Foreground Fall 2015

FALL 2015

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SEPTEMBER 2010

Š Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

New Limited Editions from Aperture Visit Aperture in person or at aperture.org/prints The Non-Conformists Limited-Edition Box Set includes an 8 x 10 in. gelatin-silver print of Anniversary tea, Boulderclough Methodist Chapel, 1975 (above), signed and numbered in an edition of 100, in slipcase with The Non-Conformists by Martin Parr (Aperture, 2013).

For inquiries, e-mail prints@aperture.org

Aperture Foundation 547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10001 212.505.5555 aperture.org

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S U M M E R 2014

OUR STAFF

BARBARA PFLAUMER

MARGARET BROWN

EDITOR IN CHIEF

FOUNDER AND PUBLISHER

CHRISTINA DAVIDSON

PATRICIA MCCLAIN

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

BEN MINTON CIRCULATION MANAGER

JANE MILLER ACCOUNTING MANAGER

COPY EDITOR

MORGAN SIEM CONSULTANT, SOCIAL MEDIA

KASIA PIASECKA SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

For advertising inquiries, call 214.704.4182 or email Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com For editorial inquiries, email Barbara@shelfmediagroup.com

Photography from Adventures in Fine Art Photography by Howie Garber.

Winner of the Foreground Competition for Best Indie Art/Photography Book.

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Apply now to the new BFA degree program at the Southwest School of Art. 300 Augusta • San Antonio, TX 78205 • www.swschool.org/bfa admission@swschool.org • 210.224.1848

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Barbara Pflaumer talks ISIS

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ARTISTS DRINKING BEER Jaime Scholnick & Kyla Hansen

12 JOHN SINGER SARGENT

On view at the Met 16 IT’S THE REAL THING

The High Museum spotlights

the Coke bottle 20 MY FIRST TIME

With Time editor-at-large

Richard Lacayo

Artwork: Red Headed Stranger (back) 2014. Found object, bondo, resin, paint, lace, paper mache’, glitter, paint, wood. 9”x5.5”x5” (sculpture) 12.5”x5.5”x3.5” (base)

22 DIEGO RIVERA & FRIDA KAHLO

At the Detroit Institute of Arts 26 DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS

A conversation with Graham Beal 32 PHOTO ESSAY

Tripp Schoff 36 FOREGROUND

COMPETITION WINNER

Howie Garber wins for best photography book 42 PERSPECTIVE

ON THE COVER:

Jaime Scholnick One of the 50 pieces comprising “Gaza: Mowing the Lawn” installed at CB1Gallery, Los Angeles, June 6 - July 18, 2015. Using icompendium.

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A WORD FROM THE EDITOR

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ISIS, THE NAZIS AND WAR CRIMES

ome may think the wanton obliteration of heritage sites by the Islamic State is a minor concern within the context of events in the Middle East these days, but one must differ. The decimation of Assyrian sites from the 9th century is not merely appalling but reminiscent of the Nazi’s handiwork during the Second World War. When Hitler thought the battle against the Allies was lost, he ordered his generals to blow up Notre Dame and other cultural landmarks in Paris, but for once, his military men defied him.

While certainly not an expert, it is my understanding that the rationale (one struggles to use the word in this context) for the obliteration of these landmarks is a belief that any imagery pre-dating the life of Muhammad is idolatry and must be eliminated. As a non-Muslim one cannot understand how destroying mosques, ancient libraries and monumental sculpture advances or protects the faith these vandals profess to revere, and while one respects an individual’s or group’s religious beliefs, this unparalleled hatefulness exceeds any known justification for their actions.

What’s the world to do? When we are forced to hear and see the unconscionable beheadings of journalists and Christians, the mass abductions of teenage girls, the bombings and endless stream of nihilistic behavior, saving archeological sites and artistic monuments somehow can’t be seen in the same light. Yet it is important to make every effort to prioritize the rescue of these locations, as they are seminal to who we are as a world today.

Classifying them as war crimes is a start, and when, and if, this madness ever concludes, the perpetrators must be pursued to the fullest extent possible. In addition, no person, museum, auction house, etc., should purchase any of these works not destroyed since the funds only go to perpetuate reprehensible behaviors.

A small amount of good news came from British television’s Channel 4 when one observer noticed metal bars protruding from bits of shattered artwork laying about, indicating that some of the destroyed works were copies with the originals having been moved to the relative safety of the Baghdad Museum.

In the art world there has always been, and there will always be, a discussion of what constitutes art, but let there be no question that the archeological, historic and artistic loss visited on all peoples by the so-called Islamic State is an unforgivable, and sadly unfixable affront to all civilizations.

Yours, Barbara Pflaumer Editor in Chief barbara@shelfmediagroup.com 5

ARTISTS

DRINKING BEER

Foreground editor Barbara Pflaumer sits down with artists Jaime Scholnick (jaimescholnick.com) and Kyla Hansen (kylahansen.com).

JAIME SCHOLNICK & KYLA HANSEN Foreground (to Hansen): I know you did your undergraduate work at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV); how did you decide to come to Los Angeles?

Kyla Hansen: Vegas was great for a number of reasons, one being its proximity to a major city with great contemporary art—Los Angeles. I was able to visit galleries and museums fairly often.

