Note on Under the Big Top at McClain

by Robert Boyd

This conceptually weak show is like a lot of shows one sees in summer at the galleries--various odds and ends from the storeroom. For example, a wall full of paintings and prints by a variety of blue chip artists.


On the wall, left to right: untitled, 5.06 by Rob Reasoner, (untitled) by Victor Vasarely, Target-660 by Stephan Dean, Five by Donald Baechler, Trytophan by Damien Hirst, Blue by Ellsworth Kelly, Mandala 03 by Alexander Haas, Untitled Spin Painting by Damien Hirst. Far right--Dream by Sylvia Fleury. Foreground, hanging from the ceiling--A Piece of Infinity #13, Jonathan Borofsky

It's hard to see where the circus theme comes in with most of these pieces. At the very least, I associate circuses with stimulation (over-stimulation, actually); this weird grouping, on the other hand, is really kind of boring. Except for the Jonathan Borofsky piece. Whatever happened to Jonathan Borofsky? It seems like in the late 80s/early 90s, you couldn't turn around without seeing his work. Now he seems largely forgotten. Personally, I always liked his work and I like this piece. It appeals to the math geek in me.

I don't mind that McClain wants to clear out its overstock--lots of retail establishments do this. I just wish that instead of creating a fake-ass theme like "Under the Big Top," they had called it something like "Summer Clearance Extravaganza." The whole "circus" thing feels like an afterthought. There are a few clown paintings (I always wonder who hangs pictures of clowns in their homes) and there's this piece by the Art Guys that actually made me laugh.


The Art Guys, Clown Noses (Double Self-Portrait), clown noses on broken concrete, variable dimensions, 2011

They also had a kinetic piece, Pretty as a Picture.


The Art Guys, Pretty As a Picture, cut plywood lettters, gear motors, wood, wire, 2009

I guess it's obvious that in this exhibit, I liked the things that made me laugh. And nothing made me laugh more than this piece Dennis Oppenheim.


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000

A gallerina told me that she thought this was a model for a larger public piece, which seems extremely unlikely. That said, I would have preferred a giant mouth with books for teeth than his Radiant Fountains sculpture at the airport. But there are two reasons why I doubt that this was meant to be a model for a large public piece. First, it's part of an edition (9 of 27). Second, the book titles are nasty, funny and quite personal. Oppenheim is doing a little score settling.


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000

I thought it was particularly funny that Hirst and Baechler both also had pieces in this show.


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000


Dennis Oppenheim, Upper Cut detail, plywood, steel, enamel paint, silkscreen on books, 2000

I Saw Boogie Woogie So You Don't Have To

This is not a review of Boogie Woogie. I don't have anything to say about it as a film beyond what has been said in the reviews in the New York Times and DVD Talk. I pretty much agree with what they wrote. It's not a dreadful movie--it's definitely watchable, but only just.

Briefly, the film is set in the London art world. There is a blue-chip gallery owned by Art Spindle (Danny Huston), a pair of collectors, the Maclestones (Gillian Anderson and Stellan Skarsgård), a pair of artists (Jack Huston and Jaimie Winstone), a pair of gallerinas at different stages of their careers (Heather Graham, whose character is about to quit and start her own gallery, and Amanda Seyfried, who has just been hired), and an older couple who own a Modrian that everybody wants (Christopher Lee and Joanna Lumley). Alan Cumming plays the enabling friend of Elaine, the lesbian video artist; he helps her career and gets nothing in return.

One thing really interesting about the movie was that it featured a lot of blue chip art. It didn't try to fake it, as many movies do. The art on screen was curated by Damien Hirst, and it is not surprising that the film features a lot of Hirst work.



He even seems to have fabricated a piece for the film. Paige Prideaux, the Amanda Seyfried character, has a medical emergency which results in a teratoma being removed. Bob Maclestone then commissions Hirst to make a really gross artwork out of it.



The Maclestone's apartment is loaded with art.



I can't identify all the pieces here, but the flower cart is by Michael Landy, the $ by Sue Webster and Tim Noble, and of course the Brancusi.



Not to mention a Warhol.




