Detroit Art Review – Page 79 – Critical art reviews of Detroit galleries and museums weekly

On the Piano, 28 X 120 Oil on Canvas – Courtesy of the Artist

Marcia Freedman’s one-person exhibition, Memory & Observation opened April 10, 2015 at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center in the Robinson Gallery. It introduces the audience to twelve oil paintings with an underpinning of the figure in some paintings and objects in others. Ms. Freedman’s work, a style that could be aptly described as Abstract Expressionism, is part of the art movement that developed in New York City during the mid-1940. These paintings are rooted in the 1950’s work by Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and Joan Mitchell, and Freedman continues in that genre much like a composer of classical music continues to compose after the work of Beethoven, a jazz musician inventing music in the style of Miles Davis, or a writer composing a sonnet after Shakespeare and Frost.

Baby It’s Cold Outside 72 X 48 Oil on Canvas – Courtesy of the Artist

The painting Baby It’s Cold Outside leaves behind any reference to the figure and divides up the vertical composition using color, form, and gesture. The muted color palette and probing brush gesture is intuitively sophisticated. An audience will immediately sense the spontaneity of execution and wonder how these expressions manifest themselves. The answer starts with the title of the exhibition, Memory & Observation. The critics Clement Greenburg and Harold Rosenberg wrote extensively about this post-war, Abstract Expressionism movement, where they describe the artist mannerisms after moving on and away from representational painting. They explain that the myriad of gesture that reveals itself in an abstract expression is unconscious feelings that result from a life experience. For the Abstract Expressionist painter, the canvas is an extension of the artist’s mind where they explore issues of personal and social identity.

In her artist statement, Ms. Freedman explains, “My intention is to allow the painting process to lead the way opening up the work to wider questions, political and social….The physicality of the paint joined with resultant symbols creates a narrative and dialog between self and materials, revealing a personal history that remains ambiguous. The resultant images are mostly abstract, but, in fact, are based on the constant inquiry into the reality of life experience.”

He Said, She Said 72 X 90 Oil on Canvas – Courtesy of the Artist

In the large two-sectioned painting, He Said, She Said, Ms. Freedman juxtaposes complementary colors in a type of imagery where the foreground and backgrounds are reversed. The textured surface using a blue pattern invites the viewer for closer inspection, questioning where there is an object present. The opposing forces create a tension that provides the viewer with its power and intrigue. Ms. Freedman describes her work as ambiguous, and there in lies the meaning…different for each viewer.

Marcia Freedman holds an MFA from Wayne State University and has been exhibiting in the Detroit Metro area since the mid-1980. Her work is part of numerous public and private collections.

Memories & Observations – April 10 – June 5, 2015

BBAC http://bbartcenter.org

Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo @ the Detroit Institute of Arts

By Ron Scott

On April 4, 2015

In Paintings

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo kiss on the scaffolding of Rivera’s mural Detroit Industry, at the Detroit Institute of Arts.Photo: W.J. Stettler 1932-1933 / Detroit Institute of Arts

When Director Graham W. J. Beal took the podium to introduce the opening of the new Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit exhibition, he reflected on how long the show was in the planning. It had been nearly ten years. He reflected on this accomplishment in bringing this exhibition to Detroit.

“Rivera considered Detroit Industry, recently designated a national historical landmark, as his finest mural cycle. It shows the artist at the height of his powers. For Frida Kahlo, on the other hand, the works she produced while in Detroit can be seen as the beginning of her development as a mature artist with her own distinct—and distinctive—style.”[1]

After his introduction and within minutes of completing his remarks, he stood and watched Juan Coronel Rivera, grandson of the famous artist deliver his remarks with a feeling of respect and accomplishment. Rivera talked about his grandfather’s mural work, both in the United States and Mexico.

Graham W. J. Beal & Juan Coronel at the DIA opening photo courtesy of Ron Scott

The exhibition chronicles Rivera and Kahlo’s year spent in Detroit (1932-33) living at the new Wardell Hotel on Kirby Street across from the Detroit Institute of Arts. The building has now been transformed into the Park Shelton Condominiums, and on the list of the National Register of Historic Places. The couple had just married in Mexico in 1929 after a yearlong courtship where Rivera began traveling to the Kahlo house in Coyoacan, a suburb of Mexico City. Coincidently, it was the same year that the Mexican Communist Party removed Rivera as a member. It was also a year of turmoil for Mexico as northern generals raised armies to revolt against the government. But Rivera always seemed to place art above politics and positioned Frida Kahlo prominently in his mural panel, The Arsenal, at the Ministry of Education in Mexico City in an attempt to promote national pride and culture. In 1931 Frida Kahlo painted a double portrait of herself and Diego in San Francisco commemorating their wedding.

