Saturday, May 31, 2014

Art Review: Mel Bochner, "Strong Language" and Dialogue and Discourse



Mel Bochner, 2008
I was thrilled to attend the event, Dialogue and Discourse: Mel Bochner and Norman Kleeblatt at The Jewish Museum to view and hear about Bochner’s new show, “Strong Language”, on exhibit until September 21, 2014. The show features Bochner’s distinctive and provocative text-based works that span his five-decade career. The dialogue and exhibition were both enlightening and inspiring and conveyed depth and insight into Bochner’s process, transitions and impact on Conceptual Art.

Norman Kleeblatt (L) and Mel Bochner (R)
The Jewish Museum, May 15th, 2014

The artist dialogue revealed the motivation behind Bochner’s ideas that often encompassed humor, intellectual representation, and his affinity for synonyms. What was even more revealing was Bochner’s body language. As he took the stage with Mr. Kleeblatt, Bochner shifted away from the spotlight cast upon him and moved his chair into the shadows. Needless to say, he could not escape the limelight and he brought subtle humor to his aversion of being the center of attention, which he richly deserves.

Bochner’s early works from the 1960’s were spawned from words, from the cerebral and the mathematical that are mindfully penned on graph notepaper. These early works can be easily connected to his recent paintings that are large scale, full of lush color, and inspired by language and the Thesaurus. His later works are divergent, but clearly an evolution of his earlier endeavors and accomplishments.

Self/Portrait, 2013, Oil on canvas
Curator Norman Kleeblatt began the dialogue with a new self-portrait Bochner created in 2013 to commence the exhibition appropriately titled Self/Portrait, 2013. For Bochner portraiture is representational (like language) and when you enter the gallery, you are enveloped with a large self-portrait that is exemplary of Bochner and his methods. This new work echoes a previous self-portrait created in 1966, which reads as a manicured, inked list on graph paper, rather than a painting. During the dialogue, he described how hard it would be to pick one word (and the synonyms) to describe himself as he did in his conceptual portraits in the late 60’s for friends like Eva Hesse and Marcel Duchamp. So instead he choose the ideas, the words, to embody the idea of the self-portrait.


Left: Portrait of Eva Hesse, 1966, Ink on graph paper Right: Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1968, Ink on graph paper

From the Exhibition: From 1966 to 1968 Bochner undertook a series of artists friends whom he admired. Each drawing refers to the creative work of the subject. The central concept WRAP is enclosed within eleven circles of words associated with the sculptor Eva Hesse. The concentric format reflects the circular motifs found in her sculpture at that time.

Photo from
Dialogue and Discourse: Mel Bochner and Norman Kleeblatt

The Jewish Museum, May 15th, 2014
The 1966 self-portrait was highly conceptual and now Bochner reinvents and transforms it into a fresh painting that looks like it was painted with sweeping drips of vanilla gelato with urban grit. His love for synonyms is on full display as the words Self and Portrait headline the composition and he creates two lists of synonyms that provoke questions about the idea of the portrait. However, when read across the words become phrases that take on new meaning, which Bochner frames as sometimes being evocative or just silly. He keeps the spine (empty Colum in center) in his work, which can be read as figurative and he deliberately has 18 words on display, which is symbolic and meaningful in Judaism. The number 18 is represented by the Hebrew letters חי, “chai” and means life in Hebrew. So there are “hidden” meanings in his composition and in relation to himself.  Bochner also revealed that the painting is as tall as he is. 

Panoramic photo of the exhibition at The Jewish Museum, ©Monica Hopenwasser
Bochner made the distinction that he doesn’t paint words–he paints letters!  Each one is hand painted, without a stencil but with a very steady hand, which he held up for the audience that laughed. Each letter is unique, from a dreaded S with all its curves to the letter O, which he exclaimed is a really hard letter to paint. Each O is different and you can see the subtle differences up close in his work. He makes lettering look easy, which it is definitely not. He also revealed that perhaps his father being a sign painter influenced his work and technique. There is no plan with the text and letter in his recent works. He looks at it as an “instant improvisation”, like going from note to note in a musical composition. For Bochner getting from the idea to the object entails much physical work that he stated as matter-of-fact. 

Crazy, 2005, Oil and acrylic on canvas
Bochner is very interested in words especially the idea of what a synonym is, which is a vehicle for his thoughts. Ironically, no words or phrases can mean the same thing and he bluntly stated, “there is no such thing as a synonym”.  Many of his Thesaurus inspired works from the past decade have one word titles like Contempt, Die and Nothing. Bochner's works explore the relationship between words and although his paintings are flat, at the same time they deny their flatness through his fluctuating, flickering colors that are arbitrarily chosen. Bochner stated some simple yet profound statements about color like “Color is, what color does” and “Color always means trouble… especially something you can’t control”… These concepts fascinate him. 

