Women Around Town and more, September 2017

It is truly a privilege to have art be such a significant part of my life. My profession allows me to share my passion with others, my writing allows to me research and take time to contemplate art, and my travels allow me to indulge in viewing art.  Finally, living in Los Angeles affords me so many venues where I can enjoy art exhibitions. The summer months of 2017 were punctuated with sporadic travel that included some art viewing experiences which I am highlighting here. I traveled to San Francisco twice, the first time to see the nostalgic “The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll” exhibit at the De Young museum. While there, I was delighted to see the “Stuart Davis in Full Swing” exhibit as well as “Revelations: Art from the African American South” which was filled with 62 works by contemporary African American artists from the Southern United States.(thru 4/01/18) This exhibition included Gees Bend Quilts, works by Kara Walker, Purvis Young, and more.

Jessie T. Pettway

The second trip to San Francisco began with “Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed” at SFMOMA, a thorough, spectacular and wonderfully curated exhibition. Among the treasures here were profoundly human and technically daring artworks that reveal Munch as a tireless innovator.

The original draw for this second trip to San Francisco was to see “Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millinery Trade” at the Legion of Honor.  (Thru 9/24/17). This museum is truly delightful and surprisingly interspersed throughout a Rodin exhibition were sculptures by artist/provocateur Sarah Lucas. Her transgressive works comment on the innate crudeness of stereotypical conceptions of gender and sexuality. An example of her work is provided below right. The “Degas Millinery” show included over 40 paintings and pastels from the Impressionist period. Including works by Renoir, Lautrec, Cassatt, Manet, and Morisot. Adding to this delight were 40 exquisite examples of period hats. One of the most compelling aspects of this exhibition was the focus on the intersection between the historical context of the Parisian millinery trade and the contemporaneous, avant-garde art of Degas and the Impressionists. What truly was revealed was also the often ignored aspect of all of these beautiful hats and that is the young women who were exploited in the efforts to provide goods for the elite. The theme of the chapeau, the millinery trade and the consumers was explored quite extensively in Degas’ oeuvre. These images revealed radical experimentation with color and abstracted forms, and are central to his portrayal of women, fashion, and Parisian modern life.

Mary Cassatt

Sarah Lucas

This summer also included visits to many local venues including the Marciano Art Foundation. 

Not many women artists were represented on this visit. However, I will hold out my judgement as their plan is to offer continually changing installations from their collection. Jim Shaw’s massive installation and “Wig Museum” were entertaining enough for now.

“Happy Birthday, Mr. Hockney”, “Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth Century Europe” and “Illuminating Women in the Medieval World” all at the Getty Center Museum made for a complete artful summer day.

Another noteworthy exhibition was “Marisa Merz: The Sky is a Great Space” at the Hammer Museum. 

Marisa Merz

“Betye Saar: Keepin’ it Clean,” a solo exhibition of new and historic washboard assemblages was featured at one of my favorite spaces, Craft and Folk Art Museum.

Betye Saar

Just down the block from there is Spreuth Magers Gallery which was exhibiting “Folds and Faults,” works by Analia Saban. The Argentine born artist who lives and works in Los Angeles has exhibited internationally. Saban is known for working with  with materials in ways that confuse or subvert their typical meaning or use in studio art practice.

Concluding my look back on Summer 2017, are the current exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum of Art  of which I cannot recommend highly enough. Firstly, “Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage”is a feast for your eyes and ears as it  highlights the principal role that music and dance played in Chagall’s artistic practice. “Home-So Different, So Appealing” features U.S. Latino and Latin American artists from the late 1950s to the present who have used the deceptively simple idea of “home” as a powerful lens through which to view the profound socioeconomic and political transformations in the hemisphere. Of special notice here are works by Doris Salcedo, Laura Aguilar and Pepon Osorio. The last exhibition I saw at LACMA was “Sarah Charlesworth: Doubleworld” (thru 2/4/18).  Charlesworth (1947–2013) was a highly influential artist whose work examined the role that photographic images play in contemporary culture. She aligned closely with a group of New York-based artists in the 1980s known as the Pictures Generation.

