Looking at The Large Bathers

The Large Bathers by Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne may be unique among great painters in that, well - he couldn't really paint all that well.  

I know that sounds paradoxical; perhaps even oxymoronic. Yet it's quite obvious Cézanne had little natural gift for the art form he was determined to master. It's true that put to the test, he could eke out a solid figure study (as he did in art school); but anyone can see his heart wasn't in it - as soon as he could, he reverted to the thick, bulbous caricatures that came to him naturally.

The flip side of this lack of facility, however, was that Cézanne was never tempted by art-star showiness (a trap that in different ways snared Sargent, Picasso, and Dalí). There would be no easy success in the salon for him; and so he began a long, (almost) solitary trudge toward remarkable insights into how painted images operate, how they can be de-stabilized, and how the resulting abstractions hint at new metaphors, and unspoken questions.

Take The Large Bathers, for instance (above), which since February has been on loan to the MFA, where it has graced the wall next to the museum's major Gauguin (a melancholy comic strip which is certainly in debt to Cézanne, but may not be flattered by comparison with him).  When you look at these Bathers, however, it's best to look hard (I've visited the painting several times over the past few weeks; it returns to Philadelphia on May 12). For it's startling how many subtle optical tricks Cézanne has embedded in this seemingly "primitive" image.

The piece is clearly (though perhaps coyly) posited as a work-in-progress -  even though the artist had been working and re-working it for years (he died with it still in the studio). Despite a half-decade of attention, however - Cézanne's process was famously slow - unpainted patches still make up much, if not most, of key figures (so the canvas is as nude as they are), and the image as a whole is laced with mysterious lacunae. The seated woman on the left, for instance, is missing her head (it takes a while for most people to  notice this, such is the suggestive power of the composition), and it's unclear what, exactly, these "bathers" are up to, anyway.  Are they washing, perhaps?  Or drying their clothes?  It's hard to tell, for the object of the central trio's attention has likewise yet to be called forth from the canvas; Cézanne only supplies a flat glyph that might be intended to read as "motion" (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Nude Descending a Staircase may derive entirely from these gestures, btw).

Larger aspects of the picture are similarly unstable - the supine nude staring toward what would be a traditional "vanishing point" is wittily floating in some alternative perspective, while the object of her attention could either be facing us, or turned away.  And beyond the vaulted "frame" of trees, the background landscape is surprisingly evanescent: we can make it out to the left, but it vanishes entirely on the right.  Has it been occluded by foliage?  Again, hard to say, because Cézanne's leafy surround blends directly into his sky; the same luminous carpet of strokes serves for both.  In the end, the landscape has vanished from the right-hand side of the picture simply because it doesn't have to be there.

So The Large Bathers operates as a kind of essay in a new mode of pictorial illusion - one in which the painting persuades us even though much of it isn't there. But perhaps the solidity of Cézanne's structure renders irrelevant the gaps in his pictorialism; the sacred arch of the trees, the soft pyramids of figures - these could underpin a Titian or Poussin, and they anchor and reify what would otherwise be a series of half-realized suggestions. It's almost as if the artist is testing how little he can actually reveal while convincing us he is showing us something in its entirety - which only allows him to leave his actual content ambiguous.

But what is that content?  Here is where an atmosphere of almost wistful depth begins to emanate from The Large Bathers. As with all death-bed statements and famous last words, it's hard to resist the temptation to gaze into its surface and find there a mirror of many of Cézanne's life-long concerns.  Certainly here we can perceive something of the heavy deliberation of his early work - only now operating in a luminous palette that hints at his famous interactions with the sunny Pissarro. The image's tricks of perspective likewise recall the later still lifes, as does the curious sense of the "solidity" of everything on display (even those things that aren't fully painted!). Somehow, we feel, Cézanne's entire technical development is referenced or conjured in this work; it's essentially his Tempest.

The subject matter itself is likewise poignant. There is little sensual playfulness in Cézanne's oeuvre (he once confessed his Catholicism made him uneasy painting from nude models); when sex does rear its head, it's usually in paintings with titles like The Rape. Thus his  nudes splash about in an entirely different manner from Renoir's - and in a river of tears, probably; so it's no surprise The Large Bathers conveys a sense of erotic melancholy, even alienation, rather than joy.

Which only makes one wonder whether the details of the picture aren't so much unpainted as being erased; perhaps Arcadia is fading, and these goddesses are ghosts. Needless to say, for Cézanne, who was always possessed by the solidity of things, by their very thing-ness, this haunted quality is something extraordinary.  No wonder then that the indistinct figure - his face mostly bare canvas - who stands at the center of the image, on the far shore, is looking, Janus-like, in two directions at once: backward at the garden of Eden, and forward to the little bourgeois town that beckons from the horizon.  Meanwhile Diana and her nymphs stare after him, but do not wave or call; perhaps they know modernity means saying good-bye forever.

And yet given all this, it's strange how the painting seems to quietly glow somehow.  Perhaps for Cézanne it was a kind of sunset.  After all, he died working on it. It was quite literally his last farewell.

Degas and the Nude at the MFA

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The Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art.

This week Greg Cook of the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research and I have been engaged in an extended conversation on the newly opened Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art at the MFA.  Below is the third and final part of our discussion:

Thomas Garvey (TG): So, Greg . . . we've spent two articles diagnosing the many issues with the new Linde Family Wing at the MFA. What's our prescription?

