Exhibition dates: 16th June – 9th September 2018
Artists: Drager Meurtant (assemblages, NL) and Petra Senn (photography, D); Jeanine Keuchenius (paintings, NL)
Kelly Elmendorp, Stijn Geutjes, Robert van der Kroft, Drager Meurtant, Winny de Meij, Petra Senn.
*PLEASE NOTE I WILL BE TAKING A SHORT BREAK FROM REGULAR POSTINGS ON ART BLART FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS AS I CELEBRATE MY 60TH BIRTHDAY. THANK YOU*
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Green bird day
2017
When the green bird / came to live / we agreed to call / it a day
Accumulating, life
I first had contact with Gerard Rutteman (artist alias Drager Meurtant) when he emailed me about a posting I had done on Art Blart about the Japanese photographer Shomei Tomatsu in 2015. Since then we have become firm friends. In 2017 on a trip to Europe, I caught a high speed train from Paris to the French city of Reims to meet him and his vivacious wife Jeanine. We spent a glorious day wandering the city, taking photographs, talking art, and eating a hearty lunch at a local brasserie. This pair of self-taught artists, creative human beings, are so talented.
While I greatly admire Jeanine’s paintings with their powerful and poetic muscularity (in my mind, I note the influence of artists such as Pierre Soulages, Cy Twombly and Anselm Kiefer) and their use of colour which can be seen in other paintings on her website – and observe the photographs of Petra Senn (I would need to see more to make constructive comment) – it is the work of Drager Meurtant to which I am going to focus my attention in this text.
The path of Drager Meurtant reminds me of that of Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne.
“Gascoigne worked as a teacher before moving to Australia in 1943 following her marriage to astronomer Ben Gascoigne. She discovered a natural talent for creating assemblages through the ensuing seventeen years spent in relative isolation on the stony terrain of Mount Stromlo, home to Stromlo Observatory, and the wheat belt of Monaro near Canberra, a landscape she designated as the crucible from which her art emerged… Gascoigne’s lifelong passion for collecting and arranging developed initially from the Sogetsu school of ikebana, with its emphasis on form and line rather than colour. Its general principles of valuing immediate response, the experience of materials, process and experiment with variations can be seen as underpinning all of her later work. The collection of discarded materials, such as farm machinery parts, for use as suitable vessels for her arrangements, led her to also make sculptural assemblages… Gascoigne had no formal art training, often asserting that her fifty-year apprenticeship was in looking. She began exhibiting in 1974 at the age of 57.” (Text from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website)
Gascoigne went on to become one of Australia’s most loved and respected artists.
Drager Meurtant spent most of his life as a veterinarian-biomedical researcher. He is an autodidact and, like Gascoigne, his apprenticeship as an artist was one of looking and writing poetry. Only in the last five years has he really been able to fully concentrate on his art practice. To my mind, he has the potential to become a much beloved artist of his country, and an international artist of high repute. I am palpably excited by his art and its development. There is a frisson of expectation every time I see new work; that frisson enhanced by the amplitude of the music he creates and the temperature of the environment that surrounds his work.
In this latest exhibition, there is a wonderful, tensional balance between elements and energy in his constructions. Much of the basic elements are from demolition- / remnant materials (“recycling art”), sometimes called objets trouvés: things coil around, are contained, wire, wood, recycled materials, energy, intimacy. His un/civilised forms of expression create an interplay between the conscious and the unconscious minds.
Drager is true to the integrity of his materials, the inherent qualities of natural and man made materials, and his vision. He incorporates primitive, mythical, spiritual and folkloric elements into his art. And his pleasure is in the layering and painting, in the materials, forms and, finally, in the art itself. Here is humour (The snake kept its mouth shut, 2018 below; the moustache of The Orator, 2016 below), ecology and spirit. A sense of mystery and purpose at one and the same time.
Riffing on Guy Debord’s concept of dérive (“drift” in English) which Debord defines as “a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances”1, I can relate Drager’s art to an unplanned journey through the urban landscape in which he drops his everyday relations and lets himself be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters he finds there. Drager’s attractions are the refuse of the human race. His encounters lead to the construction of contexts and situations, an artistic practice of “the happening”, which is a structured but unencumbered, expressive approach that encourages us to question our finite place in the world. Who else would paint a mountain on a radiator!
