Art review: 'Kandinsky' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Just over a year ago, New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum completed a three-year restoration project for its great landmark building by Frank Lloyd Wright. Among much else, the beautifully done project put a grayish white skin on the original corkscrew building, visually separating it from the undistinguished annex added in the rear in 1992.

The renovation was done in time for the Guggenheim's 50th anniversary celebration -- and, happily, in time for the celebratory Vasily Kandinsky retrospective, on view now. Kandinsky (1866-1944) was among the small handful of authentic revolutionaries in Modern art. The big retrospective draws heavily on the incomparable Kandinsky collections at museums in Munich, Paris and New York, but the relationships between his achievements and Wright's remarkable building are one of the unique pleasures of seeing the show at the Guggenheim.

I'll have a full review of the Kandinsky retrospective in Sunday's paper.

-- Christopher Knight

Photo: Vasily Kandinsky, "Impression III (Concert)" 1911. Credit: Guggenheim Museum

Art review: 'Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years'

By Christopher Knight
Art Critic

It resonated like a huge stone dropped into a big pond: A year ago, as reports surfaced that the Museum of Contemporary Art had dug itself into a deep financial hole from which it might not be able to emerge, a shudder rippled outward from Los Angeles to the international art world. Since its fledgling days of 1979, MOCA had grown — in terms of facility, program and collection — into the nation's museum-flagship for art after World War II.

MOCA has not yet fully climbed out of the financial crater, although the balance sheet is far better now than it was then. And this week, the museum opened a remarkable 30th anniversary exhibition of its remarkable permanent collection — the ultimate reason any museum finally matters. About 500 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos and installations by more than 200 international artists fill the Grand Avenue building and the Geffen Contemporary warehouse in Little Tokyo. The show's title urges forward-looking optimism: “Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years” implies there will, in fact, be a second 30 years.

But this is not just a promotional treasure-house show. Installed chronologically by chief curator Paul Schimmel, it also tells a story — although one that's rarely heard. The postwar rise of American art is paired with the simultaneous rise of Los Angeles, from shallow backwater to cultural powerhouse.

At the Grand Avenue building, which spans 1939 to 1979, the distinctive emergence of a mature L.A. art is embedded within the larger postwar prominence of the United States, artistically dominated by New York. At the Geffen — the story picks up in the year MOCA was born.

Two telling works flank the Grand Avenue entry. At the left, a lovely little 1939 abstraction by Piet Mondrian signals Modernism's shift from Europe to America as war loomed. At the right is Sam Francis' luminous cloud of gray-white color, painted in postwar Paris in 1951 as an atmospheric evocation of urban light. Francis later moved to Santa Monica and served as a founding MOCA trustee.

MOCA's permanent collection goes on view, temporarily

The Museum of Contemporary Art has had a rather erratic history when it comes to displaying its permanent collection.

One reason is structural: The museum's largest space -- the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo -- was never climate-controlled for temperature and humidity. Especially with older works, from the 1940s through the '70s, conservation concerns cannot be ignored, so the marvelous Geffen's uses are limited.

Another reason is programmatic: Curators like to organize temporary exhibitions. Museums also incur debts with other museums to trade exhibitions. And MOCA has a genuine interest in bringing important shows to Los Angeles. Altogether, those program concerns can mean that permanent-collection galleries get uninstalled to accommodate traveling and temporary shows.

A third reason is philosophical: From the start, MOCA has wanted to shake up the standard narrative of contemporary art. One way to do that is to keep shuffling the permanent collection, organizing and reorganizing its display as a periodic series of temporary installations with different viewpoints.

More reasons can probably be found. But one result has been the forfeiture of the deep and unique bond that can grow between a visitor and a museum when the finest work in a permanent collection is on permanent display. Like the difference between dating and marriage, the bond develops over the long term. And the possibility for that bond is what distinguishes a museum from any other cultural institution.

The 500 works in "Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years," the sprawling exhibition that opened to the public Sunday, brings the point home. I'll have a review of the show in Tuesday's paper, but one thing "Collection" made me wonder is what will happen in May, when this latest (and largest) iteration of the permanent collection as a temporary exhibition comes to an end. Perhaps by then it will have been on view long enough for people to realize what we've been missing.

