Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy has been exploring and reinterpreting the 19th century German folk tale, Schneewittchen, and the 1937 animated Disney adaptation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in a variety of mediums. In 2009, Hauser & Wirth presented a series of McCarthy's drawings based on the "dark psychological and social undercurrents of the original 19th century tale" (from show's press release) and the sanitized, Disney-fied retelling of the 20th century version. The gallery currently has on view The Dwarves, The Forests, a series of bronze sculptures of disfigured, grotesque dwarves that expands on the artist's examination of the children's stories.
Along with the dark, malformed dwarves with phalluses protuding from faces that appear to be melting or falling apart, McCarthy created a massive carved wooden sculpture of an orgasmic Snow White and grinning Dopey (referencing Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculptureTransverberation of Saint Teresa) and two maquettes of mystical forest landscapes that serve as models for sets for performances and films the artist is planning for the future.
While inspired by the German folk tale and the Disney story, McCarthy adds a personal touch to the works by combining his "memories and impressions of the deep forests and magical clearings on his own property above the Mojave Desert." McCarthy's dark, intense, nightmarish take on the Snow White stories is way beyond Fractured Fairy Tales. It has positively evolved from his 2009 show of drawings which I posted about here. I'm looking forward to see where he takes Snow White and the dwarves next. Learn more at Hauserwirth.com. Closes December 17th.
White Snow Cake, 2011
White Snow Cake (detail), 2011
White Snow Cake (detail), 2011
White Snow Cake (detail), 2011
White Snow Cake (detail), 2011
White Snow Dwarf 4, 2011
White Snow Dwarf 7, 2010-2011
White Snow and Dopey, Wood, 2011
White Snow and Dopey, Wood (side view), 2011
White Snow Dwarf Head 5, 2011
Left to right: White Snow Dwarf Head 3, 2011 and White Snow Dwarf 6, 2010-2011
Left to right: White Snow Dwarf 6, 2010-2011and White Snow Dwarf Head 1, 2011
This past weekend I headed up to the Whitney Museum to catch Glenn Ligon: America before it closed on Sunday. For over 25 years the New York-born and based Ligon has explored American history, literature, society, homosexuality, and being African-American in his artwork. The Whitney's compelling exhibit is the first mid-career retrospective of the 51-year-old artist's oeuvre. Featuring about 100 works, several of the galleries are devoted to Ligon's paintings that incorporate text culled from writers like James Baldwin (from his 1953 essay Stranger in the Village about the author's experience visiting a small Swiss town that had never seen a black person before), Jean Genet, Zora Neale Hurston (from her 1928 essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me), and quotes from comedian Richard Pryor and lyrics by rapper Ice Cube. The selected texts primarily deal with race and being black and the phrases, written out with stencils in black oil stick, are repeated over and over trickling down a white or black canvas (or in some cases, a door) until the letters get smudgy and illegible and seem to dissolve into a deep pool of blackness. The works featuring lines from Richard Pryor jokes were created in dizzyingly bright colors, giving the words a vibrating effect, complementing Pryor's "colorful language" (from the exhibition's notes).
To Disembark is a series of four large, square art crates, each concealing a quietly playing soundtrack within its wooden walls. From one box, Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit is barely audible. From another a Bob Marley song plays, while another plays KRS-One's Sound of Da Police. The fourth box contains audio of Ligon reading the story of Henry "Box" Brown, a slave who mailed himself to freedom in 1849 in a 3 x 2 foot box. Hanging from the walls surrounding the four wooden crates are prints displaying descriptions of Ligon written by his friends on "Missing" posters that were once used to search for runaway slaves.
The central gallery features Notes on the Margin of the Black Book (1991-93), an installation Ligon created in response to Robert Mapplethorpe's controversial Black Book published in 1986. Mapplethorpe's Black Book featured 91 black-and-white portraits of black men, mostly in the nude. The book was unique at the time of its release because men of color had not been artistically represented in this way before (which is why Mapplethorpe said he produced it). When the book was first released, Ligon could not decide whether he found it racist or exploitative, so he showed the images to various artists, friends, critics, politicians, and bartenders and patrons at gay bars and asked for their opinions. Along with exhibiting all 91 pages from Mapplethorpe's Black Book, Notes on the Margin of the Black Book displays 78 of the varied responses (ranging from homophobic or shocked to thoughtful or humorous) Ligon received from his survey.
