Willem de Kooning at MoMA

I made my second visit to the Willem de Kooning retrospective because the exhibition closes in a few days and I had not yet written about it.   The gushing reviews by critics like Barry Schwabsky in The Nation and Howard Halle in TONY seemed to capture my general feeling. However I don't agree that there wasn't a bad painting in the show.  There were quite a few crummy ones, particularly from the 50s throughout the late 70s.  

The early works are stunning in their utter virtuosity with both drawing and painting.  From the portraits to the pink angels of the early 40s to the black and white paintings to the titanic achievements of Attic and Excavation in 1950 it was a singular march towards greatness.  Then came the Women.  The Women suck.  They are gimmicky and dumb.  It was a bad lapse.  I now have to say once again that Greenberg was correct.  The abstract paintings that immediately followed in '53-'55 (using the same palette as the Women) were very good--Gotham News and Interchange among them.  But then decades of mediocrity follow. The big brash abstract paintings like Merrit Parkway don't hold up. Few of these do except for 1960's Door to the River.  I know this will be heretical to some, but second generation de Kooning acolytes like Michael Goldberg and Al Leslie were arguably making better paintings than Bill at this point.  

The 1960s were not a good decade for de Kooning witness the Sag Harbor stuff.  It's only in the late 70s that his paintings appear to become more focused and not so forced.  And then seemingly out of nowhere in the 1980s we get the astonishing late paintings. These are his greatest works and among the greatest paintings in Modern Art. The effortless flow of line, the white light that animates the entire surface, the lack of clutter and abex bravado (the letting go of a certain weightiness).  These are timeless works.  They are familiar yet look like nothing that had come before.  

Helen The Bridge Dead at 83

Few artists in the New York School of the past 70 years have had as privileged a life and background as Helen Frankenthaler, the painter who died yesterday at the age of 83 after a long illness.  She was a glamourous figure in the New York art world and was lovers for some years of Clement Greenberg and then married painter Robert Motherwell years later. She painted some very beautiful paintings.  A few were even great.

But there is a tragic dimension to her that rests on the general consensus that she wasn't a great artist.  Despite getting all the official plaudits and medals this country could bestow on an artist, Frankenthaler never got what she probably most wanted--the recognition of the art world as to her centrality to the evolution of painting after  Abstract Expressionism.

Her main problem was this:  the two most important critical champions of Color Field painting (Greenberg and Freid) rated her below the boys. In Greenberg's canon--after Pollock and Newman came Louis, Noland and then the painter he considered the greatest since Pollock, Jules Olitski.  For Fried, the canon ran from Pollock to Louis, Noland, Stella, Olitski and Caro.   In neither man's writings do we ever get anything about the greatness of Helen Frankenthaler.  She will forever be the bridge-- the bridge from Pollock to the D.C. boys--Louis and Noland. 

And truth be told, she didn't consistently paint anything as good or original as  Louis' Veils or as perfect as Noland's Circles or Chevrons, or as novel as Olitski's controversial spray paintings. 

When the Color Field movement ebbed in the late 60s, abstract painting had entered into the  more reductive anti-color strictures of Ryman, Martin, Baer and Mangold. Louis had died, Noland would eventually become irrelevant and Olitski reinvented himself as the impasto king (eschewing color for surface) and bringing all the other former Color Fielders with him--Poons, Bannard and others.  Helen was left all alone. She never abandoned the basic vocabulary she established with Mountains and Seas 60 years ago.

I'm no believer in the necessity of the romantic idea of the impoverished or tormented artist, but she could have been much better. Louis painted in the tiny living room of his little house.  He had to figure out how to make large works in that space.  With little ventilation, he sucked on the paint vapors for years until they gave him lung cancer and he died.  Helen's studio was bigger than Louis' house.  She could have anything she wanted.  Perhaps her life was too easy and her work became too easy.   

Texas Trip UPDATE

My recent trip to the Lone Star state over Thanksgiving allowed me to check out Marfa and Houston and lots of art--mostly stuff made here in New York.  Many have been asking me for a full report, but it will take some time.  In the meantime, above are unauthorized photos from the Menil Collection, Barnett Newman's titanic Ulysses, 1952,  and directly above from the Judd Foundation tour some early Judd wall and floor  pieces.

Howard Halle Rips New Museum & Gugg A New One

While catching up on my reading, I noticed Howard Halle's complete evisceration of both big contemporary shows in town--Cattelan at the Guggenheim and Holler at the New Museum in the November 30 issue of TIMEOUT NY.  I bashed the Holler show weeks ago,  but Halle (one of NY's most sober and respected critics) went even further.  The money quote is very clear:  "Why would any self-respecting institution mount either of these shows?"  writes Halle.  
Then he goes for the kill.  And it's an indictment of the entire art world especially the Anglo-American one based in New York City and London: 

However you want to frame it--the bridging of high-cultural and low, the mining of the gap between art and life—the ostensibly democratic conceit underlying much of  the big-name art being produced today has been co-opted by the powerful and ossified through incessant repetition, it's become meaningless.   Little more than  populism for  plutocrats, the notion is treated by the art world as an article of faith to be tithed with bids at the auction  house and admissions at the museum door.  But that is all the idea really is now: a belief.  Aping it doesn't  make an artist interesting or important any more than jumping out of a window makes you able to fly.

Unfortunately, Lisa Phillips has spent the better part of two decades implementing that very program--first at the Whitney and now at the New Museum.  

