Embracing the Contemporary at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Embracing the Contemporary: The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Collection of Contemporary Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art

June 28–September 5, 2016

Reviewed by Ed Voves

There was a moment during my visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibit, Embracing the Contemporary, when the opposite  of the title words occurred. The art "embraced" me.

Embracing the Contemporary; the  Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Collection presents masterpieces of art created during the last fifty years. The collectors are a dynamic husband-wife team who have promised their collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Katherine and Keith Sachs at the Embracing the Contemporary Exhibit

It was neither this commendable generosity nor their appreciation of contemporary art that made such an impression. Rather, it was a sense of the living reality of art - art pulsing with life, ideas, awareness - that struck me as I examined works by Brice Marden, Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly.

Keith and Katherine Sachs did not merely collect art that is representative of the present age. Many of the works in their exhibit strike to the most primal levels of creativity. I might have been looking at a  blackened ceramic Nagada vase from Egypt, c. 3500 BC, or the 1966 painting by Ellsworth Kelly, Black Red Orange. 

Ellsworth Kelly, Black Red Orange, 1966

In art, there really is no timeline, no yesterday, today or tomorrow. That is the powerful feeling that "embraced" me as I engaged with the art on display in Embracing the Contemporary.

Of all the paintings in Embracing the Contemporary, Brice Marden's Red Ground Letter exemplifies this ongoing effort to give today's art its voice. It also articulates the resonance of enduring, essential themes of art that speak across centuries and national boundaries.

Marden is famous for his 1984 mid-career shift. From color-drenched minimalism, Marden began experiments in a calligraphic style. 

Anne Lloyd, Gallery View of Brice Marden's Red Ground Letter, 2007-2010

Following  a visit to the “Masters of Japanese Calligraphy, 8th-19th Century” in New York City, Marden unsheathed strands of color and propelled them as cursive lines across the canvas. These powerful pronouncements may well be the visual language of the future. Yet, a sense of meaning - just beyond our grasp - is already apparent in these arching, scrawling lines. 

In his wonderful book, American Visions, the late Robert Hughes noted that Marden,"liked his paintings to be the size of a person - so that one would be induced, without quite being aware of it, to experience them as standing figures, other "presences" in the room ..."

Anne Lloyd, Photo of Boy with Frog, by Charles Ray, 2008

Embracing the Contemporary is filled with "other 'presences' in the room." The most obvious is the huge Boy with Frog, created by Charles Ray. This cast stainless steel and acrylic polyurethane statue measures eight feet in height. It evokes our modern sense of ancient marble sculpture. A monumental scale, which in antiquity would have been reserved for a Roman emperor, is applied to the sense of discovery of an adolescent boy.

Boy with Frog anchors the Embracing the Contemporary exhibit. But in some respects, the insistent "voices" of other works on view are nearly overwhelmed by this towering sculpture.

5 Postcards is an example of a work that could easily be overlooked is the ensemble of paintings. Fortunately, the artist, Jasper Johns, has plenty of name recognition. Johns is also a personal friend of Keith and Katherine Sachs, who collect his work in depth.

Jasper Johns, 5 Postcards, 2011

So there's not much of a chance that the superb examples of Johns' oeuvre in the Sachs' collection will be undervalued. But 5 Postcards is a work filled subtle insight. A quick glance, however admiring, just won't do it justice.

Johns used imagery, both familiar and ambiguous, to explore a situation from five different contexts. It is like interviewing five different people who have viewed the same incident from five different vantage points. Everyone involved will have seen the ghostly outlines of children and adults, the ladder, the towel and then come up with five different explanations. 

Anne Lloyd, Detail of 5 Postcards by Jasper Johns, 2011

The key to 5 Postcards are the Rubin vases displayed on each.The Rubin vase is a visual device created by Danish psychologist, Edgar Rubin, to test human perception.The outlines of the vases form inverted profiles of unidentified people. But just who are they? Isn't that Pablo Picasso's face on several of the Rubin vases or is it Uncle Harry? Your guess is as good as mine.

Modern art is not about certitude but questioning. Johns became famous - and in some circles notorious - with his variations on the theme of the American flag. The Stars and Stripes was an example of “things the mind already knows” Johns declared. The multiple variations of the flag depictions and the five postcard scenes affirm the importance of searching for meaning.  At the same time, the possibility of finding an answer, THE answer, is cast into doubt.