While I believe that some of the most important qualities in this world have their meanings proscribed by their opposite, some of these qualities have to be understood by reference only to themselves – which is very difficult – but must be attempted. A lot of things have been made too simple (taught in art schools?) by constructing fraught dichotomies. In other words, as an artist and as a human being, do not rely on binaries but just “on the thing itself”. Let it reveal itself to you – whether that is through Dada, an enigmatic self, of movement and form – or through some other mechanism. Drager has enough intellect and talent not to fall into the too simple, too easy, trap.
In this small regional gallery in the Netherlands, this visionary of the romantic, otherworldy (definition: devoted to intellectual or imaginative pursuits), utopian / dystopian unification of art and life constructs his paradoxes. I love the poetry that accompanies and informs his work; I love the brown butchers paper that covered “the happenings” before the unveiling; and I love the energy, the concern for the environment, and the construction and conceptualisation of his assemblages. I am challenged, in a good way, by his art.
The next step on the path for my friend is to keep the faith, is to keep making the art for himself and no one else. To keep them free and not contained by unwanted concerns. For, as he said to me, “in the end the path followed will be more interesting than the stakes raised in passing.” But curators please take note… here is a star of the future!
Marcus
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Many thankx to the artists and Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
- Guy Debord (1958) Definitions. Internationale Situationniste #1 (Paris, June 1958). Translated by Ken Knabb.
“The creation of art, to me, is not work. The end-result is not seen as a piece, but as a whole. Since it brings me comfort and relieves stress, I call my assemblages ‘art-peaces’.”
“The essence of working with found objects (or scrap material) is that their different natures will enrich the composition as they are expressed in its different layers. This effect is based upon the divergent origins, structures and functions of these elements: wood, metal, glass, stone, cloth, plastic, etc. As a consequence, each bears a different weight and ease for ‘penetrance’ (transparency), that will influence the final form of the composition.”
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Drager Meurtant
“Nearly every work of assemblage, in its relational structure, approaches abstract art” [but] “the practice of assemblage raises materials from the level of formal relations to that of associational poetry.”
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Seitz, W. C. The Art of Assemblage. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961, p. 25, 84.
“It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.”
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Jean-Luc Godard
Before the exhibition opening
Before the opening of the exhibition Now, the new form of the past at Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum, Netherlands
Now, the new form of the past is an exhibition based on international collaboration between Drager Meurtant (assemblages, NL) and Petra Senn (photography, D) with the theme Recycling Art . Both artists place most of the energy in their art and demand attention for its creativity, in the reuse of materials and objects.
Drager uses demolition material and remnants from construction, plus objets trouvés, to make assemblages; while Petra uses weathered matter and the perishableness (transitoriness) of materials in her photographs. Every artwork thus carries echoes from the past within itself. Senses is a parallel exhibition of abstract paintings by Jeanine Keuchenius.
Text from the Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum website
The artists Drager Meurtant and Petra Senn first met on ‘pictify’, a social medium for artists (at present no longer accepting new art submissions.) After an exchange of some ‘faves’ and views, the retrospective The Trauma of Painting by Alberto Burro in the museum K21 in Düsseldorf, Germany, became the place where at the end of June 2016 the three, Petra Senn, Drager Meurtant and his artist-partner Jeanine Keuchenius, met in person. With the overwhelming artistic environment, the basis of a human and artistic interest became established. Thus, when Stijn Geutjes, the curator of Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum asked Drager about willingness to exhibit his art in the museum, the answer came with the suggestion of the theme “Now, the new form of the past”, and introduction of colleague Petra Senn as associate, and Jeanine to come with an addition of the theme “Senses”. After some discussion, and rising interest of Stijn Geutjes in the abstract photographies of Petra Senn, the decision came to exhibit in a collaborative effort, that included partaking in the selection process of works of the curator and the three artists.
Text by Drager Meurtant
Objets trouvés
An objets trouvé is a found object; a natural or discarded object found by chance and held to have aesthetic value; an ordinary object, as a piece of driftwood, a shell, or a manufactured article, that is treated as an object of art by one who finds it aesthetically pleasing.
The term relates directly to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, Dada and Fluxus art. Art critics have coined the terms arte povera (Italian) and junk art (Anglo-American) to signify art which incorporates said objects.
Arte Povera is basically the legitimate justification for creating art of junk and found objects. Arte Povera was a term coined by the Italian art critic Germano Celant. He used the word to sum up a type of art which combined elements of conceptual art, minimal art and performance art. He conceived the idea of the art movement in reaction to the ever increasing commercialism within the art world. The artists embrace the ideas of using valueless materials such as earth, gravel, rocks or litter in order to create works of art.