Greg Cook (GC): Well, I think the MFA should look at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. They’ve done a great job of mixing high art from around the world, with fashion, folk art, design and so on. They’ve done this in group exhibitions as well as in their mix of programming. They’ve also been able to do a bunch of sharp shows of Mayan art, 17th century Dutch masters, 20th century Surrealism, Joseph Cornell (!) without having hardly any examples of this stuff in their collection. But still dovetailing with the museum’s idiosyncratic past.

TG: I totally agree about the Peabody Essex; they rock. In fact I’ve been meaning to write about their current Man Ray/Lee Miller survey; it’s one of the best shows in town.

GC: Agreed. In contrast, I think the MFA has decided that its unique brand is that it’s encyclopedic. What they mean by that is that they’re comprehensive, they’ve got everything from all time. It’s not about a special vision, or highlighting your institution’s idiosyncratic strengths. It’s about acting like you’ve got everything. So maybe the contemporary collection is based on the standard history because to do otherwise would somehow say that the MFA is not truly comprehensive, not truly encyclopedic.

Donald Judd, Untitled

TG: Good point. But at the same time – the collection obviously isn’t encyclopedic, is it, so the curatorial cart is before the horse. But why not just own up to that fact? And devote yourself to filling the gaps in your backstory before spending big bucks on the latest trend? Or, if the MFA does want to compete in that arena, as you point out, the Peabody Essex and the ICA offer great lessons in how you can pull together a hot, up-to-the-minute show without having to invest in a collection to back it up.  Although personally, I think it's fine to leave the very latest fashion to others; I'd be happy with more of a coherent version of the last fifty years.

Of course, in a way the Linde Wing often feels like a first, if un-admitted, step toward that curatorial project. And as a sketch of a developing collection within that framework, it's not bad; there are striking pictures and objects on display, and it’s wrong to pretend otherwise. The Tansey actually isn't great, but the Richter and the Nevelson are very good, and the Warhol, Red Disaster, as we've mentioned, is among his most powerful. The El Anatsui is likewise terrific; meanwhile the Ellsworth Kelly is nice (below), lovely and pure, but like most Kelly, is it much more than that? The Donald Judd (at left) is better - pleasingly sleek and mysterious. But neither addresses the path from minimalism to post-minimalism, which to my mind should be key to any ongoing survey leading up to the present day.  As with the pretty-good Morris Louis on display, we can't quite feel how the Judd and the Kelly might fit together as pieces in a larger history.  So part of the back-fill project would involve a systematic curatorial approach and installation philosophy.  No more muddying the waters with pap like "Art Can Be Anything"!

Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Green Yellow Orange Red - pretty, pure, but . . .

GC: When the MFA opened the Americas Wing last November, they had a little lunch for the press in a back room in there. My recollection is that there was an even better Morris Louis painting hiding in there than the one they’ve put on the wall in the contemporary wing. I've never much cared for his art, but when I saw it, I thought: "Oh, wow, THIS is why people thought he was great." The MFA seems embarrassed by the institution's past devotion to Louis. But the museum’s online collection archive says they’ve got 34 works by him, a majority of them paintings, enough to do a decent retrospective of his work any time they feel like it. And one could make a case that it’s time for him to be rediscovered—particularly with the revival of striped abstraction and poured paint these days.

TG: Yes, I know the MFA invested heavily in color field painting - which is now thought of as an embarrassing dead end.  Which only means it will come back!  There's no reason why the focus of these galleries shouldn't shift over time.

GC: So instead of all the contemporary galleries basically being the same size, why not put in a few small rooms for single artist focuses? The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago have used this technique well. Here, one could be a micro Louis survey, including wall text summarizing the formalist art theories and influence of Louis’s champion, critic Clement Greenberg. It would help explain how we came to minimalism and a good amount of other art since 1960. And done right, it would immediately be the definitive place to see Louis.

TG:  In other words, fashions do change, so play to your strengths.  And why ignore so much of what you spent so much time collecting?

GC: In general, I keep wanting to re-curate the galleries with additional or different works from the MFA's vaults. I’d incorporate more fashion and design. Why not fill another small focus gallery with all the MFA’s significant Warhols (mourning Jackie O, a Mick Jagger, a piss painting) plus its rich trove of ‘60s rock posters and Richard Avedon’s psychedelic photos of the Beatles? It would indicate the span of Warhol’s work, and suggest his prescience or influence. And put him into a historical context in a way that people could recognize without having to talk down to them. And it would just look cool.

Michael Eden, Blue Bloom

TG: I’m not sure about Avedon and the urine samples, but I have to admit, that kind of gallery would pull in the public.  And I agree that one of the museum's major strengths - which should be more often noted of the MFA - is its collection of crafts and decorative arts. Honestly, sometimes I think MFA Director Malcolm Rogers is a decorator at heart – the museum’s installations always kick things up a notch when they juxtapose the art of a period with its décor.

There’s one little "decorated" nook of the Linde Wing, for instance, (with wall paper by the “Timorous Beasties”) that comes together for that very reason – it even includes a porcelain tea set by Cindy Sherman that’s quite a bit better than the photo by her on a nearby wall. And elsewhere there are equally intriguing objets d'art by Michael Eden, Brent Kee Young, and many others. I'd like to see more prime gallery space given over to whoever has been collecting this stuff; at the very least, they have a sensual power that conceptual art struggles to match. Indeed, elsewhere there's a placidity to the place that almost makes you wish for something more irritating, like a Shepard Fairey album cover or a Jeff Koons balloon dog. And would Banksy please spray paint something on the exterior of this gray-on-gray barn? Or maybe on one of the flying Borofskys?

