Post from The Grey Art Gallery Blog, The Grey Area, Written by DAH Student Rooni Lee

On Performing in Larry Miller’s Flux-Tour at the Grey

Having always considered myself an introvert, I never thought that I would “perform” at an art event. However, on November 11, 2011, at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, I performed in front of fifty people as a part of Larry Miller’s famous Flux-Tour.

Even harder to believe, Larry Miller led the tour—the Larry Miller, who actually first invented and conducted the Flux-Tours back in the late 1970s! Some background on Flux-Tours; they were guided by artists, such as George Brecht and Alison Knowles, who brought groups to various art-related places in New York City, and talked about everything but the art, as if the venue itself were a work of art. Flux-Tours challenged conventional definitions of art and demonstrated that anything can be seen as art. So, in conjunction with the exhibitions Fluxus and the Essential Question of Life and Fluxus at NYU: Before and Beyond (which were on view at the Grey last fall, September 9–December 3, 2011), Larry Miller reprised his work of the ’70s.

Larry Miller, Prop for performance by Rooni Lee in Flux-Tour, Grey Art Gallery, NYU, November 11, 2011

I was one of his four assistants, who volunteered to find “anomalies” for him to talk about, count the flutes on the Grey’s columns, and collect dirt from various places in the gallery. Miller invited each assistant to perform a brief presentation about some of the objects. Knowing of my Korean descent, Miller asked me to talk in the Korean language about the objects around Zen for TV (1963/78) and Zen for Film (1964) by Nam June Paik (1931–2006).

Yes, in Korean. It made such sense, since it highlights the international aspect of Fluxus, as well as the ironic nature of the Flux-Tour. I felt very excited about talking to a mostly English-speaking audience in my mother tongue, which is something I had not done since coming to the United States.

On the day of the tour, the three minutes dedicated to my performance was a life-changing moment for me. Having more than fifty people in front of me—including the artist himself—whose attention was focused solely on what I was doing, gave me an adrenaline rush. I wasn’t even aware of how loudly I was speaking about the electric cords that are connected to Zen for TV, and how exaggerated my gestures were in explaining the spinning of the projector of Zen for Film. I was no longer a quiet Asian girl, but a confident young woman in an extra-large painter’s coverall and white gloves, enthusiastically engaged in an art performance!

I was very engaged with the audience too. I felt the mutual trust between us. I fully believed that they would understand what I was talking about, and they knew that I wasn’t talking nonsense in a language they did not understand. Trust filled the air between us, and everything just made sense.

In the end, I learned three important things from the Flux-Tour. First is the confidence I never knew I had. Second is a lesson about communication through art. Cultural background, age, and even language do not matter when people communicate through art. Last but not least is the hat Miller’s wife made for the assistants, which had the Flux-Tour logo on it—with Larry’s autograph! It is now stored safely in my little box with stuff like the dog collar of my first puppy, and a ring I inherited from my grandmother.

–Written by Rooni Lee, NYU CAS ’12 and Undergraduate Intern, Grey Art Gallery

Post from The Grey Art Gallery Blog, The Grey Area, Written by DAH Student Carolyn Keogh

Visiting American Vanguards at the Neuberger Museum of Art

John Graham, Tabletop Still Life with Bird, 1929. Oil on canvas, 32 in. x 39 in. Collection of Tommy and Gill Lipuma, New York

Dear readers, I have a sincere request: Please support your local university art museums! If sometimes you forget to visit these wonderful places, American Vanguards, currently on view at Purchase College’s Neuberger Museum of Art, serves as a pleasant reminder as to why these important art institutions should not be neglected.

During a recent trip to Westchester, I made a pit-stop in Purchase to see the show and was delighted by the display of abstract art from the 1930’s and ’40s. The exhibition is organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art (located on the campus of Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts) and curated by William C. Agee, Irving Sandler, and Karen Wilkin. American Vanguards is on view through April 29 (when it travels to the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas) and showcases around 80 works, providing insight into the artistic production of John Graham, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and other important abstractionists of the period.