Junk art is the flattering name is given to 20th and 21st-century art in which the artist uses refuse, scrap metal, urban waste or just anything viewed as useless or cast of from modern society. Junk art is very much synonymous with American artist Robert Rauschenberg. It is also very much part of the 1960s Italian movement Arte Povera. The movement was the product of Antoni Tàpies, Alberto Burri, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Piero Manzoni, and Lucio Fontana.
Text from the Xamou website
Found object
Found object originates from the French objet trouvé, describing art created from undisguised, but often modified, objects or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already have a non-art function. …
Found objects derive their identity as art from the designation placed upon them by the artist and from the social history that comes with the object. This may be indicated by either its anonymous wear and tear (as in collages of Kurt Schwitters) or by its recognisability as a consumer icon (as in the sculptures of Haim Steinbach). The context into which it is placed is also a highly relevant factor. The idea of dignifying commonplace objects in this way was originally a shocking challenge to the accepted distinction between what was considered art as opposed to not art. …
As an art form, found objects tend to include the artist’s output – at the very least an idea about it, i.e. the artist’s designation of the object as art – which is nearly always reinforced with a title. There is usually some degree of modification of the found object, although not always to the extent that it cannot be recognised, as is the case with ready-mades. Recent critical theory, however, would argue that the mere designation and relocation of any object, ready-mades included, constitutes a modification of the object because it changes our perception of its utility, its lifespan, or its status.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Installation views of the exhibition Now, the new form of the past
Installation views of the exhibition Now, the new form of the past at Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum, Netherlands showing the work of Drager Meurtant and Petra Senn
Installation view of the exhibition Now, the new form of the past at Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum, Netherlands showing Drager Meurtant’s work connection not wireless (2014) top left, and Petra Senn’s Persuasiveness (2012) top right
Installation view of the exhibition Now, the new form of the past at Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum, Netherlands showing Drager Meurtant’s Under way Nd
Installation view of the exhibition Now, the new form of the past at Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum, Netherlands showing Drager Meurtant’s work Swan in essence (2014) at centre, with Petra Senn’s Insubordination (2017) top left and someone from the past I (nd) top right
Installation view of the exhibition Now, the new form of the past at Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum, Netherlands showing the work of Drager Meurtant and Petra Senn with DM’s The promised land (2016) at right
About Drager Meurtant
In almost four decades since his training as as veterinarian-biomedical researcher, Drager Meurtant (artist alias of Gerard Rutteman) has channeled much creativity towards scientific publications and – in his free time – poetry. In more recent years, through a rapid learning curve, his creations have taken form as sculptures (in particular assemblages), collages, paintings and graphical works.
As autodidact and experienced carpenter, the circle saw, jig-saw, chisel, gouge, hammer are used to handle natural materials (wood, stone) in addition to manufactured (paper, cloth) and construction material (metal, glass, etcetera). Much of the basic elements are from demolition- / remnant materials (“recycling art”), sometimes objets trouvés. The assembly of contrasting elements creates tension, sometimes suspension.
The sculptures made by David Smith and (box) assemblages by Joseph Cornell, but also installations by Dieter Roth inspire Drager, as does the art by Joan Miró and members of CoBrA. The making of photographs is considered complementary to the assemblages, in an attempt to capture the fleeting world in which we live.
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Movement from within
2016
Three-dimensional sculpture, mixed media
Assemblage (relief), wood, paper, paint, sand, image
40 x 50 x 7 cm
“When the pieces were seen fit / and fixed in their proper position / the movement was undeniable / as it arose from within”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Crawling, again
2018
Three-dimensional sculpture, mixed media
47 x 34 x 20 cm
“How to make connections / of elements and the outside world? The answer to my question / came crawling, again”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Crawling, again (installation view)
2018
Three-dimensional sculpture, mixed media
47 x 34 x 20 cm
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Number 53 (installation view)
2016
Mixed media sculpture
Assemblage, wood, paper, metal, plaster, paint
31 x 36 x 9 cm
“In former times / you could buy / petroleum, paraffin and coal / at number 53”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
The Orator (installation view)
2016
Sculpture, wood, paint
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Tegut
2018
Collage, paper
11 x 15 cm
“The next generation / has more generations / to lean upon”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Three of a kind (installation view)
2018
Mixed media
24 x 32 x 1 cm
“When presented three figures / of different size / and writing / and colour”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Three of a kind
2018
Mixed media
24 x 32 x 1 cm
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Mon Combat
2018
Installation of book, metal
60 x 30 x 5 cm
Mon Combat by A. Tempspassé: there is always someone who sees argument to start a battle
Installation view of the exhibition Now, the new form of the past at Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum, Netherlands showing Drager Meurtant’s works the listener (needs protection) (2018) at left, and The Mechanic (2018) at right
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
The Mechanic
2018
Mixed media (wood, iron, paint)
105 x 65 x 65 cm
“With good tools / you get everything moving”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
The snake kept its mouth shut
2018
Mixed media, trash
35 x 25 x 500 cm
“Curling, the snake kept its mouth shut”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Destiny (installation view)
2018
Painting on discarded radiator with support
60 x 130 cm
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
All humans are equal (installation view)
2018
Mixed media
100 x 50 x 200 cm
All humans are equal. // To test this assumption / take two / and tilt the angle / and position towards, one another.
