Anonymous Shiva Linga Paintings at Arcadia University Gallery

Installation view of "Anonymous Shiva Linga Paintings"

I have been trying to get out to Arcadia University Art Gallery for a few weeks. As everyone in Center City Philadelphia knows, it's a trek...but it's worth it.

This is especially true this month, as the gallery has mounted an unusual exhibit of meditative works from India, Anonymous Shiva Linga Paintings.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism describes linga as a "mark" or "sign" but also as the "name of the pillar shaped form of the god Shiva." Because Shiva is as a generative force, the pillar-shaped form he takes is described as kind of 'phallic symbol.' Evidently, Shiva is worshipped in this form as the result of a curse put on him the brahmin Bhrgu. But it's interesting to dig around a little on this and to learn that the linga and its cousin, the shalagram are forms of 'aniconic' images; symbols that are intended to represent deities. The way the linga is discussed in the literature I encountered suggests it is primarily a sculptural form, but in this exhibit, various forms of ovals play the part.

The paintings are riveting. Arrayed on three walls of the gallery are about thirty five pictures, all vertical in orientation (like portraits), none larger than twenty by sixteen inches. Each is hung on an invisible horizon that encircles the gallery, so they are all about level with the head of a person of average height.  Framed under glass, the paintings dimly reflect your face as you look at them. The majority of the paintings are broodingly dark, like cartoon holes. Some of these seems to be eclipsing rings and busts or color that shimmer and peek out from behind the dark forms. A few paintings are built on vibrant colors, which seem shocking in this context. An ovoid burst of Pepto-Bismo pink appears to raise cerulean eyebrows in a 1994 picture described as being from Sanganer and New Delhi. In another, a dark rose lozenge is criss crossed by pale blue gray droplets of paint. One senses that everything is planned; in some pictures the central form has straighter sides than in others, giving it a different gesture or attitude. In a few, as in a 1987 picture from Jaipur, it wears a necklace of three dots. Occasionally, a tiny dot appears within the form below the center, like a kind of painterly belly button.

Anonymous tantric painting, Shiva Linga, 1972, Jaipur unspecified paint on found paper 13.75 x 9.25″ 

All are painted on rather fragile and forlorn looking scraps of paper. Writing appears to be struggling to pass from the back of some sheets and into plain (if backward) view on the display side. Here and there, it looks like conservators have tried to patch thin areas of the paper. Effulgent mists of red, blue or yellow paint (or is it ink? India has a long tradition of watercolor painting...) drift lightly across surfaces. Sometimes little holes of have been worn through by painting and one gets the impression that they may have been been created by intense gaze.

Looking at the paintings slowly and in succession, one understands their meditative function. It's hard to imagine the abundance of them in the gallery is anything like the way they would be used in the world (in fact, the gallery notes mention that "When complete, the paintings are pinned or pasted to the wall at home to foster private meditation, eventually to be replaced by another fresher example"). On the cold and quiet winter day I visited the gallery, it was easy to pretend this was a space outside of the art world's usual hustle and bustle of make-believe commerce, but it wasn't so far outside of that as to preclude feeling a little strange looking at ostensibly sacred objects in an avowedly secular context.


The crossroad of the sacred and the secular becomes an important aspect of the exhibit. Being very spare and abstract, the paintings seems entirely different from western devotional art. They appear to appeal to the kind of general spiritualism that has replaced organized religion in contemporary life...despite being firmly rooted in a specific set of religious texts and imaging conventions. Gallery notes observe "an uncanny affinity" between these works and "examples of 20th century abstract art from Europe and the U.S. (works by Paul Klee and Agnes Martin are frequently cited as examples)". Those of us who have sat through secular sermons that 'justify' non-western art in terms of western modernist aesthetics will, I hope, be forgiven for rolling our eyes.

The idea of anonymity in today's art world, saturated by celebrity as it is, is strange enough. The idea that a work of art could be a useful object, one that focuses attention, limits distraction, and encourages meditation sounds revolutionary. Walking through the show, I was, more than once, put in the mind of Philadelphia painter Quentin Morris, whose Buddhist sympathies inform his monochromatic paintings and drawings. In the gallery notes, we read of the French poet Franck Andre Jamme, "who has played an instrumental role in introducing these works to western audiences." Jamme has an interesting story, and was apparently entrusted with access to the paintings after considerable hardship. It feels strange to have such easy access to them given how well-concealed they were - until relatively recently - in the religious communities from which they originate.

