Posted on

The Hammer delivers with the Llyn Foulkes Retrospective

March 20th, 2013

Los Angeles, California

wrqk_jk0lgumusy7-pl_q7ix7bt_medThe ease with which some art seduces one into a false sense of comfort is fascinating to behold and experience.  Thus is the work of Llyn Foulkes (b. 1934 in Yakima, Washington).  It beckons, it is a kin in magnetism to the Venus fly trap, a plant which eats the flesh of flies, yet looks fairly innocuous, somewhat cute, despite the jagged edges of its teeth-like leaves.

I tripped into the Hammer Museum yesterday evening.  They were setting up for an event with Chinese lanterns strung along the courtyard of the Museum.  I was there to see the Foulkes, exhibition, so… I zoomed by.  I went upstairs and dove into the drawings, cartoons mostly, in the first room devoted to the Foulkes show.   Spread over several rooms, more than 150 works comprising various stages of the living artist’s expansive career.  The early drawings brim with edgy talent.  Witty, pointed sharp cartoons on sexuality and undressing social norms, engage the viewer in a lively dialogue of startling poignancy.

An artist on multiple levels, a musician, visual artist, a person whose humor, is sharp pointed kesvkvddipt8upsky3w_vr4z5ev_medwit, with which he reaches out and prods minds, moves mountains.  Mountains of knowledge, entrenched and deep, mountains of memory reaching up to the sky and scratching it.  Piercing illusions, which never fold into neat mimetic representation, yet consistently demonstrate the ability to do so.  As in this fabulous painting of a cow, the artist demonstrates deep understanding of representation as a visual option, a tool.

Big ideas on what it means to see, to know, to experience.  For example, when one travels and takes pictures or buys post-cards it is as IF by doing so one proves that one was actually once somewhere worth recalling, someplace special.  One painting from the 1970’s of the rugged facade of a mountain covered in photos of the same mountain reflects on this conundrum of being in which the representation of experience stands in place of the actual, indefinitely, perpetual.

unknown_medSystematically communicating complex ideas about knowledge, knowing, being, and living in a world where values are defined by a corporate culture which taxes humans and creates markets for guns, by feeding boys and girls images of might that depend on the real world horror of weapons.  A boy dreams of an actual gun as a ghostly superman reads him a bed-time story.

As in the above example Foulkes work oscillates from the concrete and specific reference to real world, using objects as symbols representing the object with an accuracy, that allows for information to completely dominate the viewer, who is trapped like an unwilling voyeur in an awkward situation where language and pure form undress, unwind, collapse.

Thoughtful works.  Large ponderous canvas mimics postcard nostalgia of a American west blurred by00d6t_nufvyduk0xdwgrpur7mcq_med not existing in this dimension but rather… somewhere else.  The colors, pallets muted and restrained, mostly intellectual playing with text and the language of signage: warning DANGER: this is the edge of this painting, past here is the frame, which is found-object, salvaged from somewhere or other and rescued, restored, transformed into a powerful boundary between the world of image and truth.

Foulkes exploration flowers in deep three-dimension tableaux that completely void the boundary between the framed and the unframed world.  His seamlessly constructed part-cartoon part replica of traditional portraiture, yet arm or neck-tie piercing the frame, to inject the space around the art with LIFE in its precise handling of paint, and the light touch, unperturbed intensity of the swirling profound commentary on American life and our plastic disposable values.

unknown-2_medThe trademark mouse delivers a smooch on the cheek of the artist in this his self portrait in plaid shirt on a bare brown-burned looking ground.  The worried look says so much… the mouse is too pleased to deliver his kiss.  Who wants to be kissed by a rodent?  Who cares if the rodent is a movie star? What matters when the world comes to an abrupt halt?

uhvy1ctzttjhwpjiclmnqf6lnmz_med

So many questions… this exhibition is worth seeing again.  (I just made plans with artist, Skip Snow, to see it for a second time.)

m6qog_ayl7llzdjzusq-weop2kg_med

In short, I LOVED this exhibition and would highly recommend that you get over to see it if you are in Los Angeles before May 19th, 2013, when the exhibit closes.

_md1vfgmvo27qnrwxg8ejepjm6e_med

Warm regards,

Frau Kolb

Posted on

Llyn Foulkes: ROCKIN’ The Hammer and SOON NYC!

(Stay tuned for more updates on Llyn Foulkes and his upcoming exhibition in NYC!)

Last night I had the pleasure and privilege of tripping into the museum on whim and walking on on the super-star artist, Mr. Llyn Foulkes giving a talk to the Hammer’s Museum Fellows.