That was really valuable as an undergraduate. I 6

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also loved the vibe of this city. It felt very optimistic. I knew that I wanted to land here at some point, so when narrowing down my options for grad school LA seemed like the obvious choice.

Foreground: When you went to graduate school did you know what kind of art you wanted to make?

Hansen: No. I went in knowing mostly that I wanted my work to change. I wanted to use the time

KYLA HANSEN

U.S.A., 2013. Branch, golf club, lace, glitter, paper mache, epoxy putty, resin, yarn, plaster. 3’x4’x1’ Glitter Gulch 2, 2013. Found objects, paper mache, bondo, lace, tape, resin, glitter, paint, astroturf. wood, casters. 20”x20”x12”

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I’m really interested in storytelling and objects as history—that they can be one thing at one time and then lose that meaning and become another thing in another time.

—

to try new things, learn new processes, and allow myself the permission to fail. I attended a graduate school that was known primarily known for its painting program, which as a sculptor ultimately gave me more freedom to do what I wanted.

Foreground: You made that sculpture with the golf club, and USA text—tell me about that.

Hansen: Sometimes I bring things into the studio not knowing what their final purpose will be.

I found these great bent branches on my way into the studio one day. Formally and materially they related to some old golf clubs that were in my studio. I immediately like the idea of a golf club being “limp,” and cobbled together. It seemed to combine humor and wit to point at issues surrounding wealth, blind patriotism, and perceived power.

Foreground: The process is so interesting to me that you can find a piece of wood and translate it into something and it’s worth discussing.

Hansen: I’m really interested in an object’s ability to build or shed meaning over time. Found objects have the potential to move back and forth between being inanimate and imbued with meaning dependent on context.

Foreground: It’s very Duchampian.

Jaime Scholnick: He’s the reason we can do this.

Devil on TV, 2014. Mixed media. 9’x12’x5’ Stranger, 2014. Paper mache, encaustic wax, plaster bandage, wood, paint. 30”x32”x15” 8

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Foreground: Jaime, tell me about the work you are doing.

Scholnick: Presently I am working on a METRO commission for the METRO LAX Corridor Project. My piece will be at the Crenshaw Expo Station and it will be on the two opposing walls underground running North to South and South to North. The piece quilts together the area from the 110 Fwy and Martin Luther King Blvd down to Leimert Park. The style is similar to my recent GAZA drawings that were shown at CB1 Gallery this past June 2015.

JAIME SCHOLNICK

Chuckles series: Bush, 2008. Acrylic and glitter on Mylar. 36 “ x 30.5 “ framed. Chuckles series: Cheney, 2008. Acrylic and glitter on Mylar. 36 “ x 30.5 “ framed. Chuckles series: Condi, 2008. Acrylic and glitter on Mylar. 36” x 30.5” (framed). Chuckles series: Rove, 2008. Acrylic and glitter on mylar. 36” x 30.5 “ (framed).

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This is the first time in my life where I can work in my studio more than have a job—I have spent a lifetime to get here. It’s always that equation: what’s the least amount of work I have to do at another job so that I have the most amount of money to make art.

—

Two of the 50 pieces comprising “Gaza: Mowing the Lawn” installed at CB1Gallery, Los Angeles, June 6 - July 18, 2015.

Using icompendium.

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Foreground: I read you had been into papermaking?

Scholnick: Yes, in 1995 I went to live in Japan, on the main island in the North, specifically Yamagata. I went, primarily, as a result of seeing the exhibition A Primal Spirit; 10 Contemporary Japanese Sculptors at LACMA curated by Howard Fox. I went back to see that show 3 or 4 times. It really changed my life. Yamagata Prefecture has a lot of papermakers and I wanted to learn about papermaking and to understand why I was so drawn to the work in the exhibition.

Foreground: SO, you went into school knowing what you wanted to do?

Scholnick: I knew that I wanted time to do my art without having to go from grant to grant. I had been receiving CAC grants up until then, to support myself. My goal was to be able to teach at the college level, as the “interesting job/time/money equation” seemed like a viable way to allow me maximum studio time. I went to Claremont too (the same as Kyla, although years earlier!) I really valued the experience at Claremont. I loved the 24/7 availability of the studios and the intensity of it all. I think back on my experience at Claremont rather like the story in The Snow Leopard. The author goes on a trek to find the snow leopard and its really all the other things that happen along the way that are as profound as actually seeing a leopard.

Foreground: With found art do you see something and immediately thing, I know what I am going to do with that, or do you have it in your studio for six months and then suddenly know what you’re going to make?

Hansen: The latter is most often the case—If I see something that looks interesting I’ll drag it back to the studio. I’ve learned to be better about editing. There’s only so much space. Perhaps it’s also my nature. My dad has always collected things. He’ll go out into the desert and

SHOULD, as an artist, be concentrating on. I have been able to show every series I have made.

Hansen: I agree. I don’t think there is a “map” Foreground: Have you appropriated any of the for a career in the Arts. Each artist’s career path differs, which is challenging and exciting. What things he’s brought home?

Hansen: He has donated to my found object works for one, may not lead to the same outstock a time or two. I know he finds things that come for another. So what you focus on, as Jaime pointed out, is making the work. he stows away with my sculpture in mind.

Foreground: That’s incredibly sweet.

Foreground: It was my experience when workForeground: You also have a BA in Journalism— ing in museums that virtually everyone on staff what an interesting perspective that might bring who wasn’t a curator, director, or on the business to your artwork—in terms of an ability to be dis- side was an artist who worked to support their art making. cerning about the truth.