In the meantime, MOCA has launched an excellent website for the show. Exploring about 100 works, it has good photographs and abundant information. Much of it is drawn from "This Is Not to Be Looked At: Highlights From the Permanent Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles," a sumptuous book published last year. (The book concludes with a chronology of more than 100 permanent-collection shows at MOCA, starting with the 1985 presentation of the Panza Collection -- seven Rothkos, 11 Rauschenbergs, 16 Oldenburgs etc. -- acquired the year before.)

You can find the "MOCA's First Thirty Years" website here, and find "This Is Not to Be Looked At" here.

-- Christopher Knight

Photo: Artist Wangechi Mutu's "She's Egungun Again," 2005, collage. Credit: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

MOCA looks on the bright side of 30

A couple hundred museum supporters and members of the press jammed the foyer of the Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday morning to hear remarks in advance of a preview of "Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years." The show -- 500 works by 200 artists, drawn from the museum's exceptional permanent collection -- fills both the main building and the Geffen Contemporary, the museum's warehouse space in Little Tokyo.

The press event inaugurates several days of special previews for the show, which opens to the public Sunday. (I'll have a review of the exhibition early next week.) Admission is free through Friday, Nov. 20, thanks to underwriting from Ovation TV.

Not surprisingly, given MOCA's horrifying near-collapse 11 months ago from many years of living far beyond its means, today's speechifying focused like a laser on the upbeat. Eli Broad, whose foundation stepped in with a $15-million matching grant plus $15-million for programming, acted as emcee.

“MOCA has no debt,” he said.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa thanked Broad and other assembled trustees for “the turn-around.” Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes the museum, enthused, “What a difference a year makes!”

Interim CEO (and former UCLA Chancellor) Charles Young, chief curator Paul Schimmel and gala chair and trustee Maria Bell also spoke. Bell said Saturday night's gala, "designed" by Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli, should gross $3.5 million from a thousand guests, making the event MOCA’s biggest fundraiser ever. Everyone seem pleased.

They have good reason to be, given the magnitude of what was almost lost. Tough work followed in the last year, including a downsized staff and trimmed exhibition program. And MOCA is not out of the woods yet; fund-raising continues in a very difficult economic environment while the search for a director has just begun.

Still, there's reason for optimism. And all the difficulties are very easy to forget when you're in the galleries looking at the art.

-- Christopher Knight

Photo: Eli Broad speaks at the press preview for "Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years," with Mark Rothko's 1953 painting "No. 61" hanging on the wall behind him. Credit: Christopher Knight/Los Angeles Times

Related stories:

MOCA's biggest exhibition to celebrate 30th anniversary

MOCA faces serious financial problems

MOCA has gifts, officers and trustees; pronounces finances fixed

MOCA celebrates 30 years and a rebirth

Critic's Notebook: El Museo del Barrio reopens with 'Nexus New York'

New York's El Museo del Barrio has reopened after a handsome 18-month renovation of its home in the Heckscher Building, a former orphanage on Fifth Avenue at 104th Street. The $35-million project added a new entrance, a restaurant and refurbished and slightly expanded gallery spaces, plus the infrastructure upgrades that you don't see but are needed for future growth.

Conceived by El Museo's director, Julian Zugazagoitia, the opening exhibition is absorbing and a bit of a surprise. It's called “Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis.” At the start of the chunky and readable catalog,  curator Deborah Cullen discusses Marcel Duchamp, the hugely influential expatriate artist from France, not from Latin America or the Caribbean, which is what one might expect for El Museo. Starting with a hugely influential French artist, however, turns out to make a marvelous point on which the show is built.

In the first half of the 20th century, which is the exhibition's time period, New York was growing as an international crossroads for artists; any misconception one might have about Latin Americans being unique “outsiders” to this mix is simply wrong. The show underscores the important if often overlooked fact that, back then, just about all Modern artists were outsiders — whether they came from Latin America, Europe or across the United States. When they got to “the modern metropolis,” they formed artistic alliances with like-minded souls.

Duchamp, whose work is considered in the final gallery, was partly inspired by his relationship with Brazilian artist Maria Martins. His friend and collector, Walter Arensberg — who later moved his Dada and Surrealist collection from New York to Los Angeles — was also the silent backer of De Zayas Gallery, operated from 1919 to 1921 by Mexican artist and art dealer Marius de Zayas. He showed Manet, Matisse, Van Gogh and other European and American Modernists at his gallery.