I slipped right into the group and I got a good scoop, good taste, a sampling of Foulkes’s unique personality: bristling with sparkling genius, totally frustrated with others for not being geniuses, like him.  Yet, delighted with himself for being so superlatively gifted as to be a little scary.  In other words, a formidable person capable of laser slicing a faulty concept to its quick.

Listening to him to talk about his work, I quickly realized the gulf of experience between this great artist and myself.  HIS TECHNIQUE is all consuming madness.  IT IS PURE craft, requiring muscle, brains, and relentless WORK!!!  (Honestly, I do NOT have the raw LOVE of labor, clearly revealed by Foulkes’s discussion of his rummaging in the world of found-object and eerie transformation of the real-life taxidermic cat or rubber dildo installed in work that inhabits the same general space (wall) of a painting and tricks the casual lazy viewing into believing it is cute, fun, and almost silly cartoonish work.  Hah!  The joke’s on anybody that falls for it!

Foulkes’s work is aggressively loaded with message.  DE-PROGRAM yourself!  DE-CODE the lies taught to us, collectively, by big corporate sponsors and specifically, the DISNEY empire which in Foulkes’s accurate yet imaginative representation of a gun-dreaming American society is the source of much evil.  The recent work shouts.

His coded visual messages have evolved to this intensity of volume over decades of indefatigable work.

Geez… Foulkes is to a life-long semi-professional “hobby,” artist like me, Frau Kolb a demigod.

Here he is:

img_5200_med

img_4592_med

Posted on 4 Comments

The Muse and Frau Kolb Hit The Hammer Museum to See LLyn Foulkes

Los Angeles, California

18 April 2013

img_4864_medIt was yesterday, or the day before, that I saw the Llyn Foulkes, exhibition for a second time.  It was THAT GOOD!  A really meaty show, with plenty of ideas for me to chew on.  Work that resonates on many levels and is as complex as it is straight forward and simple, using techniques that range from hyper-confident cartoon to full on mimetic, evocative, realism (in spurts, mostly during his earlier career).  Work well crafted, yet not about THAT, creating an impression of effortless playful productivity and thus, leaving a good taste behind, making the brain salivate.  Almost like the first visit was an appetizer.  This second one, I took longer deeper looks.  I let myself unwind in front of his larger canvases.   I let myself think about Foulkes technique(s).  I allowed myself to experience AWE.  The seamlessness of pseudo… the butchering of pork, the wall sized post cards… the mixing of signage, the expertly made home-made img_4861_medlooking frames!  The clear and the immediate, the obtuse and the hinted… ah!

This time THE MUSE, Ms. Maria Rose Crane met with me for lunch and art.  Unlike our visit to the recent Caravaggio Exhibit at LACMA, we managed to make it to the exhibit, without Frau Kolb exploring the horizontal angel at the Hammer…  Perhaps, because the Muse is off-the-sauce, on a cleanse, which is a very appropriate activity for a LA MUSE to indulge in abstinence, in order to enhance the radiance of her already remarkable skin.

Inspiring isn’t she?

img_4862_med 

 

Well…

This piece is a second in a series of museum visit with THE MUSE!

Where shall WE, Frau Kolb and Maria Rose Crane POP UP, NEXT????

We shall see…

Much love,

Frau Kolb

Posted on 1 Comment

Rembrandt’s Original Mickey Mouse at The Frick, NYC

Dear Talkinggrid Readers,

Prepare yourself to see the impossible, to see that LIFE folds in upon itself and unexpected is miraculously present in a painting, we thought we all knew, a “Tronie” (a theatrical portrait of a typecast person in exotic dress, costume, or other status symbol representing the luxury flowing into the Netherlands at a time when colonialism was thriving and the Dutch were strident cultural leaders) of a man with a Feathered Beret (c. 1635) by Rembrandt van Rijn.

Unless you live in the Netherlands, where the paintings are expected to return, soon, after a two-year round of international exhibitions, you will have to fly to New York, New York, wait on line, or purchase a membership in order to verify this surprising find.  A painting by Rembrandt van Rijn, on view at the Frick, has a marvelous secret to reveal, today!

The secret was always there.  Yet it only makes sense now.  It was painted hundreds of years ago.  Yet, it was not relevant, until now.

You must go, now, because the work in question is on loan and will only be in New York City until January 19, 2014.  It is well worth it to do so because the work that has received so much attention yet held its secret, before the public eye for over a century of potential for discovery.  By heading to the museum today YOU might be ONE of the lucky ones that sees what is invisible until now, a startling discovery will share the secret of Rembrandt’s clairvoyant genius, because YOU read: www.talkinggrid.com.