And Jake and Dinos Chapman. This movie has a lot of sex in it (all of it kind of horrible and compromised--which this image really speaks to).

Boob lovers will enjoy this movie. Heather Graham's character gets a boob job so she can have "power breasts" (I remember in the 80s when a yellow tie was, for some reason, called a "power tie" on Wall Street--thanks to Spy for telling me this. But this was the first time I had ever heard the term "power breasts.") She is breaking away from Art Spindle to start her own gallery, and has snagged Elaine, the lesbian Casanova who videotapes her conquests, for her opening. This is the scene where Graham is showing Elaine her new "power breasts".


Elaine then decides to show hers. 


Then she seduces Graham's character--while surreptitiously  videotaping it.


Elaine comes off as a combination of Nan Goldin (in her obsessive documenting) and Laurel Nakadate (in her exploitation of her subjects). Secretly filmed sex is hardly the worst thing that shows up in Elaine's video art.

That's the thing about this film. Literally everyone (except Dewey, the Alan Cumming character) is awful. And Dewey is a pathetic victim. I have no idea what the world of blue chip art is really like, but I have a hard time believing that everyone is this bad.

For some reason, gallery owners are almost never portrayed positively in movies. In Beverly Hills Cop and Legal Eagles, the gallery owners are actually murderers. Art Spindle is not quite that evil, but he does come off as a scheming scumbag. (The gallery owner in Age of Consent, however, was portrayed in a positive light. That seems to be the exception.) This is completely different from pretty much every gallery owner I personally know.

I would like to see a movie set in the art world at a lower level than this--not the blue chip world but the world that I encounter weekly, which is far larger than the tiny blue chip world. It might be hard, though, to find all that much drama there...

Lawndale's Dia De Los Muertos Show

Every year for the past 23, Lawndale has had a show of "retablos" made by local artists. The artists pick up an 8" x 10" piece of tin from Lawndale and can do with it pretty much anything they want. I don't think the artists are even required to use the tin, but it does provide a limit to the size of the work. Two hundred and forty-five retablos were made, many by well-known local artists, but most by artists that are, as far as I could tell, "Sunday painters."

This show is a big fund-raiser for Lawndale. Funds are raised two ways. First, the works are auctioned off on opening night, and the artist can agree to give Lawndale some part of what he gets for selling her work. (Or the artist can take all of it. Or give Lawndale all of it.) Second, to attend you have to pay a fairly pricey entry fee. So this is sort of Lawndale's "gala." Like Box 13, the way they raise money is through the sale of a bunch of small artworks. In this case, it was a silent auction. Each piece had a slip of paper next to it with the title, description, artist, and minimum bid. People wrote their bids on the slip until 8:45 pm, when the auction was officially over.



In about the middle of this picture, you can see a woman writing her bid. Now if you wanted to, you could see all the pieces in advance--Lawndale posted them on Flickr. That's what I did. Like the old comics nerd that I am, I made a "want list" before I went to the show.



The ones that were crossed out were ones where I was outbid. I expected that, so I'm not disappointed. Some of the names on this list are among Houston's best known artists. I would have loved to have gotten an Al Souza, but it quickly got up to $400 (and maybe more--I stopped looking after a while). One guy, a collector who signed his bids "Haynes," was constantly outbidding me--he and I had similar tastes apparently.

In the end, I won three pieces. I didn't take pictures of them, but you can see them on Flickr. Weirdly enough (and quite by accident), two of the pieces I won are by brothers, Kenneth James Beasley and Aaron Beasley. Kenneth James Beasley's piece is called Fallen Painter. Aaron Beasley's piece is a parody of Damien Hirst, called The Mental Impossibility of Life in the Mind of Something Dead. It looks like it might be a mess to keep because it contains a real dead shark in a jar. I'll let you know if it starts stinking. The third piece is by Myke Venable and it is called Recycled Retablo. Venable will be in a group show called The New Black: Contemporary Concepts in Color and Abstraction (along with Jonathan Leach, Mike Guidry and Katherine Veneman) that opens October 28, 2010, at Williams Tower. If you are in the Galleria area, check it out.