Elizabeth Catlett @ the Whitney

I am the Black woman

On a recent visit to the Whitney Museum in New York, I was introduced to the work of Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012). I have since learned more about her remarkable and inspiring life story.

On display at the Whitney were prints from her linocut series, "I am the Negro woman", 1946-47, retitled "I am the Black woman" in 1989. I found these prints to have great visual and emotional power.

I have always worked hard in America

In the fields

In other folks' home

I have given the world my songs

In Sojourner Truth I fought for the rights
of women as well as Blacks

In Harriet Tubman I helped
hundreds to freedom

In Phyllis Wheatley I proved intellectual equality
in the midst of slavery

My role has been important
in organizing the unorganized

I have studied in ever increasing numbers

My reward has been bars between
me and the rest of the land

I have special reservations

special houses

and a special fear for my loved ones

My right is a future of equality
with other Americans

The granddaughter of freed slaves, Catlett spent much of her life as a teacher. She completed her undergraduate work at Howard University.

She was also admitted into the Carnegie Institute of Technology but was refused admission when the school discovered she was black. In 2007, this came to the attention of the president of Carnegie Mellon University, who was deeply appalled that such a thing had happened. The next year, President Cohon presented Catlett with an honorary Doctorate degree and a one-woman show of her art was presented on the campus of Carnegie Mellon.

While a graduate student at the University of Iowa, she was required to live out of residence because of her race. After graduate school in the 1940's, she accepted a position at Dillard University in New Orleans. There, as a person of colour, she was required to make special arrangements to attend shows at a particular gallery.

Catlett received a fellowship which allowed her to travel to Mexico to pursue studies in printmaking, choosing the venue because it aligned with her interest in social activism. Because of the Communist affiliations of her associates in Mexico, she was ultimately barred from re-entering the U.S. In 1962 she renounced her American citizenship and became a citizen of Mexico.

Catlett turned from printmaking to sculpture in later years, receiving recognition and awards. Art historian Melanie Herzog has called Catlett "the foremost African American woman artist of her generation." In her later years, she regained her American citizenship.

Wrote Catlett,

"No other field is closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity."

Visit to the Whitney Museum, NYC

Though it has been in its new location for more than two years, this was my first visit to the Whitney Museum's new building. It is located in the West Village/Meatpacking District, and forms the southernmost point of the elevated linear park, the High Line.

view from a terrace

The Whitney's collection centres on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Its current show on the work of Alexander Calder runs until October 23, and focuses on the movement and sound that Calder achieved with his mobiles. Calder trained as an engineer, and he is considered to be the inventor of the mobile.

I participated in a guided tour of Calder: Hypermobility, and attended an "activation", when four of the mobiles were set into motion. Some of Calder's works are motorized, others depend on a nudge, or an air current, to begin their movement. Some are hung from the ceiling, others stand on the floor. Some move at a barely perceptible speed, others more rapidly. The docent explained that Calder considered even his large, stationary sculptures to be a sort of mobile, as the viewers form the moving parts that circle around the piece.

The Arches, Alexander Calder, 1959
106 x 107.5 x 87 inches

Another current exhibition, running indefinitely, is Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney's Collection, 1900 - 1960.  Here is a sampling of what I saw there:

Cape Cod Sunset, Edward Hopper, 1934

Washington Crossing the Delaware, Larry Rivers, 1960

Buildings, Lancaster, Charles Demuth, 1930

Three Flags, Jasper Johns, 1958

Red, White and Blue, Ellsworth Kelly, 1961

Portrait of Ted Carey and Andy Warhol, Fairfield Porter, 1960

The Whitney will be added to my itinerary on any future trip to New York. It's fun to arrive via the High Line walking route, and to stop at the Chelsea Market nearby.

Public Art Walk for Montreal's 375th

From August 30 to October 15, a large-scale art walk will be presented in the Quartier des Spectacles. Over twenty original pieces in the visual arts, digital arts, design and architecture will be displayed outdoors on building walls, in public squares and other unconventional sites. All works are on the theme of "neighbourhood", and have been commissioned specifically for KM³ (kilometre cubed). They promise to "transform the way Montrealers and visitors see the city."