The Getty Initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. We are so fortunate to have these stimulating and important exhibitions to visually embrace. Many of the current exhibitions are included below.

IN THE GALLERIES:

“L.A. WOMAN” is a new exhibition on view in Santa Monica and online at Saatchi Art. It is curated by Katherine Henning and Victoria Kennedy with guest curator Vanessa Prager. Fifteen woman artists’ work will be highlighted: Shawna Ankenbrandt, Hilary Baker,Mitsuko Brooks, Kelly Brumfield-Woods, Mercedes Helnwein, Melissa Herrington,Mel Kadel, Tahnee Lonsdale, Sona Mirzaei, Sophie Morro, Monica Perez, Lisa Solberg, Stephanie Vovas, Kim West, and Hiejin Yoo. Thru 1/31/18.

“Revolution and Ritual: The Photographs of Sara Castrejón, Graciela Iturbide and Tatiana Parcero” is Scripps College’s contribution to the Getty LA/LA initiative in their Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery. (image below left)  The exhibition focuses on the works of three Mexican women photographers who explore and transform notions of Mexican identity in images that range from the documentary to the poetic.

Thru 1/7/18.

Also part of LA/LA is the exhibition “Judithe Hernández and Patssi Valdez: One Path Two Journeys” at The Millard Sheets Art Center in Pomona. The two artists took seemingly parallel paths from their childhoods in East L.A. to their coming-of-age during the Chicano Civil Rights Movement in the 1970s. Hernández (image above) was the fifth artist (and the only woman) invited to join the collective Los Four and Valdez was a founding member (and the only woman) in the Asco group. Both went on to successful individual careers. In addition to displaying photographs and other materials to contextualize their participation in these important artist collectives, the exhibition will bring their current works together for the first time, including a new collaborative installation. Thru 1/28/18.

Judithe Hernandez

“Phantasmata” is the current exhibition of work by Cathy Ward at The Good Luck Gallery. Her exhibition includes a bronze sculpture incorporating pagan ritual symbolism, exquisite ink drawings on translucent amoeba-shaped mother-of- pearl (Diluvian Sculptures) and two distinct gesso-on-ink portrait series, “Sprites and Spirits,” depicting supernatural entities in a style that ranges from action painting to precise draftsmanship, resembling vintage hi-contrast micrographs of cellular structures. Thru 10/15/17.

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in Culver City presents “Whitney Bedford: The Left Coast.” In this new series of paintings, Bedford “reconsiders the idea of the frontier as a stage where the mythos of exploration and manifest destiny are re-enacted through familiar characters from the Southern California landscape: cacti and palms.” Thru 10/10/17.

 

Columbian born artist, Fanny Sanín‘s career is highlighted in the current exhibition at L.A. Louver Gallery (image below right). With an extremely prolific career spanning five decades, her focus continues to be on geometric abstraction in her paintings, drawings and prints. Thru 11/04/17.

Fanny Sanin

“Article 16: Selected works by Lisa Schulte” is the current exhibition at Porch Gallery in Ojai (image below left). The title refers to a municipal code in the city of Ojai: “No neon signs or architectural elements are allowed in the City with the exception of a two (2) square foot “OPEN” neon sign allowed for commercial businesses.” This is the perfect impetus for work by the artist who has earned the moniker “neon queen.” Schulte creates elegant pieces of work that flip the original connotations associated with the materials. She juxtaposes unexpected materials with her neon sculptures. Rough branches become fetishized and sexy, while the neon, often considered the most garish and commercialized of materials, flows around the sculpture like glowing roots infusing grace and movement into the pieces.