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Rudimentary (installation view)
2016
Mixed media
23 x 13 x 16 cm
“Mental metal / rudimentary face / mind you!”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
The promised land
2016
Box assemblage
Mixed media, wood, board, metal, paint
34 x 44 x 10 cm
“The promised land / cannot be for outsiders. // They may look / how it is, yonder.”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Steep-2 (installation view)
2014
Mixed media, wood partly rotten, metal, paint and glass
35 x 23 x 10 cm
Steep-2: The Monte Rotondo / is left behind / it weighs too much / for me. // The climbing rock of Feyr / I leave / to the climbers. // But / this wooden rock / serves as model / of a viewpoint on imagination.
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
The avail of propaganda
2016
Mixed media
Assemblage, wood, cloth, metal, paper, paint
43 x 21 x 8 cm
“The avail of propaganda / is that you and I / do what / we detest.”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Twosome (installation view)
Nd
Mixed media
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
fact-ohry (installation view)
2013
Mixed media
24 x 32 x 42 cm
I said / now I will build a fact-ohry / and that / became factual. // With grabbing and placing / elements that together / took progressively the shape / of a fact-ohry / I became part of it. // Could shape the further design / and steer it at minor extent / but the end-result / was determined / by the starting point. // Voila.
(Note: This Fact-ohry is the only one with guarantee that risks during drilling for shale gas are secured.)
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Progress (halted) (installation view)
2016
Bronze
26 x 18 x 21 cm
“When going forth / from wood to bronze / and grasping the result / I realised progress had halted. // A result stands in the way / of the learning process.”
Drager Meurtant (b. 1951)
Progress (halted)
2016
Bronze
26 x 18 x 21 cm
About Petra Senn
Petra’s work has mostly to do with memories and emotions. Her photos directly respond to the surrounding environment and use everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. These experiences are often framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context.
By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, she wants to amplify the astonishment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition and alienation.
Her works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. By applying abstraction, she absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. She has a deep inner desire to protect the past from vanishing, both physically and, inevitably, mentally.
In her work Petra takes great care neither to simply reflect reality nor to just make visual statements. There is always left space for the spectators own emotions and opinions. She considers her work as visual stimulus, an invitation to enter ones inner world, knowing well that this process only works if she perceives deeper emotions while taking the pictures herself. Her search is for poetry in almost every item and condition.
Artist statement
Petra Senn
Her Lips
2015
Petra Senn
Insubordination
2017
Petra Senn
Persuasiveness
2012
About Jeanine Keuchenius
Jeanine Keuchenius (1953, Indonesia) is a creative artist, dancer, and performer. Her background is as an art therapist (independent and within psychiatry) and social worker / pastoral worker. In the visual art she is an autodidact (a self-taught person), acquiring some skills at high school (teacher in visual art), she then followed several courses / workshops given by professional artists.
Jeanine’s painting uses paper, linen or panel, with palette filled with gouache, acrylic, oil, ink, with at times addition of tar, sand, and glue. Artists that inspire her are Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Edvard Munch, Antoni Tapies and Emil Schumacher, but also the medium of modern dance moves her in her work, which is mostly abstract, but at times features more figurative elements. Sometimes echoes from mountain landscapes and abandoned hamlets (e.g. on the island of Corsica) are visualised. Her motto is: “In duet with myself.”
Installation views of the exhibition Senses at Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum, Netherlands
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Amulet (installation view)
2011
Gouache on paper
50 x 65 cm
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Amulet
2011
Gouache on paper
50 x 65 cm
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Pink and grey (installation view)
2012
Gouache on paper
50 x 65 cm
Each painting is the reflection of memory or dream.