Keith and Katherine Sachs began collecting art in 1970 and among their first acquisitions were works from the immediate post-1945 era, by Franz Kline and Louise Bourgeois. The art of the Abstract Expressionist evidently held little appeal for the Sachs. Instead, they favored works by Ellsworth Kelly who was one of the painters who reacted against the idea that Abstract Expressionism was the definitive American art form.

Kelly, a World War II veteran, studied art in Europe after the war. Fascinated by Romanesque architecture, he hearkened back to the very roots of art. He reached deep within himself, as well, to create art that had an "object quality"  which needed no elaborate explanations. Harris quoted Kelly's terse commentary in American Visions:

"Instead of making a picture that was an interpretation of a thing seen, or a picture of an invented content, I found an object and " presented" it as itself alone."

Anne Lloyd, Galley View showing Ellsworth Kelly's Black Red Orange and Red Green Blue at the Embracing the Contemporary Exhibit

Standing in front of Kelly's Black Red Orange and Red Green Blue enabled me to to connect with the voice of art, directly and without story-line. I was very moved by Kelly's "Matissean ... joy of color" and  conscious of  the "presences" which Kelly's works  summon to the exhibit gallery.

Kelly, Johns and Marden are "gold-standard" artists. So too are other contemporary artists, Gerhard Richter and Howard Hodgkin, whose works are represented in depth in the exhibit. Keith and Kathy Sachs have reached out personally to many of these artists. Their astute selection of quality art is matched by an openness to the ideas and ideals of the artists.

In recent years, Keith and Katherine Sachs have widened the parameters of their collecting to include film and video. A rotating selection of the video portion of the Sachs Collection will  be presented in the exhibit, beginning with Static, Steve McQueen's helicopter-filmed meditation on the Statue of Liberty and the dangers posed to liberty by the national security apparatus of the post-9/11 world.

Diversity is the overarching hallmark of the Sachs collection. This is true, both in the works of art collected and the emotional responses these evoke. There is a real sense, however, of a unifying "presence" in the way that seemingly unrelated pieces of the Sachs collection are integrated. A wall-text of the exhibition provides insight on how Keith and Kathy Sachs envision their collection.

Keith and Kathy Sachs describe their collection as a symphony: “All the different elements work together to create a cohesive whole,” says Keith. In Kathy’s view, the differences among the individual artworks “open up a dialogue.”

Dan Flavin's light sculpture and Joel Shapiro bronze relate so beautifully together in the exhibit that one would have thought that these works were part of a joint commission. And yet they are utterly dissimilar in creative methods.

Anne Lloyd, Joel Shapiro's Untitled, 1989-90 (left) and Dan Flavin's Diagonal,1963

Flavin (1933-96) like Marden had a mid-career change of focus. He abandoned painting to create striking works using  fluorescent light tubes to create works that were both painterly and sculptural in effect. This example of Flavin's work was dedicated to the great art historian, Robert Rosenblum, whom Flavin admired.

Shapiro acknowledged both present and past in his untitled work. His bronze sculpture appears to be a component of an industrial superstructure. However, if you look closely, you will see that Shapiro is depicting beams of timber, the wood "grain" cleverly added as part of the casting process. Shapiro's sculpture evokes organic materials and hand-made human labor. Paired with the flaring light of Flavin's Diagonal, Shapiro's work registers a striking, unforgettable impact.

The brilliant juxtaposition of Flavin's and Shapiro's works is a testament to the outstanding curatorial skill of Carlos Basualdo, the curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He has worked closely with Keith and Katherine Sachs to develop their collection which they have long envisioned bequeathing to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I could continue to pile-on praise and superlatives upon Embracing the Contemporary. Such accolades certainly would be well deserved.  However, a work small in size and easily passed-by will serve to conclude this review.

As I examined the works in Embracing the Contemporary, I was repeatedly touched on an intuitive level where theme, style, language, etc., did not operate - or need to. This level of appreciation begins in childhood. The astonishing miniature work by Charles LeDray, Toy Chest, speaks directly to this primal moment in human lives.

Anne Lloyd, Photo of Toy Chest, 2005–6, by Charles LeDray

LeDray is a hugely accomplished artist of a "small is beautiful world." Each toy in this tiny box is hand-crafted. A bewildering amount of materials were used - wood, wire, metal, gold‑plated chain, screws, epoxy resin, fabric, synthetic fur, leather, etc. etc. An enormous amount of patience and meticulous skill were devoted to this small wonder.

