrait exhibit at the Blanton Museum. Another great exhibit! For exhibits like this that are (more or less) chronological, we try to start our viewing at the end, or the latest works, and work our way backwards in time. I usually enjoy viewing contemporary works the most, as I haven’t seen as many of them, and they are more relevant to my own work.
I absolutely love all works by Chuck Close. He’s one of the painters that I contemplate often when I am about to start a painting session. I love how his portraits are made up of tiny abstract shapes, and how interesting all those shapes are, and how much fun it is to see a progression of the various shapes within the portrait—more fun when the work is in color, but almost more interesting in black and white. I keep wondering how I could incorporate shapes like his into my abstract paintings. (Does it even make sense? Maybe I should paint little representational shapes that make up a larger abstract work.)
I was thrilled to see the work “Synecdoche” by Byron Kim, which consists of oil and wax on twenty panels, and are portraits in the sense that each panel is the base skin color of each of twenty models that he found on the UT campus; thus the title, ”Synecdoche” (a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole). These twenty panels are in a way part of a larger work, or kind of a synecdoche within a synecdoche, the larger work now owned by the National Gallery of Art. The larger work has been shown at such museums as the Tate and MOMA, which has a link to a nice video explanation by Byron Kim.
<– This sculpture made up of photographs by Oliver Herring amazes me. Kind of like David Hockney in 3D. :)
The oil painting by Jim Torok below is only about 4″ x 3″ — awesomely done and really requires close viewing! I’m trying to imagine the numbers of hairs in the brushes he must have used.
The portrait by Robert Henri is a long-time favorite of mine; I can stare for hours at almost any of his paintings, and his portraits are particularly amazing.
It is also great to see again the “Portrait of George Gershwin in a Concert Hall” by David Alfaro Siqueiros, which is also a portrait of dozens of the audience members.
So much great work, so little time to talk about it, so go to the Blanton and see this show yourselves, if you can. It’s up through September 4th. There are rooms and rooms of paintings from present day back to the 14th century. I took photos of many of the ones that I found compelling, which you can see in the gallery below.
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“Rivers” at Wally Workman
Ryan Coover’s River Blooms II, 2011 at Wally Workman Gallery
Last weekend, we finally made it out to Wally Workman Gallery to see the group show “Rivers.” So much excellent work! I was particularly interested in seeing two paintings by Ryan Coover, which were whimsical abstractions that seemed to contain microscopic life seen up a little closer. His two larger paintings were both beautiful and fascinating.
I also really enjoyed the wonderful luminous colors in the large and small abstract oil paintings by Joyce Howell, and the lovely large worlds created by Saliha Staib. Neighbor Jennifer Balkan’s paintings are always a delight to view; I love her hunky application of paint!
Well, instead of reading my blatherings about how much I enjoyed all of the work in show, why don’t you check out these photos I took of some of the paintings there:[nggallery id=115]
Or view far better photos on the Wally Workman blog, where you can also find out more about all the artists and their work.
Pictures from the Davis Gallery and the Blanton Museum, 12-2010
y brother visited Austin last December, and my husband and I took him on a sightseeing tour of several great places around Austin, including a couple of places to see art.
One day, we made it over to the Davis Gallery to see the really awesome wood sculpture of Caprice Pierucci. Her work really blows me away. It’s both very labor-intensive and very organic in appearance. I love the undulations and how she makes wood appear so fluid! Take a look:
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Here’s a good little review of the whole show in the Chronicle.
The next day we headed over to the Blanton to see the “Turner to Monet: Masterpieces from The Walters Art Museum” exhibit, which was slightly underwhelming. But then we headed up to the second floor to view the American and Contemporary galleries. A lot of wonderful humongous works and a few interesting and even awesome installations.
I was hoping to see a piece by Byron Kim titled “Synedoche,” that I had seen years ago. It’s a 20-panel piece that is composed essentially of portraits of 20 people randomly encountered on the UT campus—but each panel is a solid color— the color of their skin, representing the whole person (hence the title), with the group of painted panels representing the larger population. I’ve seen another larger portion of this project, which I thought I saw here in Austin, and which has even more impact. The initial work received a lot of acclaim in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. There is a 400-panel iteration of this at the National Gallery that I would really love to see in person.
Unfortunately, this was not on display during our brief visit to the Blanton, but here is a group of photos I shot from the Contemporary galleries there. For artists and explanations of the work, you really owe it to yourself to go to the Blanton and take a look yourself. Many of these pieces become even more interesting when you find out the motivation and intent behind their creation.
