Matisse + Gertrude

Matisse: In Search of True Painting

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

December 4, 2012 - March 17, 2013

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
Notre-Dame, 1914
Oil on canvas; 58 x 37 1/8 in. 

Matisse

by Gertrude Stein

One was quite certain that for a long part of his being one being living he had been trying to be certain that he was wrong in doing what he was doing and then when he could not come to be certain that he had been wrong in doing what he had been doing, when he had completely convinced himself that he would not come to be certain that he had been wrong in doing what he had been doing he was really certain then that he was a great one and he certainly was a great one. Certainly every one could be certain of this thing that this one is a great one. 

Some said of him, when anybody believed in him they did not then believe in any other one. Certainly some said this of him.

He certainly very clearly expressed something. Some said that he did not clearly express anything. Some were certain that he expressed something very clearly and some of such of them said that he would have been a greater one if he had not been one so clearly expressing what he was expressing. Some said he was not clearly expressing what he was expressing and some of such of them said that the greatness of struggling which was not clear expression made of him one being a completely great one.

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
Le Luxe II, 1907–8
Distemper on canvas; 82 1/2 x 54 3/4 in.

Some said of him that he was greatly expressing something struggling. Some said of him that he was not greatly expressing something struggling.

He certainly was clearly expressing something, certainly sometime any one might come to know that of him. Very many did come to know it of him that he was clearly expressing what he was expressing. He was a great one. Any one might come to know that of him. Very many did some to know that of him. Some who came to know that of him, that he was a great one, that he was clearly expressing something, came then to be certain that he was not greatly expressing something being struggling. Certainly he was expressing something being struggling. Any one could be certain that he was expressing something being struggling. Some were certain that he was greatly expressing this thing. Some were certain that he was not greatly expressing this thing. Every one could come to be certain that he was a great man. Any one could come to be certain that he was clearly expressing something.

Some certainly were wanting to be needing to be doing what he was doing, that is clearly expressing something. Certainly they were willing to be wanting to be a great one. They were, that is some of them, were not wanting to be needing expressing anything being struggling. And certainly he was one not greatly expressing something being struggling, he was a great one, he was clearly expressing something. Some were wanting to be doing what he was doing that is clearly expressing something. Very many were doing what he was doing, not greatly expressing something being struggling. Very many were wanting to be doing what he was doing were not wanting to be expressing anything being struggling.

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
Nasturtiums with the Painting "Dance" I, 1912
Oil on canvas; 75 1/2 x 45 3/8 in.

There were very many wanting to be doing what he was doing that is to be one clearly expressing something. He was certainly a great man, any one could be really certain of this thing, every one could be certain of this thing. There were very many who were wanting to be ones doing what he was doing that is to be ones clearly expressing something and then very many of them were not wanting to be being ones doing that thing, that is clearly expressing something, they wanted to be ones expressing something being struggling, something being going to be some other thing, something being going to be something some one sometime would be clearly expressing and that would be something that would be a thing then that would then be greatly expressing some other thing than that thing, certainly very many were then not wanting to be doing what this one was doing clearly expressing something and some of them had been ones wanting to be doing that thing wanting to be ones clearly expressing something. 

Some were wanting to be ones doing what this one was doing wanted to be ones clearly expressing something. Some of such of them were ones certainly clearly expressing something, that was in them a thing not really interesting then any other one. Some of such of them went on being all their living ones wanting to be clearly expressing something and some of them were clearly expressing something.

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)
Apples, 1916
Oil on canvas; 46 x 35 in. 

This one was one very many were knowing some and very many were glad to meet him, very many sometimes listened to him, some listened to him very often, there were some who listened to him, and he talked then and he told them then that certainly he had been one suffering and he was then being one trying to be certain that he was wrong in doing what he was doing and he had come then to be certain that he never would be certain that he was doing what it was wrong for him to be doing then and he was suffering then and he was certain that he would be one doing what he was doing and he was certain that he should be one doing what he was doing and he was certain that he would always be one suffering and this then made him certain this, that he would always be one being suffering, this made him certain that he was expressing something being struggling and certainly very many were quite certain that he was greatly expressing something being struggling. 

This one was one knowing some who were listening to him and he was telling very often about being one suffering and this was not a dreary thing to any one hearing that then, it was not a saddening thing to any one hearing it again and again, to some it was quite an interesting thing hearing it again and again, to some it was an exciting thing hearing it again and again, some knowing this one and being certain that this one was a great man and was one clearly expressing something were ones hearing this one telling about being one being living were hearing this one telling this thing again and again. Some who were ones knowing this one and were ones certain that this one was one who was clearly telling something, was a great man, were not listening very often to this one telling again and again about being one being living. Certainly some who were certain that this one was a great man and one clearly expressing something and greatly expressing something being struggling were listening to this one telling about being living telling about this again and again and again. Certainly very many knowing this one and being certain that this one was a great man and that this one was clearly telling something were not listening to this one telling about being living, were not listening to this one telling this again and again.

