Category: Art

Posted on

Chelsea Outing

Yesterday BC and I hiked up to Chelsea and visited a few galleries. Nan Goldin has a show up at Matthew Marks, same old moody saturated stuff. Next door we saw a show by Fischli+Weiss, a video of two people in a bear and a rat costume, stupidly frolicking in caves and across beautiful landscapes. The animal suits were effectively displayed, barely visible in floor-to-ceiling darkened glass vitrines. Kara Walker has a knockout show at Sikkema Jenkins, of drawings, paintings, cutouts, and a video, Eight Possible Beginnings. In the video, she uses cut-paper marionettes to paint a portrait of the African experience in Antebellum south. Very powerful, really disturbing, with totally gorgeous imagery. Max Protech has a nice show of abstract paintings by Thomas Nozkowski, nearly recognizable abstractions that bring to mind cityscapes, constellations, and Emily Wilson’s work, which really should be shown here. Sonnabend has a show up documenting collaborative work by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret made in India in the early 50’s, beautifully displayed furniture and architectural photographs. We bumped into Chuck Close, who didn’t say hi (he looks so little in person!), at Pace-Wildenstein, where Tara Donovan has a fabulous installation on display, of hundreds of thousands of stacked translucent plastic cups, laid out in a rectangle appx. 50′ x 60′ x 5′ high, and creating a magical topographical recyclable polar landscape. Tom Sanford has a show up at Leo Koenig which seemed hyped beyond anything I could make of it. His ambivalence to culture seems reflected in his ambivalence to paint and imagery. We ended our two-street Chelea gallery outing with a show of Basquiat “Heads” at Van de Weghe, which BC didn’t really like, but Basquiat’s spontaneity and convoluted narratives always draw me in. There are also some cool Marilyn Mintner photos on billboards throughout Chelsea, very effective venues for her glamourous grime scene investigations. More a-gallerying next week.
Posted on

Breakfast, Biennial, Dinner

After breakfast and dish with Philip, in town for the day, at Florent, Michelle, BC and I checked out the Whitney Biennial yesterday. It was the worst art experience I’ve ever had. Day for Night is the title of the exhibition, appropriate for a show of childish effluvia masquerading as works of social and political significance. We started at the top and worked our way down, physically and metaphorically. By the time we got to the lower level, hoping there might be something, anything to take away, we just looked at each other and in unison said, “How sad.” Most of the work was hung in ways that affected neighboring art significantly, detracting from the artist’s intent, and some pieces that needed distance to even understand were hung with no room to step back. There were a few high points, like Rodney Graham’s projected image of a rotating chandelier, and Franceso Vezzoli’s hilarious trailer of the “remake” of Gore Vidal’s Caligula, but really, how sad that there are curators out there who think this is what’s happening in American art.

Later we met up with some friends, Bev and Donna, for dinner at Cafe Loup on W. 13th. This guy walked in who looked just like Cornel West, and then walked up to Donna and gave her a big kiss and said hi to us. “That was Cornel West,” Donna told us. Donna’s a film editor, and Bev is a photographer. They’re bright, fun dinner companions with many tales and many charms.

Posted on

Munch-y

BC and I just got back from MoMA, and the Edvard Munch retrospective. I started blubbering in front of the “Madonna,” and actually cried in front of the “Kiss.” I’ve only seen his print of the “Madonna” with the sperm and the fetus, but this version, beside being so magnificently painted, was just of the woman, and utterly sexualized and sensually rendered. “The Kiss” is just the story of my romantic life, tumbling into another and losing oneself. The show is a humdinger of an exhibition, laid out chronologically. You first encounter Munch’s work from his 20’s, seeing him mimic the styles of his contemporaries and gradually developing his own vision, and then you turn a corner and BOOM, The Frieze of Life, his series of works on the themes of love, anxiety, and death, his vision and style now very much his own. There’s so much narrative and color and expression, as well as draftsmanship and painterliness–and so much feeling.
Posted on