GC: Um, well, how about saying instead: The MFA could use a more idiosyncratic vision, and it might help to turn to outside help? I’d like to believe that the Linde Wing, despite its flaws, is the beginning of something, an opportunity.

TG: You’re right. Even when you’re looking a gift horse in the mouth, you should remember it IS a gift horse! The Linde Wing is a good thing, with many good things in it.  The glass could be half full.

GC: I guess I can’t tell how much the flaws of the wing are indicators of where the MFA wants to go. Are the status quo version of history and the Art for Dummies signs positions the MFA is staking out and plans to stick to? Or are they a way to get this thing off the ground, and the Linde Wing will get more interesting as the curators develop it? During the era covered in the Linde Wing, which corresponds almost exactly with the founding of the MFA’s contemporary department 40 years ago, the MFA has trumpeted with each new contemporary curator that now it’s finally committed itself to contemporary art, only to have the program fizzle. I’m really hoping that the MFA is following through this time, now that they’ve got a contemporary curator who seems to be a decent fit with Malcolm, and they’ve re-done this building, and there seems to be some money behind the project, and new donations of art too (like the Tuttle).

TG: I know, I know! A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step; hope springs eternal, etc. And when you’re looking at the best of the Linde Family Wing, it’s easy to believe in the thing with feathers . . .

Yesterday, Greg Cook of the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research and I began an extended conversation on the newly opened Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art at the MFA. What follows is the second part of our discussion:

Thomas Garvey (TG): At the close of the first part of this series, Greg and I had just begun to talk about our favorite pieces within the new Linde Family Wing; I'd like to continue that debate now. But I have to say right up front that as I toured the galleries, I was slightly startled to realize that in the past fifty years or so the MFA hasn't picked up a single masterpiece, and only a few truly major works. They certainly have major artists on the walls, but those artists are rarely represented by their best stuff . . .

Greg Cook (GC): I’m with you that the contemporary collection does give off the feeling that the MFA hasn’t been able to recognize and acquire masterpieces over the past couple of generations. But I’d argue that the Warhol electric chair painting, Kara Walker’s cut-paper silhouette mural, and Kiki Smith’s bronze spiderwoman are among the best things these artists ever made.

TG: Ok, I agree on the Warhol - it may well be a masterpiece - but less so on the Walker and the Smith. I love Walker’s central idea of subverting the silhouette to critique stereotype, but the execution of the racially-charged poop and sex jokes in The Rich Soil Down There (below) seems rather ironic and academic to me; it reads a bit more as a lecture than a painting.  To be fair to Walker, the work is actually a second-generation image from her original cut-outs - which may be why the enormous canvas seems slightly unfocused (I agree with you that it couldn't hold its own in the hall where it was previously hung).  So while it's certainly a worthy (and long overdue!) political statement, is it really a masterpiece? I wish it were, but I doubt it is.

Kara Walker, The Rich Soil Down There

And why be ironic or academic about racism, anyway?  Sometimes I confess I’d like to see a little unbridled horror on the walls of the MFA - American history is full of terrible things, after all.  But where’s the American Goya to honestly document our racial history? Of course Walker has earned her place in any serious contemporary collection - as I said, her concept is brilliant, and The Rich Soil Down There is certainly a solid introduction to her work . . .

Robert Freeman, Black Tie

But by way of contrast, I want to mention Robert Freeman’s Black Tie (at left), on the first floor. It's not as conceptually sophisticated as the Walker, but it's punchier - it does halt you. Plus it has a local provenance; it’s not some sardonic, ambiguous argument on how racism is constructed but rather a view of the thing itself, as it was (and is) lived in Boston. Freeman's wary faces tell you everything you need to know about the injustices his subjects have suffered; there's no theory or exegesis required.

As for Kiki Smith, I confess she often leaves me a little cold - her stuff is too psychologically in-bred for my taste; but I admit some of it is indelible. Still, you only get a hint of her bristling weirdness from the piece in the Linde Wing.  So even though I'm not crazy about her, I also simply don't agree that the MFA has a major Smith.

GC: But I’d also say the MFA’s selections from Mark Bradford, El Anatsui, Matthew Day Jackson, Doris Salcedo, Fred Wilson, Ellsworth Kelly, Anne Truitt, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Lynda Benglis and Morris Louis are all strong works for these artists. Though we can debate whether these artists are worth paying attention to.

El Anatsui, Black River

TG: I'm certainly with you on the El Anatsui; I thought Black River (at right) was great - really gorgeous and exciting - and the Richter (below) was quite strong;  but the others, less so. The Nevelson is very good, the Kelly and Louis are solid, representative choices - but the Starn Twins piece is only so-so, and the Jackson and the Polke are blunt and obvious; as for the rest, well, I suppose they might feel stronger in a more cohesively curated setting . .