Marfa, Texas

On Thanksgiving morning last Thursday, I embarked on a 5 day trip the state of Texas in order to finally visit the Chinati Foundation and Judd Foundations in Marfa as well as the Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel in Houston.  I am in Houston now, ready to leave the hotel for the Menil.

The trip has been one of the most fascinating I've ever been on--there is nothing both good and bad in the world quite like what Donald Judd and his heirs have wrought in the Texas desert.  I have many, many things to say about what I have witnessed.  

Death In Vegas

The shocking accident that took the life of Indy Racer Dan Wheldon on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday is already being called one of the most spectacular crashes in the history of motor sports.  The 15 car smash-up caused little human damage except of course to Dan Wheldon.  The coroner's report released yesterday stated what was obvious: Wheldon died of massive blunt force injuries to the head. These no doubt occurred when he hit the catch fence.

I haven't followed auto racing closely since I was a child growing up in the 70s watching ABC televise the big races and watching the Speed Racer cartoon series. Then it was all about the Indy racers--Foyt, Unser, Allison, Andretti, and Rutherford.  Nascar was still pretty much of a regional phenomenon and one would hear a lot about Richard Petty and that was it. But then as now, the death crashes were always a source of incredible fascination for people.

The first I can remember was the 1973 Indianapolis 500, which was  was marred by 3 deaths--Art Pollard and the young Californian Swede Savage.  He was an up and coming racer who was very different than the rednecks who dominated American motor sports.  He looked more like a movie star.  At Indy,  on lap 58, turn number 4, what many longtime Indy observers still call the single most spectacular crash in the history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway transpired as Savage's car exploded after hitting an angled wall head-on. Savage's injuries were serious but he was expected to survive, however a bad plasma transfusion gave him hepatitis B and he died 33 days later of liver failure.   A young crew member of a teammate rushed onto the track but was struck and killed instantly by a fire truck.

Hemmingway said famously "Auto racing, bull fighting and mountain climbing are the only real sports...all others are games."  That is what makes auto racing so different than all the others.  After Savage there was Gordon Smiley,  Senna, Earnhardt  and tens of others.  It is why so many are fascinated.  Nascar is the second most popular spectator sport in the United States.  But most casual sports fans don't follow auto racing and only take notice of the sport when tragedy strikes.  The last time I watched a lot of auto racing coverage was when Earnhardt crashed into the wall at Daytona in 2001.   

When I was changing channels on Sunday I noticed the race on ABC because the announcers were speaking in hushed tones,  so I knew something bad had happened.  It wasn't until about 35 minutes later that they announced that Wheldon had died and ABC started to show what exactly had happened.  The wonder of it all is that no one else was seriously injured. Sunday night I spent about an hour and a half on you tube watching as many final crashes as i could.  Race car drivers are a different lot.  They are not the same as most of us.  I know you are supposed to feel a little sullied to watch these things.  But to me, they are heroic.  These men (and now women)  who live to race and in the process risk everything.

The Execution of Troy Davis

Last night, the state of Georgia executed convicted killer, Troy Davis.  Everyone knows the story by now and with so much controversy surrounding this case--witness recantations, no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime, it seems that the arrogance of Georgia officials from the corrections' officials, to the prosectors to the Governor himself prevented them from even considering a thorough examination of the new circumstances.

What was it about Mr. Davis that made his execution so necessary last night?  Not much it seems.  I have had my own conflicted feelings about the death penalty but I come out on the side that it should be the people's right to hold it in reserve for particularly heinous crimes.  The murder of off-duty officer MacPhail though cowardly and cold-blooded was not a pre-meditated act of hours and weeks of planning.   It does not meet the heinous criteria.  

In the meantime, serial killers, child killers and mass murderers escape the gallows.  In California, the all-time champion of serial murder, Randy Kraft  has been on death row since 1989.  He is part of a bridge club on California's death row with other serial murderers including Lawrence Bittaker (death row class of 1981) and Doug Clark (death row class of 1983).  Kraft himself  is responsible for perhaps 60 or more murders of boys and young men. This is the problem with the death penalty.  States have it on the books yet wield it in such random and arbitrary ways.

The reason I believe that the death penalty should be held in reserve is that sometimes death is the only reasonable punishment.   The only reasonable punishment for the Connecticut atrocity perpetrated by Steven Hayes on the Petit family is death.  Anything else is an insult to the victims, their families and society.    There is no justice to be meted out in any kind of fantasy afterlife.  This is it.  I hold no special sanctity for the life of vermin like Steven Hayes or Randy Kraft.  I wouldn't mind strapping them into the gurney myself.  But these are rare cases.   

The smugness of Rick Perry talking about the execution of Todd Willingham is repugnant.  Somewhere between the Troy Davis case and the laughable practices of the California penal system is common  sense and a sober realization that reform is needed.  And even though the United States is in the company of China, India, Iran etc. as far as Death Penalty states, it doesn't give me the willies that some Americans get.  

I like the fact that for violent crime the United States doesn't mess around.   We have a vast prison industrial complex because we have many more violent criminals than Europe.  I am all for rethinking the stupid and costly war on drugs and the hundreds of thousands of wasted lives serving time for non-violent drug offenses.  But as far as violent offenders I have no sympathy.  The era of mid-century era rehabilitation and early release culminated in the 
1970s and 80s crime wave that only ended with the changing demographics produced by factors such as the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973.  

The United States is one of the few countries in the world where a life sentence means a life sentence.  European and  Latin American countries frequently release murderers after 20 years because of cost and because anything after 20 years is regarded as cruel.   In the United States we now throw away the key.  That's fine by me, and in today's political climate why the last two Democratic presidents, Clinton and Obama both support the death penalty.