Zurbarán

Francisco de Zurbarán, "Still life. Bodegón" (1632-42)

Look at these objects. Simply placed next to each other on an anonymous surface, against a dark background. Vessels that were quite mundane in the middle of the 17th century when Zurbarán lined them up and made light shine in from the left. To us they are more exotic, but we can still sense the ordinariness that imbue them.


This simple, little painting was the one that made the strongest impression on me when I visited The Prado almost 20 years ago. That must have been because it communicates so clearly and directly. There are no allusions, no allegory that needs deciphering, just each object presented in its own right, all of them on equal terms.


And then there is the notion that these mundane objects carry a spiritual potential. - Through their simple beauty? - By the light that they reflect? Zurbarán's contemporary, Saint Teresa of Ávila said that "God may be found even among the cooking pots".

Francisco de Zurbarán, "Agnus Dei" 

- Or as a lamb. On a slate. Ready to be butchered. According to the title, this lamb is the Lamb of God, Jesus: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). 


Again, Zurbarán's simple and direct rendering makes his message all the more powerful. Like the vessels above, this lamb is powerfully illuminated. Its tangled wool shines, and it retains its dignity, even when it lies there with all four legs trapped together.


How fitting to look at this painting today, at Epiphany. Later this evening I will remove my Christmas decorations and thus fully be on my way onwards in the new year. Hopefully, Zurbarán's elevation of everyday objects may inform my daily life to come. I wish to develop my ability to see beauty in the small things.

Francisco de Zurbarán, "Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose", 1633. Photo from Agricola

Against the backdrop of the top two paintings, this final still life looks almost too extravagant. But here, too, there is stillness and mystery. As cited at Agricola: 

[. . .] its astonishing realism: every detail in every object is perfectly rendered without the objects losing their strong human quality, especially the basket which is truly exquisite.

[. . .]

It is this precise balance of solid, beautiful objects in empty space that creates the deep sense of stillness, purity, and mystery. And standing receptively in front of this painting evokes the same within the viewer.

The Holmsbu Painters

Oluf Wold-Torne, "Landscape from Holmsbu", 1911. Photo from DigitaltMuseum.

I'll stretch my summer by looking at paintings from Holmsbu in Eastern Norway. The one above was painted by Oluf Wold-Torne in the summer of 1911, the first of many summers when he and other artists came to Holmsbu to work.

By blurring out details from the foreground and simplifying the foliage and shrubs, Wold-Torne leads our attention towards the hill and mountains on the other side of the fjord. Horizontal lines create a calm sensation, and the central stretch of water is framed by trees on the right and sailboats on the left. A large portion of the painting is blue sky which is hazy enough to render that feeling of summer comfort and reverie that I so much want to hold on to now that fall is approaching.

Thorvald Erichsen, "Fra Holmsbu", 1931. Photo from Gwpa.

In this painting by Thorvald Erichsen some of the pink rock that is such a characteristic feature of the Holmsbu area, can be seen bathing in the evening light across the fjord.

Photo from Drammens Museum.

A gallery that houses works by Oluf Wold-Torne, Thorvald Erichsen and Henrik Sørensen (who are considered the three most central Holmsbu Painters) has been built in the woods that stretch inland from the fjord. It is clad in the local pink granite, and it lies well camouflaged on top of a steep trail.

Photo from Drammens Museum.

Holmsbu Billedgalleri, 1963-73, architect: Bjart Mohr. Photo from essential events.

At the back of the building a large window lets the untouched landscape become an important part of the total aesthetic experience that includes architecture, landscape and paintings, among which some depict the same landscape as one can see through the window (like the one below).

Henrik Sørensen, "Trollura i Jahrskogen", 1933. Photo from Drammens Museum.

Kurt Jonannessen and Jørgen Knudsen, "Blu 5"

Kurt Johannessen and Jørgen Knudsen, "Blu 5", 1995.

Again I want to show something I saw a long time ago. "Blu 5" by Kurt Johannessen and Jørgen Knudsen has stuck with me for more than a decade (like this and this and several other works that I have labelled "general").