GC: Which leads me to another topic—it’s curious that despite the MFA’s talk of trying to link the contemporary collection to its historical, international collections, these galleries pretty much tell the conventional New York-centric version of the past five decades of art history. This decision makes apparent many of the collection’s limitations. But it’s also a sort of daring declaration that the MFA wants to compete in the contemporary art big leagues (and backfill gaps) despite the collection’s present weaknesses.

TG: I know what you mean about the installation being New York-centric; this is most obvious in its political content. We get Auschwitz, Nagasaki, capital punishment, the antebellum South, all in quick succession - the perspective is always progressive, but it's also so provincial that it’s like that New Yorker cartoon of the world seen from Manhattan, only this time with "Nagasaki" and "Nazis" replacing "Jersey" and "Japan" . . .  As for back-filling gaps, well, that's the key issue, isn't it – but will the MFA do it?  Perhaps. But in the meantime, the collection’s lacunae make it feel scrambled, and the Linde Wing installation doesn’t help the problem.

Because I'm afraid I disagree with you about the gallery "themes;” their Sesame-Street-level articulation (with wall text like "Art can be . . ." and "What's it about?") turned me off, way off. Is the MFA aiming for the philistine pandering of, say, PBS or Harvard’s A.R.T.? We need less of that around here, not more. Or - to put your point another way, Greg - are the dumbed-down questions deliberately designed to camouflage the fact that a sustained, thoughtful program has been missing from the museum's collecting? (Hence, perhaps, the persistent sense of an imported New York rationale pock-marked with curatorial holes?) At any rate, with both timelines and chronology of influence thrown out the window - and the very definition of "contemporary" seeming to stretch back fifty years - the galleries feel over-familiar yet conceptually messy.

Gerhard Richter, Vase

Which is frustrating given that what could truly differentiate the MFA from the contemporary-art pack is the chronological connection between art of the present day and the art that has come before. Right now the MFA seems to be making the statement that “contemporary” art begins around 1960 (I’d agree), and you can half-discern in the collection the rough outlines of two or three major (and, yes, NY-centric) streams in artistic thinking since then: minimalism and then post-minimalism, and – well, whatever you want to call the ironic pop mode that Warhol introduced. Under minimalism you could group artists like Kelly, Judd and Richard Tuttle; under the Warhol banner people like Richter, Cindy Sherman, and the “appropriation” crowd.

The cross currents between these modes are of course complex, and no installation could limn them completely. Still, the MFA doesn’t even try. Indeed, the Linde Wing's "themes" may give such connections lip service, but at the same time actually obscure the dialogue that has played out between these artists.  By hanging a Morris Louis near a Lynda Benglis, for instance, the museum seems to be saying, "See?  They're both poured," which I guess they are, but surely that's where the similarity between Louis and Benglis ends.  Elsewhere, the real aesthetic issues behind various works are left hanging.  What does Gerhard Richter's deconstruction of abstraction (above left) "mean," for instance? You can't tell from these galleries that it’s a dead-pan application of Warholian style to a “heroic” mode. And what exactly was Mark Tansey parodying about Marcel Duchamp in The Enunciation? Again, the satiric riposte of a pictorial tradition to a conceptual one simply feels opaque. Instead of being illuminated on these issues, you get to ask yourself over and over, "What does art mean to ME?" It’s like listening to Marlo Thomas lecture on The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even.

GC: Well, yeah, the MFA is making a mistake by underestimating its audience with its "Art for Dummies" wall texts and gallery themes. This stuff even underestimates philistines.

And I think the MFA’s talk of contemporary art set in the context of the museum’s historic, encyclopedic collection remains — to be generous — aspirational at this point. It’s much like the MFA calling the other new wing the "Art of the Americas" wing, but presenting hardly any art from outside the U.S. One of the few historical connections the contemporary curators make is pairing Louise Lawler’s photo of an MFA gallery with a lousy Monet painting from that gallery. Can you be more literal and simplistic? As an aside, Monet was a great painter, but why keep emphasizing his lousy painting of his wife pretending to be Japanese, which has sour racial overtones and has nothing to do with his genius?

TG: Man, I hate that Monet, too, I’m glad to hear you call it out. I guess the MFA thinks its little “kimono samurai” counts as an early instance of “appropriation” or something. But today it’s burdened by a cutesiness that reads as colonialist – and makes you feel the curators don’t really understand the Kara Walker they’ve hung only twenty feet away! And the Lawler photograph is just funny. Frankly, anything titled “Is She Ours?” plays like an in-joke at a museum that has recently had to return so much art with a dubious provenance to its country of origin. That these two misfired gambits should occupy prime real estate in the Linde Wing speaks volumes, I think, about the issues besetting the museum's new initiative in contemporary art. Greg and I will talk more about possible paths out of those conceptual straits in the final part of this conversation.

Louise Lawler's Is She Ours?  Uh . . . . given the MFA's recent track record, maybe not!

After Greg Cook of the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research and I bumped into each other at the opening of the new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art at the MFA, we began talking about it, both in person and online. The following three-part series is a distillation of that conversation. Discursive, circuitous, at time repetitious, we feel it nevertheless serves as an accurate introduction to the MFA's latest addition and the issues it both raises and addresses.  Below is the first part of our discussion:

Thomas Garvey (TG): The opening of the Linde Wing is big news for contemporary art in Boston - in one fell swoop, the MFA has opened up a new exhibition space for contemporary art that's actually larger than the current galleries at the ICA. And as many local critics have pointed out, the renovated wing operates as both a kind of riposte to the ICA, as well as the potential kick-off to a high-stakes local competition in the arena of contemporary art.