The exhibition makes clear John Graham’s crucial importance in paving the way for abstraction in America. Born in Kiev, Graham fled the Bolshevik Revolution, moving to the U.S., changing his name, and reinventing himself as an artist and tastemaker. Graham was an early advocate for Davis and de Kooning, even including paintings by the latter with works by Picasso and Matisse in an exhibition he organized for the McMillen Gallery in 1942. I found it humorous to discover that de Kooning, his name still unknown, was included in the catalogue of this show as “William Kooning.” American Vanguards provides a fascinating contrast to the MoMA’s recent de Kooning retrospective—examining a period in which many of today’s greats were still flying below the radar.

John Graham, The White Pipe, 1930. Oil on canvas mounted on board, 12 1/4 in. x 17 in. Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection. Gift of Dorothy Paris. 1961.56

A work from the Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection, a colorful still-life by John Graham, telegraphs the essence of this period. In The White Pipe (1930), Graham places a biomorphic shape on a black surface, executing the contours with thickly applied daubs of white paint. Graham punctuates the gray-blue background with black and white lines, creating a striking graphic effect. A vibrant red rectangle sets the top right corner aglow. American Vanguards successfully captures a period before artists began working in pure abstraction, when they were producing planar still-lifes in rich reds, vibrant yellows and blues, and geometric, Picasso-like portraits.

Although the show focuses mainly on works by Graham, Davis, Gorky, and de Kooning—who referred to themselves as “The Four Musketeers”—ample attention is paid to other emerging artists of the time, such as Jackson Pollock and Marsden Hartley. One entire gallery is dedicated to the painting and sculpture of David Smith—focusing on an interesting tie between the two media during this period. I was thrilled to see Lee Krasner represented by two works dating from 1940 and 1943, inserting her in the narrative of emerging Abstract Expressionism, which is often touted as a “boys club.”

John Graham, Poussin m’instruit (Poussin Teaches Me), 1944. Oil on panel, 60 in. x 48 in. Anthony F. Bultman IV and Ellis J. Bultman

The exhibition demonstrates how Graham tied disparate artists together and also how his own tastes and preferences changed. While he advocated for artists such as de Kooning and Davis in the 1930s and early ’40s, by the end of World War II, he was dismissing abstract art and advocating a return to figural painting. One of my favorite works in the show was a large painting by Graham, Poussin m’instruit (Poussin Teaches Me, 1944), depicting two nude men in vibrant magentas and fleshy pinks. After viewing wall after wall covered with largely abstract works, my attention was grabbed by this painting. Graham executes the two men’s musculature with quasi-scientific precision, making them look flayed—a radical shift from his earlier abstracted tableaus.

Before his death in 1961, Graham referred to Picasso as a “charlatan,” showing how drastically his artistic opinions had changed over the course of thirty years. But despite Graham’s radically shifting views, American Vanguards establishes him as an important and fascinating figure in the progression of early American abstractionism.

– Written by Carolyn F. Keogh, NYU CAS ’12 and Undergraduate Intern, Grey Art Gallery

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Visiting De Kooning: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art

Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 3 7/8 in. x 58 in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

I am not exaggerating when I write that I was waiting all summer to see MoMA’s De Kooning: a Retrospective. I was literally counting down until the show opened on September 16. The massive exhibition—which fills the museum’s entire sixth floor gallery space with over 200 works by the artist and is on view until January 9, 2012—is well worth the wait. I feel that the only way to express my enthusiasm for the show is to tell you that if you haven’t seen it yet, you should stop what you’re doing, turn off your computer and go to MoMA right now…or at least as soon as you’ve finished reading this post.

I have to confess—maybe I’m a little biased since I love de Kooning’s oeuvre so much. I relish everything he made, from the black-and-white works of the late 1940’s, to the abstracted landscapes in pastels, and even to his snarling Women. The first time I saw Woman I at MoMA, I stood in front of it for about twenty-five minutes, completely transfixed. But biases (and obsessions) aside, the breadth of this informative retrospective, curated by the museum’s own John Elderfield, is undeniable. The exhibition spans over eighty years of de Kooning’s career, beginning with early still-lifes and ending with his pared down abstraction of the ’80s and ’90s. Reportedly the most expensive exhibition in MoMA’s history, it includes around four billion dollars worth of art.

But perhaps this is a small price to pay for such a comprehensive retrospective. The exhibition displays many of the artist’s most important and seminal works. During my visit, every time I turned a corner, I’d see another de Kooning masterpiece staring me in the face. When I was worried I wouldn’t see 1963’s Clam Diggers, there it was. When I felt concerned that some of de Kooning’s fluid charcoal sketches weren’t included, there they were. Even his later sculpture, which was on view at the Pace Gallery this summer as part of Willem de Kooning, The Figure: Movement and Gesture, has a place in the show. The exhibition successfully juxtaposes the artist’s best-known works with others that may be less familiar to you. In fact, one of my favorite works on display was one I’d never seen before: a backdrop de Kooning completed for “Labyrinth,” a performance by Marie Marchowsky, who was involved with Martha Graham’s dance company. De Kooning based the huge canvas backdrop, which measures roughly 15 x 17 feet, on his painting of the same year, Judgment Day (1946). De Kooning renders his biomorphic shapes in bright chartreuse, neon orange, and fleshy pink. They seem to reside on the wall of the gallery space like enormous, abstracted versions of the fantastical creatures found in Hieronymous Bosch’s visions of hell. This work stayed with me after I left the museum even though it wasn’t one of the de Koonings I was counting down to see all summer.

Willem de Kooning, Backdrop for “Labyrinth,” 1946. Calcimine and charcoal on canvas, 15 ft. 2 in. x 17 ft. 6 in. The Allan Stone Collection

The inclusion of such a wide range of de Kooning’s work makes possible what the retrospective aims to do—that is, to frame de Kooning as a modern master who continually transformed and perfected his craft through a series of different periods. To say the exhibition pays homage to the Dutch artist is an understatement. If this isn’t evident through the sheer size of the show, it becomes clearer in the gift shop—where de Kooning’s quips and quotes are blazoned onto mugs, notebooks, and sketchpads. (One notebook reads, “Not even for a million dollars would I paint a tree” while a mug proclaims, “In art one idea is as good as another.”) And although presenting de Kooning as an immensely influential figure in Abstract Expressionism and American art is nothing new, this exhibition does so in a way that sheds light on the artist’s entire body of work—not just his famous Woman paintings or the renowned Excavation (1950), which it deems the masterpiece of his early career. The show gives museum visitors the opportunity to gain an inclusive understanding of the important path de Kooning’s career took—and, of course, to purchase their fair share of memorabilia when they’re done.

– Written by Carolyn F. Keogh, Undergraduate Intern, Grey Art Gallery

Fluxus Exhibitions at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery: Accolades and Events

 Two exhibitions currently on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery are garnering critical acclaim and accolades:  Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, curated by Jacquelynn Baas and organized by Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art; and the companion show Fluxus at NYU: Before and Beyond, curated by Julia Robinson — Assistant Professor in NYU’s Department of Art History and an authority on Fluxus — with Ellen Swieskowski (CAS, ’11).  Both exhibitions opened on September 9^th and will run through December 3^rd, 2011.  These exhibitions offer important opportunities for rethinking Fluxus’s artistic origins as well as its legacies.

Fluxus originated in the 1960s as a loose, international community or network of Conceptual artists, architects, composers, and designers. The name “Fluxus,” which derives from the Latin word “fluxus,” meaning “flow” or “change,” was first coined by the Lithuanian-born artist, art historian, and designer George Maciunas (1931-1978), who organized the first Fluxus events in 1962 and authored the Fluxus Manifesto (1963).  Maciunas has important connections with New York University.  His wide-ranging education included the study of art history at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, in addition to the study of graphic design at New York’s Cooper Union and architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.  The works in Fluxus at NYU:  Before and Beyond are drawn exclusively from the rich holdings of NYU’s Fales Library and the New York University Art Collection.

Among the key themes and aims of Fluxus were “the dismantling of strictly defined borders between different media and between art and life,” as a recent review in Art Daily put it; a challenging of the notion of authorship with respect to works of art, and of the commodification of art objects in the world of “high art”; and a commitment to the notion of art as “part of the social process.”  Important roots of Fluxus include the anti-art “movement” Dada, and the experimental music of the composer John Cage. It may also be said to have been spurred, even into the stance of counter-model, by the parallel activity of the “Environments” and “Happenings” of painter, assemblagist and pioneering intermedia  artist Allan Kaprow.  Figures that were part of or associated with Fluxus include the proto-conceptual artist and “events” composer George Brecht, the pioneer video artist Nam June Paik, the German performance artist, sculptor, and graphic artist Joseph Beuys, and the artist, musician, and activist Yoko Ono.  Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life contains over 100 multimedia works by these and other important Fluxus artists, including extensive material from the Hood Museum of Art’s George Maciunas Memorial Collection.

As Grey Art Gallery Director Lynn Gumpert noted in Art Daily, “Fluxus . . . was, to a considerable extent, concocted by Downtown artists who would later become the denizens of SoHo Fluxhouses. A challenge in presenting Fluxus works today is to maintain the defiant and playful spirit in which they were made while, at the same time, safeguarding and preserving them for future audiences.”

Writing in The New York Times on September 23, 2011, Ken Johnson called Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life “a historically fascinating and excellently produced show.”  He also emphasized the value of the “fascinating” works and textual material on display in Fluxus at NYU in showing “where [Fluxus] fits historically.”  For a slideshow of works in Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life produced by the Times, click here.

Among the upcoming events associated with the Grey’s two Fluxus exhibitions is a panel discussion, Fluxus Redux, which will address the particular challenges inherent in exhibiting Fluxus works.  The panel will be moderated by NYU Department of Art History professor Julia Robinson, co-curator of Fluxus at NYU, and will include panelists Christopher Cherix, Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books at the Museum of Modern Art; Fluxus artist Alison Knowles; Carlo McCormick, Senior Editor of Paper magazine; and Glenn Wharton, Time-Based Media Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art and Research Scholar in Museum Studies at NYU.  Fluxus Redux will take place on Tuesday, October 4^th at 6:30 PM in the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, and is co-sponsored by NYU’s Program in Museum Studies, the Department of Art History, and the Grey Art Gallery.  For further information, click on “Public Programs” on the Grey Art Gallery’s website at www.nyu.edu/greyart/.

Professor Robinson and her co-curator, Ellen Swieskowski, will present one of several Gallery Talks at the Grey on Wednesday, October 19^th; other Gallery Talks/Performances will be led by Fluxus artist Larry Miller and Jacquelynn Baas, curator of Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life.

 

Support for Fluxus at NYU is provided by the Abby Weed Grey Trust; the Graduate School of Arts and Science; and the Grey’s Director’s Circle, Inter/National Council, and Friends.

Kathryn A. Smith

Visiting German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse at the Museum of Modern Art

For a post by Department of Art History senior, and Grey Art Gallery intern Carolyn Keogh on the show, German Expressionism:  The Graphic Impulse, on view at the Museum of Modern Art until July 11th, see The Grey Area.

Announcing “The Grey Area”, the blog of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery

“The Grey Area” is the new blog of The Grey Art Gallery, New York University’s fine-arts museum. The blog features thoughtful commentary on exhibitions and art-related events in New York City and around the world, and serves as an online forum for students, scholars, museum-goers, and other appreciators of the arts. A majority of the posts featured on “The Grey Area” are written by NYU students. Some of the posts have focused on exhibitions at the Grey, like entries on Art/Memory/Place, the current exhibition commemorating the centennial anniversary of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. Other entries have explored art events outside NYU, such as Peter Greenaway’s Leonardo’s Last Supper at the Park Avenue Armory in December and Will Ryman’s current site-specific sculpture The Roses, also on Park Avenue. Like the Grey Art Gallery itself, “The Grey Area” aims to explore art in a wide variety of contexts and promote an informative and engaging dialogue among members of the NYU community and beyond.