Hansen: I think more often about the slippery Scholnick: I honestly think, historically, that is nature of truth and realness—perhaps because how it has been in the U.S.A. for artists. With my of that background. Memory, for example, is not METRO commission, this is the first time in my inert; it’s a more creative process, like storytell- life where I can work in my studio more than at ing. Each time we recall an event our brain actually another job. I’m also aware that this is my situarecreates it, adding bits and pieces of experiences tion at present. Next year is unknown. to create what feels like a truth. The irony is that the more often we recall a memory, the less accu- Foreground: When you started the GAZA projrate it becomes, even to the point of being false. ect did you know what you were starting or were you doing it sort of absentmindedly? AT what Foreground: I am curious about the gallery ex- point did you realize you were on a path? perience and whether an artist needs a curator Scholnick: I never do things absentmindedly. to come in and look at the work to get into a mu- The GAZA pieces were a direct reaction to the 51 seum. SO first you have to get an MFA then you days of fierce bombings of the people in GAZA by need a gallery, and then a curator who appreciates the Israeli army sanctioned by the Israeli Governthe work and then there’s entry into a museum? ment. The images of this destruction came across Scholnick: (smile) I don’t think there is any one my social media sites every day. I ignored them way to get your work into a museum if that is at first, angry at the postings, but then felt such even your goal. There are so many examples of sheer sadness for the state of humanity. THAT’s artists who haven’t gone that route that you why and how they started. I make work about the mention. I don’t think it’s as mapped out as: times in which I am living. The Glitter pieces of “you do this, then this happens, then this”. In my the Bush Cabinet, (The Chuckles series) were a case, my desire to teach classes on the college direct reaction to the Bush Administration. That level required that I get an MFA. I like to follow was such a dark time. I was very depressed about the advice of a dear friend who is also a success- the future, the present government, the war, the ful artist: “don’t worry about showing your work blatant lies and the megalomaniacal attitudes of Jaime. Concentrate on making it the best you Cheney, Rumsfeld, all of them actually, the entire can; full of integrity and you will always be able Administration. I feel lucky to be able to get these to show it.” I have to say, ultimately its what you feelings out through my art. find old objects that have some potential history, or value and bring them back home.

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EXHIBIT see A selection of the artist’s paintings are on view at the Met through October 4

SARGENT

PORTRAITS OF ARTISTS AND FRIENDS

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merican painter John Singer Sargent [1856-1925] has often been characterized as the portrait painter of Edwardian Europe, a sobriquet he probably wouldn’t have appreciated. Sargent was the master of the loaded brush and preferred painting directly onto the canvas rather than creating an under-drawing first. His fluidity with paint was not just a technical achievement, although it was certainly that, but the result of intense study of the art of his predecessors, particularly the Spanish master Velasquez.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has an exhibition titled Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends that will be on view until October 4, 2015. Comprised of 90 distinguished portraits and gathered from museum loans and private collections, the show offers unparalleled insights into the lives of the upper classes at the fin de siècle and dawn of the 20th.

The fully illustrated catalogue offers chronological essays documenting Sargent’s work as he traveled throughout Europe and the United States. Although American by birth, Sargent never had a permanent home in the country but preferred the Europe of his youth. Nonetheless, he often spent long periods of time visiting and being a guest at the homes of friends and 12

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fellow artists in the States. Extensive sections in the catalogue are devoted to his stays in Boston and New York and the portraits that resulted from his time there.

The exhibition highlights these portraits, as well as commissioned work. While in Boston he painted Mrs. Edward Darley Boit (18871888) (the mother of the four young girls featured in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston’s masterwork The Daughters of Edward Boit that sadly is not included in the Metropolitan’s installation).

Unlike the demure, urbane women he had been capturing on the Continent, Sargent shows the viewer a genial American, in a lovely purple dress decorated with polka dots.

He depicts her openness and lack of pretense by positioning her left arm over a pillow and a side glance indicating a kind of American casualness; no European lady would be seen in such an inelegant pose.

John Singer Sargent (American, Florence 1856–1925 London) Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1883–84. Oil on canvas. 82–1/8 x 43–1/4 in. (208.6 x 109.9 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1916 (16.53) Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

One of the featured works in the Met show is the famous (infamous?) painting of Madame X, Madame Pierre Gautreau, an American by birth married to a Frenchman, living in Paris. This painting, owned by the museum, was completed in 1884, without a commission, although the subject clearly participated in its creation. It shows the Madame Gautreau wearing a fitted black velvet dress with thin, jeweled straps, her head turned in profile to fully emphasize her patrician profile and elongated neck. There is no mistaking her for commoner since Sargent has brilliantly demonstrated her societal rank by positioning her right arm snaking down her side with and her hand resting on a perfectly situated table. The sinewy elegance of her pose is unmistakably aristocratic. Michael Gormley wrote, “Madame Gautreau exists because the male gaze makes her visible. She looks away from the viewer – selfassured that her power, and indeed her very existence, lie 13

in the certitude that she is being looked upon and desired.”

Originally the painting showed Madame X with the right strap of her evening dress down below her shoulder, but when exhibited the painting created such a scandale with buttoned up French society that Sargent repainted it, moving the strap up onto her shoulder.