I do not remember the whole succession of "Blu 5". In fact, I do not remember much of it at all: Very little of the sound and only one image stands out clearly. But I do remember the feeling of anticipation as I stood together with other people along the wall in Bergen Kunsthall waiting to see what would happen.

And I remember my awareness of Kurt Johannessen's presence and his slow movements, mixed with an uneasy consciousness of my own presence in the room.

Kurt Johannessen and Jørgen Knudsen, "Blu 5", 1995.

There was a film projector towards which Kurt Johannessen moved very slowly, with arms lifted out to the sides and no shirt on. Then, when he had finally reached the focus point of the projected image, butterflies emerged on his stomach. And he let them flutter.

This is such a simple concept, verging on a cliché. The solution to that slightly tense uncertainty about what the performance would evolve into was an illustration of that very feeling: Butterflies in the stomach.

Kurt Johannessen has produced many books with short instructions - "Exercises" - that are suggestions for actions so simple that one may at first scuff at them, before one realizes that they may carry great poetic potential.

"Blu 5" and the land art piece I presented about a week ago have a similar quality. They are simple and grounded by very literal references. In "Blu 5" a metaphor collapses into a literal image, and thus it becomes poetry.

Two more Kabakov installations

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, "The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away
(The Garbage Man)", 1988. Photo from artnet.

"The Garbage Man (The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away)"

Unlike the Kabakov installation I showed on Tuesday, this one can be entered. Three rooms that allude a kommunalka are filled with junk that has been collected by the imaginary owner of the apartment. Everything is neatly labelled and organized on tables, in cabinets, and on charts that cover the walls.

What would otherwise be considered waste is turned into art that can make us reflect on just how much junk we leave behind. And the stuffiness and dusty feeling underneath naked light bulbs becomes a nightmare where we never get rid of all that junk.

Or...
We become touched by the love this person has put into his tedious archival work, and by the memories that can be attached to details from our own past.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, "Treatment with Memories", 1997. Photo from artnet.

"Treatment With Memories"

I saw this installation in the 1997 Whitney Biennial, and have thought of it many times since.

Walking through a corridor with fainted "hospital green" colored walls, I reached a barren room where simple iron beds were turned towards one projector each, showing images from the absent clients' early lives. Supposedly as treatment against dementia.

But there were no other signs of human life in the room, just an eerie notion that death had already arrived, and that the images that flickered in the light from the projectors would continue as eternal loops.

***
"The Garbage Man" can be visited at The National Museum in Oslo until January 15, 2012

Dan Perjovschi, "WHAT HAPPENED TO US?"

Photo from THE L MAGAZINE

Another MoMA project.
The one I showed the other day was number 50. This one was number 85, and it was up on the tall white wall in MoMA's lofty atrium during the summer of 2007.

Dan Perjovschi had drawn his cartoons directly on the wall (see video below), and they were printed in this newspaper, of which everybody was free to take a copy. - So of course I did :-)

And since then, I have used it as an introduction to US politics in all the English classes I have taught. I think the image above forms a particularly useful starting point for looking into US politics and for taking a look at how the US perceives the rest of the world...

The images below are political on a more general (and a more or less personal) level.

Photo from artnet

Photo from Colectivo BolaExtra

Photo from pointofview

Photo from PAVILION

Tom Friedman

Tom Friedman, "Untitled", 1990. A partially used bar of soap inlaid with a spiral of pubic hair. Photo from Satchi Gallery.

Getting back to a method I have used before:
I scan my memory for art that I have seen a long time ago. The works that I still remember have made a strong and lasting impression. - Maybe that means that they are particularly interesting, and that you will enjoy seeing them here?

I saw Tom Friedman's sculptural work in the project room at the Museum of Modern Art in 1995, and this bar of soap was the one that fascinated me the most.

- Such a mundane object aesthetiziced by a neatly constructed spiral of pubic hair. - One of the least pleasant encounters you may have in daily life - somebody else's hair on a bar of soap - is turned into enjoyment of a beautiful little sculpture...