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954)

Interior in Yellow and Blue, 1946

Oil on canvas; 45 11/16 x 31 7/8 in. 

This one was certainly a great man, this one was certainly clearly expressing something. Some were certain that this one was clearly expressing something being struggling, some were certain that this one was not greatly expressing something being struggling.

Very many were not listening again and again to this one telling about being one being living. Some were listening again and again to this one telling about this one being one being in living.

Some were certainly wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is were wanting to be ones clearly expressing something. Some of such of them did not go on in being ones wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is in being ones clearly expressing something. Some went on being ones wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is, being ones clearly expressing something. Certainly this one was one who was a great man. Any one could be certain of this thing. Every one would come to be certain of this thing. This one was one, some were quite certain, one greatly expressing something being struggling. This one was one, some were quite certain, one not greatly expressing something being struggling.

Male and Female

Jackson Pollock.
Male and Female, 1942-43.

Oil on canvas.

6 feet 1 1/4 inches x 4 feet 15/16 inches (186.1 x 124.3 cm).

Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Gallery 173, Modern and Contemporary Art, first floor.

Ab-Soul "Terrorist Threats" ft. Danny Brown & Jhene Aiko

Lucebert

Frank's Team, 1978, Ink on paper, 13.375 x 18.5 inches

Dutch Fisherman with Wife, 1980, ink on paper, 12 x 18 inches

Chemist with Mad Hatter, 1982, Pencil, colored pencil, ink, and collage on paper, 10.625 x 8.25 inches

Bad Smells, 1983, ink on paper, 9.5 x 13.375 inches

more information about Lucebert HERE

Dirty Projectors - Gun Has No Trigger

QueenS

Loving these ladies.  

THEESatisfaction from awE naturalE.

Ahmad Jamal Trio 1959

Warpaint -- Billie Holiday

Linoleum (1966) / Robert Rauschenberg

Throughout his career, and particularly during the 1960s, Robert Rauschenberg became involved in several collaborative ventures that moved him outside the confines of his studio. Rauschenberg's approach to art as an inclusive form engaging all the senses led naturally to his work in performance. Between 1954 and 1964, he designed sets, costumes, and lighting for both the Merce Cunningham Company and the Paul Taylor Company.

His early stage designs included free-standing Combines such as Minutiae (1954) and The Tower (1957), as well as what he called "live decor," in which human action became "scenery." In the early 1960s Rauschenberg worked closely with the Judson Dance Theater, a collective comprising such dancers and visual artists as Trisha Brown, Robert Morris, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, and Carolee Schneemann. Its primary objective was to liberate movement from all formal conventions. 

Between 1963 and 1967, Rauschenberg choreographed and performed in at least eleven documented performance pieces. Eliminating the customary division between performer and scenic element in these works, which ranged from Pelican (1963) to Urban Round (1967), he emphasized the interaction with specially designed costumes and stage props. In his ensemble pieces, such as Spring Training (1965), Map Room II (1965), and Linoleum (1966), disparate actions - some intentionally dancerly, others entirely pedestrian - were performed simultaneously. The pieces were often accompanied by audio collages made from electronically amplified noises, compilations of prerecorded music, and found sounds.

HERE to watch Linoleum (1966)

this post excerpted from UbuWeb.com

PEAKING LIGHTS

101 Spring Street, NYC

Donal Judd bought the entire 1870′s industrial building at 101 Spring Street NYC (above) for $70,000 in 1968 and moved in with his family.

a photographic "cross-section" of all five floors at 101 Spring Street

Judd’s concept of “permanent installation” centered on the belief that the placement of a work of art was as critical to its understanding as the work itself. Judd’s first applications of this idea were realized in his installation of works throughout 101 Spring Street. His installations of artworks, furniture, and museum-quality decorative objects in this historic building strike an admirable balance between respect for the historic nature of this cast-iron landmark and Judd’s innovative approaches to interior design.

All works on view at 101 Spring Street remain as they were installed by Judd prior to his death. Throughout his writings, Judd identifies the installation of 101 Spring Street as the true source of permanent installation as a practice. In his essay “101 Spring Street,” he wrote, “I spent a great deal of time placing the art and a great deal designing the renovation in accordance. Everything from the first was intended to be thoroughly considered and to be permanent."

excerpted from the Judd Foundation...click here

ROBERT SMITHSON Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan (1969)

"I'm using a mirror because the mirror in a sense is both the physical mirror and the reflection: the mirror as a concept and abstraction; then the mirror as a fact within the mirror of the concept. So that's a departure from the other kind of contained, scattering idea. But still the bi-polar unity between the two places is kept. Here the site/non-site becomes encompassed by mirror as a concept- mirroring, the mirror being a dialectic. 