Frieda and Diego Rivera - Frida (Frieda) Kahlo 2

Frieda and Diego Rivera – Frida Kahlo, 1931, 24 X 36 Oil on Canvas

Diego Rivera was lured to Detroit by William Valentiner, the then director of the Detroit Institute for the Arts, who had met Rivera and his wife at the Pacific Stock Exchange Luncheon, in San Francisco in 1931. They were both invited to a dinner at the home of Helen Willis Moody who had just modeled for Rivera as he completed the Stock Exchange mural that year and it was there Valentiner had met the couple. He envisioned murals in the garden courtyard at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

“As soon as I returned to Detroit, I proposed to the Art Commission that we bring Diego to Detroit, knowing that the courtyard had the only plastered walls in the museum.”[2]

After being hospitalized for acute tendonitis in her right leg, it was November 1931, when the couple set sail for New York City where Diego Rivera was having a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. He was honored to follow artist Henri Matisse by the new museum. From there, they would travel to Detroit, where Rivera had secured a commission to paint two frescos capturing the automotive industry of Detroit. The relationship with Detroit began in March 1931 with Valentiner and his assistant director E.P. Richardson, when they curated an exhibition of Rivera’s drawings and watercolors to build enthusiasm for his work. It was with the financial support of Edsel Ford who was then serving as the Chairman of the Arts Commission that Rivera’s contract was consummated, and preliminary drawings were accepted.

Diego Rivera, Portrait of Edsel Ford, 1932, Oil on Canvas

While in art school in Mexico City, Rivera studied with Santiago Rebull where he learned to model the figure with smooth continuous shading. He realized the influence he experienced in Europe, both in Spain and Paris. It is well documented that Rivera spent ten years, 1909-1921, in the company of Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris, Seurat and above all Cezanne. He was drawn to the mathematical construction using the ‘golden section’ but by the time he left Europe, he was thinking about public art, which Cubism never intended to be.

He remembered, “Gone was the doubt and inner conflict that tormented me in Europe. I painted as naturally as I breathed, spoke or perspired.”[3]

Although Rivera had completed a large number of easel paintings, it was the art of fresco painting that dominated his interest during this period. It was his early study of Giotto while visiting Italy, more than any other fresco painter, that we see him at his best. In his murals the density and economy of the massive figures evoke Giotto’s Stations of the Cross in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.

Detroit Industry, South Wall, 1932, Rivera Court, Detroit Institute of Arts

Included in the exhibition are the life size drawings on paper, referred to as ‘cartoons’ and are displayed in the second large room of the exhibition. These ‘cartoons’ were created on draftsman paper to fit the actual size of the fresco panel.

Detroit Institute of Art – Cartoons Displayed at Exhibition, 2015 Courtesy Ron Scott

The outlines on the ‘cartoons’ were perforated with small holes while pinned to the panel. A cheesecloth pouch, filled with pigment, was pounced through the holes of the paper leaving a line-work of dots. These dots would become the guideline for the final plaster coat containing pigment. Because fresco painting has not been used much in recent decades, and for many people the fresco process would be unfamiliar. Essentially, distilled water is added to lime powder and sand which chemically raises the mixture to somewhere near the boiling point. After two coats of plaster are applied, the finish coat called intonaco, made of thoroughly slaked lime and finely ground marble dust, are combined with pigment. As this hardens, the chemical process makes the pigment one with the plaster.

Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932, 16 X 24 Oil on Canvas

Frida Kahlo’s work in the exhibition includes some early paintings and drawings, but the focus is on her paintings created in Detroit. The centerpiece painting is Henry Ford Hospital depicting her condition in the wake of a miscarriage in July 1932 where she presents herself on a bloodstained hospital bed that alludes to the various aspects of experiencing the trauma of a miscarriage. Introverted and introspective, Kahlo made nearly fifty self-portraits in her lifetime’s body of work. However, it would not be until the 1970’s, primarily in the United States, where many artists and historians saw the modernism in her work, a combination of obsessive surrealism, Mexican folk-art, and feminism. Throughout the exhibition, the photographs of Kahlo are abundant and documented in videos. She confronts her audience in traditional Mexican dress, hair high on her head, single eye-browed and often having a subtle mustache. It was an expression that during her time was rarely seen in the work of women artists.

