What Works Better in Bushwick? 

     On January 11th, 2013, ArtHelix Gallery in Bushwick opened an exhibition that positions both the artwork found within, and the neighborhood outside in a perplexing light. The artist, Jene Highstein, has been exhibiting his work for more than 40 years, and is known internationally in the collections of museums, private individuals, and corporations. How does his work fit in to the edgy, counterculture vibe of this neighborhood that is the fertile soil for emerging artists in Brooklyn? Uncovering the details behind the artwork, the venue, and the people involved will point to whether the match is a good fit for all, or a round peg in a square hole.

   

 Cape Breton Drawing, 2012 

watercolor and gouache on rice paper 

    Jene Highstein: The Cape Breton Drawings showcases a loose and colorful series of abstract watercolors and gouache on paper created between 2008 and 2012 at the artist’s summer home in Northern Canada. Better known as a sculptor and installation artist, Highstein’s organic, nature-based work is most often created from stone and wood. The artist spent one year studying drawing at the New York Studio School in 1966, but since then has worked almost exclusively in three dimensions. Despite the apparent focus on three-dimensionality, his practice has never strayed from the fundamentals he learned while young.
“Drawing is an integral part of how I think…The drawing has always driven the work.”

    For this sculptor, drawing is the armature on which his work is built. Until 2008, few exhibitions were comprised of his drawings. Of those that have been shown, his black and white examples were geometric studies or frenetic “Splash Drawings.” Any drawings in color were flat, mostly monotone, and geometrically-based studies of glass vessels. The work in this series is the artist’s first combination of bright, multicolored, and vibrant abstract imagery.

 

A Hexagon in Space, 2006

bone black pigment on paper 

 

Blue and Yellow Double, 2006 

watercolor on rice paper 

     At 71 years old, Highstein forges into new directions when most would enjoy the slower pace of retirement. Instead of migrating to Florida, the Baltimore native, New York transplant heads north every summer to Cape Breton, an idyllic woodland island midway between Detroit and the southern tip of Greenland. Long walks with friends and family through the island forests inspired the watercolors, and prompted Highstein to say, “The sky and sea are constantly changing color. It is a magical landscape.”

    The Cape Breton Drawings are Highstein’s responses to these nature walks, which were approached in the same way that he begins his sculptural work; by asking the question, “How can I depict space?” Beginning with the paper, Highstein used Xuan, or rice paper, a material that complements the calligraphic style of this series. It is extremely thin and accepts watercolor and gouache in various and often unpredictable ways. In fact, the rice-product is so thin it is partially transparent and at times the bravado of the colors and strokes appear to shimmer in midair. Even handling the paper when it’s dry carries a risk of tearing, let alone when using water-based applications. Choosing the truest media for the task is only part of the challenge, as Highstein acknowledges how the atmospheric qualities are coded into abstraction. “It’s the hand…Seeing what happens…It’s very intuitive.”

    The resulting impressions produce a range that vacillates between jagged and airy. All things considered, the mood of the exhibition, curated by the insightful and creative independent curator Bonnie Rychlak (formerly of the Noguchi Museum), is professional, yet successfully resists the urge to sound pedantic. The Cape Breton Drawings, closing on March 11th, is the inaugural show of ArtHelix Gallery, headed by the eccentric and alchemical artist/gallerist Peter Hopkins. Hopkins’s former endeavor, the Bogart Salon, is reimagined into ArtHelix, a constantly shifting culture of ideas and activities. Ten minutes in the room and a mere five with Hopkins will convince visitors that trying to anticipate what’s next from this team is futile. Anything could happen. For this show at least, an awarded and respected artist comes up with something new in his twilight years. Is Brooklyn the most likely choice for its first destination in New York? That much is doubtful. However in the words of the artist, “For me to show my art here [in Bushwick], is a great privilege.” The Cape Breton Drawings benefit from keeping good company amid so many talented emerging and mid-career artists, while on the other hand, Highstein has a down-to-earth longevity and staying power in the art world from which many of the less-experienced could learn.

 

Cape Breton Drawing, 2012

watercolor and gouache on rice paper 

 

Cape Breton Drawing, 2012 

watercolor and gouache on rice paper 

Back in the Swing; Courbet at the Met

Okay, so we're back in the swing of things.
Let's jump right in.
What should be our topic this time?

How about a review of an exhibition? Bear my apologies, for I am writing this review almost 3 months after having experienced it.

Courbet at the Met:

I've always found Courbet to be one of the more interesting art personalities. I would imagine contributing as a major art world revolutionary would require so. But the Met has really brought this description home for me. The catalog picture, a close up self-portrait of the artist in a vulnerable state of exasperation, drives home the idea that you are getting more than you paid for. Between the politics, scandalous eroticism, and virtuous landscapes, who could ask for more? Let's take a peek, shall we?