The mirror is a displacement, as an abstraction absorbing, reflecting the site in a very physical way. It's an addition to the site. But I don't leave the mirrors there. I pick them up. It's slightly different from the site/non-site thing. Still in my mind it hasn't completely disclosed itself. There's still an implicit aspect to it. It's another level of process that I'm exploring. A different method of containment.

From Selected Interviews with Robert Smithson: 'Fragments of a Conversation,' edited by William C. Lipke.

The following is excerpted from Robert Smithson's Incident's of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan (1969)

"...Looking down on the map (it was all there), a tangled network of horizon lines on paper called 'roads,' some red, some black.  Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas and Guatemala congealed into a mass of gaps, in a neat row: archeological monuments (black), colonial monuments (black), historical site (black), bathing resort (blue), spa (red), hunting (green), fishing (blue), arts and crafts (green), aquatic sports (blue), national park (green), service station (yellow).  On the map of Mexico they were scattered like the droppings of some small animal.

The Tourist Guide and Directory of Yucatan-Campeche rested on the car seat.  On its cover was a crude drawing depicting the Spaniards meeting the Mayans, in the background was the temple of Chichen Itza.  On the top left-hand corner was printed 'UY U TAN A KIN PECH' (listen how they talk) - EXCLAIMED THE MAYANS ON HEARING THE SPANISH LANGUAGE,' and in the bottom left-hand corner 'YUCATAN CAMPECHE' - REPEATED THE SPANIARDS WHEN THEY HEARD THESE WORDS.  A caption under all this said 'Mayan and Spanish First Meeting 1517.'  In the 'Official Guide' to Uxmal, Fig. 28 shows 27 little drawings of 'Pottery Found at Uxmal.'  The shading on each pot consists of countless dots.  Interest in such pots began to wane.

The steady hiss of the air-conditioner in the rented Dodge Dart might have been the voice of Eecath - the god of thought and wind.  Wayward thoughts blew around the car, wind blew over the scrub bushes outside.  On the cover of Victor W.Von Hagan's paperback World of the Maya it said, 'A history of the Mayas and their resplendent civilization that grew out of the jungles and wastelands of Central America.

'In the rear-view mirror appeared Tezcatipoca - demiurge of the 'smoking-mirror.'  'All those guide books are of no use,' said Tezcatipoca.  'You must travel at random, like the first Mayans; you risk getting lost in the thickets, but that is the only way to make art.'"

"...While in Mexico, Robert Smithson created the Yucatan Mirror Displacements (1–9) by installing 12-inch-square mirrors on dispersed sites. The resulting series of nine color photographs was published in Artforum to accompany Smithson’s essay “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan” (1969). The mirrors reflected and refracted the surrounding environs, displacing the solidity of the landscape and shattering its forms. Part Earthwork and part image, the displacements contemplate temporality; while the mirror records the passage of time, its photograph suspends time."     

Nancy Spector

Rachel Harrison, The Help

Greene Naftali, NYC
May 3 - June 16, 2012

"The exhibition shares its title with Harrison's photograph of the back door maintenance entrance to Duchamp's Etant donnes, which is visible in the exhibition galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and alludes to the entangled roles of the Artist, the Muse, and the Help."

Rachel Harrison, The Help, 2012, Archival Pigment Print

"The twelve sculptures on view in the exhibition combine formalist inspiration and tragicomic epiphany and are imbued with Harrison's signature sense of slapstick timing."

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

"The Help also introduces a group of drawings in which Harrison explores the passion and pathology of the tortured artist, a figure suspended between the pressures of ambitious creative vision and the public hunger for performance." from the Greene Naftali press release.

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

from The Help by Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, 2012.

MORE IMAGES

Davino Semo

more on Davina Semo here

anemic cinema (1926)

Anemic Cinema or Anémic Cinéma (1926) is a Dadaist, surrealist, or experimental film make by Marcel Duchamp. The film depicts whirling animated drawing -- which Duchamp called Rotoreliefs -- alternated with puns in French. 

Duchamp signed the film with his alter egp name of Rrose Selavy.

Rotoreliefs were a phase of Duchamp's spinning works. To make the optical "play toys" he painted designs on flat cardboard circles and spun them on a phonograph turntable that when spinning the flat disks appeared 3-dimensional. He had a printer run off 500 sets of six of the designs and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them. The venture was a financial disaster, but some optical scientists thought they might be of use in restoring 3-dimensional sight to people with one eye.

In collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allegret, Duchamp filmed early versions of the Rotoreliefs and they named the first film version Anémic Cinéma.