The uproar over this work was so intense it forced Sargent to leave Paris for London, and he kept it in his personal collection for more than 30 years before selling it to the Metropolitan. He was quoted as saying, “I suppose it was the best thing I have done.”

While in the UK Sargent painted a number of portraits, none more enchanting than his Lady Agnew of Lochnow (National Gallery of Scotland), 1892. As was the case with Madame X, Lady Agnew was a socially ambitious young woman but Sargent’s portrait of her garnered a completely different response from the critics.

We see a truly beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties, sitting in a floral covered chair looking directly at the viewer. Whether she is flirting with her audience or not is a matter of opinion, but there can be no question of her beauty and the directness of her gaze. Her unflinching stare and the overall precision with which Sargent painted her visage are contrasted with what appears to be a more free-flowing approach to her pale lavender long dress and the deeper lavender satin sash around her small waist. It has been said that just as Madame 14

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X forced Sargent to leave France, Lady Agnew assured his success in the UK. Also from this time in Boston, Sargent painted a portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a wealthy Bostonian, who was determined to create an important collection of art, and so she did. Her namesake museum is exactly as she left it when she died in 1924 and is filled with masterworks from Europe’s best artists.

Mrs. Gardner owned an oil sketch of Madame X and wanted her own image to be a companion piece to that famed work. Sadly, she lacked the beauty of Madame Gautreau, and the portrait, although charming in and of itself, highlights the difference between the two subjects. Isabella Gardner is posed (wearing a black velvet dress with unfortunate short sleeves and two ropes of pearls around her waist that highlight the girth of her hips) in front of a Venetian brocade, whose pattern creates a halo effect around her head that radiates to the edge of the picture plane.

Clearly Sargent is not mocking her, although she was subjected to a plethora of negative remarks when he displayed the work in his first one-man show in Boston; she never lent it again. Nonetheless, this painting is one of Sargent’s more noteworthy works, and while it did not upstage Madame X it enjoys an important place in his oeuvre.

Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends, Metropolitan Museum of Art, metmuseum.org, through October 4.

art + photography BOOKSHELF Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties edited by Theresa A. Carbone Rizzoli

H

ow did American artists represent the Jazz Age? The exhibition and catalogue Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties brings together for the first time the work of sixty-eight painters, sculptors, and photographers who explored a new mode of modern realism in the years bounded by the aftermath of the Great War and the onset of the Great Depression. www.brooklynmuseum.org Available at Amazon.

The Non-Conformists

by Martin Parr Aperture

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he book takes its title from the Methodist and Baptist chapels that in the mid-1970s characterized an area of Yorkshire and defined the fiercely independent character of the town. In words and pictures, Martin and Susie Parr vividly and affectionately document cobbled streets, flat-capped mill workers, hardy gamekeepers, henpecked husbands and jovial shop owners.

www.aperture.org Available at Amazon.

Miles Davis: The Collected Artwork

by Scott Gutterman Insight Editions

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n the last decade of his life, trumpet great Miles Davis took up painting and drawing with the same interest in experimentation that had led him from bebop to avant-garde jazz. A new book collects his works, rarely seen by the public, revealing his fascination with color and form. Foreword by Quincy Jones.

www.insighteditions.com Available at Amazon.

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Promote your books in Foreground magazine in our Special Art & Photography Bookshelf Section.

All ads in the Summer 2014 issue of Foreground will also appear in the June/July issue of its sister publication Shelf Unbound book review magazine, reaching a total of more than 150,000 readers. Ad rate is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown for details on advertising.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

EXHIBIT An exhibit spotlighting the Coke bottle is on view at the High Museum through October 15 high.org

IT’S THE

REAL THING T

he High Museum of Art in Atlanta is celebrating the centenary of the iconic CocaCola bottle with an exhibition of art by artists, designers and photographers. Without question the most internationally recognizable shape in the world, the Coke bottle changed little during its hundred-year history.

Presented in collaboration with the Coca-Cola Company, which has in concert with Assouline issued a catalogue of art and artists titled Kiss the Past Hello, the exhibition examines the history of the company, the design of the bottle by Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, and the many artists who have used the bottle’s shape as inspiration. The brief given to the Root Glass Company from the burgeoning soft drink makers was “for a bottle recognizable even when broken or felt in the dark.” Although the company making the drink had had early bottles of a different appearance, the configuration known around the world today appeared first in 1915. Since that time some modifications to the size and shape have occurred, but they have been minor in scope and never seriously veered away from the 1915 original.

The installation, large enough to cover two floors of exhibition space, tracks the impact the bottle has had

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on not only society but the art world as well. Included in the show are no less than 15 images created by Pop master Andy Warhol, whose career was launched by his seminal images of the Coke bottle (as well as the Campbell Soup can). Warhol’s philosophy included a track on the bottle and its contents which proffered that whether one was President of the United States, Elizabeth Taylor or a person living on the street, “A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All Cokes are the same and all Cokes are good.” Ranging from such diverse creators as the German Fluxus artist Joseph Beuys to American Robert Rauschenberg and back again, the Coke bottle has been immortalized in virtually every media including Pop to Op Art, collages, assemblages, and advertising images of every imaginable shape and size; the image of the Coke bottle has transcended virtually every landscape.