A more G-rated gallery exhibits large-scale silkscreen reproductions from a project Ligon worked on with a group of school children. The artist brought the students coloring books geared toward children of color and asked them to color in the images. The racially diverse group of kids made Isaac Hayes a blonde and gave the image of Malcolm X a sort of clownish drag queen make-over. The exhibition closes with three neon sculptures spelling out "America" - each with an idiosyncrasy like a couple of reversed letters, non-stop frantic blinking, or being covered in black paint. While each of Ligon's neon pieces may look a little different from one another, they all still represent America. Learn more at Whitney.org. Closed June 5th.
Mirror, 2002, screen grab from Whitney.org
Malcolm X (Version 1) #1, 2000, screen grab from Whitney.org
Now that we've entirely bypassed spring and plunged head-on into summer weather, it's time to venture outdoors and enjoy some public art. Along with Ai Weiwei's Zodiac Heads at Grand Army Plaza, here are a few other suggestions for viewing art whilst simultaneously catching some sun.
If you haven't already, you should head over to the Seagram Building at Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets to check out Swiss-born, Brooklyn-based Urs Fischer's 20-ton, 23-foot-tall, bright yellow, teddybear impaled by a desk lamp. Untitled (Lamp/Bear) sold at Christie's May 11th auction for over $6 million (a few mill shy of the expected $10 million). After getting six city permits and reinforcing the ground in front of the Seagram Building, about 30 handlers were employed to assemble the piece back in April. The lightbulb in the giant lamp (whose stand juts out of the poor, slouchy bear's back) lights up in the evening. Fischer created three of these works — siblings of the bear on display on Park Avenue include a blue one purchased for an undisclosed amount by a hedge-fund manager and another yellow version displayed on the Montauk, New York lawn of its entrepreneur owner. Learn more at Christies.com and wsj.com. Through September 30th.
After checking out the excellent McQueen exhibit along with eveyone else and his mom at the Met, be sure to head up to the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden to see sculptures by British artist Anthony Caro. A key figure in modernist sculpture, the five, large-scale, steel works on exhibit span Caro's sixty year career. The lively, colorful pieces explore "principal aspects" of the artist's career including "engagement with form in space, dialogue between sculpture and architecture, and creation of new, abstract analogies for the human figure and landscape," (from the museum's website). Learn more at metmuseum.org. Through October 30th.
And if you happen to be in or around Union Square, you should make a special stop at the new pedestrian plaza at Broadway and 17th Street where Rob Pruitt's The Andy Monument christens the walkway. Inspired by Andy Warhol's art, life, drive and spirit, Pruitt created the life-size silvery statue as a tribute to the Pop artist. Posing with a Polaroid camera around his neck and clutching a Bloomingdale's shopping bag, Pruitt's figure of Warhol is exhibited a spitting distance away from the second incarnation of Warhol's famous and infamous Factory. The shiny, blinding beacon is a flashy and fitting salute to the legendary and influential New York icon. Learn more at unionsquarenyc.org. Through October 2nd.
"I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress."—Alexander McQueen
Lee Alexander McQueen was born in 1969 in London. The youngest of six children, McQueen grew up on a council estate with a taxi driver father and school teacher mother. Leaving school at 16, the young McQueen apprenticed for two Savile Row tailors where he learned the meticulous art of cutting and constructing menswear. After stints working for theater costumers and designers Koji Tatsuno and Romeo Gigli, McQueen attended the legendary Central Saint Martin's where he earned his Masters degree in Fashion Design. In 1992, his entire graduate collection was bought by the fabulous, iconic fashion editor Isabella Blow, who is credited with discovering and mentoring McQueen and launching his career.