Which is all to the good, of course. But the success of any competition depends on the talent of the competitors, doesn’t it; and so far I haven’t seen much actual great new art arrive in town as a result of this supposed curatorial cage battle.

 In fact, I felt a slightly sinking feeling as I toured the new Linde Family Wing at the MFA last week  . . . and I think I'll start with the architecture.

If ever there was a local piece of design crying out for some sort of transformative violation, it was I.M. Pei's elegantly dull West Wing (Pei himself didn’t like it that much). But the MFA hasn't made any such architectural gesture, and so much of the space now awkwardly maps to its new program. And the changes they HAVE made are sometimes puzzling - or don't feel like much of a change at all.

They've taken out the escalator, for instance - yet replaced it with a ceremonial stair (below) that hogs space and feels like a fifth wheel. This seems to have been their way of acknowledging the museum’s former front door as a new entry for school groups (a programming decision that makes sense) – and of course the loss of the escalator makes the space quieter (a bit). But the flow here is clumsy, the scale off, and the resulting spaces exist in some sort of limbo between gallery and mall.

The MFA has transformed a ceremonial stair into . . . a ceremonial stair.

Greg Cook (GC): Yeah, it strikes me as dull shopping mall architecture too. Partly I think it’s the glass galleria (the MFA’s term), and the way the middle of the building becomes a long, awkward hall taking you past the bookstore and, uh, food court. Which is why Michael Phelan’s 2009 neon “Bless You Taco Bell,” installed above the MFA’s Bravo restaurant, is amusing. Perhaps unintentionally, it teases this mall-ness that aspires to something more classy.

TG: Yes!! “Bless You Taco Bell” is funny – somebody at the MFA does have a sense of humor . . .

GC: I keep thinking of the idea of chi—or energy—in feng shui. There’s lots of bad chi here. As you note, the stairway sits awkwardly at the end of the hall — too tight at the top and bottom (the MFA doesn’t help things by shoehorning in art at both ends), and too big of a lobby around it. Which made more sense on the first floor when it actually was the building lobby. Meanwhile the extra space on the second floor was useful as a staging ground for the Gund Gallery special exhibits. But now these spaces feel baggy. And the renovation doesn’t fix the fact that the “flow” of the second floor encourages you to pass on through and not stop to look at the walls. It became really apparent to me when I saw the Kara Walker piece in the new main second floor galleries. Now it holds the wall, but when it previously was in the second floor lobby, it didn’t halt you.

TG: The new pieces up there halt you even less, I’d argue. The whole thing actually feels a little more amorphous than it did before, and the museum has chosen NOT to do what I think any talented architect would have been itching to do - that is, ditch the stacked double circulation and smash through the existing shop for direct contact with the courtyard next door. For some reason there's also a glass classroom set in the middle of everything instead. And if anything, the new finishes – save the welcome hardwood on the first floor - are perhaps even blander than they were before (barring, of course, the occasional retro-60's furnishing). To be fair, nothing feels positively bad; it just doesn't feel enhanced; the overwhelming impression is of a new program shoe-horned into an existing space - a huge missed opportunity.

GC: Let’s talk about the art. I’d argue the curators do manage to make something out of the limited resources of the MFA’s contemporary collection. To me, presenting the art by theme is an elegant solution that allows them to conceal some of the collection’s significant flaws. If only the themes were fresher, sharper.

It's a bird, it's a plane . . . it's Jonathan Borofsky!

TG: Okay, I’m half with you there; but I’d like to start with the art that’s integrated with the architecture – which is - well . . . . let's just say I really hope someday they take down those banal, flying Borofsky dudes (left), and while I chuckled at the “Taco Bell” piece, some of the neon and flashing signs really should read "GREETINGS FROM THE MILLENNIUM!” I know the works are more recent than that, but the technique feels dated. And the Cerith Wyn Evans blinking chandelier (below right) just looks too baroquely gay now that it has gone solo . . .

GC: Yeah, those terrible Borofsky sculptures definitely heighten the mall effect. The MFA says he’s based in Ogunquit, Maine. As someone who’d like to see more locally made art in the MFA’s mix, it’s galling when curators seem determined to find lousy local art. The wall label says they were “made especially for the wide open spaces for the Linde Family Wing.” So the problem may be that the MFA commissioned these, and got the Foster family to pay for it, and so can’t back away from the bad decision.

TG: Yikes, if they were indeed a commission, then I guess we’re stuck with them! Thank God the collection in the new galleries is better - and certainly better than the ICA's - but isn't that rather a low bar?

Is Marie Antoinette sending us messages through this chandelier?

GC: It’s hard to fairly compare the MFA contemporary collection to the ICA’s because the ICA only began collecting in the past several years. It’s a bit apples-and-oranges. The ICA has picked up two strong Louise Bourgeois sculptures, the MFA seems to have none. The ICA’s Paul Chan “1st Light” projection is considered one of the major artworks of the past decade—and one of the most thoughtful high art elegies to Sept. 11. Though personally, right now, I’d put it more in the quite good category. The MFA doesn’t have anything by him—or pretty much by anyone who does tech art beyond basic video and neon. Well, after Chan, the ICA doesn’t really either. The MFA’s collection may pull ahead, though, with its works from the past decade by Walker, Mark Bradford, El Anatsui and the like, none of whom are in the ICA collection.

