Ofili opening

I went to the member's preview of the Aspen Art Museum Chris Ofili exhibit. We started in the second floor gallery.

This is the gallery where 6 Scenic Artists (including yours truly) painted the background mural. Details on that process can be found in an earlier post. 

I'd never seen Mr. Ofili's work before and was pleasantly surprised.  This is stuff you really need to see in person. He plays with gloss and flat- one of my favorite things. He plays with opalescence and opacity- another one of my favorite things. His drawing is solid. His color sense is solid.  He isn't afraid to dive "down down down where the iguanas play"

He has guts. It takes courage to stand out in a room of purple and these paintings take focus.

Heidi Zuckerman Aspen Art Museum Director  and Massimiliano Gioni Artistic Director of the New York New Museum of Contemporary Art (co-curator) gave the tour. The New Museum held first US exhibition of "Night and Day"  We learn that these paintings are based on the myth of Artemis. We learn that the darkest painting was hung first (this one screams Goya's Cronos devouring his children..). We learn that Mr. Ofili used 59 colors in the renderings for the background murals. (hmmmm…. we did not mix 59 colors…. we had 6 majors and riffed off of that… such are the dangers of print reproduction for artist's renderings… it will limit your color palette to the ink in your printer.. but then we only had 6 days...). Mr Gioni told us that "theatrical painters" painted the walls. Oh Mr. Gioni, so precise in so many other aspects… we are "Scenic Artists". Sigh, it's a losing battle. Nevermind. On to the next gallery…. I'll be more objective in the next gallery...

In the second gallery comes the controversy - the elephant dung , the virgin and the pimp.  Here we have "Pimpin ain't Easy" and "The Holy Virgin Mary" side by side on the wall for the first time in the US.  Okay, I have to smile.  Anyone who collages Tiger Woods into a painting of a smiling penis with word pimp in the title does not lack for humor. Oh, if we only shared the same penchant for porn… but without that hook to hang it all on I become distracted.  "Mr. Shithead" reminds me of the Pulik.

I start analyzing my fellow museum members by their foot ware (Jeanie Button's advice surfaces soto voce to look at the shoes on the subway and see if you can guess what that person is wearing).  For the women jewelry is out, you are now judged by the height of your stiletto.  The men may have a Patek on their wrists but they're wearing kicks. It's summer.  I think of a recent comment by a visitor who  returns to Aspen because  "Aspen is more diverse than the Hamptons." Hmmm…. 

The dung ball feet on each painting bring to mind Mythbusters. The difference in "polishing the turd" being that Mr. Ofili has used glitter and what I must assume is the same extremely toxic marine resin we used to seal the "Cats" dance floor.

Sadly, for me it did not shock. Perhaps if there had been mobs of protesters blocking the entrance as there were at the Brooklyn Museum, maybe if there was the threat of mad vandalism  (TG for that toxic resin but it does beg the question how much more would the vandalized work have brought at auction?)

maybe if the Aspen Art Museum were faced with the same tooth and claw legal battle for funding then this exhibit would have more punch, more "frisson". But no, here we reserve our protests for tortoises with iPads. Heidi did draw parallels between the tortoise protests and the Ofili protests in her preview talk.  Where are the tortoises of last summer? Oh, where have they gone?

"Frisson" is different in Aspen.

On to the next gallery where the the paintings celebrate Aboriginal dot painting… and I do mean celebrate.

There are too many people in the room these paintings need to breathe. I want to get close. I want to see the light grazing the canvas from an acute angle. I want to back away and see how things change at a distance. I will need to come back later to feel these paintings when there are no stilettos in the room.

There are two more rooms. I don't have pictures for either because as difficult as it was to get a feeling for the first three rooms it's impossible for the next two.  The paintings after 2005- the ones he did in Trinidad- those need time. You need time for your eyes to adjust  from the green glow of the Exit sign in the corridor. You need to be alone so that the amber glow from the other visitor's iPhone doesn't punch the chroma too high. Your brain needs time to decalibrate. This room begs for silence.  It is a closet of the mind. Your mind should be flooded with amber when you walk back into full spectrum light.  It's not a room for preview night.