Works that suggest new ways to interact with the city

Seeing the city's symbols in a new light

Works that help us see the urban landscape differently

Luminous works that come to life after dark

Works from the municipal public art collection

Guided walks are also on offer. More detailed information, including maps, is available on the website.

Yiadom-Boakye @ The New Museum, NYC

Though the New Museum has been open in its current location for almost ten years, my first visit was last month. In April 2008, the museum's new building was named one of the architectural New Seven Wonders of the World by Condé Nast Traveler. 

According to Wikipedia, it is dedicated to introducing new art and new ideas, by artists who have not yet received much exposure or recognition. Ever since it was founded, the museum has taken on the mission of challenging the stiff institutionalization of the art museum. It continues to bring fresh air into the art world, connects with the general public and works to be free of elitist associations.

While I was there, the New Museum was staging three solo shows by women, yet another instance of the current, increasing exposure for women artists. I was particularly taken with the portrait paintings of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Can they even be called portraiture? The artist is painting these figures entirely from her imagination.

Yiadom-Boakye was a finalist for the Turner Prize, 2013. For this solo show, titled Under-Song for a Cipher, the artist created seventeen new works in oil.

Zadie Smith's thorough discussion of the artist and her work can be found in a recent issue of The New Yorker. Meanwhile, here are some images for your delight. (Somehow I managed not to get the titles for these gorgeous works.)

The show ends September 3, 2017. Three short audioguides to the show are available here.

Florine Stettheimer @ The Jewish Museum

Family Portrait I, 1915

"Stettheimer's singular paintings are among the most spellbinding and enduring in the history of art." - The New York Times

One of my first stops on a recent trip to New York City was the exhibition Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry. Staged by The Jewish Museum, it continues until September 24, 2017, when it travels to the Art Gallery of Ontario (October 21 - January 28). The show is an opportunity to get to know more about a little-appreciated artist, whose work is currently being reconsidered. I see more museum and gallery shows devoted to the work of women artists these days. I think that, in the past, Stettheimer has been dismissed as a dilettante, because of her gender and her privileged background.

Picnic at Bedford Hills, 1918

Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) was born to a prominent Jewish family in Rochester, NY. The father, a banker, deserted the family early on; the three youngest daughters never married, devoting themselves to each other and to their mother, and pursuing their artistic interests. Well-travelled, they counted among their circle Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe and Marcel Duchamp.

The show includes gorgeous, brightly-coloured canvases depicting the Jazz Age as lived by the Manhattan elite. I could see influences of other artists of the era in these paintings, among them Gauguin, Bonnard, Cezanne, and Chagall. The figures have the elongated, boneless fluidity of Art Deco fashion drawings.

A Model (Self-Portrait), 1915
scandalous in its time, referencing Manet's Olympia (1863)
and Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538)

Also on display are sketches for costume designs and small maquettes that Stettheimer made for theatrical productions.

The museum's website is so complete that it seems best to refer you directly to that resource, where you can find all the wall texts and audio descriptions that accompany the show, as well as installation photos and images of the various works on display.

I will end this entry with one of several poems by Stettheimer, posted on the exhibition walls. It seems to capture some of the artist's joie de vivre.

My Attitude is One of Love

is all adoration
for all the fringes
all the color
all tinsel creation

I like slippers gold
I like oysters cold
and my garden of mixed flowers
and the sky full of towers
and traffic in the streets
and Maillard's sweets
and Bendel's clothes
and Nat Lewis hose
and Tappé's window arrays
and crystal fixtures
and my pictures
and Walt Disney cartoons
and colored balloons

     - Florine Stettheimer

Did you like that one? Here's another:

Occasionally

A human being
Saw my light
Rushed in
Got singed
Got scared
Rushed out
Called fire
Or it happened
That he tried
To subdue it
Or it happened
He tried to extinguish it
Never did a friend
Enjoy it
The way it was
So I learned to
Turn it low
Turn it out
When I meet a stranger–
Out of courtesy
I turn on a soft
Pink light
Which is found modest
Even charming
It is a protection
Against wear
And tears
And when
I am rid of
The Always-to-be-Stranger
I turn on my light
And become myself

     - Florine Stettheimer

Counter-Couture at MAD

Embroidered ensemble by Mary Ann Schildknecht, 1972
"While serving a two-year jail sentence in Milan on a hashish smuggling charge,
Schildknecht was taught to embroider by the nuns who ran the prison.
Using torn bedsheets from her prison cell, she embroidered this skirt and top....
Her design and patterns evoke a psychedelic journey
through a fantastical narrative of castles, faces and natural landscapes."