The fact that the painting is famous and has received countless visits and exists in reproductions: books, postcards, calendars, and posters; yet it has kept its mystery until last week when investigative art person, Frau Kolb tripped into it.  She may be the first person to notice this astounding POP cultural reference in a work made centuries ago.  (This startling find, by the way, is a glaring case of people seeing what they want to see and ignoring what they don’t consider relevant in art and life.)

At the Frick, The Metropolitan, The Museum of Modern ART, The Philadelphia Museum of ART and LACMA other world-class museums Frau Kolb observes: among the milling crowds that throw a glance here, there, and move to the next; turning ART into pig’s swill, one masterpiece after another, is regarded and dismissed before a “Mona Lisa Salad,” is consumed lovelessly in the cafeteria, without seeing the secrets that are on display it becomes abundantly clear the vast majority of people DO NOT use their senses to accurately take in information.  Frau kolb suspects that most people are rarely ever present enough in their own lives to really enjoy looking at the art or facts before them; being in a rush is the norm, even at the museum, which is designed to invite a certain amount of reflection, thought… (and the two-hour timed tickets don’t help).  Any day of any week one can witness the thousands filing by painting(s), which command a life-time of reverent study, checking off  “the experience,” on a dead list of Important Art, with little more than a nod in the direction of potentially LIFE altering art work.

It is reported by art scholar, James Elkins, that visitors spend, “an average of fifteen seconds,” before even the greatest works of art in world-class museums.   This fact alone may explain why this lowly blog is where YOU deeply interested and focused art thinkers, regular readers of this, “alternative ART news blog,” have the privilege of sharing in the bounty of ART history’s never-ending splendor and learning the great secret to be seen in a painting by everyone’s favorite, or at least the most famous, of the Dutch Masters.

OK, now, let’s stay focused and reveal this strange and inexplicable discovery.    First, however, the steps that led to that discovery.   Without going too far into it.  My first art-history professor, the one that had the singular honor of being the provider of the standard introductory class, which ALL Columbia University students must take in order to graduate, was a Prof. Benjamin Binstock, an innovative Rembrandt scholar, author, and passionate art-mind.  His energetic understanding, enthusiasm, and verve inspired me to take art history rather than studio art as my main focus in my college studies.   He also sparked an interest in Old Masters in general, Rembrandt in particular, while informing incoming students that, “Cindy Sherman is the greatest living artist.”  Professor Binstock was informed and engaging, a catalyst to learning.

Next step in putting two and a mystery number together was taken twenty years later and across the country, in “ever-sunny,” Los Angeles California investing time at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles during the retrospective exhibition of Llyn Foulke’s work.  If I hadn’t visited the Foulkes exhibition at the Hammer Museum at least three times, putting in hours on top of a lifetime of careful looking with several of the contemporary master’s assemblages and paintings I wouldn’t have had my eye sharpened and my critical thinking-skills-propeller cap ON when I saw explosive yet inexplicable time-warp truth in a painting from the magical seventeenth century.

There are more, quirky and curious steps involved in the tango of learning and coming to see NEW in Old and that the connections between the two are deeper than any warm hole or cosmic wormhole, both being The Source.  Really…

At the Frick I made a sketch of the Rembrandt in order to confirm that what I thought I was seeing was really there.  AND then I asked the artsy looking man standing next to me if he saw it.  He was astounded.  He confirmed my findings.

I went and bought the exhibition catalogue.  Delighted.

Here is the sketch:

rembrandt-drawing-2

 Here is the painting:

rembrandt_med

“Tronie” of a Man with a Feathered Beret (c. 1635)

Now, you be the judge, but be sure to click the link to my earlier writings on Foulkes work IF you really want to get, to OWN this queer and yet delicious observation, with me.

Thank you,

Frau Kolb

The Man wearing a grand sombrero with feathers in the foreground hides a “truth of our time,” in the background.  The real gift we give ourselves when we make a practice of LOOKING again.  Looking with love at what we think we know, questioning and rethinking, what we have seen before.

Posted on 1 Comment

Tolerance Curiously Absent at its Museum

img_4502_med“Are you in the military?” she sniped, with a condemning jerk in the direction of the plastic airline pins I’d affixed to my beloved mustard yellow thrift store safari jacket.

“No,” I stammered.  “I am an artist.  I put these pins on my jacket, at a birthday party last night, for my dear friend….”

I began to say, defending myself, explaining myself… before she turned away, marched out of the auditorium where she had just finished speaking on the evil that she survived as a Jewish victim of the Nazi during the second world war.