- Or does your gut reaction overrule the aesthetic potential?

- Can you see how there seem to be different shades of color in the hair, and how the narrowing spiral on the bar of soap creates an illusion that draws your gaze to the very core of it?

- And what about the white soap as symbol of "the pure", whereas the dark pubic hair tends to symbolize something not so pure...

Tom Friedman, "Untitled (Self-Portrait)", 1994. Carved aspirin. Photo from artnet Magazine.

This work and the next one play on our expectations of scale.

It is impressive that Friedman has managed to carve a little sculpture from an aspirin. But why such a small self portrait? ... One that we could swallow to ease a headache...

A little white sculpture on a white wall, - but still very noticeable. ... Maybe just because it is so little.

Tom Friedman, "Untitled", 1990. Bubble gum, 12,7 cm diameter. Photo from Satchi Gallery.

- Quite a large ball of gum... - Sore jaw muscles?

Look at the subtle nuances of pink color. - And that even, shiny surface...

Tom Friedman. Photo from playgrounddoor.

I cannot remember either of these last two works from the 1995 project at MoMA. They may not have been there. But they are beautiful.

The red, gold and blue in this pencil sculpture, - and the beautiful proportions... a perfect grid....

Tom Friedman, "Untitled", 1993. Plastic cups, 101,6 cm diameter. Photo from Satchi Gallery.

This circle of plastic cups looks like it has some very interesting plastic properties...

Tino Sehgal

One very positive consequence of blogging is learning a lot from blogs that I read. And while having been mostly stuck in Bergen, Norway the last ten years, I have missed out on quite a bit. For instance: Tino Sehgal.

David M. Heald © SRGF, New York. (the village VOICE)

This (illicit!) photo (replaced by a photo of the Guggenheim rotunda) shows his living sculpture "Kiss", in which dancers were hired to execute a very slowly evolving embrace that lasted throughout the museum's opening hours, every day for a month and a half. The work is owned by the Museum of Modern Art and was loaned to the Guggenheim as part of its 50th Anniversary celebrations early last year. But there exists no official photographic documentation of "Kiss" or of this particular effectuation of it, and as an attempt to counteract the material commodification of artworks, Sehgal sells his works exclusively by oral agreement, without any written contracts. (For critical comments about this strategy see: ARTslanT and Escape Into Life.)

While this and one other work by Sehgal were shown, the Guggenheim rotunda was empty for the fist time since it opened to the public 51 years ago (there were no other artworks to be seen), and the photo gives a good impression of Frank Lloyd Wright's beautiful architecture (which I mentioned in a recent post about Felix Gonzalez-Torres). Sehgal's work not only thrives from being shown at the Guggenheim like Gonzalez-Torres's did in 1995, the second work by Sehgal that was shown there last year requires participation from the audience in a similar way as Gonzalez-Torres's work does.

That second work is titled "This Progress", and exists only as individual conversations with the audience. Actors of different ages (a child at the bottom and a person in late middle age at the top) accompany visitors on their way up the spiraling rotunda while engaging them in conversations about progress. I would have loved to try this out myself and to describe my experience here, but since I have not had the chance to take part in "This Progress", I will rely on Holland Cotter's story from The New York Times:

It begins when you walk a short way up the rotunda ramp. A child comes over to greet you. My greeter, a girl of 9 or 10, introduced herself as Giuliana and stated matter-of-factly, “This is a piece by Tino Sehgal.” She invited me to follow her and asked if she could ask me a question. “What is progress?” I gave a broad answer, then at her request, a clarifying example. We went further up the ramp.

Soon we were joined by a young man, a teenager, who said his name was Will. Giuliana carefully and accurately paraphrased for him my response to her question and slipped away. I walked on with Will, who commented on my comments on progress, which prompted me to try to refine my initial thoughts.

About halfway up the rotunda, Will was replaced by Tom, whom I took to be in his mid-30s and who introduced a new topic.