The Metropolitan Museum unveils a 'maybe' Michelangelo

Saturday I stopped at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to have a look at “Young Archer,” the  sculpture attributed to a youthful Michelangelo Buonarroti (Caprese 1475 -- Rome 1564), which went on view Nov. 3 in the Vélez Blanco Patio, just off the grand staircase at the entrance to the European galleries. For decades the marble had been sitting in the lobby of the Cultural Services office of the French Embassy just down the street from the Met, but not until 1997 was the attribution to the Renaissance titan Michelangelo advanced by NYU professor Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, followed by Met curator James David Draper.

Other notable scholars doubt the claim, and research has been ongoing for the past dozen years.

Seven informative text panels lay out the pros and cons of the debate, as well as considering whether the figure of a nude youth might represent Apollo or Cupid. Rather than showing a counterbalanced posture, the boy affects a Hellenistic twist: The head turns in the same direction as one (missing) arm, which would have been reaching across the chest to pluck an arrow from a quiver, carved in the chunky shape of a lion's paw.

The fragmentary figure is in poor condition. Missing both arms and lower legs, as well as a carved vase against which it originally leaned for stability, the sculpture is badly weathered on the front. (Pitting and general abrasions likely came from a lengthy outdoor stay in a niche in the Roman garden of Cardinal Scipione Borghese). Originally about 4 feet tall, it was also broken into several pieces prior to the 20th century and put back together with metal rods.

Rudimentary carving in areas of the face, hair and back of the slender, elongated torso also suggest the sculpture might not have been finished. If it is by Michelangelo, he would have been a teenager living in the house of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, just around the time Genoa's Christopher Columbus was preparing to set sail for the Indies under the flag of Spain.

[Updated] Critic's Notebook: 'The Art of the Steal: The Untold Story of the Barnes Foundation'

 

[For the record: A previous version of this post incorrectly said that the film “The Art of the Steal: the Untold Story of the Barnes Foundation” shows that Pew Charitable Trusts Foundation President Rebecca Rimel gave false testimony in a court hearing. The film does not show that. The Times regrets the error.]

“The Art of the Steal: The Untold Story of the Barnes Foundation” is a riveting — and tragic — documentary film chronicling the gratuitous ruin of a school outside Philadelphia that houses an incomparable art collection. It's a classic story of destroying the village in order to save it.

Except this little saga comes with an unexpected twist: “Saving” the Barnes turns out to have been a sham, as the title's claim of artful theft implies. (Full disclosure: I was interviewed for the film and appear, uncompensated, in it.) That slowly evolving turn of events finally leaves a viewer slack-jawed and angry.

No doubt it's also central to the film's largely rapturous reception in recent weeks at film festivals in Toronto and New York. (It screens Wednesday night at the Mann 6 in Hollywood as part of AFI Fest; national release is slated for February.) You leave the theater energized but frustrated by the grim sense of needless waste, a dull ache roiling the pit of your stomach.

The Barnes Foundation is a school built more than 80 years ago by Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951), a cantankerous Philadelphia physician who became wealthy after developing a patent medicine. Modern art is the school's primary tool, while architect Paul Cret's specially designed building set in a 12-acre arboretum forms a unique container integral to the school's curriculum.

To build it Barnes assembled important examples of African sculpture, Navajo rugs, Pennsylvania Dutch furniture, decorative metalwork and more. These he displayed in distinctive arrangements with mostly Modern art.

The staggering art collection includes 69 paintings by Cézanne, 59 by Matisse, 46 by Picasso, 21 by Chaim Soutine, 18 by Henri Rousseau, 16 by Modigliani, 11 by Degas, seven by Van Gogh, six by Georges Seurat and four each by Manet and Monet. Some are among those iconic artists' greatest works.

Visual artists absent from the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities

Twenty-five new appointees have joined the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. So it's not exactly heartening to note that the distinguished roster includes no visual artists.