The rest of the small audience was gone.  They had listened, taking in the toxic tales of hardcore woe and mind boggling cruelty, before hopping back on Highway 405 or Highway 10 and heading… wherever.  The dispersed listeners, people from various ethnic groups, none particularly likely to feel any better about her words and content than I did, all took the quick exit prescribed by the speaker’s abrupt departure.

I was speechless, a flood of tears crashed from my eyes onto my face.   My eyeballs released my body’s liquid reserves. I wailed.  “NO!” I would not get up.  I was, “Not going to leave.”  My mind went into full Rosa Parks mode.  I was crushed. Damaged.  Empathy: overload. The Second World War, its infamous horror has always set me on edge and destroyed my ability to move on without taking time to process the horror.  As a child, a curious pre-teen, I took in many books and diaries, the documentaries, and collected histories… portrayed in library books, videos, etc… I invested myself in reading about the outrages against the Jewish people, whereas I avoided learning about the horrors endured by the kidnapped and sold slaves of West and Central Africa.

Why?  Why did I decide to avoid learning about the holocaust suffered by a portion of my ancestors? The reason is that I feel… invested in both, “teams,” I am the HAPPY CHILD of colonialism.  I am as much a part of the historically victimized group as I am of their oppressors.  I know my family history and I know I am as black as I am blond and that my physical appearance may not indicate this truth to the uniformed but that it is what it is.  I accept it.

Yet, at the Museum of Tolerance, my eyes remained glued to the empty chair where The Survivor had sat, talking for an hour about the unspeakable.  I was lamed, incapable of getting up and getting on with the business of life, which is my expertise.  I’m a person focused on loving LIFE, now; never postponing the pleasure in simple pleasure of being present. Yet, today, I  couldn’t just get up and walk away from the horror that the, “nice little Jewish woman,” had laid out for her audience’s anti-lunch.

“No! not I!”  I cried.  My face felt like a rubber mask of Edward Munch’s “The Scream.”   I was in bits.  My soul was mush under the crushing sole of The Survivor’s horrendous story.  I would not, could not, move. Feeling drained, abused, and defiant;  I was stuck to the folding chair provided, starring at the the vacated, looming, vociferously empty chair.  The vacated chair was speaking volumes, in a strange code of objects, energized by symbolic power.  I could hear every unspoken word.  The chair, a perforated metal object, kept talking to me.  Tears tracks and smeared make-up, I was a woman in public distress.

The entire time she was speaking, behind her head the names of activist heroes, glowed, on a luminescent wall: above her head it said, “Martin Luther.”

Anyone that knows even a little about the protestant reformer knows that he was a virulent anti-semite.  I believe the wall was referring to “Martin Luther King, Jr.”   Yet, the high irony that this Jewish woman was sitting beneath the name of “Martin Luther,” at the Museum of Tolerance, and he was famously intolerant of the Jewish people living among German Christians, the empty chair was now under the name, “Martin Luther.”   I stared at the name and thought that the she was to be gone, soon… an old woman, lucid for now, yet slated for the unavoidable death that waits us all.  Yet, fortunate that she had narrowly missed death in a gas chamber as a young girl.

“I was a real blond, back then,” she said, still shocked that this fact alone, coupled with her (callously) img_4494-2_medself-reported high status of her professional parents, among the Star-of-David wearing members of her despised ethnic group, did not immunize her from institutional abuse.  She was one of the five, among hundreds, of local Jewish girls chosen to attend high-school in her community.  An only child, she had received the lion’s share of her parent’s caring.  Summers were spent as summers ought to be spent by pretty teenage girls: swimming and carefree, oblivious to the war, barely noticing the streams of near starving Jews, that came asking for a little food, so they could continue… searching for an escape route, living.

Time stopped.  The empty chair was a throbbing void.  It screamed of all the people for whom she was speaking that hadn’t been so fortunate.

It was then that I was, suddenly, rescued from my conviction to stay put, to remain planted in one spot until some new thoughts, good ideas sprouted again, and then I might again move with the ease that is my signature.   (I guess I was not meant to spend eternity starring at an empty chair, tears inking down my face.)  A man, appeared, popping out of near-by conference room, full of ernest well-groomed people.  He was  well-formed mildly muscular with very smooth skin.  He wore a neck tie and a shirt with a comforting blue grid pattern.  He was conservatively attired man with long Jesus hair and dark round luminous eyes filled with pity and understanding.  He had the professionally honed look of obvious caring.  Without pomp, he saved me.  He plopped down into the foreboding, mind numbing, cosmically portentous, empty chair the holocaust survivor had abandoned.