The final gallery is a room with small portraits hung in a floor to ceiling checkerboard with large squares knocked out. The scale of the room to portraits is perfect.  It's very 18th century. It reminds me of Steadman's Ghosts of Gone Birds.

Here's the Aspen Art Museum description of the preview.  

After revisiting the first gallery I walked down the stairs past the  black velvet rope which cordoned off the upper tier where members of a less modest caliber would be served dinner "with the artist". I flash on Robertson Davies dinner scenes …. the exotic specimen on display…. oh which fork to use... a room flooded with multisyllabic jenga towers…the tightrope of pretension and restraint... perhaps baseball filet mignon caramelized to just the right shade of elephant brown…. little red and green jewels of coulis dotted around matte black desert plates and a bright yellow custard with sugar crystal sparkles … brûlée with a crust you have to  crack with the back of your spoon … tooth and tongue ….???  It did smell delicious from below stairs. Not even cubed crusty cheese and flat sparkling wine for us punters.  I flash back to days in Aspen when privilege was something you hid.  I think back to the days when the punters wouldn't be somewhere they could smell the steak. I flash back to days when circumspection was prudent.  Bread and cake.  Oh well. 

Classism is not a theme in Ofili's work. Sex, Death, Myth those are all there... but upstairs downstairs ?… not so much… Now that would be a brave show for the Aspen Art Museum to intentionally curate in this town. That might reach the level of "frisson" to which the Art Museum aspires.  

Purple, it needs more purple …. murals for Chris Ofili

I got an email from Scenic Arts Studios in March asking if I knew any painters in Aspen. Now that's a loaded question if there ever was one…. There are all kinds of painters but when it's a Scene Shop calling the question is "Do you know anybody who knows which end of a paintbrush to hold, how to mix colors without a swatch book, can climb a ladder, distrusts tools invented after Cromwell, shows up on time,  can paint in the dark, watched the Tony's (all the way through) , can quote lyrics to at least 3 Rogers and Hammerstein songs and knows what "a dead kitty on a stick" means?"

My response was predictable, "What do you need?"

My good friends at Scenic Arts did a full room mural for Chris Ofili's Night and Day at the New Museum in New York and now the show was traveling to the Aspen Art Museum.

Work in my hometown… with friends I hadn't seen in 25+ years?  Kidding myself that I could still work like a Scenic I said "Sure." Just my luck it dovetailed with the Aspen Ideas install. Well, at least that meant I could snag the inimitable Mr. Trumpler for a little work before we started at the Aspen Art Museum.

The concept is the film "Black Narcissus" …

1947 with Deborah Kerr in glorious Technicolor,  Production Design by Alfred Junge for which he won the 1948 Oscar  and Cinematography by Jack Cardiff who also won the Oscar.

Six Scenic Artists,  

Ron Gottschalk charge, 

Charlotte Vosseler, 

Cassandra Holden, 

Nicole Laemmle, 

Allan Trumpler 

and me (photo Allan Trumpler),  

four 14' high walls (40x70) and six days… 

here's the sequence:

Charlotte arrived early on Wednesday and mixed all the colors.

Full crew shows up Thursday morning. The walls have been base coated by the Museum and protective flooring has been laid down. We start by making a thread grid of 4' squares around the room. Joe and Deb Forbes - owners of Scenic Arts Studio and Studio and Forum of Scenic Arts show up for lunch in Aspen ….

Some cartooning (sketching with charcoal) is done on Thursday. On Friday we start laying in the first layer.  The trick is dark/ chromatic/ translucent over lighter opaque tints which keeps the glow in the paint.  Want the complete explanation of both the chemistry, the physics and the color theory? Go to your copy of Ralph Mayer or you could go to a personal favorite The Practice of Tempera Painting. 

Friday Sketching  and lay in continues….  

here is a video of end of day Friday:

Saturday… RAFT TRIP!  (No Joe, we did not die on the river)

photo Aspen Whitewater Rafting

Sunday… day off for the crew and a chance to see a little bit of Colorado.

photo Allan Trumpler

Meanwhile,  I plant some late potatoes with help from a couple of local young athletic gentlemen- could I sell this as "more than cross-fit"? Surely flipping a tractor tire isn't as difficult as breaking up my clay "garden" with a broad fork. It is the ab workout from hell.