Frick-y

Today we visited the Frick Collection. It’s a smallish museum, with an intensity of masterpieces sited in an opulent gilded age setting, the paintings surrounded by 18th century furniture, sevres porcelain, and small bronzes. There aren’t just three Vermeers, there are three beautiful Vermeers, and not just a Bellini, but of St. Francis basking in a heavenly light that bathes all the marvelous details in a warm glow, as well as a touching late Rembrandt self-portait, a Renoir tucked at the base of the stairway around the corner from a Bronzino portrait and a Degas, and Holbein’s tour-de-force portrait of Sir Thomas More next to El Greco’s “St Jerome.” The paintings are not arranged according to subject matter or period, but set in relation to each other and their surroundings. In the larger gallery are four portraits by Whistler, one in each corner of the room, and each a “symphony” on the theme of a single color or two. I find myself drawn more these days to Whistler, whose paintings are like cake frosting, a lushness poised to melt into abstraction. The Gainsboroughs are thrilling for their subject matter and arch artificiality, but I’m not very interested in the paint. Unlike the late Goyas on display downstairs, which are painted in broad powerful strokes. Several portraits directly prophesize the coming of Manet.
Posted on

This and That

One week has gone by since arriving in New York, and it seems that a few years have trickled by in our little apartment on the Hudson–so much in such a short span of time. BC and I had a really bumpy ride last week, with a lot of post-breakup stress and anger burbling to the surface and splashing all over us. The great thing about being here together is that we can’t avoid dealing with the things that we’ve so skillfully avoided since first meeting. The drama has mostly subsided, and it’s been at least three days since I last told him that he needed to fly back to San Francisco.

We met up with the ever-charming Joey on Friday to check out the Armory Fair. It was exhausting, but fun, and dishing with Joey made it even funner. I discovered Michael Van Ofen (below) at the Sies+Höke booth. He paints in very broad minimal strokes to create portraits and landscapes with much visual depth, vigorously luminous surfaces, and emotion. Barry McGee’s installation at Deitch was just a knockout–yaay for that Frisco kid!

Joey took us out the next night to the gayest Italian restaurant that I’ve ever been to, with a dj and everything. BC dressed appropriately in his new pink Izod sweater. Tagging along were Joey’s cutie-pie husband, Mr. Bear, and their smolderingly hot buddy, Cubby. I had the Gnocchi Shenequa, which one must order by saying, “I’ll have the Gnocchi Shenequa, girl!”

Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian, fellow San Franciscans, had an interesting show at White Columns that ended Saturday, introducing New York to their lives and work, with samples of their ‘zine and art from their collection. I still haven’t done the Chelsea galleries, so that report will come soon–there’s an awful lot to see. This week’s list includes the Munch show at MoMA, the Goya show at the Frick, and the Whitney Biennial.

We spent one day with my old San Francisco buddy, Michelle, in her new digs in Jersey, visiting her horse and bonding with her dogs. She showed us a fabulous scrap book that she recently found in a flea market, of clippings from newspapers and magazine from the 30’s. We were mesmerized by what amounted to a porn collection of the time–images of bathing beauties, and legs, legs, legs! She’s recently completed a new art work in bronze, a sculpture of a bunny in an impossibly tight corset. All of Michelle’s work is beautiful and well-crafted and conceptually rich, queasy fetishistic objects and images for big bad kids. Dana, her husband, has the most complicated train set that I’ve ever seen. It’s half completed and fills a quarter of their garage. He has a mini-elevator with several levels of track, to add or take away trains. Each train is individually controlled and programmable to travel different routes, all trackable on a laptop. He and BC bonded over their mutual obsessiveness, while Michelle and I slipped outside to mentally landscape her yard.

Posted on

Up and Over

We took the A train yesterday, or was it Tuesday(?), up to the Cloisters, which we decided would be best visited in the spring or summer, as the gardens were all shriveled up and without plantings of winter interest. The structure itself is worth the 100 stops on the A train, combining plundered medieval French monastic architecture into a fabulous and dramatic setting. The tapestries are pretty fabulous, too. But also pretty gruesome. That poor unicorn. My favorite things in the museum are the wavy columns in the 12th century Saint-Guilhem Cloister.

Today we hopped back onto the A train and over to Brooklyn to the Transportation Museum. We’re both interested in Victorian technology and the amazing feats of late 19th century engineering, but were a bit discouraged that the displays seemed geared towards 2nd graders. On the lower level, in a now defunct subway station, the museum houses trains dating back to the early 20th century, which we got to actually play on! And there are still bathrooms in the station, adding a touch of nostalgia and convenience to the experience.