New York's Museum of Arts and Design offers Counter-Couture: Handmade Fashion in an American Counterculture until August 20, 2017. The show explores the forces that led to the explosion of hand-crafted fashion in the 60's and 70's.

"Counter-Couture exhibits garments, jewelry, and accessories by American makers who crafted the very reality that they craved, on the margins of society and yet at the center of an epochal shift. The works on display encompass the ethos of members of a generation who fought for change by sewing, embroidering, quilting, patch-working, and tie-dyeing their identity. Putting the handmade at the center of their daily revolution, they embraced and contributed to establishing a craft and folk sensibility in a seminal moment for the development of American Craft."

Tie-dyed silk by Marion Clayden

Marion Clayden's tie-dyed cloth "crystallizes... the transcendental aspirations of a generation striving for higher meaning." Clayden provided textiles for the sets and costumes of the famous rock musical Hair and by the late 70s had created her own fashion labels with a list of clients including Lisa Marie Presley, Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Jewelry by Alex & Lee

"Rather then the precious materials traditionally used in jewelry design, Alex & Lee used found objects to reflect the anti-materialistic hippie creed of recycling and repurposing. This challenged conventions of the genre and ultimately upheld jewelry as an art form in and of itself, echoing the revolution experienced by the discipline in the 1960s."

Birgitta Bjerke's crocheted coats
for Roger Daltrey of The Who and his then-wife Heather

These crocheted coats by Birgitta Bjerke, constructed in fan shapes, "vibrate with kaleidoscopic colours that suggest blossoming flowers, Tibetan mandalas, and patterns inspired by Indian textile traditions."

Tibetan Dream Dress by K. Lee Manuel

Traditional ethnic textiles were a frequent source of inspiration.

Billy Shire's studded denim jacket, "Welfare",
winner of Levi's Denim Art Competition, 1975

Billy Shire's 11-pound jacket features hundreds of hand-set studs, rhinestones, and oversize upholstery tacks, typically used on leather and furniture. It also incorporates an ashtray and a desk bell, which chimes when the jacket is being worn. Shire's creations have been worn by Elton John, as well as by rock musicians in the bands Chicago and the Doobie Brothers.

Yvonne Porcella's Patchwork Dresses, 1972

Yvonne Porcella is best-known as the founder of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates). Her two dresses, above, incorporate ribbons from Germany, molas from Panama, and Victorian antique buttons.

Influences cited in the exhibition include a desire for self-expression, the Black Pride movement (evidenced in the adoption of the dashiki by both men and women), a rejection of a materialistic and consumerist interpretation of the American dream, and the back-to-the-land movement, as well as the interest in psychedelia, in ethnic traditions, and in repurposing that has already been mentioned.

I found the items on display to be of couture-quality design and execution. The exhibition, with its insightful explanatory text, gave me a broader understanding of how the social forces of the 60's and 70's were manifested in the clothing and adornments of the era. It also brought back sweet memories of embroidered jeans, a pink-and-white dashiki, and a pink hand-crocheted bikini (never worn).

Griffintown Tour

Having seen G. Scott Macleod's multimedia project In Griffintown at the Centre d'Histoire de Montréal, I was happy to learn that his self-guided walking tour of Griffintown is now available on line.

Montrealers know Griffintown as a historic working-class neighbourhood that birthed the Industrial Revolution in Canada and was once home to a large immigrant community.

The 21 stops on the tour are spread over about ten city blocks. Each stop is accompanied by a short video clip that tells a story about the community or a particular building. Photography, drawing and animation are used to create a visual record of the sites. Combined with brief histories and a Google map, the images and animations are now freely available as an online self-guided tour. Guided group tours may also be available.

Griffintown has a special place in the hearts of English-speaking Montrealers, as so many Irish immigrants made their homes here. I look forward to seeing the magic that Macleod has worked with his animated sketches and his evocative story-telling.

You can read my October 2015 post about Macleod's museum show here.