Monday through Wednesday we continue with layers of color, glaze upon glaze to get that rich Technicolor glow… 

Ron giving us some direction:

Here's a video of the end of day Wednesday:

and some finished details from Thursday:

crates of Art ready to go on the walls….

All done… 

Time for an evening snack on the Mall… with some Folklórico music and dancing.

…and here's the exhibit at the Aspen Art Museum

walkthrough the exhibit

Aspen Art Museum and the Given, letter to the editor 2014

I'm posting some old letters to the editor. This is so I can remember what I wrote, and to keep myself honest.  I'm posting them in the order I wrote them so this goes back a couple of years.

The more things change….

This was in response to an Aspen Art Museum Press Release calling the new museum the greatest piece of architecture in Aspen for a century. Summer 2014

"The most important building in Aspen in a century." Love it or hate it the Aspen Art Museum is many things, but it is not that. We demolished what was, in my opinion, the most architecturally important building in a century. We demolished the Given Institute. 

I am certain that the inside of the new Art Museum is spectacular. I am equally certain that it invites the glory of our outdoor scenery inside. The rooftop parties are going to be *fabulous*. The installations will be displayed with love, attention and detail. It will be an "Art Experience" for those who walk through. Over time it will become "ours" and we'll give directions to tourists "walk one block past the basket weave building" just the way we use the Wheeler as a navigation point now.

It is different than the Given Institute in one major respect. The Given not only followed the spirit of Herbert Bayer's Bauhaus "form follows function"  it also followed the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright and honored the land around it. The Given embraced the trees around it. The windows were placed so that you could look north to Smuggler and Red Mountain through the circular window behind Mrs. Paepcke's cottonwood tree and that tree was also framed in the southern view. Harry Weese designed a building which did not shout "look at me!" he designed a building which whispered, "Come, sit by me and be restored. Come, share your spirit with me." 

The angled walls changed with the sun and shadow with the same dynamism as curved walls of Gehry's Bilbao. It sat as lightly on the land as any "green" building built today. 

The Given did not call attention to herself. She rested silently in her garden and nurtured countless Scientists and "thinkers" from all over the world. She aged quietly wrapped in wildflowers and evergreens. There was no public passion to save her from the bulldozer. She was razed in 2011, along with Mrs. Paepcke's cottonwood tree. 

I will surely come to accept the new Art Museum, I may even come to love it over time. I will certainly continue to love the exhibits and the energy inside it's walls and the enormous benefits to our community. "The most important building in Aspen in a Century"? No. Not that. Should the bulldozer ever hover over this building the way it did over The Given let's show a little more passion.

footnote: I wrote this before I toured the inside of the museum. Reactions to the completed Aspen Art Museum can be found on this link: http://ziskac.blogspot.com/search?q=aspen+art+museum

Tortipad

The tortoises are still pacing the Aspen Art Museum penthouse.

If you haven't been keeping up with our local hot topics it's tortoises. Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Moving Ghost Town Tortoises” exhibit has garnered multiple protest petitions most notably the one started by Lisbeth Oden https://www.change.org/p/aspen-art-museum-take-the-ipads-off-the-tortoises

The articles have been fast and furious.

The Washington Post
Time
LA Times
Huffington Post
Artnet

Here's my own unsanctioned unauthorized art exhibit in front of the Aspen Art Museum on Sunday Aug 24. The unsanctioned unauthorized art exhibit consisted of me walking veeeeeeeerrrrrrrry sloooooowwwwwwly back and forth in front of the Aspen Art Museum for 30 minutes wearing my "tortipad".

To create your own tortipad you will need the following:

an iPad in a case (I suggest an iPad mini), some twist ties, wall sticky putty and a ski helmet.

use the twist ties to secure the google strap to the back of the iPad case (this is a speck fit folio)

Place the wall putty on the back of the iPad case on the other end.

The twist tie secures the case at the back.