(Small) Fart, 2003, Oil and acrylic on canvas
His humor is on full display with his painting (Small) Fart, 2003 that was for his 8-year-old daughter. This sweet story was revealed when Bochner exclaimed to Kleeblatt and the audience... “Aren’t we going to discuss and show the Fart painting”, which generated a roar of laughter from the audience. Kleeblatt jested back that is it on display downstairs for everyone to enjoy and this opened up to the funny story of how the painting came about. Bochner gave his daughter the opportunity to choose a word and he would create a painting for her birthday. (On another note, he doesn’t really do commissions and paints for himself). She wisely picked the word Fart that is amusing and childish and can make anyone laugh.  




Jew, 2008, Oil on Canvas
Bochner’s sociopolitical side can be seen in his painting titled Jew, 2008 which was created in response to coming across a vulgar website that listed slanderous words and names for a Jew. He exploits these stereotypical words of the Jew in drippy, yellow letters that signify the yellow stars Jewish people were mandated to wear during Nazi rule in Europe. If this painting was not done by a Jewish person and featured in a Jewish museum the text could be read as offensive and malicious, rather than demonstrating that anti-Semitism is alive and well and living on the Internet. It is intended to have implications beyond the literal meaning of the words and one audience member contributed that she felt safe viewing it in the Jewish Museum. However, if it were somewhere else it could be read entirely differently.  

Photo from Dialogue and Discourse: Mel Bochner (L) and Norman Kleeblatt (R)The Jewish Museum, May 15th, 2014
Mel Bochner was a great guest in discourse with curator Norman Kleeblatt. The event was educational and illuminating in this beautifully conceived show. Bochner was genuinely interested in the audiences’ questions and Bochner stated that for him that was the best part of the conversation… Hearing what the audience had to say in relation to and about his work and how his work is perceived.  Bochner ‘s artwork and concepts can easily be introduced in to the art classroom because of the many cross-disciplinary connections that can be made to language and mathematics, as well as techniques to painting letters and color mixing. There are so many connections and teaching points that cane be generated from his approach and methods. There is more to learn and see at the show then the above mentioned. For example, how Bochner reinvents the idea of the reproduction and how he used photography in his early works. He was a gentleman and a true artist and this is a show surely not to be missed.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Get in touch with your creativity: Summer Art Classes for Adults in New York City 2014


Summer is a great time to get creative and invest in your self! Here are a list of some select museums, art centers and unique classes that will inspire and develop your inner artist in New York City. From traditional fine arts and photography to film production, sewing and pottery classes; New York City has it all. Adults need creative play time too!

ICP is centrally located in midtown Manhattan and has a beautiful darkroom facility and offers classes and workshops for adults in foundation and techniques and professional practice. They have an open house to tour facilities, meet faculty and learn more about their continuing education program.  

School Open House
School at ICP, 1114 Avenue of the Americas
Friday, June 6, 6:00pm
The School at ICP offers more than 400 courses that range from traditional film and darkroom practice to digital media.  Learn more about summer courses here.

The Peoples Art Center
For adults who like Modern Art and Ideas you can explore various periods of modern and contemporary art through programs led by MoMA curators and other prominent experts, both inside and outside MoMA’s galleries. Check out there offerings here.

They also offer online courses http://www.moma.org/learn/courses/online#online


The Frick offers FREE sketch programs and interesting lectures/symposiums that focus on themes like Collecting Colonial and Modern Latin American Art in the United States. Check out summer offerings for adults here.

Gain fresh perspectives through a wide range of programs and resources for the novice as well as the expert. From artists talks to art making courses The Met has it all, whether you are an artist or an art appreciator. Check out summer offerings here.

The Educational Alliance has three downtown locations that offer a variety of multi-session summer courses like stone carving and portrait drawing. The Spring session ends at the end of June and they haven’t posted summer courses as of this post.

The 92nd Street Y has a lot of adult offerings from jewelry making and ceramics to Plein Air painting in Central Park. Check out the plethora of offerings here.

The reknown Arts Students League is a great place to take a course where you can do monthly full-time, part time classes or drop in on a casual drawing session. They have a great open drawing class where you can pay $6.00 to do a live model sketch with no instructor for those who can’t commit but need there live drawing fix. You need to register before taking any classes workshops... Check out how it all works here.

Downtown Community Television (DCTV)DCTV is not just a learning center; they are a community of aspiring, emerging and established filmmakers and offer a variety of workshops in producing, production, postproduction and more. If you want to learn Wordpress, or how to create your own website in several sessions with small classes up to nine people, this is your place to go. It also offers a variety of classes that delve into all aspects of digital media, filmmaking that include:

·  Producing
·  Production

Check out there offerings here.