As an aside, you can’t help noting that the new MFA wing presents a number of artists who’ve been featured at the ICA in recent years—Bradford, Charles LeDray, Roni Horn, Kader Attia. But except for Attia, the MFA acquired these works before their ICA surveys. I mean, the MFA got the Horn in 1992 and LeDray in 1994, more than a decade and a half before their 2010 ICA surveys.

But I’d say the more telling comparisons are with Harvard or Andover or the Rose. The other day I paged through the 2009 catalogue of the Rose Art Museum collection. Look at any handful of pages and it’s apparent how terrific the Rose’s post-War collection is, and how thin the MFA’s is. If you compare what the Rose has by each artist with what the MFA has, there’s about one time the MFA bests the Rose: that Warhol electric chair painting.

TG: Well, maybe I’m just not all that crazy about the ICA collection, or its ethos, either; to me the ICA relies too often on a kind of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” quality (to be fair, a lot of contemporary art, does too). What people seem to remember about the ICA’s art is how the cube was made entirely of pins, or that the whole room was filled with scotch tape, or the yellow powder formed a perfect cone! Uh-huh. I’m not against quirky technical perfection, but people never seem to have any opinions about the content beyond the quirk. As for Louise Bourgeois, I’m not a fan, so I’m fine with the MFA not having anything by her! And like you, I think the Paul Chan is quite strong, but hardly one of the major works of the last decade (something tells me Chan got 9/11 completely wrong); and at any rate, the MFA’s haunting new video by Sigalit Landau is nearly as good.

But I agree with you about that Warhol – it may be the most striking thing in the whole wing. And I do admit it’s unfair to compare the ICA with the MFA, because the ICA hasn’t been collecting for very long, and with nothing like the MFA’s resources. You’re also right about the gap between the MFA and the Rose – which is why I always used to forlornly wonder why the MFA couldn’t just buy the Rose collection - or at least show some of it on loan! But that’s a discussion for another day . . . literally; Greg and I will continue our chat on the Linde Family Wing over the coming week here at the Hub Review.

The MFA's one postmodern masterpiece?  Warhol's Red Disaster

MFA to sell 8 paintings for 1 big fat gay Caillebotte

Gustave Caillebotte's Man at His Bath (1884)

News broke today that the MFA will de-accession some eight works (including a Monet, Degas, and Gauguin) to purchase Man at His Bath, by Gustave Caillebotte (at left), for a price of around $17 million.

I suppose the purchase will be controversial (the Monet that's being sold is a nice one, although the MFA has another much like it) - partly, I think, because the Caillebotte is still a slightly shocking image: a rudely vigorous male plunked down into what's structured as a Degas-style reverie.  Actually, I'll go a little further - the image is shocking because it's so gay.  It presents male nakedness as a precise equivalent to the softcore tease at the heart of a zillion French domestic scenes (and so slyly destabilizes the hetero-centrist context of a good chunk of Impressionism).  The guy is practically rough trade, his butt is center stage, and Caillebotte even teases us with the silhouette of his scrotum.  It's all gayer than Cher's mascara, but at the same time it's as masculine as a Bruins game - a combination that, frankly, the straight population struggles with much more than it does with queeny types like Michele Bachmann's husband.

So, as I'm sure you have guessed, I think it's pretty cool that the MFA is purchasing it, and to my mind the price is justified (if such prices are ever justified, that is).  The museum already has a half-dozen sun-splashed Monets, after all, but Man at His Bath is nearly unique in the Impressionist catalog, and it's of high sociological interest as well.

Was he gay?  Obviously.

For gay men have long thought of Caillebotte (at right, a self-portrait) as the "gay Impressionist" - many straight art connoisseurs might quibble with that "gay" appellation, because of course we have no definitive proof of which way the life-long bachelor swung (if he swung at all); but frankly I'd quibble more with the "Impressionist" part of "gay Impressionist;"  I know Caillebotte initially was shown with Monet and the gang, but to me he floats in some sphere of his own, between Monet, Degas - and photography (his signature view is a panorama in which perspective falls away vertiginously).  But as for being gay - yeah, he always seemed delicately alienated to me in a way that the rest of the Impressionists aren't, and which always read to me as queer.  And it's nice to see a queer edge make itself known at the MFA - at least implicitly - after decades and decades of quiet suppression. So here's to our $17 million piece of rough trade!  It's a lot to pay, but he's worth it.

So - how bad is the Dale Chihuly show?

Chihuly's Ikebana Boat: shouldn't some Oompa-Loompas be rowing this thing?

Recently something very strange occurred in the pages of the Boston Globe. Its star art critic, Sebastian Smee, whose glittering paeans to things everybody can agree on had just won him a Pulitzer Prize, did something he'd never done before.

He dared not to like a great big fat crowd-pleaser.

Smee's target was Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass, the MFA's current blockbuster devoted to the output - I won't call it an oeuvre - of Dale Chihuly, certainly the most successful glass artist in the country. Actually, Chihuly is more like his own industry; teams of glassblowers and engineers produce his work for him and install it all over the globe (sadly, the artist lost the vision in one eye in a car accident years ago, forever complicating his ability to personally produce his work).

