Notes on sex, violence and John Brown: A conversation with Laylah Ali

“The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.” -Lester Bangs

Last night we braved the rain and bad signage in Lincoln, Massachusetts to hear a conversation with the artist Laylah Ali and Assistant Curator Dina Deitsch at the Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park. The evening was billed as a conversation on the reemergence of drawing and Ali’s new work. But with a breezy acknowledgement by the artist that she had “always drawn,” the talk centered on the always fascinating but elusive subject matter of Ali’s latest “note drawings.”

Inspired by sources such as NPR, John Brown biographies, and the dalliances of lovers outside her studio window (who knew Western Mass was so saucy?!), the “note drawings” feel more personal, more intimate, as if we are witness to the subconscious thoughts of the artist. Ali is creating form out of the minutiae of modern daily life, while still leaving room for interpretation. “The dynamic is similar (to earlier work) in that the viewer still has to make choices and name things,” said Ali.  One surprising aspect of this new work is how unmediated it is by Ali; these notes are truly random, and the drawing has a spontaneous nature and quality. The artist spoke of learning to trust her instincts more, as her earlier work was quite deliberate in planning and execution. In assigning race and gender to her characters in this new work, Ali still manages to deftly subvert the viewers assumptions about race and identity, and complicates those questions further by revealing more.

The conversation got interesting as it steered towards the questions of sex and identity. Ali spoke of a hunger in contemporary art for grotesque black female bodies, and feels audiences are not as comfortable with white mutilated bodies.  She also spoke of a sort of double standard that still exists in contemporary art, that male artists “who traffic in the female figure” are usually only discussed in terms of “ownership” and “desire.” I thought about the historical and social baggage that must come with being a black female artist—if we were discussing John Currin’s work, would the same issues of race and identity come up?  And why does the white female figure become the generic female?  One of Ali’s “note drawings” featured a blonde perky character, whose breasts were exposed through careful cutouts of her striped shirt.  She reminded me of a typical advertisement I might have seen in a teen magazine growing up, the embodiment of youth, beauty and blossoming sexuality.  But any meaning assigned to it is purely my own, as the accompanying text is random, appearing in and out of the lines and patterns of the drawing.

Spiders and Steel at the MFA, Boston

Currently showing as part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Art on Film series - Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress, and The Tangerine, by Amei Wallach and Marion Cajoli, and Richard Serra: Thinking on Your Feet, by Maria Anna Tappeiner.

Filming the process of making art or getting an artist to talk about their work can be an illuminating experience or a bit like having the curtain pulled back in the Wizard of Oz; what was magical or inexplicable becomes mechanic.  Each of these films prove to be the former.  Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine “reveals much about this haunting and haunted master” writes Nathan Lee of The New York Times.  At 96, Louise Bourgeois has always made work that commanded our attention.

Richard Serra: Thinking on Your Feet is an entirely different sort of art on film. While equally revealing about the artist, this documentary is specific to Serra’s installation The Matter of Time for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.  Serra’s magnificent steel sculptures inspire a sort of childlike awe when you see them in person, and the film offers a glimpse into the Herculean effort of making them.

Both films run at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through November 30th. See the complete calendar here.

Meat After Meat Joy

Zhang Huan, My New York, 2002, still from video performance. Courtesy of Pierre Menard Gallery.

One of the last shows I saw in the United States before leaving for Belgium was Meat After Meat Joy, an exhibit of 10 contemporary artists who use meat in their work, that was on display June 21- July 20 at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge. The title takes its cue from Carolee Schneemann’s performance/happening Meat Joy (1964) that explored flesh, gender, and the language of meat (in Schneemann’s case, “chick”)*. A video of Meat Joy is projected in the gallery but the other artists are ‘after’ Meat Joy—their works explore different significations of meat and raw flesh.

Exhibited artists included Tania Bruguera and Nezaket Ekici, Anthony Fisher, Betty Hirst, Zhang Huan, Tamara Kostianovsky, David Raymond, Dieter Roth, Carolee Schneemann, Jana Sterbak, and Jenny Walton.

Betty Hirst’s meat sculptures were only on display the opening night; July is not a friendly month for meat longevity. When I arrived, there were photographs on display instead. I liked Tamara Kostianovsky’s ’stuffed animal’ carcasses out of her own clothing. Although these pieces were the most cuddly and approachable of the works exhibited, the use of clothing encouraged consideration of our own hides and flesh and what lies beneath.

In addition to the emotional and symbolic connotations of meat, it is visually striking. “Meat is such a wonderful aesthetic subject,” says Phil Dmochowski, the gallery’s assistant director. “Its textures, color variance, striations and marbling are very seductive, really. There’s such a great history of painting meat,” he says, mentioning Rembrandt, Van Gogh and…Bacon (from The Weekly Dig).

The opening received a lot of publicity and subsequent protests drew further attention to the show. On July 9th, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) issued a press release to call for the closing of the show: “Unless you’re Hannibal Lecter, there’s nothing ‘artistic’ or ‘joyful’ about meat,” says PETA Senior Vice President Tracy Reiman. “If it’s unacceptable to kill humans for an art exhibit, then it should be unacceptable to kill animals too.”

The Pierre Menard gallery has images and introductory text that explains the significance of meat and the curator’s intent on its website.

Big Red & Shiny also has an interview with the curator, Heide Hatry.

(*We also have plenty of meat terms to objectify men—hunks, prime rib, grade A chuck etc..)

Sikander and Barney in concurrent shows at MIT’s List Center

Matthew Barney and Shahzia Sikander, both Season 1 artists, currently have exhibitions at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center in Boston. Barney is best known for his work in sculpture and video, but his printmaking practice is an interesting and unexplored part of his body of work. As a result Photogravure Prints from Drawing Restraint 9 will have a lot to offer those attempting to keep up with the ever-expansive Barney mythology. Drawing Restraint 9, the latest in Barney’s ongoing metaphorical investigation of creativity, takes place on a Japanese whaling ship, and shows Barney, his life partner Bj√∂rk, and the ship’s crew ritualistically recreating his field emblem image with petroleum jelly. The prints in this exhibit are from production stills showing this sequence.

Shahzia Sikander’s Pursuit Curve is a digital animation with accompanying music by composer David Abir. Sikander uses the pursuit curve, a mathematical function which describes the progress of a chase, as a visual starting point from which to investigate the way culture, identity, and iconography interact. These brightly colored sequences, which contain suggestions of bomb blasts, fireworks, and turbans, resist easy interpretation, and challenge viewers to name what they’re seeing. The animation is currently playing continuously throughout the day at the Media Test Wall. You can find more information about the exhibition here.