I had a similar wooden toy box made by my father many years ago. It too was stuffed with play things - not as well cared for as those in LeDray's box. Except for a couple of threadbare survivors, all the toys and my toy box are long gone. It's amazing how many of these vanished treasures I can recall, when I set my mind to it.

Anne Lloyd, Detail of Toy Chest by Charles LeDray, 2005-2006

Looking at LeDray's wondrous work of art, I was stuck by the thought that we begin to collect memories as children and continue to do so throughout our lives. This in turn leads to a point when we are moved to share our emotional riches with others.

At this moment, the "art instinct" takes tangible form.This is the genesis of the creative urge that finds all manner and ways of expression.

I suspect that the Keith and Katherine Sachs first approached art collecting from this level of caring and sharing - and still do.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Anne Lloyd

Introductory Image:                                                                                                       Anne Lloyd, Detail of Red Ground Letter, 2007-2010, by Brice Marden. Oil on canvas, 6 × 8 feet (182.9 × 243.8 cm). Collection of Keith L. & Katherine Sachs. Digital photo, 2016 
                                                                                                                                
Anne Lloyd, Photo of Keith and Katherine Sachs at the Embracing the Contemporary Exhibit, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Digital Photo, 2016

Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015) Black Red Orange, 1966. Oil on canvas, two joined panels, Promised gift of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs. © Ellsworth Kelly, Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery

Anne Lloyd, Gallery View Showing Red Ground Letter, 2007-2010, by Brice Marden. Oil on canvas, 6 × 8 feet (182.9 × 243.8 cm). Collection of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs. Digital photo, 2016

Anne Lloyd, Photo of Boy with Frog, 2008, by Charles Ray. Cast stainless steel and acrylic polyurethane. Collection of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs. Digital photograph

Jasper Johns (American, born 1930) 5 Postcards, 2011. Oil and graphite on canvas, Encaustic on canvas,  Promised gift of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs. © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery

Anne Lloyd, Photo of 5 Postcards, (detail) 2011, by Jasper Johns. Oil and graphite on canvas,  Encaustic on canvas.  Collection of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs. Digital photograph, 2016

Anne Lloyd, Gallery view of the Embracing the Contemporary Exhibit, showing Elsworth Kelly's Black Red Orange and Red Green Blue, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Digital Photo, 2016

Anne Lloyd, Gallery view of the Embracing the Contemporary Exhibit, showing Dan Flavin's Diagonal of May 25,1963 (to Robert Rosenblum), Fluorescent light tube,1963, and Joel Shapiro's Untitled, Bronze, 1989-90. Collection of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs. Digital photograph, 2016

Anne Lloyd, Photo of Toy Chest, 2005–6, by Charles LeDray. Wood and mixed media. Collection of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs. Digital photograph, 2016

Anne Lloyd, Photo of Toy Chest,(detail) 2005–6, by Charles LeDray. Wood and mixed media. Collection of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs. Digital photograph, 2016

Art Eyewitness Book Review: Art Since 1989 by Kelly Grovier

Art Since 1989

By Kelly Grovier

Thames & Hudson / 224 pages / $21.95

               

Reviewed by Ed Voves

This year, one of my New Year's resolutions is to pay more attention to contemporary art and to achieve a greater degree of insight and empathy for the Artists of Today.

To be honest, that was on my list of New Year's resolutions for 2015 and also for 2014.
Thanks to the latest volume in Thames and Hudson's World of Art series, Art Since 1989, I have a good chance of keeping my resolution in 2016. 

Art Since 1989 is not merely a worthy addition to this invaluable series. Written by Kelly Grovier, Art Since 1989 is one of the most intelligent and thoughtful books I have read in recent years. Brilliantly correlating political events and social trends with developments in the visual arts, this wide-ranging survey is rooted in the real world. Even as it probes visionary art theories, it keeps the reader's feet firmly planted on the ground.

Grovier is a notable poet and a perceptive scholar of the Romantic era of the late 1700's and early 1800's - also a tradition-shattering  period much like today.