In October 1996, McQueen was selected by the president of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, to be John Galliano's replacement as Chief Designer at Givenchy Haute Couture. While at Givenchy McQueen learned to successfully combine his razor-sharp, bespoke tailoring skills with the fine craftsmanship of haute couture. During McQueen's five years at Givenchy, the designer delivered beautiful, dramatic collections with a distinctive dark and edgy side. Developing his reputation for dramatic and lavish runway shows while at Givenchy, McQueen featured robots spray painting a white dress worn by model Shalom Harlow in one show, and double-amputee model Aimee Mullins (who is also featured in Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3) walking down the catwalk on specially carved wooden prosthetics in another. After leaving Givenchy due to creative differences, McQueen focused on his own line (which 51% of was acquired by LVMH rival the Gucci Group) and continued his ascent to be one of the industry's most daring, renowned, and respected designers. It's no surprise then that the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute is honoring Alexander McQueen with Savage Beauty, a fantastic retrospective of the late designer's illustrious and sadly truncated career.
Featuring approximately 100 looks and 70 accessories spanning McQueen's nineteen-year career, the pieces were culled mainly from the Alexander McQueen Archive and also features a handful of his ensembles from the Givenchy Archive. A number of pieces are loaned from collectors including stylist Katy England (whose wedding dress McQueen designed) and Daphne Guinness, the heiress and couture collector who famously purchased Isabella Blow's covetable fashion collection after Blow took her own life in 2007. Signature McQueen designs on display include his infamous "bumster" trousers (which changed how high -or low- we wear pants), kimono-inspired jackets, and his three-point "origami" frock coat.
The exhibition is organized into six sections: The Romantic Mind; Romantic Gothic and Cabinet of Curiosities (highlighting the designer's references to the nineteenth century Victorian Gothic); Romantic Nationalism (displaying McQueen's Scottish pride); Romantic Exoticism (featuring works inspired by the cultures of Japan, China, Africa, India, and Turkey); Romantic Primitivism (displaying McQueen's contradictory take on primitivism "contrasting 'modern' and 'primitive,' 'civilized' and 'uncivilized'"); and Romantic Naturalism (exhibiting nature's strong and consistent influence on the designer). The talented creative team who produced McQueen's elaborate runway shows were enlisted for the exhibition's design. The Cabinet of Curiosities they created features shelves and nooks showcasing the various accessories, shoes, and headpieces McQueen created throughout the years alongside notable collaborators, including two of my favorites Shaun Leane (who creates gorgeous and disturbing metal pieces, ie: his rib cage corset) and well-known milliner Philip Treacy (whose hats Isabella Blow regularly wore and who recently gained notoriety for designing Princess Beatrice's "pretzel" hat for Kate and Wills' royal wedding). Unfortunately, the pieces in the upper cases were only visible from afar—and in the over-crowded, grid-locked room, it was pretty impossible to find good vantage points.
The comprehensive exhibition features pieces from McQueen's graduate collection titled Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims up through his final collection for A/W 2010 that was shown posthumously to rave reviews. McQueen's design assistant of fourteen years, Sarah Burton, who was appointed Creative Director after the designer's suicide, has shown two well-received collections for the label and has made quite a name for herself in sartorial history by designing Kate Middleton's princess-appropriate wedding gown and her sister's much-loved and unforgiving bridesmaid dress. I wondered how McQueen would have felt about his namesake brand being associated with the pomp of the royal wedding since legend has it while working on Savile Row, the designer with the bad-boy reputation embroidered "I am a cunt" into the lining of a jacket for Prince Charles.
