Jiha Moon at the Mint Museum

Typhoon
(reprinted from www.mintmuseum.org)

I had the opportunity to see Jiha Moon's exhibit at the Mint on Randolph Road last week. Sometimes when you see "smart" art, it translates as boring art. Not here. There is an infectious, youthful absorption in her work....like she is discovering moment by moment with the wonder of a child. That sense of discovery is balanced by the very deliberate references to historical artisms and contemporary pop culture. I generally grimace at pop culture references....they just seem so shallow next to...well, everything. She explores them with equal zeal...I don't think she promotes the idea that one is bad and the other is not. All references are just toys in the sandbox.
I'm always pleading about quality of line to my students...and Moon uses line to it's fullest possibilities....it's descriptive, calligraphic, sexy and mysterious. Yes, I said sexy. I'm less enthralled by the color...but maybe that's just me. I think color takes a back seat to line and value in these paintings, for the most part, though Peach Heaven probably makes a liar out of me.

Peach Heaven
(reprinted from www.mintmuseum.org)

And, it's a lot of fun to see someone work on such beautiful paper...yes, I know this is a nod to history, but it's so darn beautiful just on it's own. Whenever I see such beautiful paper, I think about how we often get paralyzed by the preciousness of the materials....the paper is soooo beautiful, how could one ever make something to live up to the innate beauty of the it? Obviously, this is not something Moon has to struggle with....she enhances all those qualities inherent in the paper, as well as history and infuses them with contempory references that suddenly don't seem so out of place.

It's a small show, but you can spend a lot of time looking at these. I have to admit, the Made in China exhibit doesn't do much for me, but I did notice two recently installed Eric Fischl lithographs as I walked through the permanent collection. I thought they were watercolors at first.

You can see more of Jiha Moon's work at www.jihamoon.com .

Jasper Johns "Gray" and the Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute in Chicago is currently exhibiting Jasper Johns Gray, a sprawling collection of mostly monochromatic works. While I have certainly looked at Johns before, I was taken aback by the variation and continuity of the work. The subtlety was actually quietly stunning. There weren't a lot of pieces that wowed me individually, but as a whole, it is more than the sum of its parts.

One that did wow me was Diver. This is a breathtaking drawing in person...it's large; 6 or 7 feet tall, on paper mounted on canvas. The warmth of the underpainting is just luscious. The image reverberates from the downward thrust of a dive, to the two-dimensionality of the mark making and the hand prints. It is movement and static all at once. And a lovely catalog to boot. I believe it moves to the Metropolitian next. Visit http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/johns for more info.

Also on display was a photo exhibit: Girls on the Verge. You know...I am mostly bored by photography, and this was no exception.










The permanent collection is strong in painting...I was pleased to see Cailebotte again....I didn't realize that he never sold a painting in his lifetime until I read it the other day. The museum has a number of big names; Picasso, Monet, van Goghs....a few lovely Corots.

I don't recall seeing Manet's The Mocking of Christ during previous visits...what a stark and haunting painting. The figure is so incredibly high key it almost leaps off the picture plane.


And John Singer Sargent's The Fountain is just lovely. I just get this pure sensual joy looking at his color and brushwork.

The minaiture room is fun; the American collection is good. The Asian collection, well, I don't know enough about it to know if it's good. I wasn't too impressed by anything pre-17th century.....so Egypt, Rome, etc. were small (hopefully, I didn't just miss them, but I was struggling to see everything in one day, so who knows?). Some of the galleries were closed due to the construction/renovation on the Modern wing.


Upcoming exhibits for Spring 2008 include Edward Hopper and a show of Winslow Homer watercolors (a must see, I think).

Age of Impressionism at North Carolina Museum of Art

Okay, I admit I am a bit of an art snob. I sort of glory in it. I've seen some things that have blown me away, and frankly this exhibit wasn't one of them. It wasn't bad...just average. For $15.00 I want it to hold my interest more than 15 minutes, which is about how long it took to make it through the exhibit. Monet can be good, but these Monet's are kind of a yawn. There are a couple of lovely Sargents, a Courbet or two, and a number of other "names".

Sargent had such a facile hand...it's like he didn't even have to think about it---just reacted. It almost seems too easy, and those of us who have to struggle marvel at it and resent it a little, and think maybe he is a bit superficial. But I think there is a certain magic in him. His watercolors are stunning---perhaps the immediacy of watercolor was perfect for his abilities....

The Museum has a fabulous Keifer in its permanent collection, and several Wyeth's that make me scratch my head and calculate how long it must have taken to make all those little cross-hatched strokes....and a nice portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn with incredible edge quality.

I think a worthwhile stop, particularly for students, even though the feature exhibition didn't overcome my own snobbery.

Contemporary Cool and Collected at the Mint Museum

I viewed the new Mint Museum exhibit Contemporary Cool and Collected yesterday. A good exhibit...though I wish it were a little stronger on painting. Here are a few of my favorite highlights:

Lalla Essaydi, Converging Territories #7

Chromogenic print, 30x40"

What an absolutely stunning piece! Here's a statement about her work from http://www.aperture.org/ :

Lalla Essaydi's photographs deal with a rebellion against the limited domain of the female within Islamic traditions. As noted in Nazar: Photographs from the Arab World (Aperture, 2005), according to Islamic tradition, the street is the domain of men, and women are condemned to live indoors. Behind closed doors, they are nothing more than decoration, suggests Essaydi, a situation she that she vividly represents in Converging Territories, which appeared in the spring 2005 issue of Aperture magazine alongside a text written by Isolde Brielmaier. Essaydi places Islamic women in isolated spaces and literally decorates them with texts written in henna. The texts-a reversal of the silence of their isolation-give the women a voice, with which they can speak to the space and to one another. The rebellious character of the photographs is magnified by the fact that within Islam calligraphy cannot be practiced by women. Converging Territories, #30 was photographed in the house where women and girls from the artist's family were locked up, sometimes for weeks, when they transgressed the rules of Islam. Essaydi herself was sent to this space as a youth; escorted by silent servants, she would be left alone for up to a month. As Isolde Brielmaier notes, "her intention and introspection are evident in her photographs: we see Essaydi turning 'space' into something more than just the delimited enclosures of that house of her childhood." Brielmaier goes on to say that "at a time when many images in circulation portray Arab people in increasingly negative ways, Essaydi reclaims and reconsiders ideas of what it means to be Arab and female on her own terms."

Shana and Robert ParkeHarrison, Mourning Cloak, photogravure, 55 x60"

The info card by this image states that the butterflies "act as a shield, protecting Everyman from his empty existence; or implies a richer existence by interacting with the natural world." As I looked at this I couldn't help but wonder why the Chrisian symbolism of butterflies isn't mentioned...it's a clear symbol of resurrection.....

Tony Oursler, Invisible Green Link?, aluminum, acrylic, LCD screen, DVD player

I love it when I get surprised...it's not necessarily a new idea for the artwork to cause you to reverse viewpoints and recognize yourself as the work to be viewed; but I wasn't expecting it for some reason.

Stephanie Pryor, Untitled (painting light blue background), acrylic paint and acrylic ink on gessoed board.

A lovely little poem on canvas. Beautifully crafted and suggestive. But I'm sick of pieces titled Untitled.

The Elizabeth Murray painting Split and Join is probably my least favorite of all I've ever seen of hers. I got a kick out of Tara Donavon's Controlled Caging, and of course, Josef Koudelka's Untitled (Coal Mining Started in the Region around the Year 1400) was haunting to me. All in all, a worthwhile show. Take some time and enjoy it :-)