BC and I are doing great. He’s chatting away with his new little dude on one of those bear_ _ _.com sites as I type away up here. click click click click, his stubby fingers are chatting up a silent storm but a few feet away. This is such a great segue into bachelorhood, being single together.

Posted on

On the Plane: New York Day 1

BC, you know, the one that I’m supposed to be separated from, and I are on the flight to New York City, for a three week stay in the West Village. Our purser’s name is Chad. His voice and entire being radiate calm efficiency and dedication to service. We’re staying at my friend, Lilly’s, who’s going to China for the month. Lilly’s a fascinating film maker, a passionate and intense woman whose films have focused largely on her Jewish heritage, both on very grand and very intimate scales. Very happy to be able to spend the evening with her before she sets sail for the Middle Kingdom.

Having dreamt about having a solo show in New York city since deciding to pursue being an artist, it’s with an unavoidable level of disappointment that I go there now, with the gallery closing and my show being canceled. Start spreading the word. I will not be a part of it. I had a dream that Michael Kimmelman’s review of the Whitney Biennial mentioned my show, telling people to head over to Chelsea to see where the real pulse was. I don’t know if I’ll have another opportunity to show in the center of the art world again, and am trying to be comfortable being a peripheral anomaly relegated to the artistic backwater that is San Francisco. I’ve asked my artist friends to make recommendations for introductions with dealers, and have at least one solid lead to follow. I’m not the aggressive type, you know, when it comes to approaching galleries, that is, so if all else fails, I’m going to love exploring the city for an extended period of time, and will get back to work in San Francisco renewed and invigorated. Or ready to take off for Italy.

Last night I watched Jacques Demy’s delightful Lola, which momentarily blew me out of the doldrums and into new wave paradise. Anouk Aimee plays Cecille, a dancer nicknamed Lola, who clings optimistically to the return of her lover and father of her child, who left 10 years ago after getting her pregnant and with the promise to return rich. Meanwhile, everyone falls in love with her, but this is Jacques Demy, so by the film’s end, the lover returns, sure enough rich, with all of Lola’s floozie dance buddies in tears and her many suitors heartbroken but wiser and off to all ports not Lola. I see Jacques Demy as a new wave anomaly of sorts. His films are almost postmodern in their appropriation (Lola is an ode to Max Ophüls) of style and content, but always with his unique fairy tale stamp.

Okay, three more hours to go. What shall we talk about? Do you have any more questions for me? Want to hear about my vestigial nipple? Well, I don’t have one, but at least two of my past lovers did. And I’m not one to kiss and tell. That’s kiss–make love to every day, devote every second to, spend two years looking for the perfect sofa with, break up in a public and painful confession of indiscretion–and tell. Oh, wait, I won’t be posting this for hours, so I obviously can’t answer your questions while I have all this time on my hands, so let me anticipate some questions for you, Dear Readers…

Chris, just how did you get the nickname ‘Coco’?
That’s a very good question! I was the first relative that my nephew, Nathan, addressed who had not only a single-syllable name, but one that began with all these consonants. There were “Ma-ma,” “Pa-pa,” “Di-di,” Nathan was even “Na-Na,” and then me. If you’ve ever babysat an infant, you suddenly realize how long 8 hours are. Sort of like being on a plane, but having to keep everybody amused. There I was, trying to get Na-Na to say my name, and he’d get the “C” sound okay, but I guess the two-syllable thing was already too heavily ingrained, and out came “Co-co.” “Chr-is,” I’d say. “Co-Co.” “Ch-ris.” “Co-co.” So it stuck.

If you were stuck on a desert island with only one person, who would it be, and why?
I’d love to get shipwrecked with Talullah Bankhead, because I’ve already seen how entertaining and resourceful she can be, fishing with her diamond bracelet in Lifeboat. If she somehow couldn’t make it, then I’d choose Bob Hoskins because in the absence of practical matters, like checking e-mail or having to work for a living, I’d just want to have sex all day, and he’s the only man who could ever please me. Isn’t he the son of a preacher man?