Savage Beauty exhibits fashion at its finest—the oeuvre of a unique designer whose clothing was artistic, innovative, and evocative. This is by far the best Costume Institute exhibit I've seen. Though it's a shame he isn't here to receive the honor, I'm relieved that McQueen is represented in a stylish, tasteful, and elegant manner. I cried when I read the news of McQueen's suicide on February 11, 2010 (a mere nine days after his mother succumbed to cancer). Growing up, I followed his career and was a huge fan of his beautifully dark and daring work and rebellious "don't give a fuck" attitude. After fashion weeks, his would always be the first shows I'd look for in magazines, and later online, to get a glimpse of his stunning clothing as well as the excitment of his shows—shows inspired by the film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, shipwrecks, asylums, Scottish history, and much more. His human chess game show for Spring 2005 was inspired by a scene from Harry Potter and his Fall 2006 show closed with a ghostly, life-size hologram of Kate Moss floating in gossamer fabric (see below - a small version of this is on view at the exhibit). Insightful, articulate quotes by the designer are featured throughout the exhibit, and it's disheartening to read the many references he made to death. One quote reads: "I oscillate between life and death, happiness and sadness, good and evil." Sadly, now that he's gone, it seems that he wasn't just referring to his work. Another quote near the beginning of the exhibit states: "I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that when I'm dead and gone people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen." Long live McQueen! Learn more at metmuseum.org and at Alexandermcqueen.com. Through July 31st.
(Sorry, photography was not allowed inside the exhibit.)
Burning Down the House, David LaChapelle, 1996, featuring Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow
SHOWstudio/Nick Knight's tribute to McQueen, 2010
Pepper's Ghost, A/W 2006, hologram by Baillie Walsh featuring Kate Moss
Since Ai Weiwei's whereabouts are still unknown after being detained by Chinese officials in early April, the world-renowned artist and human rights activist was not able to attend the unveiling of his first major public sculpture installation, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, last Wednesday at Grand Army Plaza (at 58th Street and 5th Avenue - across from Central Park, the Plaza Hotel, and Bergdorf Goodman). New York City is the first stop of the exhibition's official world tour which will be traveling across the U.S. as well as Europe and Asia.
The 800-pound, bronze sculptures represent the twelve animal signs of the Chinese zodiac (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig). The work was inspired by the 18th century water clock-fountain built in the gardens of Yuanming Yuan by two European Jesuits for Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty. The Yuanming Yuan gardens were raided in 1860 by British and French troops and the original animal head sculptures were looted. While only seven of the original twelve heads have ever been recovered, Ai recreated the full dozen in charming, large-scale renditions that question issues of "looting and repatriation" and explore "fake" or copied works of art (from zodiacheads.com).
The exhibition is organized by AW Asia, and while Ai could not be at the opening last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was joined by a number of artists, curators, and members of the arts community to honor the artist and read aloud some of his eloquent and rousing quotes. Mayor Bloomberg noted, "Artists risk everything to create, but artists like Ai Weiwei, who come from places that do not value and protect free speech, risk even more than that."
New York City seems an appropriate choice to kick off Wei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads tour as the artist attended Parsons and lived here for more than ten years. The artist states that the zodiac sculptures are works that can be enjoyed and understood by all - including children, people not in the art world, and casual passers-by. The stunning, playful sculptures were certainly getting lots of attention when I visited. Now if only those imprisoning Ai could understand and appreciate the artist, his artwork, and his politics as well. Learn more at zodiacheads.com and artdaily.org. Through July 15th.
Interpreting Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, Rachel Feinstein has transformed the lobby of The Lever House into a whimsical fantasy world. Inspired by the children's story, the artist explores themes of beauty, fantasy, and ruin via massive sculptures and installations featuring toy soliders, roses, children, ice, and a gilded coach.
The Snow Queen's Room is a vast, cold, white space that can be viewed outside through the exterior windows or in the lobby through intricately decorative alcoves containing ornate, dynamic sculptures of characters from the story. Adjacent to the installation is The Soliders, a colorful parade of giant toy soliders, hand-cut and hinged together like an enormous folding screen. The Mirror Room is a two-sided room featuring floor to ceiling mirrors embellished with painted images of "architectural ruins in a bucolic, sweeping landscape" that "suggest[s] nature overpowering the presence of man," (from the exhibit's press release). Outside in a wintry barren planter rests Golden Carriage, a smashed, golden, 19th-century royal Austrian coach "constructed of joined and curved pieces of wood that have been cast in metal and brightly gilded." Sitting in a green, leafy planter inside the lobby of the building is Flower Girl, an odd sculpture that looks a lot like a child's Play-Doh creation. Feinstein's quirky works transport the busy worker-bees shuffling through The Lever House's lobby to get to their offices temporarily to a magical fairy tale world. Learn more at leverhouseartcollection.com and check out this recent NYTs article to get a glimpse into Feinstein's fabulous life with husband, painter John Currin, and their three young children. The Snow Queen is on view through April 22nd.