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Pink and grey
2012
Gouache on paper
50 x 65 cm
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Lying figure 2 (installation view)
2017
Two-dimensional plaster cut, printed on newspaper
22 x 26 cm
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Beautiful stay (installation view)
2014
Gouache on paper
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Unchained (installation view)
2016
Mixed media on panel (bitumen, acrylic, sand on panel)
45 x 57 cm
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Memory 1 (installation view)
2018
Mixed media on panel (acrylic, sand, plaster, oil on panel)
60 x 70 cm
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Gribusella
2014
Acrylic on paper
50 x 65 cm
Form and colour accompany depth and emotion
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Senses
2012
Acrylic on paper
50 x 65 cm
Jeanine Keuchenius (b. 1953, Indonesia)
Bwual ènzo
2014
Gouache on paper
50 x 65 cm
Both when handling and avoiding themes, you sometimes walk in a circle.
Poster for the exhibitions Now, the new form of the past and Senses
Kunstwerk! Liemers Museum
Kerkstraat 16, 6901
AB Zevenaar, Nederland
Phone: +31 85 040 9971
Opening hours :
Tuesday to Sunday from 2 pm – 5 pm.
Exhibition: ‘Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW’ at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
Tags: (Andy Warhol and Other Artists) Tulip, (Roy Lichtenstein and Other Artists) Black, adjusted to fit, American art, american artist, American conceptual art, American Conceptual artist, American conceptual photography, American contemporary photography, American photography, Andrea Fraser May I Help You?, appropriated images, appropriation, Appropriation Art, appropriation in art, Arranged by Donald Marron Susan Brundage, Big (adjusted to fit), Birdcalls, Cameron Rowland, Cameron Rowland 91020000, Conceptual Art, Contemporary Photography, continuous re-presentation, continuous representation, Does Andy Warhol Make You Cry?, Does Marilyn Monroe Make You Cry?, Douglas Crimp, Douglas Crimp Pictures, Evening Sale, exchange value of art, female artist, feminist art, film noir, film noir still, Hand On Her Back (traced), image production, image production and institutional critique, images stretched or expanded to fit the location of their display, Jasper Johns, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns White Flag, Life After 1945 (Faces), Louise Lawler, Louise Lawler (Andy Warhol and Other Artists) Tulip, Louise Lawler (Roy Lichtenstein and Other Artists) Black, Louise Lawler Arranged by Donald Marron Susan Brundage, Louise Lawler Big (adjusted to fit), Louise Lawler Does Andy Warhol Make You Cry?, Louise Lawler Does Marilyn Monroe Make You Cry?, Louise Lawler Evening Sale, Louise Lawler Hand On Her Back (traced), Louise Lawler Jasper Johns, Louise Lawler Life After 1945 (Faces), Louise Lawler Marie +270, Louise Lawler Monogram, Louise Lawler No Drones, Louise Lawler Nude, Louise Lawler Nude 2002, Louise Lawler Pollock and Tureen (traced), Louise Lawler Pollyanna (adjusted to fit), Louise Lawler Produced in 1988 Purchased in 1989, Louise Lawler Salon Hodler, Louise Lawler Salon Hodler (traced), Louise Lawler Sentimental, Louise Lawler Still Life (Candle) (adjusted to fit), Louise Lawler Triangle (adjusted to fit), Louise Lawler Untitled (Salon Hodler), Louise Lawler Untitled 1950-51, Louise Lawler WAR IS TERROR, Louise Lawler White Gloves, Louise Lawler Why Pictures Now (traced), Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW, Louise Lawler Birdcalls, Marie +270, May I Help You?, MOMA, Monogram, Museum of Modern Art, New York, No Drones, performative art, photography, Pictures, Pictures Generation, Pollock and Tureen, Pollock and Tureen (traced), Pollyanna (adjusted to fit), Produced in 1988 Purchased in 1989, question the meaning of art, re-presentation, reframing, representation, restaging photographs, Robert Rauschenberg, Salon Hodler, Salon Hodler (traced), Sentimental, Still Life (Candle) (adjusted to fit), the meaning of art, the politics of space, tracings, Triangle (adjusted to fit), Untitled 1950-51, use of art, WAR IS TERROR, White Gloves, WHY PICTURES NOW, Why Pictures Now (traced)
Exhibition dates: 30th April – 30th July 2017
The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor
Louise Lawler
Pollyanna (adjusted to fit) distorted for the times
2007/2008/2012
As adjusted for the MoMA exhibition WHY PICTURES NOW, 2017
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2017 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Pollyanna (adjusted to fit)
2007/2008/2012
As adjusted for the MoMA exhibition WHY PICTURES NOW, 2017
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2017 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Produced in 1988, Purchased in 1989; Produced in 1989, Purchased in 1993 (adjusted to fit), distorted for the times
1995/2010
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2017 Louise Lawler
(Note on reproducing Lawler’s Adjusted to Fit works: Each time these images are reproduced, they should be stretched to the space given to the reproduction. The original file (un-stretched) is the origin point for anything that is then adjusted by the photo editor.)
