Art writing around town

Some recent writings about art around town linked below.  I think it's important to hear various perspectives on art as a starting point for conversation.  These opinions are just that and certainly should not dictate how you experience or judge the art after seeing it for yourself.

Blake Gopnik writes about a new Roxy Paine sculpure that has been installed in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, a beautiful 45-foot stainless steel, gnarled, leafless tree.

In theory, that title simply refers to the botanical act of making two plants grow as one. One side of "Graft" looks like a tree that's tall and straight; the other side looks like a different species, gnarled and bent in on itself. Or Paine's graft might be between a young tree, healthy and clean-limbed, and an older sibling that needs the youngster's help to stand up and survive.

But since Paine's piece is only half a mile from the Capitol, "graft" takes on more than pastoral meanings, and a rift down the middle inevitably speaks of splits along party lines. Both Democrats and Republicans are sure to see themselves as fine and upstanding, and their opponents as hopelessly twisted. Or Washington viewers might choose to note that the straight, young half of the piece faces the Capitol's Senate side (think Michael Bennet) and the ancient side points to the House (and to Charlie Rangel).

Read the rest HERE.

Maura Judkis writes about Andrew Wodzianski's show at Flashpoint in the City Paper, noting that Wodzianski has distracted everyone from the exquisiteness of his paintings by mounting stunts before and throughout the exhibition.

Turning his show into a game has brought a great deal of publicity, but it's also had the unsavory effect of distracting people from the exquisite paintings. "My entire career has been criticized for that. There's always a way to look at it as [me] being bombastic," says Wodzianski. "It's a tribute to a genre I love, but in the end, it's just popcorn. No one cares about the subtext of the art. They ask me what it was like to be in the coffin, what it's like to have this moustache."

Wodzianski’s love of a genre that avoids self-seriousness may be at the heart of his struggle to be, well, taken seriously. "I am reaping what I sow, by packaging it this way," he says. "If you research it further [there is depth], but for most people, it's a fleeting moment of eye candy. I can't have my cake and eat it too." Fortunately he can still have his popcorn.

Read the article HERE and go see the show.

Michael O'Sullivan writes about an exhibit of photographs by Robert Bergman at the National Gallery of Art.

The pictures don't give up much in the way of biography. Shot in city streets -- where Bergman would befriend, and then disarm, total strangers before talking them into sitting for his camera -- each person is utterly anonymous. Sometimes it's hard to tell a subject's age or sex. One or two might be cross-dressers. Others seem prematurely ravaged by disease, drugs or alcohol. A few look ancient but almost certainly aren't. Only a handful are good-looking, young and healthy, though several are children.

What, then, is revealed when we look at them?

By stripping away almost all narrative context, Bergman invites us to search for something other than the trappings of his subjects' lives. (Though homelessness is an all-too-apparent subtext of the show.) Something in the eye between fear and hope, between fragility and resolve, something approaching, in many cases, a kind of transcendence. It's no stretch that the 1998 book of photos from this series is called "A Kind of Rapture."

Read the rest HERE.

Jessica Dawson writes about the Phillips Collection's new contemporary art exhibition series called Intersections, which kicked off with Jennifer Wen Ma's beautiful video.

Ma created that protean backdrop by filming her own manipulations of ink drips, splashes and drifts. Her camera stood flush against a clear glass tablet as she worked. When that footage is juxtaposed with the walking man, the ink's permutations begin to suggest landscapes of sand or clouds and hills. Droplets of inky water pass like falling snow or shimmering stars. The quickness of ink spreading in a pool of water mimics the sudden appearance of thunderclouds.

Ma is also part of a group show at Transformer Gallery called "Ink Storm," a group of Chinese artists using ink is their primary medium.  Read more about all of it HERE.