What’s the most memorable break-up you’ve experienced?
Alfonso, my hot Basque potato. He looked like Jean-Luc Picard (+25 pounds), and ran into the Pacific naked. We went to the beach together one afternoon, in Santa Cruz. There was a couple making love on the beach, under a blanket, very tenderly. I thought how wonderful, and looked over to Alfonso with hearts and stars bursting from my eyes, and he said, “The whore.” Later than evening, as we supped on a light but fiery Basque specialty, he suddenly leapt from the table and turned the gas on the stove. “Do you see that?” “Yes, Alfonso, I see that.” “But do you SEE?” “…?” “There is no spark–and without a spark, there is no flame.” I was so turned on by his inventiveness that I tore his clothes off and made love to him one last time before hopping in my car and driving back to the city in tears.

Posted on

Another Question, from JColdrey

Your writing, particularly when you engage elements of your own experience such as the South, is outstanding. Have you, or have you ever considered, producing works that have a strong element of the written word?


 Why thank yeww! But no, I’ve never ever considered writing seriously, or using the written word in any of my work. I do and have used spoken word. One particular sound installation, Personals, was based on a personal ad that I placed the year after my lover died, when I still wasn’t ready to be dating, but felt compelled to organize my desire in some way that elicited a response (although I did end up meeting and seriously dating quite a few wonderful fellows). I recorded all of the responses, which were amazing–so much desire and longing directed at me, based on a frivolous one-paragraph description of a little twinkie seeking an older mate with hairy forearms, before the internet and without a picture even! I can’t imagine writing stuff like that. I do have a novel in me, to be sure, but how to get it out of me? Augustin Burrows’ recent Running With Scissors seemed close to my own point of view and how I would imagine writing a book, but who knows… So if I were to do something with writing, it would be something autobiographical and obsessive, all about my intense love affairs with fat hairy guys, with pages and pages of intimate anatomical details, and most likely low-brow.

Posted on

A Few Questions, from AllanH:

Who was your first male crush? (Public figure or private figure)

My first serious crush was on Parker Stevenson, who played Frank Hardy in the television series of The Hardy Boys, with his feathered brown hair and beady eyes. It was more a crush on the character he played, as portrayed by him. I read all of the Hardy Boy adventures to extend my fantasies of us exploring and spelunking together. The big brother figure loomed large in a lot of my teen fantasies, with Wally Cleaver, and Bud, from Father Knows Best also figuring into my dream Boy Scout Troupe. The idea of exploring together is something that still has great meaning in my romantic life.

Why does body hair fascinate you enough to explore it in your art?

To see the world in a grain of sand… A local curator, looking at my work years ago, which I had described as being the result of obsession, claimed that he didn’t see any obsession. He encouraged me to stop talking about being obsessed and to show it. Body hair triggers my salivary glands and makes my diaphragm contract. While my relation to body hair is a bit intense, my work isn’t about obsession, for I try to channel my obsession into works that are experiential, conceptual, critical, as well as obsessive. Simply put, I photograph what I like to look at. Intimately.

What is your favorite museum in the whole world?

I have many, but certainly one of my favorites is the Museo della Specola, in Florence, for their life-sized wax models of the various systems of the body. The figures were made in the late 19th century and feature subjects reclining on pillows and with a hand drawn across a forehead, or eyes looking off into the distance, while their bodies are splayed open and peeled apart. It’s a fascinating mix of the beauty and horror of the body.

Posted on

New at the Marjorie Wood Gallery

New this month at the Marjorie Wood Gallery is a survey of works by Me! called Honeymoon Hotel, accompanied by a commissioned prose work by Chana Morgenstern called “3 Rooms.” The exhibition is named after a musical sequence in Busby Berkeley’s 1933Footlight Parade. Berkeley was famous for his large-scale kaleidoscopic film spectacles. I’ve put together a survey of photographic arrays from the past few years, inspired by Berkeley’s abstractions, and am presenting them alongside images of nature, blonde wigs, nude models, and breathing sounds, heightening our sensory experience of this body type on the periphery of the traditionally erotic.

Check it out…
HONEYMOON HOTEL
Now through April 30, online only at the Marjorie Wood Gallery.