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)

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet IV"

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet IV", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

I stopped by Bergen Kunsthall the other day to see the exhibit of four artists that is currently showing there. Among all the works that are included in that show, the one above, by Michael Krebber, gave me the most momentous moment of seeing "something".

But what was it that I saw?

For starters: Three primed canvases in a vertical pile that is halfway covered by a polka dot "hood", with a smear of black paint up towards the right.

This seemed quite meaningless to me. But knowing how rear it is, - that experience of not immediately connecting a visual uttering with some kind of perceived message, I was thrilled. And even more so when I found out that the work is titled "Miami City Ballet IV".

The connection between the covered up canvases and the title "Miami City Ballet IV" made no sense to me. I could find no literal connection, apart from thinking of other artists that have painted ballet, - Degas, for instance. But bringing Degas's impressions of dancers into my moment at Bergen Kunsthall, just seemed like an irrelevant distraction.

- Or maybe the three canvases could be perceived as stopped in moment, lined up and covered by a mutual piece of costume? No, the title "Miami City Ballet IV" left me with an even stronger notion that this work does not give any direct meaning in and of itself. (But the exciting experience of actually trying to find one, and feeling very close to finding it, was what made that moment at Bergen Kunsthall worthy of bringing on.)

What I found when I looked for meaning outside of the artwork itself, you can read below the next pictures. But that is more or less random information which ends up confirming a notion that this work is not a painting in any traditional singular sense, but a "painting" that is only concerned with the premises of "painting" as a general notion, and with the context that makes works like "Miami City Ballet IV" possible.

(If you are uncertain about the term "context", please look at this former post).

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet I", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet II", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet III", 2010.
Photo from Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

Since then, I have found the paintings "Miami City Ballet" numbers I-III. They were included in a show Michael Krebber had at Galerie Daniel Buchholz in Berlin this summer.

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet", Installation view, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, 2010

And this was how the paintings were installed: Three of them to the left, and then the covered up ones to the right. With a big box clad in fabric between.

Michael Krebber, "Miami City Ballet", 2010,
invitation card photo,  Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2010

I also found out where the artist got the title from: The entire show at Daniel Buchholz was titled "Miami City Ballet", and here is an excerpt from the invitation card written by Krebber:

"'Miami City Ballet" shall be the first stop in, or the downbeat of a series of ”new” exhibitions
following a lengthy period of inactivity. I took the photograph on the invitation card during a
Douglas Crimp lecture. It shows the photograph being projected—of Edward Villella—the ballet
dancer and later founder of the "MCB"—in the midst himself of holding a lecture. He shows his
arm; looks at it and—according to Crimp-comments on it. That he is “beholding” his arm is un-
knowable from my blurry photograph. More or less the same applies here, too.

[...] At this point we put in the picture of Paul Swan, the actor and dancer who once held the title: "Most Beautiful Man in the World"; Swan who appears and dances beside a curtain behind which he disappears for a costume change or some other preparation but doesn’t reappear except perhaps when no one can believe it any more.[...]

- So was this what Michael Krebber intended all along: Covering up the paintings ("painting") until no one can believe in them (believe in "it") any more?


***

On December 2, David Joselit will speak about "Painting Stripped Bare" at Bergen Kunsthall.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon


a red wheel
barrow


glazed with rain
water


beside the white
chickens.

(William Carlos Williams, 1923)

To me, this poem has always been about seeing. - Ever since I first read it in early fall, 1989. I remember the moment exactly; because "The Red Wheelbarrow" was presented in the very first lecture I attended at the University of Bergen, during the first couple of weeks that fall semester, before I went back to New York.

Professor Orm Øverland used it as an introduction to English literature and asked what the meaning of it was. I answered that it shows us the importance of noticing beauty around us, even in unspectacular, everyday objects.

I still appreciate this poem very much. I think it says something important about what art is, and can be. Visual art points out beautiful, interesting, shocking, funny...etc... aspects of life, that we may not notice on our own. And artworks often draw heavily on their context; a big part of a work's meaning may be generated by the surroundings in which it is presented. - Just like the image of the wheelbarrow in Williams's poem is something we can see more clearly when we imagine its red color next to the white chickens, an image that we most likely would not have been able to appreciate if he had not pointed our attention to it.

What do you think this poem is about?
Is there another poem that tells you something similar (or different!) about art?
Then please send it to me by e-mail, so that I can include it in my poetry page (momentc@hotmail.no).

Caravaggio

"The Calling of St. Matthew", 1599-1600, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. (Reproduction cropped top and bottom.)

This is one of Caravaggio's most famous paintings, "The Calling of Saint Matthew". I have seen it in reproduction so many times and was very exited to get to see it "live" when I was in Rome recently.

I enjoyed its technical mastery and composition, - particularly the light that comes in from the top right corner, falls on Christ's hand, and illuminates the sitting men's doubtful looking faces and the money in front of them on the table.

And it was interesting to see, within the walls of a church, the greedy counting of money in such a gritty and cellarlike room. But I experienced an even greater contrast between the next two paintings and their ecclesiastical surroundings. They are placed on either side of the very colorful and celestial "Assumption of the Virgin" by Carracci, in Santa Maria del Popolo.

"The Crucifixion of Saint Peter", 1600-1601, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.

"The Conversion of Saint Paul", 1601, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.

Do you see how literally down to earth Caravaggio has chosen to tell these two stories? - The dirty feet and dug up gravel on the ground below the cross in the first picture. - And the tangle of horse legs and human legs in "The Conversion of Saint Paul". Here, the spiritual is brought down not only to the contemporary everyday, but to the very practical and dirty reality of pushing a cross into a vertical position, or possibly being stepped on by a horse when one has been struck to the ground by a blinding vision of Christ.

In both paintings the light serves not only to accentuate the main character, but also to create a very intimate visual room for us to enter. And you can see how the light creates a similarly intimate setting in the last painting, where Christ helps his mother crush the head of a snake that symbolises original sin.

"Madonna of the Palafrenieri", 1605-1606, Galleria Borghese, Rome.