He had read a scientific report that morning saying that dinosaurs, long envisioned as drab-gray and green, might have been brightly colored, even gaudily striped. We had both, we said, been fascinated by dinosaurs as kids, as was his young son today. And now everyone would have to reimagine them, though artists already had done that. So Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” turns out to be natural history. Art beats science to the punch.

As we neared the last stretch of the ramp, Tom handed me over to Bob, who was, like me, in late middle age and who broached another topic. He had just returned from Bulgaria where he had talked with a range of people over 20 about their feelings about the state of their country and lives. He found, he said, a pervasive nostalgia for life under Communism, a yearning for a society that promised to take care of everyone.

The Guggenheim Museum says about this requirement for the audience to participate that "a visitor is no longer only a passive spectator, but one who bears a responsibility to shape and at times to even contribute to the actual realization of the piece".

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

I have been searching widely on the web - but in vain - for a video of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's "Stella" (1990). When she was visiting Bergen with her company Rosas and this piece (in 1990 or 1991, I cannot quite remember), I liked it so much the first and second time I saw it, that I ended up seeing it three times.

Visually stunning (100 metronomes on stage that played Gyorgy Ligeti's "Symphonic Poem for 100 metronomes", and sharp, elegant costumes with skirts and high heeled shoes) "Stella" still stands out as one of the strongest stage works I have ever encountered. So I would have loved to see it again. - Anybody out there who knows how?

The New York Times called it "...a multilevel essay on how context changes meaning, especially with respect to how women are regarded by others and themselves".

This video shows part of a well directed film (by Thierry De May, 1997) which is based an earlier piece by De Keersmaeker for Rosas: "Rosas danst Rosas" (1983).

Enjoy!

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

New year. Clean slate.
I will fill this first one with Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and focus on the possibilities he has given me by handing out candy and posters.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (Placebo), 1991. Photo from: Chicago Art Collection.

I have come across his candy in many different exhibitions (among them: Guggenheim, New York, 1995; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, 2002; Venice Biennale, 2007).

The first time I stood next to one of his shining carpets that look like minimalist sculpture, but are made from sweets wrapped in cellophane, I had to figure out whether or not it was ok to take one. And the moment of insecurity that I experienced then, is a very important aspect to all his different candy pieces.

Well, the answer is: - Yes!

Photo: Ramiro Quesada.

But then another question emerges: - How many will it be ok to take?

Getting something for free like that, in a situation which tends to be about not touching very costly artwork, inspires thoughts about the artwork as a commodity, and about modesty versus "unlimited" sensuous pleasure.

In Felix Gonzalez-Torres's work, mouthfuls of hard, sweet candy, when put together in great numbers, neatly shaped on a gallery floor, become pieces of installation art that not only challenge our desire to own and acquire. They also carry a distinct political message which I will get back to at the bottom of the post.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (Golden), 1995.
Photo from: Makurrah's Blog

This golden curtain of beads on strings forms a beautiful, gleaming surface. Its shape is very simple, - like the candy carpet above. And - like the candy piece - it requires viewer participation: It needs your body to brush through the beaded strings. You may be curious about what you can find behind the curtain, but it is most important that you savour the moment when you feel the weight of the beads against your hair and your skin...

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (Golden), 1995 (detail).
Photo from: Makurrah's Blog

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (Passport), 1991. Photo from: Leaving Traces.

As far as I remember, the 1995 retrospective at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York was the first time I encountered Gonzalez-Torres's work. And I remember very well the inspiration I felt as I sat down somewhere on Frank Lloyd Wright's spiralling floors to fold the blank sheet of thick paper I had picked up from one of the stacks that were displayed. I could take a part of Gonzalez-Torres's sculpture and add something to it. Not really making it my own, but helping it fulfil itself...

Photo from Makurrah's Blog.

Here somebody is rolling up a sheet from a stack of printed paper.

Photo from adrienneskye's photostream: "Felix Gonzalez Torres in Paola's Room".

And here is where another sheet from the same stack ended up.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled", 1991. Photo from: DCUBANOS.