Louise Lawler
Produced in 1988, Purchased in 1989; Produced in 1989, Purchased in 1993 (adjusted to fit), distorted for the times
1995/2010
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2017 Louise Lawler
I missed the closing date for this exhibition due to the ongoing problems with my hand. However, I believe it is valuable to post these images because Louise Lawler is an always provocative, thoughtful and interesting artist. She shines a light or, more possibly, pokes a big stick at patriarchal systems of value in art – turning perceived points of view, ways of seeing, and “the cultural circumstances that support art’s production, circulation, and presentation” on their head.
“… behind Ms. Lawler’s shape-shifting works lies a poetic intelligence, a political sharpness and an understanding of the artwork as a form of value, but also as a source and an object of love.” Well said.
Lawler possesses a unique understanding of the forms of culture embodied within images and also an intimate knowledge of the archetypal forms buried deep within their bones. Is the pattern immanent in the paper (the cosmos), or is the paper a blank slate to be written on by the creator?
Distorted, restaged, reframed and re-presented for the times…
Marcus
.
Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish the photographs in posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
#art #moma #museumofmodernart #museum #modernart #nyc #education #artist #photography #womenartists #femaleartists #louiselawler #whypicturesnow
Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW is the first major survey in New York of the artist Louise Lawler (American, b. 1947), spanning the 40-year creative output of one of the most influential artists working in the fields of image production and institutional critique. The exhibition takes its title from one of Lawler’s most iconic works, Why Pictures Now (1982), a black-and-white photograph showing a matchbook propped up in an ashtray. Reminiscent of an advertising photograph or a film noir still, it asks the viewer to consider why the work takes the form of a picture, and why the artist is making pictures now. Lawler came of age as part of the Pictures Generation, a loosely knit, highly independent group of artists named for an influential exhibition, Pictures, organised in 1977 by art historian Douglas Crimp at Artists Space in New York. These artists used photography and appropriation-driven strategies to examine the functions and codes of representation. Lawler’s signature style was established in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she began taking pictures of other artists’ works displayed in collectors’ homes, museums, storage spaces, and auction houses to question the value, meaning, and use of art.
WHY PICTURES NOW is organised by Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator, with Kelly Sidley, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography.
Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW | MoMA LIVE
Join us for a conversation with MoMA director Glenn Lowry and curator Roxana Marcoci on the opening of the exhibition, Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW. The first New York museum survey of the work of American artist Louise Lawler, this exhibition is an exploration of her creative output, which has inspired fellow artists and cultural thinkers alike for the past four decades.
Among the most intriguing aspects of Lawler’s working process is her continuous re-presentation, reframing, or restaging in the present, a strategy through which she revisits her own images by transferring them to different formats – from photographs to paperweights, tracings, and works she calls “adjusted to fit” (images stretched or expanded to fit the location of their display). Lawler’s critical strategies of reformatting existing content not only suggest the idea that pictures can have more than one life, but underpin the intentional, relational character of her farsighted art.
Louise Lawler | HOW TO SEE the artist with MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci
Can the exact same image have a completely different meaning if its title or medium is changed? Explore the work of one of today’s most influential female artists, Louise Lawler, in the new exhibition Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW.
MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci gives us a tour of the exhibition that charts Lawler’s continuous re-presentation, reframing, or restaging of the present, a strategy through which Lawler revisits her own images by transferring them to different formats – from photographs to paperweights, tracings, and works she calls “adjusted to fit” (images stretched or expanded to fit the location of their display).
Louise Lawler’s Birdcalls at MoMA
You’re not hearing things. For the duration of the Louise Lawler exhibition, a stroll through our Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden places you squarely in the middle of Birdcalls, the artist’s defiant, humorous critique of the art world’s captivation with male artists. Find out what exhibition inspired Lawler’s sole sound piece with MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci.