For those of you who miss the days of Home Economics and want to learn how to sew on a machine, this is a great place to go in the Chelsea area. I took a wonderful weeklong class last summer that met my expectations and reintroduced me to a past love, sewing! Check out their classes and boot camps here.

Get your art on and explore the public programs that encompass seminars with artists, critics, writers, and scholars participate in roundtable conversations and panel discussions that respond to works on view and to broader trends within American culture at large. Check out there summer offerings here.

The Jewish Museum has some great public programs this summer like gallery talks about there exhibitions that include Mel Bochner's Strong Language and Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors, the first American museum exhibition to survey the style now known as Minimalism. Click here for a list of summer programs.

For ceramic enthusiasts check out Mugi Pottery on the UWS
They offer kid and ADULT pottery classes and the summer session runs for 6 weeks from June 23 thru Aug 3, 2014, 6 weeks for $245.00. For more info, click here.

Mugi Pottery can also host parties/events and have an evening called couples night with an introduction to hand building techniques for functional pottery.

I discovered this organization called ArtMuse in my search for adult classes and this group offers customized tours in NYC and Europe to get your art and culture juices flowing. They provide personal and custom tours and have a comprehensive website that describes who they are and what they offer. Worth reading if you are a serious art lover who wants to cultivate a customized experience for a group. 
From their website:
What is ArtMuse?
ArtMuse offers exceptional art experiences in New York City and Europe through museums, galleries, auction houses, art fairs, and artist studios. We offer Scheduled Tours & Class Series and Custom Designed Private Tours for adults, kids, and families in New York City, London, Paris, Rome, and Florence. ArtMuse tours can be customized regarding subject matter and degree of depth according to your interests and existing knowledge. We gear these tours and classes towards those who wish to have a new, cultural experience in an artistic city center of the world.

For the anti art school crowd who seekd and alternative drawing experience there is Dr. Sketchy art classes… you may ask what is Dr. Sketchy's anti-art school?

From their website:
Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art school is the world's premier alternative drawing movement. Artists draw glamorous underground performers in an atmosphere of boozy conviviality. Found in 2005 in a dive bar in Brooklyn, Dr. Sketchy's has now spread to over 100 cities around the world.

They have events all over, so check out there site. The next event in New York City celebrates Gay Pride at the historic Stonewall Inn.
Sun, June 15, 2014 • 4:00pm - Dr. Sketchy’s NYC - Queen’s Men

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Call for Applications: 2014 NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists










From the New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA)...
The IAP Mentoring Program pairs immigrant artists from all disciplines with artist mentors who provide their mentees with one-on-one support.

Learn more https://www.nyfa.org/Content/Show/Mentorship 

GOALS
The broadening of access to New York's cultural landscape — through the mentors' sharing of ideas, advice, resources and experiences — is one oft-cited benefit of IAP mentorship. In addition, mentors guide mentees to achieve specific goals — like composing an artist statement, researching potential venues for showing work, or completing a grant application.

The Mentoring Program also helps immigrant artists to connect through group meetings, including professional development workshops, events, and informal gatherings.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Art Classes and Workshops in New York City for Tweens and Teens 2014

Summer is almost here and many parents want to find meaningful creative activities and programs for their busy children in New York City. I will not be available for private art lessons and group sessions this summer because I am working on a special creative project; starting my own family! I will be back in action this fall and you can learn more about my offerings later.

Below is a select list of some of the finest art and cultural institutions that offer unique programing for teens and tweens and much of it is FREE. So check out the list and links to see what may be in your child's future.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The MET offers FREE workshops/classes for tweens and teens ages 11-18 this summer. You have to register to be in the class and it is a great way to make connections at one of the finest New York cultural institutions and become familiar with their collections.

Here is another comprehensive list/link of art making and events for all ages and some classes are free whiles others are paid courses.

Museum of Modern Art
MoMA offers FREE hands-on art classes for NYC high school students, ages 13–19. No experience necessary! Applications and letters of recommendation are due Monday, June 2, 2014. MoMA provides all materials, food, studio space, and more. Each course meets three times a week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for six weeks, and culminates in a Teen Art Show of participants' work.

