Monday 19 April 2010

The Whitney Museum of American Art, third and final selection

Here's my last selection from the work I saw at the Whitney Museum early this month.

Tauba Auerbach's work from the exhibition has to be seen in person to be fully appreciated, as the Whitney's description makes clear (I hope). If you click on the painting beside the description so as to enlarge it, you'll appreciate how much her paintings look like real fabric. You can see more of her work on her website.

Lesley Vance's paintings suggest layers in intriguing relationships that render their still lives a greater sense of intimacy. Here are a couple images: "Untitled (12) (2009)"; "Untitled (21) (2009)".

The last artist I want to mention is photographer Stephanie Sinclair, who took photographs of Afghan women who set themselves on fire. The series, titled "Self-Immolation in Afghanistan: A Cry for Help," is intimate and moving. You can see it on the artist's website here.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for these: lots of good work from artists I’ve not heard of before. So much to see!

    I liked Named. It’s density, and those colliding images (I’m having to remember it now!) It’s interesting that it was an acrostic. In my race to 30 I also used one, for the first time. Do you think because there’s a pressure to create unconsciously we are looking for props, tricks or helping hands? Something to push us on our way?

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  2. Hi, Paul. Thanks for your response--I really appreciate it and hope you'll post again. I'm always delighted to encounter new artists whose work interests me, so I'm happy to share the experience.

    I'm glad you liked "Named." I do find that having to compose 30 poems in 30 days pushes me to experiment even more than I usually would--the range of poems I've written this month surprises and pleases me. Even so, I couldn't keep it up!

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  3. Thank you for your kind comments.

    Yes, I’m also finding it hard to keep the experiments going. I’ve reached my own limits? At the start I assumed I would write long sequences. It seemed the natural solution. This hasn’t happened, and I’m not sure why. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the pressure to create, which may open up a wider more heterogeneous range of materials, especially if ideas are somewhere in the mix, while the ability to transform them is perhaps greater, because there is more creative energy around.

    Whatever the reason, it’s been a very good April! Thanks again.

    Bookshops: The LRB Bookshop is marvellous, with an excellent poetry section. And Felixstowe(!) has two monumental 2nd handbook shops – Poor Richard’s and The Treasure Chest. In West Hampstead there’s West End Lane Books, which used to have a very good poetry section, with a number of US imports (I haven’t been there for about three years)…… Time to stop I think.

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  4. I have more info and image of the Whitney museum here

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