[New York Peasant by Wilfrid: November 3, 2008]
To the opening reception for another interesting, chronologically disparate show at Richard L. Feigen's uptown gallery: "Eros: Love, Lust and Its Consequences".
The name of the show is little more than an excuse to throw together more-or-less sexy paintings, photos, collages and sculptures, juxtaposing art-works from different centuries with the Feigen gallery's customary knowing and witty curatorial eye.
It shows some curatorial flair, for example, to flank Jacob de Gheyn's bawdy "The Archer and the Milkmaid" with two similarly saucy Salvador Dalí drawings from three centuries later. Lust is certainly an enduring subject.
Louise Bourgeois is represented by a metal floor sculpture - copulating pairs of legs on a bed - reminiscent of her copulating woollen dolls shown at the recent Guggenheim retrospective. There's a splendid, stately Bill Viola video work, "The Lovers" in which two models are slowly and meticulously dowsed by a relentless and romantic shower of water. There's a smutty circle-jerk by the West Coast artist Jess, some grim monochrome photos of naked puppets from the 1930's by Hans Bellmer, and an elegant Klimt drawing of a woman in a subtle state of undress.
Another fascinating juxtaposition pairs Jean Van Der Loo's subtly erotic "Danaë" with one of John Currin's large, old master-ish, but pornographic paintings, "Rotterdam". It speaks volumes that I'm tempted to post a warning before that last link. For all Currin's painterliness, the subjects of Rotterdam are arranged as for a porn video, awkwardly twisting their genitals toward the figurative camera. Perhaps the effect is deliberate, but I find it to be one of sexlessness.
And then to a quite nutty little exhibition in the MOMA media galleries called "Looking at Music". I had to revert to the web-site afterwards to re-assess its purpose. Apparently, it "examines the radical role of music in the early development of media art, and includes documentary and experimental films, and music videos."
Well, no, it doesn't really do that. What it does is segue abruptly from a few relics of John Cage and Fluxus, via some nice sheets of song ideas by Laurie Anderson, a Bruce Nauman video-sculpture and a Steve Reich EP, to a selection of music videos by an odd assortment of bands. There are some unrelated drawings and photos along the way - unrelated except that I suspect some of them are by composers or performance artists.
The music videos feature Devo, Ziggy-era Bowie, The Residents, The Beatles and Captain Beefheart. I hope I'm not forgetting anyone. The implication of the selection, I can only imagine, is that these artists are construed as developing or evolving ideas originally conceived by Cage and/or Fluxus and/or minimalists like Reich. Perhaps the curator thinks these artists are all doing much the same kind of thing? Or perhaps there's an enormous, tacit irony in showing The Beatles alongside The Residents?
Who knows? Maybe there's an essay in a catalog which explains it. I looked in vain in the gallery itself for any indication that Devo, Bowie and the Beatles organization were perhaps recuperating and reproducing certain familiar gestures of the avant garde for commercial purposes. But no - this is all seems to be curated with a straight face. I should think VH1 Classics could present the material in a more illuminating light.
Plenty of time to see the Feigen show, open through January 9, 2009. The MOMA show, if you must, runs through December 21, but your time would be much better spent at the Miró show upstairs, which I hope to review next week.