The preeminent designer Raymond Loewy declared the Coke bottle “the most perfect ‘fluid wrapper’ of the day and one of the classics in packaging history.”

The High Museum’s installation features more than 500 3D designs suspended from the ceiling in the entryway to the exhibit (watch this YouTube video to get a sense of this charming design element).

Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987), Three Coke Bottles, 1962, silkscreen, ink, and graphite on linen, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc., 1998.1.20. © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists 17

EXHIBIT

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Paul Meates, Droga5.

100 Years, 2014.

HI(NY). La la la Coca-Cola, 2014.

Print advertisement, 1942.

Lady in Red, Brazilian advertisement, 1950.

The conceit of the 1980 movie The Gods Must be Crazy was that an empty Coke bottle is thrown out of an airplane and discovered by a bushman in the Kalahari desert, who initially thinks it is a gift from one of their gods, and because there is only one, a new concept of greed, 18

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envy, etc., comes into their previously blissful existence. Hilarity ensues but the subtext for the humor was that these native peoples were the only ones on earth who didn’t recognize the Coca-Cola bottle—I doubt today there is anyone in the world who could make the same error.

NeW From

the Getty Chatting with Henri Matisse The Lost 1941 Interview Edited by Serge Guilbaut Translated by Chris Miller Matisse talks about his art, his life, and his legendary career in this engaging and informative interview published here for the first time.

Getty ReseaRch InstItute cloth $45.00

The Letters of Paul Cézanne Edited and translated by Alex Danchev Alex Danchev’s crystalline translation of Cézanne’s letters includes more than twenty that were previously unpublished and reproduces the beguiling sketches and caricatures with which Cézanne occasionally illustrated his words.

J. Paul Getty MuseuM cloth $39.95

The Greek Vase Art of the Storyteller John H. Oakley This richly illustrated volume presents ancient Greek vases not merely as beautiful vessels to hold water and wine, but also as instruments of storytelling and bearers of meaning.

J. Paul Getty MuseuM cloth $29.95

Stained Glass Radiant Art Virginia Chieffo Raguin Beautifully illustrated with reproductions from the remarkable collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Stained Glass addresses the making of stained glass windows, their iconography and architectural contexts, their patrons and collectors, and the challenges of restoration and display.

J. Paul Getty MuseuM Paper $20.00

The Window in Photographs Karen Hellman This elegantly conceived volume considers the motif of the window as an enduring photographic symbol.

J. Paul Getty MuseuM cloth $24.95

Architecture in Photographs Gordon Baldwin Architecture is second only to portraiture as the most favored subject for the camera. From Greek temples to Gothic cathedrals to modern-day skyscrapers, this lavishly illustrated book presents a panoply of different architectural structures and styles.

J. Paul Getty MuseuM cloth $24.95

Getty publications A wo r ld o f A r t, r e s e A r c h , c o n s e r v A tio n , A n d p h i l A n t h rop y

www.getty.edu/publications 800 223 3431 © 2014 J. Paul Getty Trust

The conceit of My First Time is the interviewee’s first museum experience and what it meant to them, whether it was the museum itself or a particular work of art that moved them.

Richard Lacayo is editor-at-large of Time. He writes about art, architecture, and photography, as well as other topics across the spectrum of culture.

T

he museum I really want to talk about is the one at Cornell, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, which is the first one that I got to know. I do, however, remember the first time I went to a museum was when I was 10 years old, in 1962, and living in East Patterson, New Jersey. A friend who was being taken into the City by her parents to go to the museum invited me to come with them.

They were cultivated people and we went to the Museum of Modern Art —the original Museum of Modern Art before there was even the Philip Johnson extension. I remember very distinctly some of the paintings I saw there that for a long time disappeared from the walls of the Modern

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like Pavel Tchelitchew’s Hide and Seek.

Tchelitchew was, at one time, huge in American art, obviously he was a émigré [who became an American citizen], and his painting was a great favorite with kids because it appears to be a spooky tree with children’s faces emerging from it in a variety of phosphorescent colors. The Modern took it down and then about a year ago they put it back up again; I hadn’t seen it for decades but it was only up for about a year since I have noticed it is gone again.

The paintings that made the greatest impression on me weren’t necessarily the masterpieces of the Modern.

I do remember being impressed by a Modigliani nude—another work they

took down for years and then put back up. I also remember being impressed by a painting by an American artist named Peter Blume titled The Eternal City; it was very colorful and he had done it in the 1930s in Italy. The composition is a big red head of Mussolini popping out like a Jack in the Box toy in the middle of the ruins of Rome. The whole painting was a satire or a critique of Mussolini. Those paintings by lesserknown artists really made an impression on me more than any of the van Goghs or the Pollocks or the great masterpieces of the Modern.

I remember being excited to be in New York City since I didn’t get there very often; although I had been to the Museum of Natural History, this was my first art museum and it was an icebreaker for me. Before I went to Cornell, I attended NYU, but when I first finished high school I lived in Manhattan for a year which gave me an opportunity to go to museums more frequently. But I was an English major and that’s why the Cornell museum turned out to be an important experience for me in a number of ways. Before transferring from Cornell I took a year off from school and worked as a cab driver in New York City to make enough money to do one of those long backpacking trips one did in those days. One reason I wanted to do the trip was I had started to take a much more serious interest in art and I wanted to see all the great works that resided in the European museums. I remem-

ber the day I got to London, going to the National Gallery. They had an appeal going on at that time to match the purchase price of a Titian painting The Death of Actaeon that had been on loan for many years from a private collection. The private collector had been presented with an opportunity to sell it to the Getty. The government postponed the export license long enough to give the museum an opportunity to see if they could raise the funds to match the purchase price. I donated about ten pence, which means I own about two square centimeters of the painting.