Lisa Schutte

 

Longtime SCWCA member Suvan Geer has a spectacular installation (image right) at the Cal State University Fullerton Begovich Gallery. “What we saw of it…” is an inquiry into the experience of memory. Not a single memory, but rather the experience of remembering with all its slips and slides, moments of clarity and repeated forgetting.” The artist uses multiple video projections, a circling boat made of wind-fall pine needles and fragments of pages torn from her journals. With these materials, “she creates a darkened territory of ongoing motion, appearance and disappearance.” Runs thru 12/7/17. Artist’s lecture on Saturday, 9/23/17 from 4 to 5 pm.

Suvan Geer

IN THE MUSEUMS:

 

“Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell” is the first comprehensive retrospective of her work (image left). The exhibition is also part of LA/LA at the Vincent Price Museum. It will feature over 100 works produced during the past three decades. Aguilar’s highly personal and political imagery intersect performative, feminist and queer art genres. Thru 2/10/18.

“Sarah Charlesworth: Doubleworld” is an outstanding exhibition currently at LACMA (image left). Charlesworth (1947-2013) was one of the key figures of what is known as the “Pictures Generation.” Her influence in using photography of art is well demonstrated in these selections. Thru 2/4/18. For more about this exhibit go to: KCRW 

Sarah Charlesworth

Opening this month is the long-anticipated exhibition at the UCLA Hammer Museum titled “Radical Women: Latin American Art 1960-1985.” This show is part of LA/LA and is curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta with Marcela Guerrero, curatorial fellow. The exhibition will give visibility to the artistic practices of women artists working in Latin America and U.S. born women artists of Latino heritage between 1960 and 1985. Fifteen countries will be represented in the exhibition by more than 100 artists with 260 works in photography, video and other experimental mediums. Among the women included are emblematic figures such as Judy Baca, Lygia Clark, Sonia Guiterrez, Yolanda Lopez, Ana Mendieta and Marta Minujín. This groundbreaking exhibition will include the first genealogy of feminist and radical art practices in Latin America and their influence internationally, thereby addressing an art historical vacuum. Thru 12/31/17.

Among the many amazing exhibitions that are part of LA/LA is “Anna Maria Maiolino” at MOCA  (image right). In this first retrospective in the United States, MOCA brings together over five decades of paintings, drawings, videos, performances, sculptures and large-scale installations to chart the path of an extraordinary artist. This major mid-career survey focuses on the artist’s more than 25-year exploration into ideas of time, narrative, memory and the senses demonstrated in her installations utilizing found and fabricated objects. Thru 12/31/17.

 

“Lineage through Landscape: Tracing Egun in Brazil” is a multifaceted drawing project by Fran Siegel currently on view at the UCLA Fowler Museum (image above). This is another example of Pacific Standard Time LA/LA. The project is the result of the artist’s research residency in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and the island of Itaparica. Three walls of the Museum’s “Fowler in Focus” Gallery are wrapped in a vast, forty-foot-long irregular “weaving” made of strips of sun-exposed and patterned fabric crossed by lengths of delicate drawings of sacred plants on translucent drafting film and cyanotypes. “Finding inspiration in the worship of ancestral spirits, or Egun, in the natural environment associated with Candomblé practices on Itaparica and in the vexed history of colonialism and slavery in Brazil, Siegel’s project can be read as a highly-charged landscape of black Brazil, built from fragments that embrace its African roots.” Thru 12/10/17.

 “The Avalanche and The Silence” new works by Linda Arreola is the upcoming exhibition at the Carnegie Museum

in Oxnard.  Arreaola explores the bipolar oppositions of serenity and chaos in this series of geometric paintings. Thru 11/19/17.

Linda Arreola

	Photo of Anita Brenner by Tina Modotti

 “Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico” at the Skirball Cultural Center offers a new perspective on the art and visual culture of Mexico and its relationship to the United States as seen through the life and work of the Mexican-born, Jewish-American writer Anita Brenner (1905-1974). Brenner was an integral part of the circle of Mexican modernists in the 1920s and played an important role in promoting and translating Mexican art, culture and history for audiences in the U.S. Brenner was close to the leading intellectuals and artists active in Mexico, including José Clemente Orozco, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jean Charlot and Tina Modotti. 9/14/17 thru 2/25/18.