Artwalk Gallery Writing Assignment
I missed the gallery “crawl,” so this paper reflects my sojourn into Saturday morning sobriety.
Melissa Morgan Fine Art. What a delightful find, a Clem Greenberg nirvana with an entire room devoted to his beloved “Post Painterly Color Field” painting. Perhaps taking a page out of the Arnason “playbook,” the Frankenthaler/Louis-inspired collection adjoins an Ellsworth Kelly-inspired “Hard-Edge” work which is also informed by Barrett Newman’s reductiveness.
UPDATE: March 23, 2011. J. Willcot is under new, tasteful management, but I'm leaving the post to demonstrate how bad things can get. J. Willcot. Schlock-decorative division. These works are purposefully designed for the culturally-vacuous wealthy. If you examine local demographics it becomes evident why Philistines trump Bohemians. Take Indian Wells, for example, http://zipskinny.com/index.php?zip=92210 boasting a nearly $100,000 (per the 2000 census, it’s much higher now) median household income while a whopping 60% of adults (age 25+) fail to complete a four year college program. Compare against Cambridge , MA US cities by creating an income/education ratio chart, Indian Wells would stand out for having more money than brains while Cambridge
Imago Galleries. This free-standing postmodern structure contains monumental art too large for in-line stores. While definitely more sophisticated than “Casa Schlocko,” supra, I managed to overhear a couple chatting with a salesperson. Apparently, they had earnestly contemplated “art” and arrived armed with a “sophisticated” pallet including specific requirements. What artistic requirements? It had to fit on their Philistinian wall.
Despite the more-money-than-brains crowd, the collection is noteworthy. One piece leaped in my face.
Jun Kaneko
“Untitled Head” 2007
Cast Bronze
69 x 59 x 47 inches
[see attached]
This large, semi-smooth, head-shaped sculpture is devoid of facial features: no eyes, nose, mouth or even ears. An Archimedean/arithmetic (evenly spaced) patina spiral envelops the entire volume. This Op-Art spiral (is the swirl dark bordered by light or visa versa?) forces the observer’s gaze to its terminus, the centrally located “snakehead.”
* * *
Untitled Head denies evolutionary psychology, our primordial and universal expectation of two-eyed creatures. We anticipate hemispherical symmetry; eyes reflect and incarnate humanity. Whether love or hate, deception or joy, it’s all in the eyes… both of them. Eyelessness, cyclopsism and all manner of ocular abnormality unsettles us. Just think of the discomfort one may experience while conversing with strabismustics (people with crossed or wandering eyes). Also, eyes portray life and death. See Picasso’s near-death Self Portrait, 1972) (20.5).
Untitled Head evokes emotional disturbance. It obliterates visage with vertiginous spiral creating a retina-visceral reaction. I doubt other abstract designs, e.g., a mandala, or a nature-inspired spiral, e.g., the Greek “golden mean”/nautilus would provoke a similar response. As we search vainly for missing eyes, a vortex actuates our “extra-ocular” muscles jerking us cross-eyed. We become what we fear: the strabismustic. Vertigo may follow, head and guts reel.
Swirls generally activate primal fears, e.g., drowning in a maelstrom, falling down from vertiginous dervishing, and falling down from, or being killed by, cyclonic winds. Swirls can create a reality unsettling to the observer. See Munch, The Scream (5.18), and van Gogh’s ostensibly pleasing, but nevertheless disturbing Starry Night.
Several additional factors may contribute to a visceral response. 1) The central “snakehead” unleashes our primatial fear of snakes, 2) The mask-like qualities of the spiral serves to both obscure a “hidden enemy” while simultaneously eliciting an empathic response as the spiral “mask” “muzzles” the mouthless and suffocating person within, and 3) The “snakehead” is located at the intuitively powerful point of Ajna, the “third-eye” located on the forehead between the brows.
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