By the time I got to Cornell I had a stronger interest in art and my arrival coincided with the opening of the Johnson Museum. Previously the university had had exhibition capability, but in the 1960s Herbert Johnson of the Johnson Wax family, who by this time was elderly as well as a trustee at Cornell, decided that he would donate money to build a museum on the campus and he chose I.M. Pei as the architect. Johnson was very sophisticated and knowledgeable about architecture, since Frank Lloyd Wright had built the factory for Johnson Wax and Johnson lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Pei by this time was very prominent thanks to Jackie Kennedy selecting him to design the Kennedy Library at Harvard. I think the Johnson Museum is one of Pei’s masterpieces, and although the collection at Cornell was not strong in European art it

did have a very strong Asian collection. This was great for me because I hadn’t been exposed to much Asian art and the building was one of the first great modern structures I had time to study, so the building itself was a kind of education that I went back to over and over again. I was fascinated by the combination of voids and masses, of forms, of how interior spaces were so ingeniously thought out, so that you were always passing along different kinds of corridors. Then on the second level the doors opened onto a sculpture court within the building almost like a doughnut hole.

Although, as I said, the museum wasn’t strong in European art, they did get temporary shows, and I remember the first show I saw was “Photorealism: Paintings” in 1973, which was something I had heard of but not seen and knew almost nothing about. At that show I saw painters like Richard Estes and Robert Bechtel. I was particularly interested because I wasn’t aware that there was a return to representational painting. Of course the Pop artists had returned to representational painting but the works in “Photorealism: Paintings” were done without irony or commenting on the consumer culture. It was an exhibition about the return to representation for it’s own sake and that was one of the first postPop developments in art that I ever knew of. I learned of it through that museum.

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he Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has been through a tumultuous period over the past several years (see interview with its Director Graham W.J. Beal in this issue). The museum, one of the six largest in the country, boasts one of Diego Rivera’s most important and acclaimed works to be found anywhere in the United States, Detroit Industry, a 27-panel fresco masterpiece located in the Garden Court of the museum. The exhibition, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit, chronicles the time this husband and wife spent in Michigan, showing Rivera at the height of his powers and Kahlo at the dawn of hers.

Dedicated members of the Mexican Communist Party, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo came to the United States in April 1932. Hired by then museum director William Valentiner (who would later become the genius behind the current manifestation of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Rivera was an acknowledged master and member of the Mexican Muralist Revolution (which included Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros and whose aim was to bring social and political messages to a generally uneducated population after

DIEGO RIVERA AND

FRIDA KAHLO IN DETROIT

Frieda and Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, 1931, oil on canvas, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Albert M. Bender Collection, Gift of Albert M. Bender © 2014 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 22

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the Mexican Revolution). Characterized by bold colors and iconography easily understood by viewers, the goal of these muralists was to underscore the ideals of the revolution. Not unlike the pre-Gutenberg Bible days when artists communicated the stories of Christianity through the art found in churches, the Mexican Muralists sought to communicate societal and political principles through art.

The Assembly of an Automobile, Diego Rivera, 1932, charcoal on paper, Leeds Museum and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery)

Rivera, the greatest of the group, had already completed major projects in Mexico City for the Ministry of Public Education, including a fresco titled The History of Mexico, for the Palacio Nacional as well as many portraits depicting the native people of the country and important commissions in San Francisco.

Diego Rivera was both enamored of and fascinated by mass manufacturing.

His work on Detroit Industry was fueled by the many hours he spent at the Ford Motor Company’s automotive plant at the River Rouge Center and at the Ford family’s Greenfield Village, the inside/outside museum, both located in Dearborn. Hired by Edsel Ford (who knew virtually nothing of the artist or his work), son of Henry, Rivera came with a brief to paint two walls at the DIA but soon realized he needed more space. He convinced the director and his patron to double the walls (and his

salary) since he recognized this project could be his Sistine Ceiling. Rivera’s philosophy of aligning the cultures of northern and southern America was easily translated into making factory workers and artists equal while also rejecting the influence of European artistic movements. Throughout the exhibition there are examples of this mindset, particularly with the complex drawing The Assembly of the Automobile, 1932, which achieves what seems impossible by actually pictorially detailing, in a single albeit very large panel, the process of constructing a car from beginning to end. Although Rivera was justifiably renowned for his fresco work, one can see in this drawing that his use of shading and raking light were found in all his works.

His wife of less than three years, Frida Kahlo, was virtually unknown in 1932. Kahlo hated Detroit (she thought it like most American cities

Detroit Industry, south wall (detail), Diego Rivera, 1932.

Detroit Institute of Arts

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Window Display on a Street in Detroit, Frida Kahlo, 1932, oil on metal, Mr. and Mrs. Francisco and Fiorella Diaz

Detroit Industry, north wall (detail), Diego Rivera, 193233, fresco. Detroit Institute of Arts (vaccination)

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“ugly and stupid”), despised industry and lived, at that point, completely in her husband’s shadow. Soon after arriving in Michigan she suffered the loss of a pregnancy (there is considerable debate about precisely how this transpired with suggestions that Kahlo had an abortion rather than a miscarriage). Regardless the loss deeply affected her and Rivera encouraged her to express her sorrow through painting.

