eyespy012907

EYESPY 01.29.07

(Feb. 21, 2007. Please scroll down the page
to read the Stratiformis article.)

Two more shows open this week:

Martin Kline at the Haggerty, Marquette University 530 N. 12th
St. Milwaukee. Martin Kline is a contemporary painter living along the
Hudson River Valley in New York. His large canvases employ encaustic
to generate thick, rich surfaces of pattern. (Encaustic is a medium
where paint pigment is mixed with warm wax. It usually creates a
creamy, tactile surface).

The Haggerty Museum of Art on the Marquette campus will launch an
exhibition of Kline’s work at 6 p.m. Thursday, February 1. Kline will
present a lecture at that time. Besides the 30 paintings in the show, a
number of nature-oriented bronze sculptures are also included.

Why Martin Kline for a major show at the Haggerty? Apparently the
museum’s Friends of Art visited his studio on a travel tour and fell in
love with the work. Grace Glueck of the New York Times also likes his
work and in a 2005 review wrote that he applies ‘painterly flesh’ to
minimalism.

Place of the Transcommon at Inova, Vogel Hall. This must be the
month for exhibitions that look at contemporary responses to the
spiritual. At MIAD, the "Sacred Text" show presents handmade books
dealing with spiritual writings.

Opening Friday at Vogel Hall on the UWM campus, is a group exhibition
of artists who find divinity in every day objects. The show opens from 6
to 9 p.m. Feb. 2 and features a reading by poet Peter O’Leary at
6:30 p.m.

Local photographers Steve Foster and Paul Calhoun join forces with
national (mostly Chicago rooted) artists Corey McCorkle, Helen Mirra,
Cindy Loehr, Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Althea Thauberger in this
exhibition curated by Nicholas Frank.

It will be interesting to see how these diverse conceptual artists’ work
comes together to speak of ‘reverence’ or the transformation of the
common into something else, such as art? The threads that link their
bodies of work are not apparent on the surface. The show runs through
March 16.

A first look at "Francis Bacon: Paintings from the 1950s" at the
Milwaukee Art Museum (January 27-April 15)

It is with such relief that a painting exhibition has landed in the
Milwaukee Art Museum’s new Calatrava exhibition space. It feels as if
it's been a long haul through the decorative arts, leaving some of us
thirsty for good old oil-on-canvas. “Francis Bacon: Paintings from the
1950s” has been worth the wait.

The installation of the 50 paintings is spare and simple, with plenty of
breathing room between pieces. On white walls, with minimal signage
and no superfluous documentation, Bacon’s paintings alone tell a
crystal clear story of an artist who taught himself to paint, using art
history as his tutor. Bacon was 17-years-old and in Paris when he saw
an exhibition of Picasso’s drawings and decided that he too would
become an artist. He seemed to first deconstruct Picasso and the
Surrealist painters of the 1930s such as de Chirico and Magritte, with a
nod to Matisse for good measure (as evidenced in the first room of the
exhibition).

By the second room, Bacon has confronted and regurgitated
Velazquez. His meditation on this great Spanish Baroque artist seems
severe: more than 40 versions of Velazquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent
X (1649-50) executed over a 14 year period. Bacon’s obsessive
wrangling with Velazquez leads to some of his greatest works:
tormented, screaming enrapture. Paint that both engulfs and caresses
the body, yet maintains a sense of restraint. A true wrestling match, with
Bacon struggling to both learn from and consume Velazquez in violent
spasms. What fun.

Still, you have to wonder, why dwell on this particular painting? Why a
painting of a pope? He never even saw the actual painting in Rome, but
worked from reproductions. For now, let’s just say it’s no surprise that
Bacon quickly leafed backwards through the art history text, from
Picasso to the Baroque. Bacon’s sensibility is dark, stemming
undoubtedly from a troubled childhood and a certain alienation he felt
as a homosexual in a less than comforting environment. Once Bacon
opens up the history chapter on the 17th century, he finds his brethren
and he lingers.