The putty secures the case at the front.

Tortipad

Not recommended for use above African Sulcata speeds. 

The exhibit is scheduled through October 5, that is unless the weather turns too cold for desert tortoises. Given our propensity for snow in September… I'm guessing that the exhibit won't run the full course.

Up the down staircase, or an afternoon at the Museum

The new Aspen Art Museum has two staircases, one accessed from the cash register* and one from the street. If you prefer you may use the elevator and get shot to the top (or the bottom).
(*let me be clear- there is no entrance fee- but there are still things for sale)

Here's the NYT fluff piece (can't wait for the real review)

"Black Lightning" Art "happening"

August 2 I went through the doors of the Aspen Art Museum with the rest of the hoards. It was the "must see" event of the summer in Aspen. This was supposed to be a "members only" preview. In reality it was an "anyone who wants to enter" preview.

I felt sorry for the tortoises. 

After all it wasn't their choice to be surrounded by iPhone wielding art lovers.

I hope they don't turn into soup.

It is a great view from the top floor (as we knew it would be).

There's been plenty of controversy surrounding the museum.

http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/letter-editor/163289
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/letter-editor/163287
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/letter-editor/163264
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/letter-editor/163110
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/163052
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/161725
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/161136

(...and this one posted on August 4 two days after the Museum "pre-opening" as reminder that the  Kids Valley Art show was  discontinued under Ms. Zuckerman Jacobson's watch
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/letter-editor/163308  )

Even our former Mayor the famous (or infamous) Mick Ireland has asserted on his Facebook feed that someone "punched him" yesterday due to the Art Museum (don't you love this town? I just can't make this stuff up).

Most of this has centered on the "view plane" from the street and the loss of parking spaces. The museum does a fine job of blocking out the mountain from it's neighbors and from pedestrian traffic. As I've stated previously the building is all about  admiring the view in the mirror or to quote Rembrandt "Vanitas, vanitas."

Vanity in Aspen? The .01% of the .01% opting for exclusivity? "Locals" railing against change and privilege (whilst pocketing the profit)?  I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you.

After my quick perusal of the museum  my head hurt. I was squinting. My sinuses throbbed and I had that all too familiar feeling of a migraine hovering on the edge of my eyebrows.

I can forgive much. I can forgive the mixture of  hastily crafted wooden handrails and the paint not quite dry yet on the "permanent" handrails. I can forgive the unfinished edges, the unwashed glass, the construction dust pooling in the cracks and corners. I can almost forgive the bad craftsmanship. (The display boxes for the minerals are shoddy, just plain shoddy.) Sigh….this is, after all, a "pre-opening" opening. The windows can be cleaned and the display boxes can be replaced.

What I cannot forgive is poorly displayed art. The color temperature of the lights alone is enough to induce the mother of all migraines. (Don't lecture me about low light to protect pigment- this isn't it- by a long shot- this is simply the wrong LED and the wrong throw distance and the wrong angle of illumination) The objects are anchored in acidic white more married to the wall than to each other. There is no attempt to focus the viewer's attention on the art.

Then there are the choices within the show itself. There is normally a logic in the juxtaposition of objects which contrasts the aesthetic , conceptual and  historic. This allows a viewer to bring their own level of understanding to the show. What on earth do Klein and Hammons have to say to one another?

At first glance the answer is "nothing". Simply put Klein worked the system and Hammons worked outside the system.  Klein was a colorist, a lover of the female form and an extremely witty provocative marketeer with the full support of the French Government. Hammons punched above his weight for Civil Rights and jabbed at the Establishment every chance he got. There is not subtlety or wink wink nod nod from Hammons. There is no Civil Rights commentary from Klein.  The fact that Hammons substituted red white and blue in the American Flag  for green black and red doesn't make him a colorist.

The fact that Klein got the French government to honor stamps he'd painted with Klein Bleu doesn't make him an activist. (Lest we forget there was plenty of opportunity in 1950's France for activism- days after "The Void" opening on April 28 came the Algerian coup on May 18.)

They shared a technique, 

Klein had naked women rolling around in pigment 

and Hammons used his own body to do the same. 