Kahlo had endured as a teenager a hideous accident while riding on a trolley car that left her with lifelong injuries including a broken pelvis, collarbone and spinal column as well as a handrail that pierced her abdomen and uterus (and one explanation for the possibility of her having an abortion since she and Diego both believed childbirth might prove fatal). As a result, Frida Kahlo’s art is populated with many self-portraits and images of children, childbirth and blood.

EXHIBIT Self-Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States, Frida Kahlo, 1932, oil on metal, Private Collection

Detroit Industry, north wall (detail), Diego Rivera, 1932-33, fresco. Detroit Institute of Arts (poison gas bombs manufacture)

Finally taking her husband’s suggestion of painting to heart, Kahlo’s painted her first work in Detroit, Window Display on a Street in Detroit. Simplistic in approach and content, this painting launched her output while in Michigan. The exhibition features many other of her better known and more accomplished works, including her portrait of herself and her husband, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo of 1931, the iconic and heartbreaking Henry Ford Hospital of 1932, and the compelling Self Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States also of 1932 that speaks to the artist’s sense of isolation in Detroit, her long-

ing to return to Mexico and her sense of alienation while in America.

The Detroit Institute of Art is the only showing of this exhibition, which is a shame, but for those who were unable to get to Michigan before it closed in mid-July, the good news is that there is an excellent catalogue that accompanies it. A major contributor to the scholarship is Mark Rosenthal, one of the most esteemed curators in the country, who offers a brilliant essay detailing Diego and Frida’s time in Detroit, with a fascinating insight and analysis of the artists, their time in the twentieth century and their artistic mastery. More at dia.org.

Preparatory Drawing for Pharmaceutics, Diego Rivera, 1932, charcoal. Detroit Institute of Arts

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MOTOR CITY MUSEUM CRISIS A conversation with Graham W.J. Beal, director, president, and CEO of the Detroit Institute of Arts

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hen Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, creditors looked to the city-owned Detroit Institute of Arts and its collection, appraised

by Christie’s at more than $500 million, as a source of revenue. To prevent the sale of the artworks, a “grand bargain” was eventually reached between the museum, private foundations, the State of Michigan, and the City of Detroit. We talked to the DIA’s Graham Beal about the saga.

Foreground: Let’s start with a background on what happened to the DIA and the City of Detroit’s financial crisis.

Graham W.J. Beal: The DIA came into being in 1919 from the Detroit Museum of Art and became a city department that seemed like a great idea in 1919. But what became apparent in the early 1930s was that it tied the fate of the DIA to that of the city and the local economy, the auto industry, and so the museum prospered and suffered as the industry did. Things changed radically in the ‘60s and early ‘70s with the extraordinary flight of people

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from the city following the riots. By 1975 the state had to step in and support the budget of the museum and the museum actually closed for a month in 1975, the only time it ever did so fully. By 1990 the state was providing 75 percent of the museum’s budget, which was then cut drastically by an incoming governor. When I arrived here in 1999, the museum had gone through another crisis and but was back on its feet again. In 1998 it had signed an operating agreement with the Founder’s Society, the private component, which resulted in an operating agreement with the City of Detroit to run the museum for the city; by then the state funding had started to disappear. To cut a long story short, in 2012 we got a local, tri-county property tax bill passed to support the museum that restored our old business model, and the museum had stability for the first time in 40 years. That wonderful situation lasted all of seven months before the city decided it was going into bankruptcy and decided that the art collection that had been owned by the city of Detroit since 1919 was “vulnerable,” to use the governor’s words. Then we entered this long battle with the prospect of years of court fights that was all short-circuited by the so-called “grand bargain,” whereby charities, the state, the legislature and the DIA itself combined and put together a package of over $800 million that was used to repair the badly managed city pension funds. In exchange, the DIA became independent again and is now the owner again of the property and the collections and a couple of other properties, including two parking lots.

Foreground: A revenue stream—that’s always good.

Beal: We rented one parking lot from the city for a dollar a year and the other parking lot is an underground lot that is very important to us. But the city closed it several years ago because it is in such terrible disrepair and is in need of a good $10 million worth of work. But we are independent and now trying to raise money and to get our business model to work the way most American museums operate where you have an annual, unrestricted operating budget that provides the core of your funding.

Foreground: Were you truly concerned that the collection was in danger?

Beal: I didn’t believe it was going to be sold, but it was a possibility not to be discounted. What was frustrating to me was that in all the coverage, even the best coverage, nobody gave any serious idea of the obstacles to the sale that existed, as though moving vans could pull up to the front of the DIA and take the art. That was the story as it was perceived.

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MUSEUMS Foreground: You were in an awkward position because on the one hand you’re the director of the museum and on other the head of a municipal department.

Beal: My predecessor worked for the mayor, but under the operating agreement of 1998 we became the Founder’s Society and the Detroit Institute of Arts, Inc., a 501c3, running the museum on behalf of the city.

Foreground: It seems to me it was still a very delicate dance you had to perform. As an outsider looking at this situation, I was horrified at the drama and possible consequences, and you handled it so brilliantly, managing the politics so deftly. How did you do it?