A professor of mine once told me that the first reason a person looks at a painting is the visual quality. And that it is more often than not this characteristic that dictates whether the mobile audience of a museum stops and ponders, or skips and passes. Courbet's work has always had the attributes of the former. Upon first entering the exhibition space it is easy to notice the appeal of the artist's skill. Meticulously rendered landscapes are often not the first images associated with Courbet in the annals of history or among enthusiasts, but these are some of the first works the visitor comes across. This is either done inadvertently or, as I am reading too much into it, to whet the appetite for the rest of the display, which will further challenge our perceptions of this French Modern Master. It is through these picturesque visual appetizers of Flagey, the Seine, and the Valley of the Loue that the viewer is able to appreciate the delicate skill of Mr. Courbet's coordination. Rich colors pulsate from canvases over 150 years old. The lack of deterioration is noted, as there are portfolios by artists 50 years newer that resemble photographs of stilled lightning.

Swept up in the current of the aesthetics, you are pushed downstream to more figurative works. Bathers, Sleepers, and Beautiful Irish Women (or are they the same woman), hold frozen in time, as if their only reason for existing was to hold this pose for your eternal enjoyment. The gilded frames could serve to line a Victorian era mirror, which would be suitable because Courbet's subjects of nature, society, and the body easily reflect our own states of being and show us the layers of humanity.

Entire reviews could be written on his collections of self-portraits alone. Courbet's depictions of himself reveal his inclination to paint himself into different roles. You'll see him as the traveler in "Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet," the haughty young man in "Courbet with a Black Dog," and in a moment of instability as "The Desperate Man," the exhibition title shot.

Finally, we come to the maverick's treatment of the human body. And while not the last images you see as you exit the gallery, one might say they are the last ones you are thinking about when you do. A small grouping so controversial, back in the last half of the 1800's and today, that to see them in New York this year you have to enter a partitioned off area with a warning that the works included might not be suitable for children. And I agree with them. I don't recommend the recent Botox transfusion to step inside the parlor unless you have someone to raise your eyebrows for you, because you just might hurt yourself trying. A blatant, raw, all too honest painting titled "L'Origine du Monde" (The Origin of the World) is the show-stealer. I'm not going to drip the details for you here (in case some pre-teen is locked away in his room stealing a read from this blog), but it looks like what it sounds like, and then some. It was so scandalous back then that at the Met you get to read a little blurb about how fellow artist Andre Masson was commissioned by an owner of the Courbet work to create a landscape on a wooden panel, flirtingly similar to "L'Origine." This wooden panel, when slid aside, revealed the controversial Courbet piece, in a secret compartment. And who said museums were boring? While the rest of the show in no way disappoints, you might linger your way on from there, not really plumbing the depths of other artwork you see, but with a mischievous smile on your face as if someone let you in on a dirty secret.

All in all, some artworks catch the eye and interest more than others, but a show worth seeing if you really want to experience Courbet. So if you didn't make it to the collection this time around, don't expect this to be the last you hear of Monsieur Courbet. Although this is his first major retrospective in over thirty years, his colorful life and work promise to keep him in the spotlight of modern research and thought. We can only look forward to the next serving of his exciting imagery, and maybe this one will even let the children in.

जोसेफ कर्नेल

Alright Ladies and Gentlemen,

because I know there are more than a few of you out there interested in him, let me open up the floor on Joseph Cornell. His assemblage works some might call surreal, morbid, then YOU might just call them happy and inspiring; but I don't think you would disagree that they show a level of calculated skill and completion. It at least serves to catch the eye, and from that point is where blogs like this take over.

I am attaching some useful websites to check out his work. After you do, I want you to report back here and let us know your thoughts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cornell
http://artchive.com/artchive/C/cornell.html (great images of his work)
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/02/17/030217crat_atlarge?currentPage=1
recommends Mary Ann Caws's 1993 anthology "Joseph Cornell's Theater of the Mind"
(this New Yorker article paints a great picture of Cornell's life and from where his art comes.

Go get 'em, Tiger.

Inauggural Bloggurual

Good Afternoon,

Welcome to the kick off blog for Artist Arena! Let the purpose of this blog be for anyone passionate about art, to pitch in; anyone with a nagging question about art, to find an answer, or at least some direction.

You don't have to like art to contribute. The artworld is made up of many influential people, including artists themselves (Dadaists for example), who don't like art either. So just throw in your two cents and we will make some money out of it. But if you are passionate like me and some great artists I know, lets kick it off and make some music.

Anyone can throw out a discussion topic and start it off. Join in at anytime, feel free to ask questions to the group, post pictures, attach links - anything you think might make this world a little more interesting.

We all certainly have our favorite types of art as well, but don't feel like we are not "your type" of art people. Just like any great soccer team the artworld needs to thrive on ALL different types of players.

So let's get it started in here.

-Blake J.R.