A Superficial Critique: Musings on the Façade of the New Museum

 

Failure and Frustration

I thought my trip home to New York City would present an opportunity for me to see postmodernism in action. Sadly, my eagerness to head downtown to the New Museum on the Bowery hindered my usual organizational tendencies. Yesterday, while I idiotically forgot to check museum times online, I discovered that the New Museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. As I stood outside in the unwelcome cold and indulged in my New Yorker tendencies to rant about minute inconveniences, I was also able to engage in an abridged, begrudging, critique.

Soon, my frustration with the New Museum's two day-a-week closure translated to a broader apprehension with the museum itself. From the location, to the architecture, to the fellow, aggravated museum goers outside, my first encounter with the New Museum, rather its façade, was troubling. Within the Godeau article we read for class, the author exclaims "imperialism breeds imperialistic tendencies." I can't help but wonder if this aphorism applies to the institutions behind modern postmodernism.

While postmodernists such as David Hammond and Jeff Koons provocatively engaged in a critique of identity politics, commodity art, and art institutions, the New Museum's location does not seem to question institutional norms, but rather instill them. Yes, this museum is rooted downtown, a deliberate dislocation from the traditional modern art institution MOMA, which is situated in the hectic, tourist trap of midtown Manhattan. However, the New Museum has not constructively embraced its neighborhood's troubled reputation. Yes, the Bowery has less crime and homelessness today than twenty years ago, but the New Museum and the new artistic crowds flooding the area do not offer an inspiring alternative environment for neighborhood residences, only disjointed change. As I stood outside, I couldn't help but notice how the headphone-wearing pedestrians blocked out the calls of the homeless on the street, and the New Museum looked architecturally inspired by the Whole Foods down the block. I am not compelled to interpret these changes moralistically and spout about the implications of gentrification. Simply, my observations outside the New Museum made me question the progress of art institutions since the heyday of MOMA. Wouldn't Hammond want to relieve himself on the New Museum, in addition to Richard Serra's art? Isn't this an elitist interjection of ideas that facilitate unfair disparities?

Again, I did not go inside. In the New Museum, I could have found the most inspired, creative work yet. However, outside on the Bowery, I was reminded of Martha Rosler's work that highlighted institutional failures in the exact area the New Museum stands today. Mayor Bloomberg helped contribute to the millions it took to construct this museum. Couldn't our billionaire mayor also have chipped in for more affordable housing as well?

While my failed attempt to visit the New Museum biased my external interpretation of this institution, this venture was at least thought provoking. In the future, I hope to go back to the Bowery when I'm home and debunk my own hostilities. For now, I'm only left with the lingering reception that this institution does more harm than good.

What are your thoughts? Has anyone been to the New Museum?

Chinatown Galleries: Sam Lee

Pipo Nguyen-Duy & The Parody of the American Gaze

        In 1975, Douglas Crimp declared postmodernism a movement of young artists "committed to radical innovation," in October, the hallmark journal of the postmodern era. Thankfully, while the writings of Douglas Crimp have diminished and the journal October has dissolved, postmodern innovation and radicalism can still be found in the heart of Los Angeles's Chinatown. At the Sam Lee Gallery, the current exhibit of Pipo Nguyen-Duy's photographs conveys an inspired contemporary application of postmodern artistic techniques. In each photograph, the photographer has staged his subjects and manipulated his work in such a manner that allude to previous postmodern artistic renderings such as Cindy Sherman, but also engage in a new social critique. Pipo Nguyen-Duy uniquely addresses the confounding realities in Vietnam today, and his photographs highlight both the country's natural beauty and unsettling hardships. These representations contain "the good, the bad, and the ugly" in contemporary Vietnam and present the beauty of Vietnam and the Vietnamese as disturbingly tainted. Through manipulated imagery, America’s physical and social mutilation of the Vietnamese landscape and people are subversively alluded to in Pipo Nguyen-Duy’s work.  Thus, just as Cindy Sherman uses her staged photographs as a means to explore the implications female objectivity, Pipo Nguyen-Duy engages in the same postmodern critical process. Pipo Nguyen-Duy transgresses from Sherman’s parody of the male gaze to one of the American gaze. As the viewer, often American, is tempted to grasp the inherent beauty of Vietnam, but confronted with undertones of a damaged reality.

    The staging of Pipo Nguyen-Duy human subjects is the primary means in which these photographs are parodic images. Particularly in the photos with the amputated individuals, these graphic pictures disrupt the viewers’ inclination to interpret the portraits as a glorified representation of Vietnam. From the man missing both legs to the individual with mutilated facial features, these subjects are highly personal, humanizing the scars of the Vietnamese population. Even the other portraits, such as the little girls standing in the water, present individuals in a surreal manner, with stark facial expressions, rigid postures, and ambiguous emotions. The inherent parody of these representations is constructed through Pipo Nguyen-Duy jointly representing both natural despair and delight. Disturbingly, one of the figures most disabled, a double amputated man, lies joyfully smirking in his portrait, as if pleasantly portraying his own physical limitations. Less hopefully rendered is the other individual who missing both legs, with this man glaring troublingly into the sky, as if to seek divine salvation. These incongruent portrayals highlight both the inherent optimism of these individuals but also the dysfunctional desire of viewer, who can perceive superficial joy and progress, but also profound physical pain and shared struggle.