Suddenly, I was not alone, again.  My friend, a Muse, was witness to my outburst.  More than a little surprised by my utter breakdown, the snot flowing from my nose, the crust forming on my tear streaked face, she got up and went to the bathroom, leaving me in the company of the sudden companion, (I’m sure) feeling very surprised that I was hyper sensitive response to this story we have all heard before, surely.  “You have read or watched documentaries about this before, No?”  She asked me, her voice characteristically gentle, her face slightly distorted by concern.

His thick beard was decorated with a few stripes of gray, reddish brown skin, he looked like kindness personified to me.  The mustache came with a little bottle of water, which I later realized was bottled by Nestle, a company that has attempted to privatize ALL the WATER on the planet, and some tissues. Hah!  Hah!  Hah!  The irony!

He said that he “understood,” how I felt.  He said, that “it happens, sometimes,” that people can’t just “get up and go,” after one of their speakers has delivered their payload.

It was horrible.  The stories she told, most of you have heard stories like hers before and worse stories.  Yet she proclaimed herself, “lucky,” to be alive.   She had grandchildren, and a great grandchild.  She had enjoyed a long marriage with a man she loved.  She looked perfectly put together.  She was trim and petite.  She had intelligent, low-key, tasteful hair, even her bag had a little metal tag/label that said “Relic,” on it.  She was perfect.  An educated woman, successful, competent, in flat nurse’s shoes.  She was lucid speaker, convincing in her telling of a story I can barely write about.  She has lived in Los Angeles for decades.  She shared these personal facts and more without prompting.

The details of her outfit fascinated me.  I took notes.  I made a sketch.  She wore a dark purple sweater, with a very smooth and clean black top underneath, dark slacks.  She spoke about the “shiny boots,” of one famous Nazi doctors at the concentration camp, she spoke about the starvation diet, the constantly burning oven, the crematorium, the gas chambers,  the angle of death descending… She spoke about the unspeakable with smooth efficiency.  Her speech was well rehearsed.  She was a practiced public speaker.  She even ended her presentation with a poem on postponing morning, until now, an old woman with time on her hands… She knew that she had me, mouth open, vulnerable, on the hook.  She reeled me in and then struck me on the head with the mallet of her personal truth. That she managed this feat, without qualms, and without hesitation is clear to me. She did it all without thinking, an experienced deliverer of deadly blows.

For reasons I do not know, she took an instant dislike to me.  It happens, sometimes.  Some people find me repulsive, too this or too that… I’m sure this happens, to everyone.  It usually doesn’t bother me, because as a matter of policy I only go where I am welcome and made to feel comfortable.  I have no desire to be the uninvited guest.

She, I could tell… was not a person capable of any patience for my constantly playful being.  She would never understand my point of view, my Caribbean perspective on life, would always be foreign to her.  It is likely that she defines herself as NOT, whatever she decided I was.  She had zero tolerance for whoever it was she thought I was… a person “in the military.”  Hah!

We, humans, traditionally have farmed animals to eat them.  (Vegans are exempt.  Yet, I’ve noticed a tendency in animal rights activists to forget that many animals, like us, eat meat.  There is also a tendency to forget that cows, pigs, and chickens would not exist in the volumes that they do, without farmers. Moreover, eating synthetic meats and industrially processed soy-cheese from a lab cannot be healthy.)  In animal farming, families of animals are raised and then separated.  Trucks used in transporting them to slaughter.

img_4500_medThe trucking and transportation of Jewish people from their villages, to camps located mostly in Poland…  this outrage was only one of many insults, the mounting injustice, which equated people with animals, in order to strip them of human value and social value.   The gradual erosion of privileges,  the subtle and consistent message that the Jewish people were not as human as “pure-blood,” Germans, the “most civilized,” nation in the world.  Many felt that the Germans, had a grand plan yet the idea … the Germans… the world’s biggest consumers of pig products… were actually gassing and cremating millions of humans, as a part of their all-out-war strategy… well, that no one could believe it.  It wasn’t until our speaker was in a camp, stripped of her clothes and personal belongings, head shaved, and wearing a number… then she believed it.

Cultivating the so called, “bliss that is ignorance,” I’ve avoided, most of my life, the cold embrace of history’s worst moments.  For example, I purposely dance around, so called, “African American History,” because the stories of kidnapping, killings, beatings, whippings, and lynchings make me sick.   The fact that countless beings were kidnapped from the African continent and taken like stock animals to serve as unpaid workers in “New World,” plantations is a historical given.  Yet, there are few respectful monuments to this truth.  The African diaspora isn’t organized around promoting and improving understanding for its contributions and abyssmal exploitation during and after slavery’s institutional sway.