Eggman II, currently on view at the Skarstedt Gallery, reintroduces works by Martin Kippenberger that were originally shown in Der Eiermann und seine Ausleger (The Eggman and his Outriggers), the final exhibition of the aritst's work before his untimely death in 1997 at the age of 44. Consisting of nine paintings, a series of drawings on hotel stationery, and a sculpture, the works focus on the egg, a theme Kippenberger often revisited throughout his career.
"Always recycling imagery, the egg is the banal comedic device in Kippenberger's images," (from the show's press release). By playfully incorporating an egg into these works, Kippenberger made "indirect references to rebirth, reproduction, and the ideal of the circle." Whether showing a woman posing proudly with a giant golden egg, an embryonic dinosaur inside an egg, or the artist himself morphing into a bloated, grotesque Eggman, Kippenberger infused humor into his studies of the mundane egg form. As the artist stated: "In painting you must look what fallen fruit is left that you can paint. The egg has missed out there, Warhol already had the banana. You take a form for yourself it's always about angular, square, this and that format, about the golden mean. The egg is white and insipd, how can a colorful picture come from that?" That last bit must have been a rhetorical question. Learn more at Skarstedt.com. Through April 16th.
Untitled, 1996
Egg Sock, 1996
Untitled (Showcase with egg sculptures), 1996
Untitled (Showcase with egg sculptures) close-up, 1996
Portrait Paul Schreber,1994
Portrait Paul Schreber close-up, 1994
Eierverliebte (Infatuated Egg), 1996
Dinosaurierei (Dinosaur egg), 1996
Eifrau die man nicht schubladieren kann (Egg woman who defies categorization), 1996
Untitled (Grand Hotel), 1996, n/a
Das gute Eierfeierabenbuch (The Good Egg Leisure Pleasure book), 1993
Now that it feels like spring may have actually, finally arrived (please, please, please!), Will Ryman's The Roses seem more fitting (and less like a tease) along the Park Avenue Mall traveling up the road along 57th - 67th Streets. Presented by The NYC Department of Parks & Recreation and Paul Kasmin Gallery, Ryman's site-specific installation consists of 38 Godzilla-sized pink and red roses standing between 3 and 25 feet tall with blossoms measuring 5 to 10 feet in diameter. The enormous, whimsical roses made of stainless steel, "yacht-grade" fiberglass resin, auto body paint, and brass were created to endure unpredictable weather — they were covered in over a foot of snow after a blizzard hit the city shortly after they were installed in late January. The charming, colorful, monstrously oversized flowers are accessorized with thorns, leaves, fallen rose petals (mostly scattered along the stretch between 63rd and 65th Streets), as well as Mothra-sized ladybugs, bees, and beetles.
Ryman, a native New Yorker (his parents are painters Robert Ryman and Merrill Wagner), was initially a playwright before becoming an artist known for "large-scale figurative sculptures based on urban scenes and outsized flora," (from Paul Kasmin website). In explaining his installation, Ryman states: "With these roses I wanted to do something that was larger than life and site-specific. In my work I always try to combine fantasy with reality. In the case of The Roses, I tried to convey New York City's larger than life qualities through scale; creating blossoms which are imposing, humorous, and hopefully beautiful." Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe adds, "Park Avenue is known for its beautiful floral displays and Will Ryman's massive roses, ranging between three and twenty-five feet in height, will enliven the area throughout the winter, in anticipation of the arrival of the tulips in the spring."