So how far would you go to see something really great? The magnetic pull of New York is inescapable in Philadelphia (and this exhibit came to us through NY's Feature Gallery), but people seldom talk about going to Baltimore, DC, or Chicago to see great work...let alone visiting the West Coast or traveling abroad. There are whole art worlds in these cities in the shadows of their respective megamuseums. What are these artists doing and thinking?

I'm not of the economic strata that can plan my travel around exhibits in London or elsewhere  (even Baltimore...), but I worry that we are getting a little local in our art viewing...that a diet of a few galleries interrupted from time to time for an art fair is good enough and that when we come face to face with something strange and wonderful, we'll see it only through what we already know. With the collapse of the art criticism world, I cannot count on reading about shows in other cities as easily as I once could, and that's terrible. If those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, what happens to those who don't know what's going on around them?

Murakami

It’s sometimes hard to know what to think when you’re looking at an exhibit. It’s harder when a museum’s entire arsenal of opinion shaping is being brought to bear on you. One can long for a dark quiet room to retreat and think. The Murakami exhibit at LAMoCA has a dark room, but it’s got movies playing inside. It will have to do.

Sitting in the dark watching Murakami’s forays into animation and live action film, trying to get my head around the sheer volume of things – paintings, sculpture, installations, products, etc. – in the main exhibit outside, I began to wonder, is it a good thing that we live in an age where artists have the means to make whatever comes to mind without concern for patronage?

It’s not the thirty-foot cast aluminum Buddha with a platinum patina. It’s not the startlingly similar paintings, or the acres of wallpaper. Not even the slightly sepulchral room in which Murakami’s ‘multiples’ (has that word ever been a thinner art-veil for the ordinary word ‘merchandise’?). It’s all of it taken together under the banner of one artist that makes me worried. The disappearance of dozens -- perhaps scores -- of people’s labor in the manufacturing of a brand of contemporary art seems suddenly disturbing.

Whoa there, don’t think I’m going to rant about the sell-out factor. I love sellouts. They give me something to buy. I’m not opposed to Murakami or anyone making work at a variety of prices for anyone – from sticker-struck kids to LV bag mules. What imparts a vaguely unpleasant, metallic taste to exhibit experience is the way all this is taken to be interesting when some of it is not. Which brings me to patronage.

Once upon a time, artists lavished materials and technique on objects made to realize a patron’s world-view. Religious or secular narratives of power were given splendid props by artists and artisans who learned to balance their own interpretations with the cultural frame in which they worked. Works became memorable for the extent to which they encompassed the complexities of their subjects – shared concerns of a whole society - and balanced them against the individual's vision.

Now, not so much. The watershed moment in art of the last 200 years has been the artist’s ability to determine his or her own ‘content’. Monet had his haystacks, Pollock had his drips, Warhol had his soup cans, Vito Acconci had his…well, Vito had a lot of things going on. But all of them were singular, individual, often idiosyncratic concerns that audiences took on faith were worth talking about. Murakami has singular, individual, and idiosyncratic down, but where preceding artists more or less made work in spite of mass-production, Murakami works on an industrial scale.

Not a public scale, an industrial one. The difference is important. In terms of glossiness of output, sheer size, degree of polish, Murakami is unbeatable. Everything seems ready to go into a store, ready to be consumed, as if it were already a souvenir of itself. (The show's biggest disappointment is that paintings wither in any room where sculpture is present, as if 2D work were just wrapping paper or stage dressing for the 3D objects.) There is little public memory in Murakami’s work (the oft-repeated mushroom clouds are an exception, but more on that in a minute). There is a fertile – almost fecund – play with images and characters, but they’re largely self-referential and seldom turn out to the world at large.