Fortunately, that man, the one with the Jesus hair, came and said a kind few words to me, gave me water (which I did not drink because I am boycotting the Nestle corporation’s water and other, cheaply produced and fundamentally debased chemical laden simulacra of wholesome, products) and reminded me of the Museum’s security might take umbrage with the idea of my remaining fixed in this auditorium chair beyond the Museum’s rigid hours of operation.  He warned me.  I asked him to sit and allow me to make a sketch of him.  I made it clear, that IF, I really decided to stay… well, I wasn’t moving until it happened naturally.

After making a boxy sketch of the patient man, I giggled.  The laughter got me up and out of the chair in a blink.  I was back on my feet.  I refused, however, now that it was time to exit, to go down the ramp… (why do all museums have swirling ramps, at their hearts, these days?  Is it architectural homage to The Guggenheim Museum in New York City, or yet another message that we, crowds of humans, are to be easily herded?) I did not want to be like a sheep or pig sliding down the belt to the butcher’s block.

Historically, we have all taken turns being victims and victors, captors and captives.  We come from the loins of killers and captains, queens and chambermaids.  We all like to think that our suffering as special, unique, “Our People,” more abused or less abusive or more fearsome, than others…  Yet, we ALL come from one source and we are all equally capable of cruelty and kindness.  The nobility of Europe, have been the target of bloody uprising and public de-capitation, let’s not forget.  We can all suffer and relive endless horror as long as we see it fit to take a dip in the fetid pool of communal blame.

Undeniably, there are humans that want to recreate their own feelings of worthlessness in others.  They feel fundamentally less-than, thus IF they can reach out and touch you, leaving a stain behind, that stain is their version of immortality.  It is their way toward living forever.  By creating living records of the destruction, the emotional bruises and physical scars, numbers branded on the flesh of living beings, these people may cause more harm than good, more suffering than celebration.  Is it better to forget, leaving behind the past, and investing in the present?  Embracing healing and mental health?  I don’t know… Yet, I guess, we all have a purpose in this world.  I learned a lot, from this woman’s public revelations.  I was reminded that social alertness is required.  Activism is a must, writing truth, and staying sane, lucid, and vigilant: these are my responsibilities.

In short, we must all take responsibility for our lives and pay attention to the writing on the wall.  We must remain alert to injustice and cruelty.  We must avoid buying propaganda wholesale and sliding down the many ramps to the abyss.  Or risk… brutal awakening.

Yours truly,

Frau Kolb

Ongoing mission:

Process the joy.  Follow up on the initial dive into “the ocean of air,” the sea of light which Turrell slices into edible portions of delight, left me full of ideas, ready to digest the delicious experience of the eternal which is always NEW.  Stay connected to the joy of discovery in the visual arts by introducing children and others interested to the joys of museum going.

Thank you, once again, to all that make the Talkinggrid, possible.  Without the indefatigable social support of our donating friends and loyal readers, this website could not become a reliable source of alternative ART and MUSE NEWS!

Posted on

TURRELL DEMANDS ANOTHER LOOK AT LACMA

What an excellent exhibit!  This time we took in Turrell, Part II, in addition to visiting the first part at a leisurely pace, fully embracing our two-hour time slot.

It was a pleasure to see again.  Well worth paying for, IF, you are interested in art, light, and perspective of color.

I might return for a third time.  Perhaps THE MUSE might join me, again.  Perhaps…

img_5175_medThe most precious moment of my day was catching a glimpse of the brilliant head of LACMA, the dashing, Mr. Govan, purely by chance.  I attended this exhibit and paid for it, this time, because I wanted to see it with my darling and handsome scientist and super creative husband, the talented and amazing, Hartmuth C. Kolb, sometimes known as Hutch.  Hartmuth has had a strong interest in photography, film, and technology since childhood.  His teenage family vacation movies, from northen Italy, where the family summered at their tiny villa, are a visual delight!  He made super-eight films and framed every shot right and steady.   To relax, he makes holograms at home.  We had a blast walking into Turrell’s dazzling rooms of pure color, together.   We were bathed in light, bright and white, like the tunnel to heaven.

The significance of art as “religion for atheists,” as the celebrated author, Sarah Thorton, of the bestseller, “Seven Days in the Art World,” is made clear in the temple models of Turrell’s famous, Roden Crater.