Installation views of Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW
© 2017 The Museum of Modern Art
Photo: Martin Seck
Lawler’s study of art in its commercial context will be complemented by the display of a work by a younger artist that highlights a different kind of economy. The sculpture New York State Unified Court System (top photo), by artist Cameron Rowland, included in the artist’s knockout exhibition at Artists Space this winter, takes the form of four oak benches used in courtrooms and built using prison labour. (Text from the Artnet website)
Louise Lawler
Why Pictures Now
1981
Gelatin silver print
3 x 6” (7.6 x 15.2 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired with support from Nathalie and Jean-Daniel Cohen in honour of Roxana Marcoci
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Why Pictures Now (traced)
1981/2013
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
(Roy Lichtenstein and Other Artists) Black
1982
Silver dye bleach print
28 ½ x 37 ¼” (72.4 x 94.6 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
(Andy Warhol and Other Artists) Tulip
1982
Silver dye bleach print
38 ½ x 60 ½” (97.8 x 153.7 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Monogram
1984
Silver dye bleach print
39 1/2 × 28″ (100.3 × 71.1 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
© 2017 Louise Lawler
“Swimming among the show’s images are words and wordplay that can have a few layers. One of Ms. Lawler’s better-known photographs shows Jasper Johns’s creamy “White Flag” (1955) hanging above a bed with an equally creamy monogrammed satin spread. The image is sensibly titled “Monogram,” all the more fittingly since “Monogram” is also the title of one of Robert Rauschenberg’s combines from the 1950s, when he and Mr. Johns were lovers.
Roberta Smith. “Louise Lawler’s Stealth Aesthetic (and Muted Aura),” on the New York Times website
Louise Lawler
Untitled, 1950-51
1987
Silver dye bleach print
29 3/8 × 39 1/4″ (74.6 × 99.7 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
© 2017 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Does Andy Warhol Make You Cry?
1988
Silver dye bleach print with text on Plexiglass wall label
Image (shown): 27 ¼ x 39” (69.2 x 99.1 cm); Label: 4 3/8 x 6 3/8 in. (11.1 x 16.2 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Gabriella de Ferrari in honour of Karen Davidson
© 2016 Louise Lawler
The Museum of Modern Art announces Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW, the first major survey in New York of the artist Louise Lawler (American, b. 1947). Spanning the 40-year creative output of one of the most influential artists working in the fields of image production and institutional critique, the exhibition will be on view from April 30 to July 30, 2017, in The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor, along with one sound work, Birdcalls (1972-81), which will be installed in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. The exhibition takes its title from one of Lawler’s most iconic works, Why Pictures Now (1982), a black-and-white photograph showing a matchbook propped up in an ashtray. Reminiscent of an advertising photograph or a film noir still, it asks the viewer to consider why the work takes the form of a picture, and why the artist is making pictures at this moment. Lawler came of age as part of the Pictures Generation, a loosely knit, highly independent group of artists named for an influential exhibition, Pictures, organised in 1977 by art historian Douglas Crimp at Artists Space in New York. These artists used photography and appropriation-driven strategies to examine the functions and codes of representation. Lawler’s signature style was established in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she began taking pictures of other artists’ works displayed in collectors’ homes, museums, storage spaces, and auction houses to question the value, meaning, and use of art. WHY PICTURES NOW is organised by Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator, with Kelly Sidley, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography.
Lawler’s work offers a defiant, witty, and sustained feminist analysis of the strategies that inform art’s production and reception. In 1971, she was invited to assist several artists for independent curator Willoughby Sharp’s Pier 18, an exhibition that featured 27 male artists on an abandoned pier on the Hudson River. While walking home after leaving the pier one evening, Lawler began to mimic birdlike sounds in order to ward off any unwanted interactions, chanting “Willoughby! Willoughby!” This parody evolved into Birdcalls, a seven-minute audio piece in which Lawler squawks, chirps, and twitters the names of famous male artists, from Vito Acconci to Lawrence Weiner – an astute critique of the name recognition enjoyed by her male contemporaries. Birdcalls thematises Lawler’s strategy of resistance to the authoritative and the patronymic proper name. This work will be played throughout the course of the exhibition, in MoMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden.
An intriguing aspect of Lawler’s practice is her process of continuous re-presentation, reframing, or restaging in the present: she revisits her own work by transferring her images to different formats, from a photograph to a tracing, and to works that she calls “adjusted to fit.” The “tracings” are large-format black-and-white line versions of her photographs that eliminate colour and detail, functioning instead as “ghosts” of the originals. “Adjusted to fit” images are stretched or expanded to fit the location of their display, not only suggesting the idea that pictures can have more than one life, but also underpinning the intentional, relational character of Lawler’s farsighted art.
