Art Down Under

El Anatsui – The Genius of Contemporary Sculpture

Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui has exploded as one of the leading contemporary artists, of his generation. Winner of the New York Museum of Arts and Design’s Visionaries 2008 award, his meteoric rise to promise belies a 40 year career and practice as artist and educator.

I was lucky to view his exhibition in New York, and it is these works that have generated so much international attention in recent years. Made from thousands of aluminum bottle tops, the sculptures are ‘draped hung murals’ that shimmer and contour with an iridescent voluminous power. They are mesmerizing in scale, and artisanal ambition. They held the visitors to the exhibition spellbound.

El Anatsui has worked predominantly in clay and wood, yet it his his woven murals made from discarded bottle tops that have really captured public imagination. Consisting of thousands of aluminum liquor bottle tops and sleeves that are woven together, the works shimmer but have a fabric like quality. I was reminded of chain mail on grand and colorful scale. El Anatsui allows the exhibitor to hang the work, and as such the work takes on a kinetic energy of its exhibitor where hanging decision are made and adjusted. It means that the works change and move, a fabulous artifact of the people that have helped share the work.

The works also remind me of traditional kente cloths of Ghana, in both drape and colour. Importantly, the use of tops from liquor bottle talks about the cultural issues associated with cheap imported liquor within the Ghanian community. From the discarded remnants of the pain of alcohol, El Anatsui weaves a tapestry rich in cultural, sociological and political overtones. The great standout is idea that from such difficulty, can evolve great beauty. It’s a beauty that cements El Anatsui’s place as one of the most important artists of our time.

Keith Haring – A tale of two Cities

Folk-law in art is driver of an artists legacy and the vitality it hold over new viewers and devotees. Keith Haring, contemporary of Basquiat darling of the New York arts scene and counter culture in the 1980s is one such artist who is still fondly remembered and talked about by those that he met.

in the 1984 he visited Australia to complete a number of projects. One project was on the entry “Water Wall” of the National Gallery of Victoria. Completed over a couple of days, Haring with the aid of scissor lift and his trusty ghetto blaster completed the massive mural freehand, without aid of drafts or plans. Ted Gott who then worked at the Gallery was amazed by the artists precision, speed and technical mastery. Gott called his Haring “a poetic freehand genius”, as much for his unrelenting pace and draftsmanship, combined with his soaring imagination. Tellingly, Haring would always stop for children or visitors to sign and autograph, always emblazoned with small delicate trademark Haring figures or graphic.

Sadly an irrate member of the public smashed one section of the wall and the commision was removed prematuraly. At the same time, Haring completed a massive outdoor mural that still survives in the Collingwood Technical Collage in Melbourne. Under threat of crumbling into dust, Government intransigence will most likely reduce the mural to being beyond rescue.

I visited Dietch Galleries in New York to view a large mural completed in 1985 for the St Patricks Day Care Center in San Francisco. It a remarkable mural, playful, fun and enigmatic. It is a wonderful illustration of his technical and drafting mastery, and points the way to how Melbourne needs to save its position in the Folk-law of Keith Harings generosity and artist spirit.

Studio visit to New York Artist – Thornton Willis

Thornton Willis is a living link with the great New York art scene of the 40’s, 50’ and 60’s. Thornton lives in his New York loft in Soho just a stones throw from the Mercer Hotel and all things gentrified. Thornton and his wife Valied still live the bohemian lifestyle in a region devoid of any of its original authenticity. Thornton studied in the sixties, and gained strong recognition with his series of organic triangles with bold painterly surfaces. Thornton was kind enough to show me a number of these works. Seismic, ominous and powerful you can see why MOMA and many other institutions collected his works in the 1970’s.

Thornton ever curious and cynical of the typical arts industry, moved styles and began using a language of greater geometry, tighter, more restricted and reflective of the mood when he painted them. These works, or more importantly the shift to a new style confounded the arts industry, and Thornton never reached the peaks attributed to many of his peers.

Thornton clearly channeling Rothko, understands the higher ambition of breaking ground, leading and not giving in. When a young Sean Sculley knocked on his door, I am sure that Thornton passed on the lesson, but his counsel would have been; the world has changed this is my fight, relight the flame under abstraction its time for promotion.

Berlin Art Scene

Berlin is the epicenter of art in Europe. The art scene is so rich and dense, but what really strikes you is how art plays a central role not only in Berlin’s psyche, but how the city conceptualises its self. Berlin deliberately shies away from the monumentalism of the built form; art inhabits the tenor of the city, derelict building from WW2 are still art squats, still respected and still important in the collective urban scape. In many ways Art has rebuilt Berlin.

In a series of posts about Berlin, today I am looking at the work of Emilio Vedova housed at the Berlinische Galerie. Vidova worked in Berlin in the winter of 1964 in the former studio of National Socialist scultor Arno Breker. Having received a Ford Foundation scholarship he made in this studio the “Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch 64” works(Pictured).

Vidovas term for the works were “Plurimi” which were picture frames and panels shattered and joined by hinges to form 3rd objects. These objects release non representational, expressive painting from the conventional form of the panel picture. For Vidova the Plurimi capture “feelings that have hapened, that are happening…..in a city burdened by fears”. For me these works capture the action of historical legacy, they are cathartic and in many ways have set the tone, and substrate for the space that art occupies in Berlin. Vidova wanted to capture the legacy of the city, its struggles and the critical democratic spirit of Grosz, Dix Beckmannn and of Dada Berlin. I think he does this brilliantly, and nearly 50 years after he painted the “Plurimi” the antagonisms and conflicting movement of energies are still present in Berlin, still signposted in this great work.

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