    In addition to the contrived posing and gestures of Pipo Nguyen-Duy’s subjects, the photographic parodies are deeply rooted in the postmodern artists’ critique of realism. Each image at the Sam Lee Gallery presents the viewer with vivid, crisp, colorful imagery that is suggestive of a natural reality. On close inspection, the colors contain artificial undertones with the vegetation unnaturally neon green and the sky obliquely gray. Through these simulated environments and staged positions, Pipo Nguyen-Duy presents the landscapes of Vietnam as surreal. The bizarrely conveyed depictions temp the viewer into perceiving an aesthetically pleasing Vietnam, however, even the subtly manipulated elements of Pipo Nguyen-Duy’s photographs suggest a contradictory reality and the false representations facilitated by the photographic medium.

    Roland Barthes once said, “La réalité se montre, le reel se démontre,” which translates to “reality is displayed, “the real” is demonstrated. This distinction has clearly been applied to Pipo Nguyen-Duy’s work. With smirks, bizarre scenarios, and lush, natural landscapes, these representations of Vietnam mock American viewership. While inherently inclined to perceive “the reality” of modern Vietnam, and its postwar progress and beauty, altercations to this photography unpack “the real” Vietnam, fraught with underlying issues and physical scars. Therefore, Pipo Nguyen-Duy has inspiringly utilized the tactics that first emerged a quarter century ago with artists like Cindy Sherman and Robert Lungo. Using staging and manipulation, this photography portrays the modern contradictions of Vietnam and the American gaze. Just as Barthes articulated, Pipo Nguyen-Duy depicts not what is an objective reality, but what are the confounding, personal struggles for Vietnam.

So What Happened?

I found this while searching YouTube and the themes highlighted in the clip were fairly discouraging. This is a little trailer for the movie Who Does She Think She Is? As you can tell after watching it, the film attempts to expose the continued disassociation of women from art institutions and creative acclaim. Unfortunately, I can't comment on how the filmmaker supports her claims until my Netflix comes; however, even the film's trailer addresses the continued struggles of female artists through statistics and brief interviews.

Within seconds into the clip, the viewer is compelled to question the true impact of the modern feminist art we have discussed in class. Why is it that random, seemingly educated, male New Yorkers can't think of any female artists? Why is it that the School of Visual Arts (in New York) has an 80% female student body, but the art world is predominantly 80% men?? While the individual spouting these statistics could be completely inaccurate and misinformed, there is clearly a gender inequality within the art world today. I found these questions particularly relevant given our class discussion last Thursday. The lack of female participation within the resurgence of painting during the 1980's was troubling. Even the acclaimed art critic Barbara Rose was inclined to praise the return and re-interpretation of modern painting in her article American Painting: The Eighties and able to overlook gender inequalities in her positive critique. Was she in total denial or did she care more about her own career than the broader issues of women in art?? Personally, I don't really care if Barbara Jones was a career driven maniac, but it makes me wonder if all women in art are doing the same thing. Do women have to abandon issues of gender to get ahead?

The other topic I struggled with was "the ghettoized issues of motherhood and childbirth." This film is clearly trying to associate the role of motherhood with the lack of women in the arts. Honestly, I'll need to see the film to address this issue. Yes, its tough to be a mother and maintain a career, but women do it all the time.  Georgia O'Keefe didn't have kids, but its now almost a century later. The hindrance of motherhood is shared by all, not just the female artists. If the dual role of artist and mother is met with hostility, there must be other underlying factors for the current gender discrepancies in art.

Are all women in the arts adopting the Barbara Rose-ian method? Do women have to deny gender inequalities and their role as mothers to succeed artistically?

Chinatown Galleries: Solway Jones

Hadley Holliday & The Progressive Pleasures of Contemporary Female Painting

If one chooses to venture to the Soloway Jones Gallery in Chinatown, the obscurity of its location does not reflect the pertinent nature of its current show. Tucked away in the outskirts of Chinatown and masked behind white shades, the Soloway Jones Gallery displays Hadley Holliday’s paintings. Originally from Kansas, Hadley Holliday now paints in Los Angeles and creates large, colorful, abstract paintings. While Holliday’s works contain a lush color palate, graceful shapes, and soft textures that are stylistically pleasing, these paintings also imply a unique and inspired feminist perspective. As opposed to Abstract Expressionist’s rigid, impersonal forms rendered after World War II, Holliday’s modern abstractions contain organic shapes, warm tones, and fluidity. This deviation from a conventionally masculine art movement also demonstrates a departure from the overtly feminist art throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. Hadley Holliday does not project her female voice through provocative imagery like Lynda Benglis or direct appropriation of male artists’ paintings like Sherrie Levine. Rather, her paintings indirectly promote a female aesthetic and re-interpret masculine artistic traditions into engaging, accessible imagery.