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Oranges and Sardines at the Armand Hammer Museum
Painting by Mary Heilmann
“Blood on the Tracks”
2005
Today I mapped out about 4 different exhibits I wanted to get to, and they weren’t necessarily that far from each other (Westwood, Hollywood, and Santa Monica); but we got going too late, and had to return to Pasadena too early to be able to fit in more than one of them, especially considering LA traffic (1 hour to get there; 1.5 hours to get back; how do people stand it out there?).
The first (and last) place we made it to was the Armand Hammer Museum, which I am now officially declaring to be my favorite museum in LA. Every show we’ve seen there has been fantastic. OK, well, that may not apply if you’re primarily interested in viewing only Impressionist works or art from previous centuries. But for me and Terry, the shows at the A.H. tickle our art-appreciation bits the most.
Cut Paper Exhibit at the Vincent Price Art Museum
One of the art exhibits I really wanted to see while in LA, based on my pre-trip research, was the “Cut: Makings of Removal” exhibit at the Vincent Price Museum at East Los Angeles College.
It did not disappoint. In fact, I was quite blown away. All of the work is created with paper cut by the hand of the artist. The variety of work was delightfully surprising.
What had really drawn me to the exhibit was an installation of hanging paper by Chris Natrop. Delicate vines of cut white paper hung from the ceiling in a small space of maybe 8′x8′ and gave one the sensation of entering a magical paper garden.
Duchamp and More at The Norton Simon Museum
Painting by Helen Frankenthaler
“Adriatic”
1968
Just a week after the East Austin Studio Tour ended (my last big art event for the year), we took another vacation out to LA to visit my husband’s elderly parents.
On our first day there, we met up with my friend Patri, and proceeded to the Norton Simon Museum. Well, we did a kind of a whirlwind tour there. We had gone for the Marcel Duchamp Redux show, which was quite a tiny show. It was literally a copy of a show they had had there decades earlier. They had mostly prints of about 14 pieces from the earlier 1963 show, all in one small room.
Song Kun at the Hammer Museum
Painting by Song Kun
It’s My Life 05-08-31
2005
Oil on canvas. 10 5/8 x 13 3/4 in. (27 x 35 cm)
Courtesy of UniversalStudios-Beijing, Beijing, China
Several great exhibits at the Hammer Museum
Today, our final day in LA, we headed over to the Hammer Museum to see Eden’s Edge: Fifteen LA Artists: Ginny Bishton, Mark Bradford, Liz Craft, Sharon Ellis, Matt Greene, Elliott Hundley, Stanya Kahn & Harry Dodge, Monica Majoli, Matthew Monahan, Rebecca Morales, Lari Pittman, Ken Price, Jason Rhoades, Anna Sew Hoy, and Jim Shaw.
Museums in Balboa Park, San Diego
We spent a couple of days in San Diego; one whole day at Balboa Park. The first museum we came to was the Museum of Living Artists, so of course, we had to check that out. They had a show of local artists responding to the Dead Sea Scrolls (which are currently showing at the Museum of Natural History).
Good show, similar in some ways to an AVAA show. For a local show, I was impressed by the number of strong and thoughtful pieces. There were many interesting responses to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Tim Hawkinson’s Zoopsia and Uberorgan at The Getty Museum
Today we went to the Getty Museum to see the Uberorgan by Tim Hawkinson. We arrived just in time for the hourly musical performance. It is very cool — pipes, bladders, tubes and horns made out of industrial materials, a 250-foot-long scroll with black dots and dashes that create the score, and a device that electronically reads the marks and turns them into sounds.
Then we went to see his other pieces – Zoopsia. There was a huge octopus made with photographs of the artist’s mouth as suckers; a flying bat made from used black plastic bags; a huge calligraphic dragon painted in the Chinese style on a large brown kraft paper; but my favorite was a display of what seemed to be the skeletal remains of the vertabrae of a dinosaur, but each vertebral “bone” was formed out of a tiny man with ribs as oars. The whole thing was made out of sculpey! Brilliant.
The MOCA in LA…
Pictured: Nancy Rubins’s Chas’ Stainless Steel
Mark Thompson’s Airplane Parts
About 1000 Pounds of Stainless Steel Wire
Gagosian’s Beverly Hills Space
at MOCA (2001/2002)
Whenever we vacation in LA (to visit my husband’s father and his wife) I always try to see as much art as possible.
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