Chihuly's installations can be enormous, and are best known for making a forceful case for glass in the public square, where stone and steel used to rule the roost.  And they're always popular (I think this is the third major exhibition of his stuff in New England in the past few years), partly because they're remarkably consistent - indeed so predictable that Chihuly now probably counts as a brand.

All this popularity and "innovation" does offer the MFA half an excuse for taking Chihuly seriously, I suppose; the problem is that the style which has won him his international acclaim has varied in only one dimension over the years - it's gotten bigger and brighter. That's the extent of its "development." Small, early "Chihulies" are like bubbles of deeply saturated color bursting before your eyes; later ones are more like megaton technicolor explosions that just won't quit (at left). The idea of a "retrospective" is slightly absurd.

Still, Chihuly takes himself seriously enough; he gives his stuff the kind of classy monikers that the management at the Bellagio (where he runs a gallery) might give to their latest high-end eatery (Chiostro di Sant'Apollonia and Mille Fiori are samples). And he's prone to classifying his works into formal groups, like "Reeds" and "Boats" and "Chandeliers." But basically everything he does, from his candyland landscapes to his giant umbrella drinks (at top), is a happy, splashy blast of vulgarity, and that's that.

And this was Sebastian Smee's mistake - pointing, oh-so-delicately but undeniably, to the Bellagio-level taste of the whole show. Eek! Globe readers don't like that kind of thing; after all, isn't it the Herald that's supposed to be down-market?  And doesn't Smee remember what happened to Louise Kennedy when she described the self-consciously vulgar Huntington show Pirates! as, in fact, self-consciously vulgar?

I guess not.

Still, something tells me Smee will survive the outraged letters I've been reading in the Globe regarding his review. And Chihuly of course can survive any review, anywhere; he'd only be bothered by criticism if he were, in fact, attempting something like art, which he's not. Come to think of it, there really isn't a single aesthetic idea in evidence in his entire show. (Even when this artist calms down for something more "elegant," as in his "Reeds" series, he hangs onto his signature sense of inner vacuum.)

That emptiness is a bit interesting in and of itself - it's quite unusual, really. Master craftsmen generally edge toward art as their skill deepens; their formal concerns begin to coalesce into metaphors in and of themselves; they discover what their work means. But this hasn't happened with Chihuly - indeed, his one stab at connecting with an actual aesthetic (in an odd display of forms based on Native-American motifs) comes off as a weird little detour from the main event.

No, Chihuly isn't an "artist;" he's more like the head of a management team engineering a designer drug targeting your visual pleasure center. He only wants to give you a head rush; the whole show is like a giant tab of lysergic acid. Of course, LSD can be fun in small doses (don't ask me how I know that), and the pleasure center does deliver, well, pleasure - just ask the kids romping through the show, wondering aloud if you can lick the sculptures (really, the docents for this exhibit should have been Oompa-Loompas). You might get a lingering case of retina-burn at Through the Looking Glass, but that's probably the extent of its mental impact - or danger.

Still, I admit that you can't dismiss Chihuly completely, because in the right context, he can truly charm - or better yet, make you laugh; indeed, his gonzo, take-no-prisoners visual giddiness not only throws a goofy kick into all kinds of formal spaces, but seems to draw a kind of virtual content from them.  I know it sounds funny, but while his sculptures utterly fail as statements, they operate quite well as ripostes. In fact they're probably best described as visual raspberries.

If you doubt me, just go up the stairs from the current show and take in his delightful Lime Green Icicle Tower, (at left) which is standing like a luminous spire in the MFA's severe new Shapiro Courtyard.  It's everything the courtyard isn't: a whimsically organic folly (it looks like some mutant anemone in an outsized aquarium), shooting like a firework all the way to the top of a space that in its expensive serenity could pass for a mausoleum.  Indeed, the impossible height of the piece almost operates as a kind of joke; it activates the whole space as a punch line, sweetly skewering the pretentiousness of its own presentation.  You can almost hear it whispering: Oh, come off it, everybody.

Likewise, if you're inclined to think that Ikebana Boat (at top) is some kind of atrocity, just look what happens when you float its twin past the rigid restraint of Chatsworth (at right): suddenly you've got a party.  When I browsed through images of Chihuly's public installations on the web, I saw something like the same effect over and over - just about everything his team comes up with plays as jazzy fun in a public context.  It's only when you isolate it against a hushed, black backdrop, that the work suddenly seems pushy and empty.  So Chihuly doesn't produce art, he produces carnival floats - but are carnival floats such a bad thing?  He may not belong in a museum.  But that doesn't mean I feel like raining on his parade.

The opening everybody's NOT talking about . . .

It's all been very hush-hush till now, but if all goes well, the lower level restrooms at the Museum of Fine Arts will be, well, "flush" with art by Boston artists right about now.

With a wicked nod to desperate precedent - a famous "show" of contemporary art in the MFA men's room in 1971 (at left) - local artists will be sneaking in to install their own work in the spiffy latrines below the new atrium courtyard in "Flush with the Walls," a "renegade" show which opens - well, right about now, 7 pm on June 15, precisely forty years after that first exhibit. How long the show will last is anybody's guess.  But hopefully its brevity won't reduce its influence - after all, the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art is scheduled to open in September; who knows what local artists may find themselves still hanging at the MFA, only in a more public location?  For those of you who can't make it this evening, I've been told the exhibition will also include "a fully illustrated historical commemorative catalogue, subtitled Bathroom Reading."  Too funny.