The Rotoreliefs are alternated with revolving disks with spinning phrases of French puns. 

In order they are:

"Bains de gros thé pour grains de beauté sans trop de bengué." ("Baths in course tea for beauty marks without too much Ben-Gay.")

"L'enfant qui tète est un souffleur de chair chaude et n'aime pas le chou-fleur de serre-chaude." ("The child who suckles is a hot-flesh blower and doesn't like hot-house cauliflower.")

"Si je te donne un sou, me donneras-tu une paire de ciseaux?" ("If I give you a penny will you give me a pair of scissors?")

"On demande des moustiques domestiques (demi-stock) pour la cure d'azote sur la côte d'azur." ("One demands domestic mosquitos (half-stock) for the nitrogen cure on the Azur.")

"Inceste ou passion de famille, à coups trop tirés." ("Incest or family passion, with too many drawn blows.")

"Esquivons les ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots exquis." ("Let us dodge the bruises of Eskimos in exquisite words.")

"Avez-vous déjà mis la moëlle de l'épée dans le poêle de l'aimée?" ("Have you already put the marrow of the sword in the stove of the beloved?")

The video edits out the sequence with the line: "Parmi nos articles de quincaillerie par essence, nous recommandons le robinet qui s'arrête de couler quand on ne l'écoute pas." ("Among our articles of lazy hardware, we recommend the faucet which stops dripping when no one is listening to it.")

"L'aspirant habite Javel et moi j'avais l'habite en spirale." ("The aspirant lives in Javel and me I lived in a spiral-shaped abode.")

WAVERS

Tamara Gonzales @ Norte Maar (+ BONUS TRACKS).

Tamara Gonzales: Untitled.
On view at Jason Andrews' beautiful; Norte Maar, located in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
March 10 - April 29, 2012

“totter,” 2011, spray paint on canvas, 62 x 50 inches.
"totter" installed at Norte Maar - wall painting by Tamara Gonzales.

Tamara Gonzales was born in Madera, CA and has been living and working in Brooklyn since 1994. Her new paintings spring to the optical extreme through her unique process of spray painting through found lace tablecloths, doilies, and curtains. Vibrant and witty, layered and textured, the artist combines large gesture with tight pattern to create compositions that at once mimic the grand heroic gestures of the postwar painters, while capturing all-over free spirit found in the graffiti that appears daily on the streets near her Bushwick studio. Inspirations are drawn from eclectic sources: Baroque churches, pagan rituals of the Day of the Dead, rose windows, textiles from an open market in India. Her work is not without subtlety, as there are moments where the artist stops time, opens the frame, expands space and makes room for a meditative practice.  (excerpted from the Norte Maar press release)

Untitled, 2011, spray paint on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

“inked seraph,” 2011, spray paint on canvas, 36 x 30 inches

“my window last nite,” 2011, spray paint on canvas, 36 x 30 inches

“drifting at sea,” 2011, spray paint on canvas, 62 x 50 inches

BONUS TRACKS

from Tamara Gonzales' studio this afternoon....mixing up the old and the new....and Bear.

studio table 

I want this one.

mixing it up....old and new.

THE BEARPUFF!

Benjamin Butler - SOME TREES

Some Trees by Benjamin Butler
On view at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery  from March 8 - April 22, 2012.
Photos from the opening below...

Benjamin Butler, Untitled Forest, 2012, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas

Benjamin Butler, Untitled Forest, 2012, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas

The title of the show is borrowed from the John Ashbery poem, 'Some Trees', and points to Butler's specific meditation on painting. For most of the past decade, 'trees' and 'forests', have served for Butler as a pictorial stand-in and a point of departure for making abstract paintings. In these recent works, Butler is seen approaching his paintings more directly as objects, considering not only the front surface of the canvas, but the sides as well. By doing so, Butler delineates the area between painting as a window and as a plane, while his image treads between a signified 'tree' and a series of shapes, colors, and lines. With the intention of extending the visual boundaries of his motif, Butler incorporates the languages of modernism, minimalism, and post-pop representation, while keeping an eye towards the modesty of folk art and the ubiquity of popular culture. The varied results hint at a connection to the trees of Ashbery’s poem; “That their merely being there / Means something.”

Benjamin Butler, Untitled Forest, 2012, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas

Benjamin Butler, Untitled Forest, 2012, 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas

Benjamin Butler, Grey Tree, 2012, 11 x 14 inches, oil on canvas

Benjamin Butler, Grey Tree, 2012, 11 x 14 inches, oil on canvas

Autumn Forest (Sixty-Three Trees), 2012, 60 x 96 inches, oil on canvas

Benjamin Butler, Yellow Tree, 2011-2012, 30 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

more on Benjamin Butler HERE