Diego Rivera, Flowered Canoe, 1932, 68 X 80, Oil on Canvas

Diego Rivera was a giant among artists of his time. He was an accomplished painter with murals that dominated both North and Central America during the first half of the twentieth century. There were two hundred paintings produced during his ten years in Europe, studying the Cubist movement that produced scores of easel paintings, drawings, and prints. In 1986, the Detroit Institute of Arts, organized a large retrospective of Rivera’s work, largely based on the discovery in 1978-79 unpublished material including the full-scale cartoons. The Detroit Industry murals witnessed by visitors from all parts of the world when visiting the courtyard, find that Diego Rivera was an extraordinary artist with a sophisticated, allegorical power that transcends time.

A tumultuous year is now behind the DIA that ended in a victory for everyone who escaped the jaws of bankruptcy that had threatened the City of Detroit and it’s beloved Museum. With this exhibition and the transition to new leadership at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum could begin a new renaissance. That change would embrace new and experimental exhibitions along with past artistic accomplishments, and find new ways to better embrace the vibrant and progressive Detroit artist community.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo In Detroit

Detroit Institute of Arts March 15 – July 12

Tickets are timed, entrance on the half-hour.

$14, adult; $9 ages 6-17, Tue.-Fri.

$19, adult; $9 ages 6-17, Sat.-Sun.

Regular museum hours: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun. During exhibition, DIA will remain open until 10 p.m. on Thu., and, starting May 26, until 7 p.m. Sat.-Sun.

313-833-7900

www.dia.org

[1] DIA Press Release, March 15, 2015

[2] Pete Hamill, Diego Rivera, P. 76

[3] Pete Hamill, Diego Rivera, P. 150

Dick Goody @ N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Arts

By Ron Scott

On March 16, 2015

In Paintings

By Ron Scott
February 25, 2015

Still Life with Cheese & Ravioli 36 X 36 Oil on Canvas – Courtesy of the artist and N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Arts

In the heart of Midtown Detroit, the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, just two blocks from the Detroit Institute of the Arts, is where the owner and curator George N’Namdi opened an exhibition of paintings, The Making of Dauphine, by Dick Goody; both men are stalwart promoters of the arts in Metro Detroit.

Nellie Bandage – 2014 24 X 24 Oil on Canvas – Courtesy of the artist and N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Arts

When I first caught a glimpse of the Nellie Bandaged painting, I thought maybe it was an off-color behind the scenes character from The Simpsons. But on closer observation, the surreal character wearing sunglasses and lipstick whose head is wrapped in what looks like leather or cloth mask bandage; the titillating painted image slowly takes on a futuristic iconic stature.

The twenty paintings in the exhibition are the product of 2014 sabbatical leave Goody received from Oakland University.

Goody says “The Making of the Dauphine is a suite of paintings loosely based on The Dauphine, a novella I wrote in 2013 concerning the discovery of an artificial intelligence singularly focused on ridding the world of infamy and excess, but the exhibition is only marginally concerned with this. In short, I would say that it personifies the idea that it’s about how you paint rather than what you’re painting.”

Tweed Leliedwarsstraat No. 6 – 24 X 36 Oil on Canvas Courtesy of the artist and N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Arts

Many of the paintings are loosely representational and still life where Goody focuses on composition, color, black line, at times reminding this viewer of Matisse when he flattens out the subject. A challenge when observing these paintings is that many contain writing, or words, something I have always had a hard time with because it tends to feel illustrative. There is a school around this “text-based” art, recently exhibited in Los Angeles in 2013 by the Jack Rutberg Gallery, showing the work of Bill Barminski and Mark Greenfield. But the text here is more about shape, color and less about content or meaning.

As an Associate Professor of Art at Oakland University and curator of Oakland University Art Gallery, Dick Goody is many things; curator, writer, painter, and intellectual connoisseur of the arts. In this exhibition, one takes a peek into Goody’s interior world, surreal on the surface, a visionary utopia in its content, and vogue in its use of color and black line.

The Making of the Dauphine February 13 – March 14, 2015
The N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Arts

Marcia Freedman @ the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center

Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo @ the Detroit Institute of Arts

Dick Goody @ N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Arts