[Update: Well, as I guessed, the show didn't last too long!  Provocateur/crypto-anarchist/art-nerd sweetheart Greg Cook had only just concluded his welcoming remarks to the assembled crowd (of maybe two dozen people, squeezed into the corridor to the bathrooms outside the Chihuly show) when security descended, ostensibly to clear the hallway.

A reasonable excuse, but in a matter of moments the MFA's minions had invaded the bathrooms and begun to tear the art down from the walls - and none too carefully, either.  I protested; sure, the crowd had to go, but couldn't the art stay up?  (The artists had thoughtfully NOT posted anything in the stalls, as they had in 1971; the art was confined to the sink counters and vestibule, for the protection of everyone's privacy!)  The guards just gave me that look that reads "Don't make me be a jerk, okay?," and when another gallery-goer tried to video the dismantling of the exhibit, he was told to put his phone away, because "It's a federal offense to take photographs in a restroom, sir."  Oh, dear, Dorothy, I suppose we can't go against the law, can we!  So the exhibit was down in a matter of moments, and the crowd unhappily, but still genially, dispersed.

The art I caught a glimpse of was poignant in its simplicity - a sketch of the Mona Lisa on a paper towel was typical.  (I didn't notice any artists' names on the pieces.)  The show exuded a crunchy - or maybe crusty - idealism that defiantly refused to die despite the determination of the MFA marketing juggernaut to ignore it.  Meanwhile, the museum-goers who pushed their way through the proceedings looked confused but seriously miffed, in the manner of Disney patrons who find a Greenpeace protest is ruining their visit to the Magic Kingdom.  Or was that impression due to the Willy-Wonka-esque fantasia of the Dale Chihuly show next door?  Oh, well - who knows.  Somebody bring on Veruca Salt!]

The MFA's new wing

Photos by Chuck Choi

I got my first peek into the new MFA American wing (at left) this morning – along with all the bigwigs – so of course I’m dying to tell you all about it.

Ok - first, the bad news: the “architecture” itself, though always elegant, and realized with superb technical élan, is in the end undistinguished. The sun-drenched café courtyard (above), the clean lines, the impeccably tailored finishes – we’ve seen all this glass and granite and travertine marble before. Of course it works; it’s lovely. It just doesn’t surprise.

But this is perhaps tied to what counts as the better news: schematically, the new wing does “make sense.” It grows organically out of the original plan, with a clear intent to honor the vision of Guy Lowell (the original architect), and his sense of proportion and decoration. On the whole, this is a far subtler response to the existing building than I.M. Pei’s boxy arcade of the early 80’s – and architect Foster + Partners makes the connection explicit, by using the exterior façade of the old building as the interior face of the Shapiro Courtyard.

This is only one of many nice, sensitive touches. But the great news is that the galleries themselves are often fantastic, better than you dreamt they could be - in particular the floors devoted to the Revolutionary period and the nineteenth century are sheer heaven. The spaces have been decorated in rich, deep colors, with striking carpets and wallpapers, and Malcolm Rogers’s feel for combining decorative with fine art pays off in spades with several rooms that superbly conjure their periods as a whole, and thus serve as striking “extended” frames for the art on the walls. Several paintings – such as “The Peaceable Kingdom” – benefit enormously from this kind of setting (and yes, those wonderful vases are back on either side of “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,” above).

And I have to say the lighting is simply incomparable – the Luminist room alone is lit more beautifully than I think any museum space I’ve ever encountered; the glare that afflicts so many paintings in so many settings seems to have been simply eliminated (and the subtlety of the illumination allows the display of a few delicacies, like watercolors by Sargent and Homer, that we’ve rarely seen before). I’ve questioned whether the MFA actually had a collection to fill the galleries it was building, but in at least these two periods the answer is a definite “yes.” Where we before we got a taste of Copley, Stuart and Sully, now we get a smorgasbord – and most of the unfamiliar works are surprisingly tasty, while the ones that aren’t, still have value in their historicity. And while of course the new galleries offer a warm re-introduction to old friends like Mary Cassatt and Childe Hassam, they’re also stuffed with surprises, such as a bust of Thomas Jefferson by (wait for it) Houdon – I didn’t know the museum owned such a gem! Nor did I know that Edward Steichen once painted, or that the Museum owned chairs by Frank Lloyd Wright – these two floors sometimes feel like a treasure hunt.

Alas, on the modern and contemporary floor, one does bump one’s head against the limits of the collection. For more than half a century, the MFA did not collect well, and there’s no easy way to paper over that gap. (This is why I dreamt for a while that the museum might acquire much of the Rose collection – but silly me! We’re all much better with that stuff being in storage at Brandeis while this stuff is on the walls at the MFA!) There are, of course, some worthy works of art here, but some of the best pieces on display turn out to be loans (like a remarkable Rothko I hadn’t seen before). Which makes one wonder – if the works from the big names on tap are comparatively weak, why isn’t the MFA showcasing more regional art instead? Of course back in the Revolutionary day, “regional” and “American” art largely overlapped – but as the modern era dawned, the MFA seems to have dropped regional art from its collection and focused on also-rans from New York and elsewhere. With the opening of this grand new wing, let’s hope that begins to change.

But for now, congratulations to Malcolm Rogers and the entire MFA are in order, for a job spectacularly well done.