Through material choices and stylistic rendering of form, Hadley Holliday represents abstract geometric shapes in a naturalistic, agreeable manner. To facilitate this process, the artist paints on unprimed canvases, which create an unrefined, rough texture to each piece. Compounding this raw backbone of Holliday’s work are her painting materials. Every color spectrum within the gallery, from her pastels to her dark purples, maintains a diluted quality due to Holliday’s decision to pour and stain acrylic paint onto the canvas. This artistic method also induced the paints to bleed together and subtly intertwined form and color. Lastly, Holliday disintegrates the boundaries of shape through directly incorporating earthly elements into her compositions. Within many of her paintings, especially the green and yellow piece, her stripes and arches are interjected with droplets of water and dots of paint. Thus, Holliday utilizes the traditional material elements of painting to defy conventional abstract representations. No longer rigid, severe, or polished, this imagery manifests through an organic intermingling between paint, water, and the canvas.


However, Hadley Holliday’s soft and pleasing renderings of basic shapes are not removed from an art historical context. Upon examining these paintings within the context of Abstract Expressionism, a subtle feminist critique is apparent. After World War II, artists such as Jackson Pollack and Marc Rothko challenged the conventions of art and culture through constructing bold, geometric paintings. As these works and others defined the Abstract Expressionist movement, the aesthetic was grounded in an exclusionary, masculine artistic style. Conversely, Hadley Holliday stylistically removes herself from these gendered associations and visual indicators of conventional Abstract Expressionism. Rather than conveying the aggressive, pessimistic, esoteric perspectives of the past, Hadley Holliday’s abstractions are light, lively, and inherently inclusionary, as she colorfully dispels the boundaries between shapes and the rigidity of geometric representations.


This process of de-emphasizing the masculine associations of abstract art demonstrates Hadley Holliday’s distinctively feminine point of view. During the 1970’s and 1980’s, feminist art overtly challenged sexist socio-cultural intuitions. Feminist artists such as Lynda Benglis, Judy Chicago, and Sherrie Levine produced artistic critiques that contained provocative imagery, anatomical representations of the femininity, and appropriation of male artists’ work. While these 1970’s female artists rejected the traditions of painting, Hadley Holliday constructively embraces this artistic medium. Promoting the more natural, intertwined qualities of abstract shape, she transgresses from a masculine aesthetic through manipulating painting’s most basic elements: canvas, water, and paint. Therefore, while older feminists chose a removed, literal critique of masculine socio-cultural dominance, Hadley Holliday colorfully engages the conventions of paintings to subtly manipulate its gendered elements.


In addition, these paintings not are not only dissociated from the traditions of Abstract Expressionism and 1970’s feminist art, Holliday’s vibrant, organic abstractions are removed from the controversial re-emergence of 1980’s painting as well.  During this renaissance of modern painting, many art critiques debated over the cultural implications of its return. Within her article American Painting: The Eighties, renowned art critic Barbara Jones praises the re-emergence of painting with the 1980’s art scene. Her review affirms that the re-appropriation of painting, the human form, and traditional modes of artistic representation is praiseworthy. She exclaims within her text, “the capacity of painting to evoke, imply, and conjure up magical illusions that exists in a imaginative mental space” is her primary reason to support this revived art form. Other critics claimed this admiring perspective does not acknowledge the reversion to a male dominated, misogynistic art, as the objectification of the female figure and dismissal of female artists returned. Benjamin Buchloch concludes in his article Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Paintings that 1980’s painting was a form of artistic regression void of a socio-political critique. He declares that 1980’s painting reaffirmed “the politics of a rigid conservatism through cultural legitimization.” Yet, while Barbara Rose overlooked the regressionist qualities of 1980’s painting, Hadley Holliday’ removes herself from this gendered controversy. Without incorporating human form and allegorical illusions, Holliday’s work does not correspond with the 1980’s painting traditions and its subsumed anti-feminist qualities. Once again, Hadley Holliday’s pieces embrace painting’s tradition; yet simultaneously dispel its masculine associations.


Whether intentional or not, Hadley Holliday’s paintings present a dual functionality. First, her stylized distancing from early Abstract Expressionism and 1980’s paintings demonstrates a twofold rejection of masculine aesthetics. Second, Holliday’s unprimed canvases, diluted colors, and fluid shapes present energetic pieces that are not only progressive, but captivating and aesthetically pleasing. Thus, a visit to the Soloway Jones Gallery will not inspire radical originality, but exemplify a female artist’s ability to enhance the visual pleasures of paintings and transcend its contentious past.