Alexander Adler

Enough Avedon

Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, poets, New York, December 30, 1963Courtesy Gagosian Gallery and The Richard Avedon Foundation

In “Richard Avedon: Murals and Portraits,” Gagosian has staged one of the most alluring curatorial arrangements of the season. As if exhibiting all four of the artist’s monumental murals together for the first time, complemented by an assortment of thematically related portraits, wasn’t enough, the gallery has enlisted starchitect David Adjaye to create what the release refers to, and is indeed, a “dramatic spatial composition.”

The Mission Council, Saigon, South Vietnam, April 28, 1971Courtesy Gagosian Gallery and The Richard Avedon Foundation

Known as one of the 20th century’s leading fashion photographers and portraitists, Avedon retained an uncanny ability to garner quite unique, sublimely frank expressions from his subjects who varied from the severest of 20th century poets, anti-Semite Ezra Pound to desegregationist Dwight Eisenhower, The Beatles to members of “the Mission Council” assembled on April 27, 1971, a spry Brooke Shields to a weathered Willem de Kooning. Much like Ruscha matching meaning with a color scheme and the shape of his words or phrases, the tone of Avedon’s portraits reveal with all sincerity, the fundamental character of the sitter.

Photo by Robert McKeever, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Mounted at Gagosian’s cavernous 21st Street space, each of the four murals serve as anchors hung behind glass on the gallery’s structural walls. Adjaye, in accordance with the Avedon Estate and Gagosian director Kara Vander Weg, has directed the installation of four V-shaped constructs that form miniature alcoves each curated according to the theme or characters depicted in the associated mural.

Photo by Robert McKeever, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Gallery “A” contains a slathering of Warhol’s factory trannies and denizens Viva, Gerard Malanga, and Taylor Mead alongside Avedon’s shot of Warhol’s post-Solanas mangled torso. “B” follows with images associated with “The Chicago Seven,” a group of activists criminalized during the riots of 1968 concurrent with the Democratic National Convention. Keeping in turn with Avedon’s lesser-recognized but profoundly important politicized work, “C” uses “The Mission Council” as a point of departure juxtaposing American officials with soldiers and victims of strife alike. The final enclave pays homage to the freedom of expression Americans hold dear with a mural of Allen Ginsberg and his extend family complimented by a series of portraits and contact sheets featuring Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg’s lover and fellow poet. After all, Avedon embodied an American spirit taking pride in and, in some capacity, also taking responsibility for the country’s tumultuous development during the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

Abbie Hoffman, Yippie, New York, September 11, 1968Courtesy Gagosian Gallery and The Richard Avedon Foundation

By capturing both the conservative and the violent, the mistakes and triumphs, the flamboyant and the creative, Avedon gave equal opportunity to a scattered and unified American culture to build an identity and become immortalized in images of true gravitas. Avedon’s photographs, however provocative, refuse to depart from the human condition, never truly aggrandizing or mythologizing sitters but rather honing in on their roots. Whether it’s Andy’s stomach, freshly stapled, or Ginsberg caught in the rapture of Orlovsky’s arms, the sitters remain themselves, individuals not merely signifiers for a character type or sociocultural movement.

Andy Warhol and members of The Factory, New York, October 9, 1969Courtesy Gagosian Gallery and The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon Murals & Portraits is on view at Gagosian Gallery, West 21st Street through July 6, 2012.

Photo by Robert McKeever, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

(Source: The Huffington Post)

How to Ride a Subway: The Magical Mystery of Martin Wilner

(Source: The Huffington Post)

Chelsea Round-Up

In today’s art world, one so often hears about some awe-inspiring, seemingly novel concept for a work of art, installation, or performance only to be quickly let down by whatever physical manifestation appears implanted within gallery walls. In Chelsea today, several stalwarts have managed to produce work that stands alone, not bolstered by or tied to jargon scribbled on a press release at the front desk. From Peter Saul’s sarcastic and always snappy paintings to Stan Douglas’ narrative photographs, these works are witty and tough, provocative yet beautiful.

Peter Saul at Mary Boone (541 West 24th Street)
After years of eschewing traditional gallery support while still exhibiting widely, Peter Saul has finally settled down for his third solo show with Mary Boone. Throughout his career, this wily septuagenarian has interwoven themes from Expressionism and Surrealism while producing some of the first quintessentially “Pop” paintings. While his aesthetic has been refined over the years from rawer, more graphic images of the ’60s to present day cultural critiques that shimmer with a comic flare and reflect a true mastery of the medium. Saul’s latest pictures embody the same subversive spirit and technical aptitude that have earned him the reputation as one of the today’s greatest “artist’s artist.” Saul’s work has never been sleek nor kind but always had a sharp edge that cut deep. With early works like “True Crime” (1962), Saul splatters the word “Kill” in a comic bubble amidst a cluster of food stuffs and dripping paint resemblant of blood. With vivid color, the works reflect a sincere yet bleak viewer of the world in which we live today.

Stan Douglas at David Zwirner (525 West 19th Street)
For Disco Angola, renowned filmmaker/ conceptual photographer Stan Douglas has printed a series of staged images dwelling on the notion of observation and permeation into realms unknown. Assuming the role of a “fictional” photo-journalist, Douglas’ purports to delve into the peculiarity that was the underground disco scene of the 1970s. With half of the images based in Angola and the other half in New York, Douglas draws in themes from the absurdism of Samuel Beckett, one of his favorite authors and sources of inspiration. Having just been announced as a winner of the 2012 International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award, Douglas, already a star, is on a roll.

Michelangelo Pistoletto at Luhring Augustine (531 West 24th Street)
As a leader of the Arte Povera movement, Italian-born Michelangelo Pistoletto’s practice needs little introduction. Now, at Luhring Augustine, a recent series of his classic mirror paintings position the viewer in a perplexing situation immersed in the work itself. With images of industrial products and practices from cement mixers to coils of cable screen-printed onto mirrored surfaces, Pistoletto’s works address building and construction, an endeavor viewed as noble by the artist himself. The ensemble works perfectly as viewers delight hopping in and out of picture planes thus creating their own portraits while seeing each reflect off one another in the gallery space.

Hernan Bas at Lehmann Maupin (540 West 26th Street)
Not much is more difficult than being a young figurative painter in today’s market but Bas continues to earn his stripes with Occult Contemporary, a series of large-scale narrative paintings inspired by the artist’s own interest in the supernatural and Satanism. Bas’ dark pictures often feature a solitary figure lost and trapped in an frighteningly large and looming environment. The plight of his figures remains open to conjecture, only addressable in the viewer’s imagination.

(Source: The Huffington Post)