And, to what extent can Murakami really be seen as a Japanese artist? The question is a little goofy. Murakami is a global product-generating force. But the more I thought about it, the more I plowed through the exhibit’s luxurious, lavishly illustrated catalog and its accompanying essays, the more I realized I know nothing at all about Japan. And then I realized this wasn’t helping. Throughout the essays, the curators make strenuous efforts to connect Murakami to both American and Japanese contemporary art. I cannot say how successful they are on the Asian side, but some of the comparisons to American art are, well, reaching. This suggests that the connections to Japanese art and culture may be rather tenuous and perhaps should not be taken on faith. In my line of work, I read essays be people who want to convince me of things all the time. Often, I have no way of knowing if they’ve got their facts straight, let alone any real means of testing their interpretations of these facts. But when I come across a reference to something I know well, I can evaluate whether the writer is making sense on that point. If so, things should be okay throughout. If not… yipes.

Yipes.

So I hate this show, right? Wrong! I love it. But not for the reasons I felt the labels, curators, and institution want me to love it. First, Murakami may or may not be a genius, but what’s clear as glass from seeing this show is that he can marshal the skills and creativity of numerous invisible workers to make stunning installations and ensembles. Trying to cram him into the mould of the 20th century artist is too limiting for Murakami, who shines in his ability to collect and synthesize. Second, the show may not have much to say about Japan or America, but it has a lot to say about the emerging global interplay of images and ideas and, as such, it feels fresh and alive rather than clever but stale.

Your latest flame (Olafur Elisson @ SFMOMA)

The thermometer on the door outside Olafur Eliasson’s Your Mobile Expectations reads five degrees Fahrenheit. I’m wrapped in a grey fleecy blanket, waiting to go inside. As I read the wall texts, I try to figure out whether SFMOMA could actually be buying geothermal electricity for the project, or if they’ve done some kind of economic voodoo to make it look greener. Then it’s time to go in.

Your Mobile Expectations (pictured above in an image from SFMOMA's website) is like no art installation you’ve been in. It is like a giant beer distributor’s fridge…or maybe an operating room in which some alien autopsy is about to begin. More specious than any apartment I ever had, the giant refrigerated room accommodates about two-dozen visitors at a time. Our frozen breath swirls around us in misty curlicues. Most of the audience passes through the room fast, hardly pausing to look at the sculpture at its center. A few of us linger in the chilly space, getting down on our knees to peer under the rapidly forming icicles.

The sculpture at the center of all this – a very swanky BMW race car wrapped in some sort of CG carapace that makes it look like it was captured at a raid on a Klingon outpost – is interesting enough in itself, but what can compete with all the ideas Eliasson throws around? The car, a factor in global warming, enshrouded in funereal ice. The power, coming from a geothermal source that could power the entire city indefinately (were it not for corporate inertia), is just one extravagance in a small world of extra-extravagances.

For all this, I think the ideal vantage point for the installation is outside it. One can observe through little windows, like a scientist waiting for the hibernating creature to awaken. In my estimation, Eliasson is at his best when he is most economical, creating enchantments that defy the apparent simplicity of their apparatus. Upstairs in SFMOMA’s larger show, aptly named “Take Your Time”, there are several examples of Elisson’s best work (and, thank heaven, a few clunkers lest we get too exicted). Elegant works like his 2003 Yellow versus Purple and the spectacular 2005 work Notion Motion provide magical spatial transformations at the same time they reveal all their secrets. Hiding the machinery of illusions diminishes their magic.

Now I sound chilly. But Eliasson’s generousity makes me suspicious. Not of him (or his studio) but of how the spectacles he (they) might trickle down into popular culture. Some works – like 360 degree room for all colors begin looking like trendy nightclubs awaiting furniture. Anxiety about Eliassoin's popularity is picking up. Writing about the artist and his work in the September 2 New York Times, Dorothy Spears fretted openly about his accessiblilty.

From rainbows glistening in curtains of tumbling water droplets, to echoing rooms steeped in a single saturated color, to reverse waterfalls and walk-through kaleidoscopes, these are marvels of optics, sound, smell and touch. Mr. Eliasson’s admirers have kept the museum turnstiles spinning, although he is sometimes skeptical of the attention surrounding his work.

