I am not in a thinking space right now - a non-clever blog space, sorry - but I went to see the fra angelicos. LOVELY - magical - totemic. My eyes were seared with the god color. Amazing. Very crowded with dorkouts. A woman with a butterfly backpack kept squatting down in front of the images. Very disturbing and i thought she was gonna pick a fight with my pal Chicken. And then there was the earring dude. bald, overweight, and just one long, dangly earring. and the guy who was standing in front of the relics talking into a hand-held dictaphone. channeling the angels. taking message from self to self.
The Rauschenberg was way less crowded. I have a very real and persistant problem with these combines. Why are they so dingy and dirty? I feel like if I get too close I'll get a staph infection or hepatitis. please don't paint on that dirty shirt you found on the curb. no. This dirt thing really gets in my way. And the painting with the two fans and pipes coming out of it? What?
I know I know. I can get beyond it and the show has awesomeness everywhere. but the dingies. i dunno.
17 comments:
i forgot to mention that this squatting down in front of the relics did not only afflict the butterfly lady with the white paisley tights but many others. big butts were backing up on me the entire time. squat squat sqaut. i must've been missing something. maybe god's love was channeling into the believer's bowel regions? or it was a punishment from god via fra angelico. i did not have to squat to look at these. i might have peered. but no squatting.
i am going to go play vids now. and drink the brainless elixers again. wacka wacka wacka i bid you adieu.
I saw the Fra Angelicos wednesday FB. One dorkout old lady had her finger within milimeters of one of the delicate paintings. I almost went up to her and kicked her old lady ass. Duh! She was so "Paintings from the 1400's. . .I just want to rub up on them." pfffft.
Glad you saw it FB. In spite of the dingies the good stuff shines through. Like beacons and talismans, and bug zappers.
i will hopefully revisit the rauschenbergs again. even with their dinginess there was something in there.
also, just to clarify - reading this over - all the "god" talk is because of, you know, the religious content in the fra angelicos. not my own personal thing. i have not turned all goddy or anything.
fb, you must have gone to the Met last Thursday, I can't imagine more than one 'butterfly lady with the white paisley tights' The color in the Fra Angelico's was amazing, especially with old pigments and after 600 years. In spite of the religious overtones I found the paintings quite modern looking, a real suprise.
Yeah.
FB, I have not seen these shows, but it seems like it require be a major gear-shift to see them both in one day? Which should be viewed first?
yes sloth, they are so totally different. the fra angelico is over though i think?? sorry!
pd, the rauschenbergs... i've been thinking about something i read on one of the placards when i was there. his 'rejection' of the fictive space of painting. i think this is a funny statement because while his work is not pictorially organized it is a whole other emotional language - a whole other brainscape that easily falls in line with the world and history of paiting. but i guess looking back it is easier to see - when these were created it was a different situation.
i was really relating to the objectness of his paintings. something akin with my own work in how they are put together. the collage element. ham paw, you were right on that. oh, and so many birds.
I think my late work, where I trace my hand on the canvas, is my best!!
yes, it really speaks to me about the painter's hand, you know. how we are getting so far away from touch in this modern society.
What is amazing about the Rauschenberg combines, in particular the first room of works from 1955, is the quantum leap he made to get there. At the time, Pollock and De Kooning were the hot painters and the look was 'messy' The art world was smaller then and AE was the dominant style, it was how a lot of young painters were working. The trouble was, as it is when there is a dominant style, that it was hard to make ones work distinctly visible, to have an identity.
I think this was the place Rauschenberg found himself in the first part of the fifties, everyone was slinging paint around and trying to compete with De Kooning who was the master at paint slinging.
Essentially what Rauschenberg did assimilated the messy look but materialized it with junk, real junk and junky paint. The paintings and surfaces became literal which is what I think what the 'rejection of the fictive space' of painting statement refers to.
This is a literalist stance towards painting space, which was precisely an opposite position from the other AE painters who were discussing their work in terms of an extension of the pictorial space from cubism. It seems like a straight forward move in hindsight, but I suspect it was more the result of banging hard enough against a psychic wall to make it give way.
i would agree that RR takes the personal gesture of abex to a more literal level. the detritus of his life and times are literally collaged into the surface of the paintings. it's funny how dated this approach seems to me now.
he is still orgainizing his paintings in an abex style though - just replacing the only-paint-handling with a much larger vocabulary of stuff. taking it a step further. interesting how it relates to pop art.
i know, my comments my seem like art school 101 but i forget about stuff. and then i remember again. brain is sieve-like.
i still am bothered by the dinginess of the stuff though. it just doesn't age well. also, after the ecstatic viewing of fra angelico's spectacular ultramarines and gold leaf - the pure pleasure in his craft - the gemlike nature of these relics. it was a tough transition.
'…it's funny how dated this approach seems to me now.' Yeh, but the ideas get recycled. You're right about how he was organizing the paintings in an abex style using 'stuff' He had an instinctive sense for how to place things to make them work in the paintings. It's also the great strength in Basquiats work.
I suspect the 'dinginess' of the work may be partly a sign of those times, it was the Beatnik era, post WWII and dinginess must have been in the air. What's probably of value is your own sense of what works for you and what doesn't. It's a personal experience and when you see a show like RR and come away bothered by the 'dinginess', well I think that's a great reaction because you know something you can work against.
I agree about the Fra Angelico's. There was a painting in the third room, might have been the Tempest, whatever. It was a picture of a harbor(L), stormy sea(R) with an odd breakwater that was painted by Fra and an assistant. It was almost surrealist, or a scene in a videogame, most fun. With a lot of these old paintings, especially parts of an altarpiece, the little ones that went in the corners are the coolest ones, they look less self conscious, like the Pope or someone quit looking over his shoulder.
that fra angelico painting was sweet. all i kept talking about at the met was when i would be able to go back to tuscany. when? when?!
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