28129_401637638892_390638_n_med

Posted on

TAKE THE CHILDREN TO ART

Recently, we had the pleasure of a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art which never fails to impress. The museum’s collection, particularly of French impressionists, Modern, Post-Modern, and Contemporary visual artists is first class.  The staff is in all departments friendly and helpful.  The press support is excellent.  Each visit, provides opportunity upon opportunity for learning and delight.  Here is a video by artist/art critic Ron Schira of Frau Kolb and Mr. Brian Goings, deep into what Schira called, Active Looking, of Paul Cezannes  Woods and the Mill Stone,” one year ago at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

img_2688_med

This time was particularly special because the two youngest members of the Talkinggrid Creative Circle, the Llittle Kolbs, came along and experienced the fabulous collection of visual art masterpieces, ranging from the glorious Edouard Manet (1832-1883),  “Le Bon Bock/ “The GOOD Beer,”one of my favorite paintings, because the pleasure the character takes in his beer is timeless, eternal to the sumptuous bath of geometry, landscape painting, and elegant figure study, “The Bathers,” by Paul Cezanne, and Andy Warhol’s iconic “Brillo Boxes.

img_2681_med

The children were vociferously critical of Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” the famous urinal signed R. Mutt and sent in as a game-changing lark to the Society of Independent Artist’s first exhibition in April 1917.  “That’s not ART!”  They shouted in unison.  I had a good laugh. Then they took another look and noticed that the urinal was signed… hum… perhaps…. the children got to thinking.  This moment before the replica of Duchamp ready-made, was a great moment in our family history.

img_2738_med

img_2725_med
The experience of sharing with one’s children the jewels of contemporary culture, the thought-provoking objects of Dadaist Man Ray (1890 – 1976), whose work becomes more and more mysterious as time renders the “ordinary objects,” of his day into rare and evocative treasures to behold with some awe.  Another highlight of the collection are the tender intimate paintings of Mary Cassatt (1844 – 1926). Seeing the mother and child caress, a moment of pure love and caring, my children were delighted.  In the same vein, my daughter’s drawings of dancers have a sudden depth, which I attribute to her recent experience of Edgar Degas’ Ballerinas.)

img_2788_med

We also saw spent a long lingering moment with Mommy going on and on about the the abstract expressionist masters, Barnet Newman, Clifford Styll, and Robert Motherwell.

img_2791_med

A young Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) gave my son a stern talking to.

img_2740_med

Piet Mondrian was there to reassure us:

img_2881_med
Brancusi’s Bird in Space and The Kiss reminded us of how little is required to say a lot…

img_2862_med

img_2864_med

Nov 6, 2013, 4:37 AM

Posted on 1 Comment

CAPITAL TIME: WASHINGTON D.C.

Dearest Talkinggrid Readers,

img_1574_medTravel, to the nation’s capital is a monumental experience.  It is very impressive, to say the least.  This was our children’s first visit.  It mirrored a pilgrimage I made to the capital with my family as a child.  Both times, we saw so much.  The nation’s rich history and power are amply displayed and unequivocally palpable in this vital core of the American Nation’s judiciary and administrative branches.  It is awe inspiring, the wealth, and might, expressed in thunderous scale in buildings designed to remind visitors just how venerable the nation is and will always be…  Timeless beauty assaults the eye with its unwavering reminder that Justice, and Order are the goal of all our political systems. The LAW and its righteous advocates, seem to reach out and demand correct behavior, moral rectitude from the insignificant masses, among which we scampered.

Today, we share with you the highlights of the utmost pleasure that is visiting The Smithsonian Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery, there we had the privilege of viewing the newly unveiled “The Four Justices,” by artist Nelson Shanks.   The children admired the painting spending time taking in the implications that it is only recently that women have attained the degree of respect required in posts of significant power.

img_1585_med

The idealized portrait of George Washington got the children’s full attention.

img_1610_med

Afterward the children had a moment of deep chat, consultation, and meditation with the portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

img_1580_med

Machines and quirky inventions of another age also were found to be extremely intriguing.

img_1641_med

I got a kick out of Chuck Close’s painting of former President Bill Clinton.

img_1751_med img_1730_med

Yet, for me of the political portraits, Alice Neel’s intimate and intense, fierce portraits of Civil Rights activists which worked to make needed changes during her lifetime were especially touching.