His “Weather Project,” a giant fake sun made of 200 yellow sodium lamps and a bit of trickery involving mirrors and mist, attracted more than two million visitors to the Tate Modern in the winter of 2003-4. Asked to extend the show, Mr. Eliasson declined.

“The media attention was very flattering,” he recalled, sitting at a communal table on a loading dock outside his Berlin studio’s backyard of scrubby trees, grass and abandoned train tracks. “But it was also becoming very brutal. There was a danger that the project might slip from an artistic experience to mindless entertainment.” But on a dark winter day in London, who wouldn’t long to see a sun glowing in atmospheric fog while lying on a concrete floor, watching one’s own reflection make the indoor equivalent of snow angels?

It's not worth getting into whether the choice of the word 'fake' over a more neutral word, like 'simulated', is indicative of Ms. Spears’ feelings towards Eliasson's work. What Eliasson's show offers is a moment to consider how having the resources to do what you want might actually diminish the quality of one’s work and detract from its meaning. Later in the same article, Eliasson talks about the political subtext of his work:

For some reason [...] our history has produced the misconception that experiencing individuality has to do with being alone. But being together is greater than being alone, because we can do more. We are more responsible.

What more beautiful, subversive idea could an artist have in today's economic and political environment? And it's brilliantly reflected in works that achieve spectacular effects using hardware store technologies. When it takes the backing of BMW or begins to look like something we might soon see in a Banana Republic's window behind the latest khakis, art that aspires to build community runs aground in the shallow waters of corporate aesthetics.

Too often, when I talk to young artists, they are confused about the nature of public space. Eliasson has reinvigorated our awareness of space, making him a subject of great interest to those who stand to benefit from having 'interesting spaces' (not just public institutions like museums, but commercial ones interested in spectacle for its ability to pack in the customers). A work like Your Mobile Expectations fails because it cannot wiggle out from under the marketing imperative that made it possible - it can, at best, comment obliquely on the concerns it raises. Small successes, we learn, can be greater than thundering ovations. That may explain why Eliasson's latest work leaves me a little cold.

A-Z@LAMoCA

I got to see the Andrea Zittel "Critical Space" exhibit at LA MOcCA this weekend and it was (to no one's surprise) great. But it left me a little thrown off. I'd been largely acquainted with Zittel's work through reproductions and criticism, so going through it on my own led me to some things I hadn't really thought of about her work, and they weren't pretty. Here goes...

It's hard not to think of Zittel's work in terms of consumables. Mimicing a design studio, she makes delightful objects that one want to acquire. Looking through the exhibit, it was hard to ignore how many of these things were meant for her own use, and how others had been "customized" for collectors (I'm especially fond of the idea that Peter Norton needs a tidy little office from A-Z Administrative Services). I love art that can be part of the exchange economy as well as the economy of ideas, but a little light went off when someone said about Zittel's work that she "was alone a lot".

There's a monastic tradition in which one withdraws from the world to contemplate and pray and seek connection to god through solitude. However, asceticism ain’t cheap. In Zittel’s sculpture of solitude, one senses that moments alone for reflection are privileges, not rights. The gradual transition from severity to formal experimentation in her A-Z Personal Uniforms (above) implies a drift from discipline to austere luxury. The Met-Home just-so-ness of her structures – from the archly ironic airstream-inspired escape pods to the IKEA-slickness of her customized comfort units, there’s a feeling that the works perhaps too eagerly leapt into the embrace of the exchange economy. Aping a design agency is, on the one hand, clever and subversive (code for “good” in most art discourse, but not here) but on the other hand, a little bit too close to providing the kind of design advice persons in the position of providing patronage have come to expect from artists.

Let’s not kid ourselves, as great as Zittel’s work is as sculpture, it has limited implications for the design community – let alone for areas of social justice it nearly addresses (such as affordable housing). This is privacy for the privatized era. Solitude for the socially superior, hair shirts for those who wish to now and then trade in their Armani and Prada. The best thing that can come from this show (aesthetic delight notwithstanding) is that socially engaged designers might visit and adapt Zittel’s down market notions for populations in need of efficient, workable domestic design.