This photographic billboard serves well as an example of Gonzalez-Torres's attention to context. The very intimate subject matter of the huge photo is accentuated by its harsh urban surroundings and by the contrast it forms to the commercial images we are used seeing on billboards. Walking down the concrete pavement, glancing up at the board, one may be reminded of one's own feelings and thoughts about love and intimacy, and the private will then stand out as soft and fragile against the public streetscape.

But knowing that Felix Gonzalez-Torrez lost his partner to AIDS prior to the making of this work, and that he died from AIDS himself in 1996, our reading of this billboard takes another direction, towards notions of loss and a focus on prejudice against gay love.

The same perspectives can be applied to his candy work. With these biographical facts in mind, the title "Untitled" (Placebo) gets a more literal meaning, perhaps referring directly to the substitution of lost love by sweet candy.

(More about the "Placebo" series at the International Sculpture Center and the Williams College Museum of Art)

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation"

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation" 1438-1445. Museo di San Marco, Firenze.

This Renaissance fresco painted by Fra Angelico shows a moment which is quite crucial to the fast approaching Christmas holiday: The moment when Archangel Gabriel gave Mary a message that must have seemed quite overwhelming to her.

She is visited by an angel who either is about to tell her - or just has told her - some pretty devastating news. But she looks so calm. And her simple surroundings - the barren walls and the stool she sits on - accentuate her modest, but intent gaze. Mary and her visitor look at each other, both slightly bowing their heads, and they hold their hands in identical positions.

Even though they are situated below different arches, on each side of a column, their calm attentiveness towards each other makes them seem close. And the depth and space that is created by lines of perspective further enhance their intimacy.

Fra Angelico has created a balanced composition, where only the cell-like window far off in the back may distract us from the quiet action in the foreground. The architecture that surrounds the protagonists of this story is very similar to the architecture at the convent where Fra Angelico has painted the fresco, the San Marco Convent in Firenze. His "Annunciation" is the first painting you see as you ascend the stairs to the first floor, where the monks' cells are (many of them have beautiful frescos by Fra Angelico, as well):

Photo: roma-antica.

Fra Angelico has painted several Annunciations (most of them on panel), and in all that I have seen, Gabriel wears a similar dress made from beautiful gold adorned material.

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation", 1433, detail.

In this version Gabriel points up towards God and over towards Mary.

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation", 1433, detail. Museo Diocesano, Cortona.

And as you can see here, this earlier version does not emit the same quiet contemplative mood as the San Marco fresco does:

Fra Angelico, "Annunciation" 1438-1445. Museo di San Marco, Firenze.

Fra Angelico's depiction of this momentous moment will be my Merry Christmas post to you, and my last post this year.

***

I have had some great moments myself this year (though not quite as defining as the one Mary experienced a couple of thousand years ago...). Several of them have been about meeting people I have not seen in a long time. Thank you so much for showing up in my life again! (You know who you are:-)

Also, while talking about calmly accepting what the moment brings (like Mary does), I want to thank my beautiful yoga teacher, Kari, for making me more able to cut through the grime and experience quiet moments of physical and spiritual enlightenment.

I am so happy I started writing MOMENT/C this fall. It gives me great joy. Thank you so much for visiting, and welcome back early next year!

Uta Barth

Uta Barth, "Ground #30", 1994. Sies + Höke Galerie.



This blurry photograph from the "Ground" series by Uta Barth gives us just enough information to see the corner of a room. It is photography on the brink of complete abstraction. And it shows very clearly that photographs are created by light. The light that falls from the window high up to the left, and the shadows that are formed as the light's negation, build space.

I see painterly qualities in this photograph that remind me of Harald Fenn's paintings. But the most obvious reference is "The Milkmaid" by Vermeer.

Uta Barth, "Ground #42", 1994. Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

It is as if these "Ground" series photographs could be backgrounds for portraits where the sitter would be in sharp focus. And the feeling of vacancy or void that is left by the missing subject is particularly apparent in this "Ground #42". The small reproductions towards the upper left look like they just happened to be included as a background for a sitter that simply is not there. And compositionally they are balanced by whatever it is that has snuck into the image from the right.