The exhibition consists of a sequence of mural-scale, “adjusted to fit” images set in dynamic relation to non-linear groupings of photographs – of collectors’ homes, auction houses, and museum installations – distinctive of Lawler’s conceptual exercises. Additionally, a deceptively empty gallery presents black-and-white tracings of Lawler’s photographs that have been printed on vinyl and mounted directly on the wall. A display of the artist’s ephemera from the 1970s to today highlights the feminist and performative undercurrents of her art. Lawler’s long history of artistic collaborations, with Sherrie Levine, Allan McCollum, Andrea Fraser, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Christopher d’Arcangelo, Peter Nadin, and Lawrence Weiner, among others, come full circle in the ephemera on display. Furthermore, on the platform outside the gallery space, two “adjusted to fit” images are shown together with Cameron Rowland’s work New York State Unified Court System. Comprised of four oak courtroom benches, it was included in Rowland’s exhibition 91020000, presented at Artists Space in 2016. Lawler and Rowland share an interest in examining the imbalances of exploitative economies, the use value and exchange value of art, the politics of space, and the interplay of power between human relations and larger institutional structures, including markets, museums, prisons, and governments. Additionally, Andrea Fraser will perform her work May I Help You? in the exhibition space. In foregrounding her work’s relationship to the economies of collaboration and exchange, Lawler shifts focus from the individual picture to the broader history of art. Her careful attention to artistic contexts, modes of presentation, and viewers’ receptions generates witty, affective situations that contribute to institutional transformation.
Press release from MoMA
Louise Lawler
Untitled (Salon Hodler)
1992
Paperweight (silver dye bleach print, crystal, felt) with text on wall
Paperweight: 2″ (5.1 cm) high, 3 1/2″ (8.9 cm) diam.
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
© 2017 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Salon Hodler (traced)
1992/1993/2013
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Sentimental
1999/2000
Silver dye bleach print
40 ¾ x 46 ¾” (103.5 x 118.7 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Promised gift of Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
WAR IS TERROR
2001/2003
Silver dye bleach print
30 × 25 3/4″ (76.2 × 65.4 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
© 2017 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Nude
2002/2003
Silver dye bleach print
59 1/2 × 47 1/2″ (151.1 × 120.7 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
© 2017 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
White Gloves
2002/2004
Silver dye bleach print
29 × 27 1/2″ (73.7 × 69.9 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
© 2017 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Life After 1945 (Faces)
2006/2007
Silver dye bleach print
40 x 33 ¼” (101.6 x 84.5 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Promised gift of Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Triangle (adjusted to fit)
2008/2009/2011
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
No Drones
2010/2011
Chromogenic colour print
29 ¼ x 19 ¾” (74.3 x 50.2 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Marie +270
2010/2012
Chromogenic colour print
59 x 45 ½” (149.9 x 115.6 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Promised gift of Ricki Gail Conway
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Pollock and Tureen (traced)
1984/2013
Dimensions variable
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Endowment
© 2016 Louise Lawler
One of her most famous images, “Pollock and Tureen” (1984), shows a fragment of a painting by Jackson Pollock above an antique soup tureen. In the photograph, the colour relationships are clear, offering insight into the choices of the collectors who “arranged” (a favourite word of Lawler’s) the scene. The work is about class, capitalism, and domesticity, not to mention reality and fiction. But when all the site-specific context is removed [in the tracing] … all we’re left with is contemplating the original Lawler artwork’s role in art history and the market.
In Benjamin Buchloh’s essay for Lawler’s retrospective last year at the Museum Ludwig, one of his most cogent points is about the nature of melancholy in her original photographs. “[H]er images,” he writes, “leave equally little doubt that there is hardly a more melancholic space than that of a fulfilled and seemingly satisfied utopian aspiration, one that has, however, not quite lived up to the originary promises … ”
Hrag Vartanian on the Hypoallergic website
Louise Lawler
Hand on Her Back (traced)
1997/1998/2013
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Evening Sale
2010/2015
Silver dye bleach print
50 x 36 5/8” (127 x 93 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Big (adjusted to fit)
2002/2003/2016
Dimensions variable
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of The Modern Women’s Fund and The Contemporary Arts Council
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Still Life (Candle) (adjusted to fit)
2003/2016
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Arranged by Donald Marron, Susan Brundage, Cheryl Bishop at Paine Webber Inc. (adjusted to fit)
1982/2016
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures
© 2016 Louise Lawler
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