The span of art history covered by Grovier's book begins in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. This momentous event were symbolized by the spectacular,Wrapped Reichstag, planned by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1971 to protest the division of Berlin by the Cold War. By the time permission was granted to place a vast, temporary curtain of aluminum-coated polypropylene fabric over the German parliament building in 1995, Germany was finally united.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag, 1995

The Christo "wrap" was a mighty work, a human-constructed butterfly's chrysalis symbolizing reunification and harmony. But Wrapped Reichstag, as an appealing work of art, easily understood by people around the world, is the exception to the rule of contemporary art.

Grovier starts out by making an especially cogent point on the truly "shock of the new" aspect of contemporary art. We now live in an era which lacks a coherent ideology or a galvanizing "movement." There is in the art world of today no "overiding style, technique or attitude governing artistic practice..."

The art of the discredited Marxist regimes, Socialist Realism, is defunct. Hip "do your own thing" art is now a Madison Ave branding technique. Left-wing and right-wing have fallen, burying the central canons of art beneath the debris.

Art's revolutionary role has paradoxically taken a hit as well. Grovier writes, "Without an orthodoxy to resist, there can of course be no avant-garde - no overthrowing of an old order by a new one." 

The long reign of King "Ism" is over! Long live ...?

Antony Gormley, Horizon Field, 2010-2012

In a way, we are like the intriguing cast-iron figures of Antony Gormley's landscape installation, Horizon Field, watching to see who will pick up the scepter of King "Ism."

Grovier refrains from nominating any artists or art movements to fill the vacant throne. There is a note of irony here because Art Since 1989 recalls an earlier book by Grovier. This book documents selected works of contemporary art which Grovier contends are likely to stand the test of time. Also published by Thames & Hudson, 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age is a lavishly illustrated, big format volume with lively discussions of Grovier's chosen masterpieces. 

I was impressed with a number of Grovier's choices - notably Subodh Gupta's apocalyptic sculpture, Line of Control. Yet, Grovier's commentary on the "end of Art History," in terms similar to that noted above, argued against the idea that works of art made for a consumer society could outlive their creators' fifteen minutes of fame. 
   
Art Since 1989, by contrast, succeeds in addressing any lingering doubts about the enduring value of contemporary art. Not only is it filled with challenging insights, but Grovier's new book imparts a sense of coherence and relevance to the study of present-day art that seemed lacking in 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age. 

Grovier brilliantly makes the case that contemporary art legitimately addresses great themes of humanity and of our natural environment. He begins each of his chapters with cogent analysis of a major political event or scientific discovery, like the Hubble Space Telescope which was launched into orbit in 1990. Grovier then traces the effect of these developments on the creative achievements of contemporary artists.

In terms of political and social impact, the Feminist Movement and the global resurgence of Islam are among the most influential developments of recent times. These two dynamic forces came into prominence in the 1970's. Their cultural impact took a while to be felt as a generation of artists first absorbed and then reacted, pro or con, to the messages they impart.

In the case of Shirin Neshat, a talented Iranian-American photographer and film maker (b. 1957), that involved asserting herself in relation to both feminism and Islam. Neshat's family belonged to the Westernizing elite of Iran under the Shah. She was sent to study in the U.S, as feminism opened new creative venues for women and then as the radical form of Islam preached by the Ayatollah Khomeini suppressed many of the gains women had made in Iranian society since the Second World War.

Neshat eventually left Iran in 1975 to live in the U.S. Rebellious Silence, 1994, is perhaps Neshat's most famous photograph but it is a deeply ambivalent work. The Islamic veil, forced upon the female population of Iran by the male religious elite, is abhorrent to many in the West. Yet, the veil has actually been embraced by many Muslim women as a means of liberating them from being treated a sex-objects in a world where the degradation of women shows no sign of weakening. 

Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, 1994

Likewise, the rifle may - or may not - symbolize the political subjugation of women. Given the position of the gun barrel, it is hard to say if the woman is embracing the weapon or have it thrust in her face. 

The words of a poem on the theme of martyrdom, written by a woman poet (Tahereh Saffarzadeh) and superimposed on Neshat's face, are hard to gauge as well. They may express Neshat's empathy with the fortitude of the people of Iran during the horrendous war with Iraq, 1980-1988, when nearly a million Iranians were killed by bombs and weapons supplied by the Western powers to  the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein.

What does Neshat say about Rebellious Silence?

"From the beginning I made a decision that this work was not going to be about me or my opinions on the subject," Neshat declared, "and that my position was going to be no position." 

Far from being an evasive "cop-out" or a skillful repackaging of moral relativism, Neshat is encouraging, indeed forcing, the viewer, to directly engage with the content of her picture.