If you look more closely at the top left "painting", you can see that it may very well be a reproduction of the Vermeer I mentioned above...

And if you would like to depart from the more or less literal references these photographs induce, you could try to see them as representations of fleeting thoughts or vague memories...

Uta Barth, invitation card from exhibition at Sies + Höke Galerie, 2008. (Sundial series)

Then there is this image from the "Sundial" series. It is sharply focused, but it has the same vacant center as the photo above. My attention is drawn towards the yellow coach because it almost looks like it is slipping out of the picture, but for some reason it is the shadow that marks the transition between wall and ceiling I end up looking at. Maybe because this is yet another photo that is mostly about light, - about how the light changes through the day (in Barth's own home).

As Lyra Kilston points out in ArtReview:

Barth has long followed the Zen notion of what she calls a ‘choice of no choice’: she refrains from intentionally seeking out photographic subjects and instead turns her camera towards what is already around her – the sundial of her home. Through this disciplined practice, her work highlights the act of seeing as an autonomous undertaking. She does not seek out things in order to make a photograph, she makes photographs of what she happens to see.




Uta Barth, "... to walk without destination and to see only to see (Untitled 10.8)", 2010.
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.




The Quote above is from a review of Uta Barth's exhibition at 1301PE in Los Angeles in May/June this year. And the title of that show was "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees". A similar approach to the act of seeing is evident in the title of the diptych above: "...to walk without destination and to see only to see".

Having said that, I will encourage you to look again at all these photos, while trying to forget what you have just read... - Try to see them only to see...

Chris Ofili, "Afrodizzia"

Chris Ofili, "Afrodizzia", second version, 1996. Photo from Tate Britain

Using "Afrodizzia" (second version) by Chris Ofili merely as illustration of what I want to say below, is really quite unfair. Especially since this work lends itself very poorly to photographic reproduction.

It is a canvas filled with layers of lots of different stuff, like paint, cut out photos and elephant dung. And as you can see above, the frame itself also rests on balls of elephant dung. By using that rather untraditional material, Ofili quite blatantly plays with stereotypical notions of African culture. - Like he does when he spreads out images of faces with afro hairdos across a very colorful surface.

The reason why I'm showing this work today is that I want to say something about art and Advent. - Some connection, uh? Well, it's December 1 today, and Sunday was the first of the four last Sundays before Christmas, when we light purple candles. - Four of them in a wreath, and one more to be lit every Sunday.

This year we invited our friends who are originally from Ethiopia to come light the first candle and have dinner with us. So it's not really Advent I want to say something about, but the experience of getting to know Sara and Omar, who are refugees from Ethiopia, and their four children. They are Muslim, and sharing our Christian traditions with them, gave me a fresh perspective on those actions that I perform every year without really thinking about them.

Sara and Omar are great people that I would enjoy hanging out with in any circumstance. But sharing Advent with them and getting to take part in some of their ways and traditions, gives me such a valuable perspective on my own life choices (small and large). And it confronts me with plenty of stereotypical and generalized notions that I have about Africa. - For instance, I realize that Africa is so much more diverse than I tend to assume since I have never been anywhere on that huge continent.

So thinking about all this in relation to Advent, I searched my memory for suitable African art to go with it. But tellingly enough, the British artist Chris Ofili was as close as I got. I think it must have been his "Afrodizzia" (second version) I saw in the SENSATION show at Hamburger Bahnhof in 1998.

I do not know anything about African art, but Ofili's work does more or less the same as getting to know people from Africa: It highlights my prejudice.

Nicholas Nixon, "The Brown Sisters"

Nicholas Nixon. The Brown Sisters, New Canaan, Connecticut. 1975

Nicholas Nixon. The Brown Sisters. 1988

Nicholas Nixon. The Brown Sisters. 1997

Nicholas Nixon. The Brown Sisters. 2007

These were the photos I was looking for yesterday, when I got distracted by Harry Callahan's "Chicago". I had never before seen that beautiful image of trees on the shore of Lake Michigan. And I had never seen "The Brown Sisters" either, - not until one of my former high school students showed them in class last year. - Thank you, Sofie!