(Guess which sold more)

Yves Klein and Iris Clert once had a good joke by announcing his "new look" which, once revealed was a gallery with freshly painted white walls.  Everyone leaving the exhibit assured all those still waiting that it was a "must see".

"The Void"

It was the ultimate "Emperor has no clothes" triumph.

In contrast Hammons wry humor of selling snowballs on the street satirized the art not the cognoscenti.

M. Klein and Edouard Adam developed a new "Bleu" with full government support.  Here's a lovely video on M. Adam- it's in French and blogger won't show the direct link- but it's worth it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyLpQ6S4YzA

Mr. Hammons did not rely on expert craftsmen to manufacture his art. He used found objects.

So, yes you can put these two together in the same show if for no other reason than to illustrate their differences; but it's heavy lifting. It could have been a lot easier.

I would have welcomed a show of Hammons and Benton.

or Klein and Koons (and I do actively *loathe* Koons)

Ah well, maybe next time at the Redbrick

…and there it is… there is no attempt to make this "comfortable" or "easy"… there is no place to take a breath in this new museum. One of the joys of "museuming" is to see a work up close, and from afar, to take your time in a room to breathe in the essence of all the walls. There is no intimacy here.  Placing objects in a white void is not enough. You have to say something with the relationship of objects to one another. You have to give the viewer the opportunity to see and understand, to love it or hate it.  Time, Art needs time, and patience, and breath.

At the Aspen Ideas Festival there was a panel of museum curator super stars discussing "The Museum as Citizen". Panelists were Michael Govan of LACMA, Glenn Lowry of MoMA, Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem,  Lisa Phillips of the New Museum, Paola Antonelli of MoMA and our own Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson of the Aspen Art Museum. The question was what is the responsibility of a museum to the community? The answers were pretty homogenous and could be summarized in two objectives "art education" and "community involvement". The rallying cry was "Create Social Spaces!".

All the answers that is except for those from Ms. Zuckerman Jacobson.   Her answer was that the primary purpose of Art is to create "frisson".  Friction, disquiet, terror all those elements of shock which rock us out of our comfortable existence and make us reevaluate our world that is the primary purpose of the Aspen Art Museum.

Frisson has certainly been achieved. Congratulations Ms. Zuckerman Jacobson.

 It doesn't take much for my natural cynicism to overwhelm any desire for being open to "the new" it doesn't take much for me to leave vulnerability at the door. It doesn't take much for me to dust off that old New York armor and strap it back on my tired shoulders. I know it well it fits like an old overcoat in the rain, damp and smelling of wet wool.  Do I really want to do that in Aspen?  Do I really need to remember my cynicism in order to fully rejoice in the optimism of these glorious mountains?

Nope, not so much.

I think I  shall revisit the Doerr-Hosier and the excellent Herbert Bayer exhibit. That is an art exhibit which heals instead of fractures.

I expect nothing less from the "humanist" Mr. Bayer

I will continue to quote M. Voltaire, "je me suis mis à être un peu gai, parce qu'on m'a dit que cela est bon pour la santé." or as is more commonly translated : "I have decided to be happy because it's good for my health". Enough "frisson" will find me without my looking for it.

Buildings Perdu

We have a new Art Museum being build in Aspen. It's been a supremely controversial process. The naysayers have been storming the castle "it's too big!" That's been the primary complaint "it's too big!"

None the less up she goes - a new architectural icon in the city a large block of man made already dripping with the promise of cutting edge avant guard wow with Shigeru Ban recently winning the Pritzker.

Walking past the construction block yesterday I couldn't help but notice how that straight edged cube cut against Aspen Mountain and reduced the ridge line of Shadow Mountain to nothing more than a frost tipped line of crenolated cake decoration. It is not another peak in the mountain range as pictured in the sketch it is a big rectangular bite of brutalism. I'm certain the Calders will be happy gently swaying on the roof and the view from the inside will be stunning but this designs mocks it's setting, and not in a nice way.

Oh, I miss the Given Institute soooooo much. That was poetry in the trees.  Take another look at Greg Watts requiem in photographs of Harry Weese's masterful humanism: