We stopped back to see “Paint Made Flesh”, the sensational painting show at the Memorial Art Gallery. Last time we were here was for the opening and that is no time to see a show. This one, especially, requires some time with each of the all-star artist’s works. At the opening I was trying to survey the room between conversations and stack one painting against another from my vantage point. A much richer experience unfolds when you move from one to the next ignoring the damn placards on the wall and the audio tour and just letting the paintings talk to you one by one.
There are some absolutely beautiful paintings here like Picasso’s “The Artist and his Model“, Eric Fischl’s “Frailty Is a Moment of Self Reflection”, Richard Diebenkorn’s “Woman by a Window”, and Jenny Saville’s “Hyphen“. And then there are some tough, challenging paintings here like Guston’s “The Web“, Tony Bevan’s “Self Portrait”, Frank Auerbach’s “Head of David Landau”, Susan Rothenberg’s “Crying“, Lucian Freud’s “Standing by the Rags” and Alice Neel’s “Randall in Extremis“. I found these to be the most rewarding.
And hey, Francis Bacon, Francesco Clemente, George Baselitz, A.R. Penck, David Park, John Currin and the film director, Julian Schnabel are all in the house. The show is up until January 3rd. You gotta get over there.
I was just getting ready to pop a picture of Picasso’s painting when the guard said, “No photos.” We left the gallery and headed over to Cobbs Hill where we walked up the hill and around the empty reservoir and then into the woods to the graffiti tanks at Washington Park. From high brow to Low Brow, there are no rules up there.
3 Comments
The Phillip Guston is much more powerful in person than I expected. The DeKooning was great but very badly lit- sort of half covered by a spot. And that Diebenkorn- loved it. Great show.
nice multimedia production w/ the graffiti video,who is the music? shepp ? charlie nothing ? margaret explosion? of the five paintings you mentioned i liked alice neels’ the best but i would like to see more guston.
Good call Steve! That’s Archie Shepp “The Magic Of Ju-Ju’ behind that Graffiti Tank movie. There’s two huge tanks up there all covered with new grafitti since that movie was made.