Neshat's reply, courageous and self-denying, establishes one of the central facets of contemporary art. The viewer, the gallery goer, is going to have to decide the meaning of the painting or the sculpture, the installation or the multi-media presentation - for themselves.

Given the deliberately challenging - and occasionally offensive - nature of much of contemporary art, it is not surprising that many people react negatively to the art scene of today. Grovier writes: 

So dubious are many sectors of society of the integrity of the very enterprise of making contemporary art that the achievement of artists is either condescendingly diminished ('my five-year-old could have done that') or dismissed altogether as an embarrassingly failed attempt even to operate within the unruly rules of the genre: 'yes, but is it art?'

Grovier goes on to note that many contemporary artists deal with this social 
stigmatization by emphasizing "the connections between scientific and aesthetic inquiry."
In some cases, this involves audacious initiatives using "cutting-edge" technology to express emotional and spiritual values. Doug Aitken's Mirror, installed on the facade of the Seattle Art Museum in 2013, uses a  computerized LED screen to show constantly changing images "synchronized to the changing tempo of the city itself."                           

Grovier also examines how contemporary artists are exploring the interfaces between art and other creative disciplines, literature and music. Two works by outstanding painters, Cy Twombly (1928-2011) and Christopher Le Brun (b.1951) show the process of  cultural "cross-pollination" at work.

Christopher Le Brun, Walton, 2013

Le Brun, in his painting entitled Walton, evokes the 1954 opera, Troilus and Cressida, by Sir William Walton. Le Brun, who was elected as President of the Royal Academy in 2011, started this work by painting Walton's name and those of his protagonists on to the canvas. Layer upon layer of searing red paint were then applied, until the names were nearly obliterated. 

"Nearly" is the operative word here. Somehow, the names of Walton and the two doomed lovers from ancient Troy manage to emerge from the sea of red. Culture, the creative expression of humankind, makes its presence felt, swimming to the surface like a survivor of a shipwreck. 

Toward the end of his long career, Cy Twombly exhibited a quintet of wall-sized paintings of roses which lead the viewer's gaze to scrawled quotations from Rainier Maria Rilke's 1949 poem cycle, The Roses. 

Cy Twombly, Rose (IV), 2008

These awesome works of representation art, so at odds with much of Twombly's Abstractionism are simply dazzling. When Twombly's Rose paintings were first shown at the Gagosian Gallery, the walls vibrated with vivid color. Blooms of deep crimson resonated in the cavernous gallery along with gold, purple and midnight blue.   
        
Image and word were united in Twombly's Rose paintings with an epic scope worthy of the great masters of the past. These are truly the work of a great master of the present age.

These sensational paintings are proof that John Keats' theory of "negative capability" is still worthy of consideration in the twenty-first century. Contemporary artists like Twombly, Le Brun, Doug Aitken and Shirin Neshat are indeed "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." 

Looking at Twombly's Rose IV and the great works of art discussed in Art Since 1989 shows us that the basic truth of Keats' theories on creative achievement still holds true:

The excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images Courtesy of Thames & Hudson 

Introductory Image: Art Since 1989, 2015 (cover) Image credit: Thames & Hudson 

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag, 1971–95. 100,000 square meters (1,076,000 square feet) of polypropylene fabric and 15,600 meters (51,181 feet) of rope. Photo Wolfgang Volz. © Christo 1995

Antony Gormley, Horizon Field, August 2010–April 2012.100 cast-iron elements, each 189 x 53 x 29 cm (74 ⅜ x 20 ⅞ x 11 ⅜ in), spread over an area of 150 square kilometers (detail). Installation view, the High Alps, Vorlarlberg, Austria. Presented by Kunsthaus Bregenz. Photograph by Makus Tretter. Antony Gormley and Kunsthaus Bregenz

100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age, 2013 (cover) Image credit: Thames & Hudson 

Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, from the series Women of Allah, 1994. Black-and-white, resin coated print with ink,  Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Photo Cynthia Preston. © Shirin Neshat


Christopher Le Brun, Walton, 2013. Oil on canvas, 240 x 170 cm (94 ½ x 66 ⅞ in).             Courtesy of the artist.

Cy Twombly, Rose (IV), 2008.Acrylic on wood panel, 252 x 740 cm (99 3/16 x 291 5/16 in)Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photo Mike Bruce. © Cy Twombly Foundation