I let my students browse the MoMA Photography Collection on the internet, and their task was to choose one or more pictures to present in class. Sofie gave a very inspired - and inspiring - talk about "The Brown Sisters", - about affection, connection, and differences. And about growing older.

I think these photographs fit well on a day when most people in the USA are getting ready to give thanks. They may inspire thankfullness about having a family, and perhaps feeling close and connected.

The time span that is so evident on these women's faces and bodies, forms a very important part of Nicholas Nixon's project (he has photographed the sisters every year from 1975 to 2008). Their age is accentuated, but the last two photos show that they are not ashamed of growing older. - Why should they be?

- And why do I even bring up this issue?
Well, maybe because I turned 40 a year and a half ago, and I do not like being targeted by all those who want to help me look younger...

I will rather listen to the actress Liv Ullmann who refuses to put on makeup that would hide her great life from showing on her face; I will look again at the portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe that tends to make me a little better able to love my own wrinkles; and I will give thanks to Nicholas Nixon for sharing the beauty of growing older.

Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan, "Chicago", c. 1950. Museum of Modern Art.

Looking for another photographer's work in the MoMA database, I just stumbled upon this image.
And I instantly fell in love.

It has got such intensity and near symmetrical beauty that I felt physically pulled towards it.

There is the white snow, - horizontal, and the black trunks, - vertical. Such powerful contrasts that would have been too harsh if it weren't for the calm grey water and sky that flow in between. The water and the sky form an even expanse, with a barely discernable horizon. But there, over to the right, is a glimpse of light.

Six tree trunks are rooted in the white snow, rhythmically organized in pairs. The pair to the left and the pair to the right seem well established, whereas those two trunks in the middle are a little more hesitant. The branches, though, are not shy. They blend together and form a web that almost entirely covers the sky.

Fred Sandback (+ more on Juan Muñoz)

Fred Sandback at Dia Chelsea, 1996. Photo: Dia Art Foundation.

On Friday, I wrote about one of the two sculpture shows I saw together with my former art history professor, Dag Sveen, at Dia Chelsea in 1996. Among all the different shows we saw that day, neither of us remember more than these two: Fred Sandback and Juan Muñoz (see Friday's post). - That may say something about the quality of their work, don't you think?

It's not easy to find photos of works that were shown 14 years ago. But the one above is from that very Sandback show at Dia.

As far as I remember, the yarn he had used in those sculptures was red, and it was put up in vertical rectangles without any perceptible attachment to the ceiling.

It was fascinating to walk around those shapes that were so modest, and still feel so strongly affected by their presence. I felt required to respect the shape they outlined. Crossing the horizontal line that was attached to the floor seemed impossible...

Fred Sandback at David Swirner, 2009.

It is a general defining feature in sculptures that they have a certain volume, but in Sandback's sculptures volume is perceived almost only indirectly, as the shape they outline.

Fred Sandback at David Swirner, 2009.

In this photo, you can see how the string seems to have grown quietly out from the ceiling. And even though they are made from string, the sculptures look surprisingly solid, almost like wall panels dividing the gallery space.

***

Juan Muñoz, "Five Seated Figures", 1996. Photo from: The City Review.

Right after I had written about Muñoz' "A Place Called Abroad" on Friday, I went to an opening where I ran into Dag. So we talked some more about that show, and he reminded me of the slightly-less-than-human scale Muñoz has given his figures. This is crucial to their double appearance, - as both familiar and foreign. If you merely give them a fleeting glance, they seem quite vivid and familiar. But if you look more closely, you notice their slightly washed out features and puppet-like limbs.

(The photo above is taken in Sotheby's New York exhibition space. This group of sculptures with mirror was sold at Sotheby's on November 11, 2009 for $1,202,500.)