The Roses, situated in the medians between the traffic lanes on the always bustling Park Avenue, give viewers a "bugs-eye-view" of the flowers, making us feel puny in this big, crazy city. Whether covered in mounds of snow or basking in sunlight, Ryman's dramatic, cheerful, freakishly huge blooms are a delight. Learn more at Paulkasmingallery.com, nycgovparks.org and at the artist's website Willryman.com. Through May 31st.
Sunday is the last day to catch John Baldessari: Pure Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first major U.S. survey of the 79-year-old, Conceptual artist's work in twenty years. The approximately 120 works on view created by the native Californian artist between 1962-2010 include some early paintings (that survived his Cremation Project), photo-and-text works, combined photographs using found imagery, videos, artists books and installations.
In the above-mentioned Cremation Project (1970), Baldessari incinerated most of his paintings created between 1953-1966 (from Art Info). Some of the ashes are stored in a book-like urn that is on display along with a certificate documenting the act. A couple of works that escaped the fire-pit include Tips For Artists Who Want To Sell and Clement Greenberg (both 1966-68) both featuring painted text on canvas depicting commercial tips on what to paint and the writing of Greenberg, an art critic.
In the 1970s, Baldessari moved on to photo-based works where he explored "chance, accident, and game-playing" (Art Info) as seen in Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get A Straight Line (1973), a series of color photos that do exactly as their title states, and Choosing (A Game for Two Players): Carrots (1972), another series of color pictures showing participants' fingers selecting a single carrot out of a lineup of three. Also in the 70s, Baldessari worked in video. Pure Beauty has seven videos on display including I Am Making Art (1971) in which the artist repeats the title statement over and over and over; I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971) in which the camera zooms in on the artist's hand writing the title phrase over and over and over like a punishment for 13 minutes; and Baldessari Sings Lewitt (1972) which features the the artist singing Sol LeWitt's 1969 manifesto "Sentences on Conceptual Art" to the melodies of popular songs like Yankee Doodle Dandy, Auld Lang Sine, and The Star-Spangled Banner. In other hands, these videos might have been cloying, hammy, and annoying, but done in Baldessari's soft-spoken, deadpan manner they exude a good-natured humor.
The 1980s found Baldessari working with film stills—enlarging, cropping, and collaging images together to create a narrative as seen in Kiss/Panic (1984), ten images of guns framing an extreme closeup of a couple kissing. He sometimes painted large, colorful dots over faces in some stills as in Bloody Sundae (1987) and Heel (1986) creating a different mood and energy in the images and shifting their focus and meaning.
The artist's more recent works focus on fragmented human body parts as seen in his series Noses and Ears and Arms and Legs. In these works, floating body parts are "simplified, enlarged and isolated from the surrounding environment," (Art Info). The artist's own imposing 6'7" stature may have inspired these works as the artist states, "I never thought of the parts of my body as going together. I saw them as separate. Maybe it's because I'm so tall. I have to use willpower to glue them together," (from the Met's website). The most recent works in the exhibit can be found in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum. Baldessari created two gigantic, surreal photo-compositions for the exhibition—one featuring a palm tree and the other featuring a brain floating like a cloud.
Baldessari's body of work is varied and diverse since he uses many mediums, however his wit, charm, and intelligence are always constant. Learn more at metmuseum.org and artinfo.com. Through January 9th.
Tips For Artists Who Want To Sell, 1966-68
Clement Greenberg, 1966-68
Pelicans Staring at Woman with Nose Bleeding, 1984
I made it back to NYC in time to catch the final day of Yoshitomo Nara's Nobody's Fool at Asia Society, the first major retrospective of the artist's work in New York. The excellent exhibit which was divided into three themes: Isolation, Rebellion, and Music, and featured over 100 works from the 1980s through 2010, helped me see Nara's work in a new light. Instead of just seeing sinister and adorable kids and puppy dogs, I learned that the work of the king of "kowa kawaii" is much more than simply "creepy cute."