In the next room of the exhibition, he moves on to another master of
emotional intensity, Vincent van Gogh, and here he does not win the
wrestling match. Undoubtedly, it’s van Gogh’s seemingly raw, emotive
paint style that attracts Bacon. But, as evidenced by the wall of these
“van Gogh” studies, Bacon cannot quite find a comfortable space while
under the post-Impressionist master’s bright and intent gaze. There’s
something about van Gogh’s essentially optimistic and affirming sense
of life that Bacon cannot call his own. These are the worst paintings in
the show and perhaps the most revealing of how difficult the task of
making good paintings truly is. Bacon was intensely self-critical to the
point of destruction and this wall of paintings feels raw and wrong and
painful.

After a lovely foray through meat-like naked bodies entwined and in-
battle (he’s now looking at the photographer Eadweard Muybridge), the
show concludes with portraits and this is where Bacon feels the most
self-assured, perhaps because he’s giving himself a bit more breathing
space from history. His portraits are disconcerting because they defy
the very nature of portraiture, which is about likeness and
representation. Bacon’s portraits seem to be about something totally
alien, like degradation and decay. His portraits seldom fully form into
faces and we are left, once again, with struggle: any state of just ‘being’
seems hard for Francis Bacon. And he refuses to let things gel or settle
into what must feel to him like an unnatural state of wholeness and calm.

Related programming Gallery Talks with coordinating curator Joe
Ketner are Tuesdays, Jan. 30, Feb. 20 and April 3 at 1:30 p.m. An
excellent film containing interviews with Bacon (who died in 1992 at age
83) will be shown at 6:15 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1. A discussion with MAM
curator Joe Ketner and artist Michelle Grabner from the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago will be from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday,
Feb. 10.

A full review of this exhibition will appear in a future edition of
Susceptible to Images.

New potential for ‘Stratiformless’

Now that we’ve thoroughly critiqued and criticized Stratiformis, the
sculpture by Jin Soo Kim in the Third Ward’s Catalano Square Park,
what if we shift 'gears.'

With all this dialog about the sculpture, both in Susceptible to Images
and Milwaukee Magazine, as well as on WUWM radio, I’ve found myself
newly fascinated by the piece. I can’t drive up to the Milwaukee Institute
of Art and Design (MIAD) without first mentally greeting ‘Stratiformless’
(as it has recently been dubbed). I think I’m developing a new, strange
attraction to it.

Perhaps it’s simply stimulating the ‘underdog’ compulsion where we
have an empathetic human need to feel sympathy with the losing team.
I’m not saying that I suddenly think Stratiformless is a successful work of
art. But I do think it beckons in subtle ways.

What if, as a community, we figured out a way to interact with the
sculpture that would bring it to life and make it a vital part of the Third
Ward community? We don’t have to let it sit there passively as ‘object.’
Perhaps Stratiformis wants us to complete the thought. Perhaps it’s
waiting for our ideas and interests and particular human moment to
enliven and utilize it?

Here are some of our ideas:

1. In the summer, viewers may have noticed that birds flit in and out of
the structure. They seem to really like it. What if we coated the
armature with bird seed at different times of the year and encouraged
the bird population to occupy the form? Then, we could plant butterfly
and bird friendly gardens nearby to attract more wildlife.

2. What if Stratiformis became an interactive zone where viewers could
tie artifacts and messages to the armature as a kind of offering.
Overtime, the sculpture would evolve, change and become an
increasingly intricate, rich and layered votive.

3. What if every two months, a different corporation or organization was
in charge of a temporary ‘alteration’ of the sculpture. This would
become a competitive, creative challenge. What can each group bring
to the sculpture (without damaging the piece) as a temporary
intervention?

4. The Cult of Stratisformless: We could start a club with t-shirts and
membership cards. The club would meet a few times a year in the park
for some kind of bacchanal -- a seasonal, vernal celebration where
form and formlessness would be the topic of discussion.

5. Perhaps Stratiformless could become a "dog zone" or a puppy play
area with benches and an enclosure surrounding it.

Does anyone else have ideas for ‘claiming’ this wayward sculpture as
our own? Please send in your ideas or even photo-shopped versions of
the sculpture that would illustrate your ideas. We will publish
suggestions in future weeks.

Email comments@susceptibletoimages.com

- Debra Brehmer

Feb. 21, 2007. For more on the Stratiformis dialogue, please see our Letters to the Editor section.

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