Beal: I tended to be the front man, along with my colleague and chief operating officer Ann Marie Erickson, and the chairman, and we had a great team of lawyers as well as a special committee that was set up. And your observation is correct that, especially in the first six months, we were provoked, and there were leaks from the Emergency Manager’s Office; we were determined that we were not going to do anything that could be seen as gratuitous insults. We were portrayed over and over again as being helpful and we knew we were not being unhelpful, to use an old cliché, “take the high road.”

Foreground: Do you think the auction houses, in some way, fueled the situation; were they too obviously interested in selling your collection?

Beal: One of the abiding mysteries for me is why Christie’s agreed to take on the task of evaluating the collection because it was clear that would cause outrage in the art community. Basically their initial strategy was going to be setting the poor pensioners against the rich museum, but when a poll was done by one of the newspapers it showed that there was more support within the City of Detroit for the museum than there was for the pensioners.

Foreground: Much of what was portrayed in the press was the museum versus these people, who, in fairness to them, had contributed to their pensions and then there were no funds being returned to them as they approached their dotage. What is the relationship between the community and the museum today?

Are there abiding resentments?

Beal: In the one truly meaningful meeting I had with the representatives of the Emergency Manager, I tried to point out that the citizens of the three counties who represent 80 percent of our audience had just voted to tax themselves to keep the DIA going. We are not regarded as an elitist organization and it took

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MUSEUMS that poll to show that it wasn’t just this unrealistic person from the nonprofit world. It also allowed us to counter the concept that you can send an army of people into a museum to look at a work of art for three minutes and then put a value on it. Then they learned that some of the artwork had been purchased with city funds and then they started to focus on that while at the same time the state’s attorney general wrote a strong, 22-page opinion that we were a public trust and therefore could not be sold. Lots was going on and it was all unprecedented. For instance the attorney general’s opinion was not law but it was binding on state officials, and the governor was a state official, as was the Emergency Manager. I said to our lawyers surely that means they can’t sell the collection, but their response was that it had to be tested in a court of law. Everything was like that!

Foreground: How long did this go on?

Beal: From our point of view it started in April of 2013 with a meeting of our chairman and a representative of the main restructuring, and it ended when we signed the papers in December of 2014.

Foreground: The money that was raised in the “grand bargain” went to satisfy the union pension requirements. Where did the money go?

Beal: The money is being raised over 20 years and it goes to the pension funds funneled through a special fund that is held at the community foundation of Southeast Michigan.

Foreground: So over 20 years all the various organizations who came to your rescue will be paying into that fund—is that right?

Beal: They didn’t come to our rescue they came to the pensioners rescue.

Foreground: Are there restrictions in your new structure or are you a fully operating independent organization—are you protected?

Beal: We are now, I hesitate to say, a normal museum, but we are an independent, self-perpetuating 501c3 like most art museums in the country.

Foreground: So you no longer have municipal affiliations?

Beal: None whatsoever.

Foreground: Congratulations!

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Tripp Schoff

T

ripp Schoff is a photographer, videographer, and content creator located in Newport Beach California. His passion is the ocean and everything that encompasses it, such as surfing, fishing, waves, and more. After spending five years of his career in the financial services sector, he has branched out and decided to follow his passions and pursue a career path of creativity on the West Coast. He specializes in aerial drone videography and photography as well as postproduction in video and photo editing.

Tripp’s ideal scenario is to be shooting photo and video at exotic locations around the globe, creating content for brands and companies he connects with. His work can be seen at www.trippschoff.com and you can follow him on instagram @trippschoff.

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TRIPP SCHOFF

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WINNER

Winner:

Foreground Competition for Best Indie Art/ Photography Book

Adventures in Fine Art Photography

by Howie Garber

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owie Garber is a professional fine arts and nature photographer. He has lived in Salt Lake City since 1972. Garber’s interest in photography started in 1969 when he took a History of Photography class while at the University of Rochester. He remained an amateur for many years. In 1990, at age 40, he traveled to Nepal, his first trip outside North America, and shot 40 rolls of film while trekking for a month.

This convinced him to spend more time with his cameras. While traveling in South America during 1991, his wanderlust was rewarded with an incredible stroke of luck. He was picked up while hitchhiking by a Brazilian biologist who was doing jaguar research. Experiencing the wonder of observing wildlife in natural habitats was an incentive to improve his photography skills and start a second profession. Since then he has traveled and photographed on seven continents including China, Bhutan, Patagonia, Peru, Antarctica, Brazil, Kenya, England, Alaska, Australia and Switzerland. He often returns to the same locations.

“The creation of a single fine art photo can be the result of hours or days in the same place waiting for the right light or an intimate moment with wildlife,” says Garber. “I have returned many times to the same places, yet the scene is always different.” He adds, “It is important to document what we are trying to save as well as what we are destroying at a fast pace.”

www.howiegarberimages.com | All photos © Howie Garber.

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WINNER

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FINALISTS

WHAT A TOTALLY CRAZY ORCHESTRA!

by Steve Diskin

OF BEARDS AND MEN

by Joseph O’Leary

COLOUR ME FRANCE 1

by Tony Matts

SKELETONS

by Stephanie Kambic Ellinger

CLASSIC GAME COVERS

by Mike Winterbauer 41

She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. — from Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

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