Nara was born in Hirosaki, Japan in 1959 to working parents who often had to leave him home alone as a child. This ingrained in Nara a sense of isolation which he extensively explored in his work when he moved to Germany from 1988-2000. During these twelve years, Nara explored emotions and vulnerabilities in children and animals, whom he finds interchangeable and representative of "loneliness and solitude, and signs of innocence and its fragility." The "submissive obedience" of a dog "sadly" reminds the artist of children (from the show's notes). To personalize his work even further, Nara once stated that the use of dogs in his work was a result of a failed attempt to adopt a stray when he was young. The use of children, dogs, and solitary houses symbolize the artist's lonely and isolated childhood.
Highly influenced by music, especially punk bands like The Clash and Ramones whom he listened to in the 70s, Nara's work exudes a punk spirit of independence and rebellion. Many of his works from the 90s include scrawled words "that express anger, frustration and the resolve to stand up to the challenges of life." In 1991, his painting The Girl with the Knife in Her Hand introduced Nara's pared down style featuring canvases focusing on a single subject on monochromatic, empty backgrounds.
One room in the exhibition is devoted to Nara's obsession with music, featuring ceramics emblazoned with lyrics from some of the artist's favorite songs. Also showcased in the room are 100 album covers selected by Nara from his extensive record collection illustrating his favorite album art and giving viewers an idea of his musical inspirations. His selected record sleeves include: Joni Mitchell's Clouds, Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren, The Doors' Morrison Hotel, Jethro Tull's Stand Up, The Beatles' Revolver, The Rolling Stones' Flowers, Donovan's HMS, Loudon Wainwright III's Attempted Moustache, and Dan Penn's Nobody's Fool whose name Nara borrowed for the exhibit. Nara himself has designed album covers for Jim Black, REM, Shonen Knife (Happy Hour), and the Japanese punk band The Star Club. According to the show's notes, a possible reason for Nara's more recent characters appearing more contemplative rather than angry may be due to his current playlist of American folk and soul music. The program booklet for the show includes two playlists that "reflect Nara's most current interest in music"—the first list featuring rock selections from bands like Small Faces, The Flamin' Groovies, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Turtles, and the second list featuring picks from singer-songwriters like Dan Penn, Donovan, Mary Hopkin, and Vashti Bunyan.
Nara recently began collaborating with the designer Hideki Toyoshima using the name YNG in creating shack-like structures typically built from found materials to showcase Nara's work. Nobody's Fool featured three of their collaborative installations. Untitled (formerly Home) (2010) is a little house you can walk into and see three recent works by Nara, a maquette for his White Ghost sculpture that was on view a few blocks down on Park Ave and a 1983 video montage. Doors (2006) features five colorful doors of varying shapes and heights that you can enter to see assorted drawings, a sculpture, and a photograph. Drawing Room Between the Concord and Merrimack (2010) is a large, site-specific, mixed-media installation that features a hallway displaying new paintings and older drawings from 1992-2000 that leads to recreations of Nara's studio, a concert stage, and a carnival tent—"familiar, exciting, and inviting" venues. Prior to Nobody's Fool opening, Nara and Toyoshima held open studios at the Park Avenue Armory where they worked on rebuilding Home and creating new drawings.
Nara's Neo Pop, Edo period ukiyo-e print-influenced works are much more than cutesy kids with anger management issues and dreamy puppies. Nara's work is deeply personal and emotional, exploring "feelings of helplessness and rage" and "loneliness and rebellion," emotions that the artist has harbored for years and that have influenced his work. Learn more about Nobody's Fool at asiasociety.org. Closed January 2, 2011.
*Photos weren't allowed, but I managed to get a couple of pics. Also, see below for Shonen Knife's video Banana Chips from the band's 1998 album Happy Hour, whose cover Nara designed. In the video, the band members are animated in a style strongly influenced by Nara (sorry if the song's chorus gets stuck in your head...).
Untitled (Lonely), 2008
Peace Sign, 2003, made from handmade stuffed dolls, from the installation Untitled (formerly Home), 2010
