Art Makes Such Weird Bedfellows
At Maccarone Gallery, works by Haim Steinbach, Julian Schnabel and Anselm Reyle.
Everyone-into-the-pool gallery group shows are a welcome distraction in a steamy New York midsummer, even when the water is tepid and unsightly matter floats to the top, as is the case in “Pretty Ugly,” a jolie-laide ensemble of 75 artists split between Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Maccarone Gallery.
“Les Folles” (1970) by Bernard Buffet at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
Like most art world parties, this is a networked affair. It includes lots of best friends of friends — artists who are the partners of curators, who are planning retrospectives of other artists, who are represented by the galleries hosting the show — along with a few bussed-in oddballs and recruits from the modernist mothball brigade. 3- ) At Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, works by Takashi Murakami, Pat Steir, Ida Applebroog and Bernard Buffet.
At Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, works by Takashi Murakami, Pat Steir, Ida Applebroog and Bernard Buffet.
Summer group shows can be newsy, but this one feels a little old. Pretty and Ugly have, after all, been the twin poles of contemporary figure painting for some time. Merged together — and they are always merging — they turn into Weird. And weirdness is what “Pretty Ugly” is about.
“Angry Flower (Big Nose, Baby Moose)” by Mark Grotjahn.
An installation of paintings at Maccarone establishes that the show will be organized by themes and it will be an old-new mix. In the floral lineup we find an 1918 Abraham Walkowitz still life, next to Andy Warhol’s 1964 poppies, and Mark Grotjahn’s “Angry Flower (Big Nose, Baby Moose” (2003), all bracketed by Takashi Murakami smiley faces from just last year.
None of the work is refreshed, illuminated or deepened by the company it keeps, which should be the point. On the plus side, Mr. Grotjahn’s painting, of what looks like the face of Bruce Vilanch blooming out of a cabbage rose, is a minor revelation. Who knew that this artist of catchy but formulaic starbursts could get so nuts?
At Maccarone, Stanislaw Szukalski’s sculpture stands in front of a work by Paul McCarthy and Mike Cram.
The Polish sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski (1893-1987) fled to the United States in 1939 and settled in Burbank, California. His freely espoused aesthetic and political views gained attention, as did his cranky, neo-Symbolist figures, like the life-size bronze bust in the show of Bor Komorowski, a World War II Polish military hero who looks like a sad-eyed Darth Vader.
“La mort 5″ by Bernard Buffet at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.
Bernard Buffet’s art is routinely dismissed as adept but facilely illustrational, which it is. He gets two main-stage moments at Gavin Brown, where a mural-size painting of Cabaret-style show girls dominates one room, and a skeletal figure of death — painted the year Buffet died, a suicide — rules another.
Julian Schnabel, Franz West and John Currin at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.
In the end, the problem with “Pretty Ugly” is that it stops at weirdness. And weird is too easy, too obvious, too thin. Like Surrealism, which is weirdness psychologized and academicized, it starts as a thrill but ends with a snore. Weird, as an end in itself, is a waste of time. N.Y. Times
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