Or, perhaps, half a visual artist: Chicago's Paula Hannaway Crown, a former banker at Salomon Bros. Inc., is now a principal of the investment firm Henry Crown and Co.; she is also, her official bio says, an artist. Her husband James was Barack Obama's chief presidential campaign fund-raiser in Illinois.

Fourteen of the appointees are business people, educators, arts organization trustees (Crown is on the board of New York's Museum of Modern Art), lawyers, politicians, etc. The remaining 10 are architects and performing artists, half of them actors.

According to its website, the committee works "directly with the three primary cultural agencies – National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) – to initiate and support key programs; to recognize excellence in the fields of arts and humanities; and to encourage private-public partnerships around those disciplines."

The United States is a big country. Apparently, no full-time visual artists suitable to serve could be located.

-- Christopher Knight

Critic's Notebook: Ingres' 'Comtesse d'Haussonville' @ Norton Simon Museum

Louise d'Haussonville arrived in Pasadena the other day, and it's always good to see her. Always strange too.

One of the greatest portraits by one of the greatest portrait painters — French genius Jean Auguste  Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), who didn't like painting portraits despite his knack for it — the picture captivates for a host of peculiar reasons. One is its color.

Colin B. Bailey, chief curator of New York's Frick Collection, which inaugurates its half of an exchange program with the Norton Simon Museum with this first-ever loan of the famous painting to California, has aptly described the picture's palette as “a rainbow of blues.”

Blue is the color of the amazing satin evening dress that first grabs attention to “Comtesse d'Haussonville” (1845), finished nearly five years after Ingres first met the doe-eyed young beauty, a young wife of 22, in Rome. The dress, with its rustling folds, intricate design and panoply of light reflections is a virtual catalog of possible blue shades.

There's more. Blue is also the color of the wall paint, the velvet mantle-cover she leans against, its fringe and a tassel, the Sèvres and other porcelains on the mantle, assorted flowers, the pouch for her fan, the bell-rope to call servants, the paisley-like pattern on the gold and red cashmere shawl draped over a chair, gemstones in her jewelry, Louise's limpid eyes, even the pale shadows beneath her eyes and along the hand she holds at her chin.

All these and more encompass the primary color's full range, starting with delicate azure and ending in deep indigo. Much of it is doubled by the reflection in the big gilded mirror behind her.

It's tempting to think of Ingre's extraordinary choice of chromatic display in symbolic rather than simply decorative terms. Nineteenth-century French painters were enamored of all things political, and Louise was from a grand political family — the great-granddaughter of Louis XVI's finance minister, the granddaughter of the brilliant essayist and salon hostess Mme. de Staël and the daughter of an eminent liberal statesman. Her husband was a diplomat, son of a distinguished soldier. “The blues,” so-called because of their uniforms, had been the troops of the revolutionary government.

Art reviews: R. Crumb @ UCLA Hammer, 'India's Comics' @ LACMA

Cartoons have been art's most common language going on 50 years, ever since Roy Lichtenstein painted Mickey Mouse and Edward Ruscha conjured Little Orphan Annie.

Make that 140 years if you believe (as I do) that the brushy, broken, unfinished-surface look of Impressionist paintings derived from the oil sketches that artists of the French Academy used to map out the slick, highly finished surfaces of their often grandiose canvases. They called those preparatory sketches cartoons, and the Impressionists latched onto their raw energy.

Two small museum shows put current cartoons in our sights. In different ways, both use the form as a method to consider ancient texts.

The more bracing of the two is “The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis” at the UCLA Hammer Museum. Robert Crumb spent nearly five years thinking about and drawing 206 sheets to illuminate the first book of the Old Testament — chapter by chapter, scene by scene — inside rectilinear panels (as many as six per sheet) whose wavy contours frame events with nervous visual energy. At the Hammer, the sheets are lined up edge to edge around one gallery, as well as around a circular wall built in the center of the room.

As a general rule manuscript illumination has long-since gone the way of lighthearted children's books. Crumb, however, takes on the daunting task with a fierce intelligence and the graphic skill one expects from a founding father of the radical underground comics movement. (His first issue of the counterculture masterwork, Zap Comix, was published in San Francisco in 1968.) Crumb's familiar drawing style — black ink, a tremulous line, dense cross-hatching that darkens the field and electrifies the light through contrast — gives Genesis the punch of a heavy graphic novel.