Nov 12, 2013, 7:01 AM

Posted on 1 Comment

James Turrell at LacMa

Dear Talkinggrid Friends,

Thank you LACMA!  The James Turrell (b. May, 6th 1943) exhibition is a singular experience.  It is eye opening, to the most extreme degree, to engage in a visual dialogue with silent and pure color.  LIGHT, which re-frames and re-invigorates the interest in perception, is here the subject.  Thereby, altering the expectation of “meaning,”  to arrive as a gift from the outside.  Instead, the gift is within, in the dazzling ability to perceive, to deduce, to share in Turrell’s focus on light as a truth to be embraced, cherished in a darkened chamber, for as long one can bare its enduring brilliance.

The invitation to reflect on seeing, and on its effect on knowing, is extended to the audience of the art inclined   to admission into circle(s) of enlightenment, described and delineated by the artist’s scientific study and methodical exploration of light’s value.  One must dart and dive into darkness, blackened rooms which beckon the viewer into sacred–––contemplative–––corners of neon, “Emergency Exits,” unreal Portals to raw Potential, and tangible understanding(s).  Holograms gleam and blink inviting us to reach into two-dimensional space and pull out a jade triangle, or a square piece of blue opiate glass or the ellipse of the moon, a—shimmering—circle, cut deep in the projected phenomenon of fabricated and condescend time.  One must think of Kazimir Malevich (23 February 1879—15 May 1935), the great pioneer of abstract art that broke the barrier into the world of Objective Art, replacing the Russian icon with the glow of pure form.  Wandering from glowing pink room to dark wine sea of burnished light installed and projected via discrete sources and enticing one to walk into walls, blind…walls which become infinite halls, winding down the bunny-hole of masterful aesthetic manipulation.

California, home to the great film industry, and all things flashy and intoxicating, in their projected glamour is fertile ground for art, which takes light, seriously.  Making it the STAR, rather than a tool of production.  Turrell’s slicing and dicing of building(s) to create architecture in which viewing is the ONLY purpose, totally shifts the scale of typical visual art experience, which was traditionally, until Modernism, was limited to “the framed window,” of the painted surfaces (Yet… come to think of it, the red-wall mural paintings of Pompeii were… unframed, precedents… to the spectacle of the lighted Zimmer, living room feel, of Turrell’s LACMA installations remind one of other key moments in art history.  The Impressionists, for example, showed off, a corner of their discoveries of light’s properties, and of color’s possibilities, when they incorporated tube paint into an outdoor light focused plein air technique of painting which used points, tiny chunks, dots, and/or strokes, of industrially produced, for the first time in history (!), color as a means of creating shifting, living, vibrant painted surfaces depicting slices of live in early 20th century France.

The interest in light is palpable in all successful works of visual art.  The understanding of color, a function of light, is essential in most visual art practice.  This Turrell exhibit provides a means of relating anew to the art of the Renaissance and its particular interest in light.  The works of Carravagio and his followers, for example, dealt with the darkness abounding, shadowy figures of vagrant types he collected on streets, and cast in the role of saints and sinners in his highly emotional works.  Masters such as Rembrandt van Rijn, (July 15, 1606-October 4th 1669, whose famous Chiaroscuro, was the signature understanding of light as a substance, precious, and essential in the construction of worldly value with dirt, crushed stones, and pigment.  Similarly, Giovani Bellini, (c.1430 – 26 November 1516) also painted the features of light, in his painting of St. Francis, in (The Frick collection), soaking in the almighty sunlight, Bellini deftly recorded the brilliance of man’s expanding architectural prowess, thereby making a powerful record of light’s potential to speak volumes and thus influence everything from mood and radical changes perspective or epiphany.

Turrell has enjoyed a long career and a stunning success as an architect of landscapes, which seek to “Bring down the sky,” not by altering it but by changing the context in which it is seen.  The artist’s crowning work, is the Roden Crater, in Arizona, pulls the sky from its far-away place and makes it a manageable square of pleasure.  The retrospectives at LACMA, brings home the visual feast of the majestic desert light, which defines, the American West.

What a triumph for Los Angeles and the Art World that this retrospective of local-home-grown art, many of the early works created in Santa Monica California.  This exhibition reveals that the actual subject of ALL visual art is, LIGHT, as is elegantly and effectively exhibited in the Eli Broad Center for Contemporary Art in the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum Compound. Right NOW!

LIGHT, as topic, as material, as the means by which we perceive and are perceived is treated with all the respect and majesty it deserves by temple building, monumental cavern digging, genius architect of trans-formative viewing spaces, Turrell.

Best regards,

Frau Kolb

*** Special thanks to Ms. Crane for her fresh and lively take on the Turrell Exhibiton.  We don’t call YOU, “The MUSE,” for no thing.  YOU ROCK!

Nov 3, 2013, 5:23 AM