LOOKING AT ART WITH SPARK: NO. 33

One terrific advantage of being a New York critic in L.A. is that you are automatically endowed with advantages that would be unimaginable in the brawling, hip-checking, high-paced competitive intellectual world  of Manhattan.

As a visiting writer I was entitled, together with a very intimate circle of about 200 international colleagues, to preview the LA Convention Center's LA Art Show of 2014.

At the risk of alienating the local scribes who by contract were banned from the pre-pre-preview I would like to offer a brief assessment of this West Coast grand bizarre of pictures, statues and prints.

My choice of words are deliberate for though the event is billed as an "art show," the format resembles more a county fair than a cathedral of culture. Lacking even the slightest pretense toward gravity or high mindedness the tin chorus of cubicles are filled with what can only be described as potential components of snazzy interior design. That the investment potential of these baubles is foregrounded by the participants never for a moment dispels the obvious neutrality of the works at hand.

Gliedmann no.11, Lars GroßesJuwel, 2013

Even the controversial Berlin based artist, Lars GroßesJuwel's monumental steel sculpture Gliedmann no.11 was tamed by its surroundings. Measuring close to 35 feet in height and 120 feet in length, the work was situated just outside the center's South Hall J. I must say that in the bright southern Californian light it looked more like a dismantled billboard than a disruptive "interplay of irony and subversion."*

It's fair to note one notable but qualified exception. Toward the back of Hall K in booth number 61a5 - shared by the Vienna based gallery Malen nach Zahlen and L.A.'s Torn Curtain - is an interesting project by the local artist Dahlia Danton. Metro Stations of the Cross consists of 347 small drawings of churches, cathedrals and monasteries throughout Athens and its environs.

Metro Stations of the Cross no. 212, Dahlia Danton 2013

 With funds from the Hellenic Center of Arts and Culture and the Orange County Martial Fund Danton traveled to Greece to document every Christian house of worship within striking distance of public transportation. This impressive project was thwarted when Danton was severely stricken with food poisoning but she did manage to nearly complete the Athenian leg of her journey.

I was so taken by the work that as soon as I was done with the dim task of writing about the fair for Dolphy Cane's Vernissage Magazine, I hopped on a plane for Mykonos where I'm defering the churches in favor of the beaches and the pubs.

*From the catalog essay by Los Angeles critic Frank Gilui 

LOOKING AT ART WITH SPARK: NO. 29

Up until a few months ago, my familiarity with the work of Cuban artist Micah Carpentier was casual at best. Though very much a part of the standard Latin American art historical narrative, his stature has always been dimmed by the legends of Siqueiros, Orozco and Rivera. Attempts to correct this traditional misjudgement have been feeble at best.

from The Song of Degrees, Micah Carpentier, 1971 (courtesy of the Carpentier Foundation, Madrid)

It has been my great good fortune to have recently made the acquaintance of Carpentier's nephew Roberto Carpentier-Katz . A native of Puerto Rico, Carpentier-Katz divides his time between Manhattan and Madrid where he directs the Carpentier Foundation. His is a labor of love since the Rivera-Kahlo lobby has done everything in their power to suppress or diminish his uncle's legacy.  

I made a special trip to Spain in order to research the Carpentier archive as part of a book I am writing about the relationship between Roberto Bolaño, José Bañón and Micah Carpentier and I was astounded by what I saw.

Aside from the remarkable work, the press clippings alone added up into a veritable bildungsroman of hope, triumph and crushing despair, a dispiriting story worthy of the most tragic of operas.

Nonetheless I came away fairly ebullient. How often does one discover for oneself new source of cultural caché? Few of my hipster colleagues in Brooklyn had ever heard of Carpentier. My editor, Dolphy Cane thinks there isn't much of a story here and my girl friend who is an adjunct professor of Latin American Literature is stubbornly convinced that the whole thing is a hoax.

Which is all fine with me. I will bask in my uniqueness for a little while longer while I wait for the world to catch up.