Whitney Museum of American Art 
Another FREE museum program... This summer, Youth Insights is offering a new free program for New York City high school English Language Learners in grades 10 through 12: Youth Insights Introductions. Applications are due June 2, 2014.  Youth Insights (YI) is a free after-school program for New York City high school students. It brings teens together with contemporary artists, providing opportunities to work collaboratively, discuss art critically, think creatively, and make art inspired by this exchange.
http://whitney.org/Education/Teens/GetInvolved


The Jewish Museum
Experiment with printmaking, painting, and installation art inspired by the current exhibition Mel Bochner: Strong Language. Over the course of one week, explore our relationship to words and how we use them to make meaning in works of art.
Middle School Session
August 11-15
9:30 am-Noon

High School Session
August 11-15
1:30-5 pm

To register or find out more information call 212-423-3254 or email teenprograms@thejm.org

International Center of Photography
A great resource for photography with both adult and youth classes, ICP offers a summer teen academy in traditional darkroom photography (both black and white and color) in one week intensives or two week intensive that focus on digital photography. They have a beautiful darkroom and are centrally located in midtown Manhattan. Check out the link below for cost and schedules.

Museum of the Moving Image
The newly renovated museum in Astoria, Queens offers a Summer Media Camp from
July 28th-August 29th for ages 9-13 in

  • Movie-Making
  • Video Game Design
  • Animation
  • Registration

Each camp runs one week (Monday through Friday, 10am-4pm). You can enroll in one or more sessions. Camps are divided into two age groups: 9-10 and 11-13. Check out the link t read more about the course description for those kids interest in more tech-centric art interaction.

http://www.movingimage.us/education/summermediacamp


Another great online resource with a comprehensive list of FREE programs is http://insideschools.org/middle/free-programs. The Inside Schools website has a great list of ART resources (and other subjects too) that are FREE and taking place throughout the year. Check it out to see what institutions they have sourced in this well organized list.

 


 

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Neue Galerie, Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937


I have my own personal connection with WWII being the grandchild of Holocaust survivors and having had many cousins and extended family murdered, tortured and imprisoned during the war. Hitler was no stranger in my house and the very popular exhibition at the Neue Galerie exposes another horrid facet of the Nazi regime and its evolution of evil. The exhibitions focus is on how the Third Reich used art as propaganda to influence the public, manipulate power and demonize artists by dictating what was pure and acceptable in the world of art. The more abstract, simplified, raw or reduced the figure or landscape; the more pathological and sick the Nazi party deemed the art and artist. Artist Emil Nolde, a Nazi party sympathizer was labeled "degenerate" and modern artist Paul Klee was removed from teaching positions and driven in to exile because of his minimal, abstract paintings that were compared to the renderings of a child and were considered lacking and deficient.

Paul Klee, The Angler, Oil transfer drawing, watercolor and ink on paper, 1921

Vasily Kandinksy, Several Circles, Oil Paining 1926
Russian painter Vasily Kandinksy is one of my all-time favorite artists and his painting Several Circles was designated (surprisingly) "degenerate" and was on display at the exhibition. Other lesser known household names like Christian Rohlfs and Lasar Seagull were also labeled degenerate art by The Third Reich. To see these imaginative, diverse, rich and colorful artworks displayed together in one space and to witness the attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany only validates the perverse evil the Nazi's embodied. Put on full display is The Nazi's intolerance and wickedness.

Christian Rohlfs, The Towers of Soest, Oil and Tempera Painting, 1916

Lasar Seagull, Eternal Wanderers, Oil Painting, 1919  

One room had a powerful display that juxtaposed artworks regarded as acceptable by the Nazi party on one side of the space, while the other side of the room showcased the degenerate art labeled by the Nazis. This coupling, in one space, clearly showed the distinct styles and differences in a blatant compare and contrast. Adolf Ziegler's, The Four Elements, (supposedly one of Hitler's favorite painters) is a triptych of the idealized female nude, reminiscent of the Romanesque woman with clearly "Aryan-like" features that mirrored racial Nazi ideology. The Nazi's liked this kind of art... technically proficient and emotionally flat.
 

Adolf Ziegler, The Four Elements, Oil Painting, 1937
 In the same room, to the right of Ziegler is another triptych by Max Beckmann titled Departure.
Max Beckmann, Departure, Oil Painting, 1933-35

According to the Museum of Modern Art, "...the elaborate narrative juxtaposes scenes of sin and salvation, but what makes the painting modern is the deliberate ambiguity of its iconography." The style of Beckmann's painting is raw and edgy with black, bold outlines and simplified forms and features that lend itself to the violent and emotional. This was rejected by The Nazi's and eventually Beckmann was fired from his professorship by the Nazi's and moved in to exile to The Netherlands.

Check out this engaging exhibition... The Neue Galerie is located at 1048 5th Ave, New York, NY and runs from March 13-June 30, 2014

Photographs are not allowed at the exhibition and the images included in this blog post were taken/sourced/found on the Internet.