Portraits of Some Human Interest at the Whitney
Can't say that I was thrilled by the exhibit, Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney's Collection (runs through February 12, 2017). The geographical limitations of the American collection are a problem: One yearns for some portraits from outside our borders. I also wished for more paintings. The photographic contributions are important but I missed paint and the very special thing it can do when an artist works with another person in a studio. And maybe there are simply too many pieces spread over these two floors. Although the curators created a thematic scheme that should have provided some sort of guide and order, I too often wondered why a piece was in one section and not in other sections I had just seen. Too many pieces fall into too many of the curators' slots. Their scheme is not very useful. No question, there are interesting ideas about American portraiture at work here, but they didn't strike me as especially original. I have read these ideas before and seen them effectively illustrated.
One last complaint: The prime grand gallery space given to the larger than life statue of the artist Julian Schnabel. These days, I have had my fill of larger than life male figures. The only thing that drew a smile (or maybe it was a smirk) is that the statue is actually a burning candle and will someday melt down to nothing. But then, when it does, the curators with replace it with yet another larger than life male figure. At least, I can be thankful that the statue candle doesn't have orange hair.
All that said, I can't say I wasn't glad to have seen the show. There were some pieces that inspired long looking and new ways of thinking and feeling about how people depict other people; pieces that I wanted to learn more about after leaving the museum. Here are just a few of those from the exhibit.
Grace Hartigan, Grand Street Brides, 1954.
Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) is known as an abstract painter but, given her use of everyday objects in her work, is also connected with the pop movement. The above is a painting of mannequins from one of the many bridal shop windows Haritgan saw in her Lower East Side neighborhood. I like the combination of the abstract and the figurative in her work, the way portraits emerge out of the swirl of big, bold gestures, and wild, experimental brushwork. There is lots of drama and energy here, you see a painter working hard to get it right. I also like the monumental quality of the painting. That involves more than just its large size of 72 9/16" by 102 3/8". It reminds me of those grand old master paintings in art history -- those portraits of aristocratic family groups. I read later that Hartigan based the composition on Goya's portrait of the Royal Family of Charles IV, circa 1800. She was well recognized as a painter and as a teacher of painters.
"Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the
world that has been given to me in chaos."
Grace Hartigan
John Sonsini, Byron & Ramiro, 2008.
Since 2001, John Sonsini has been painting mostly Latino short term day laborers who work in and around Los Angeles. He finds the men at hiring sites and contracts them to pose for him at hourly rates. The two men he portrays here are breathing. They have none of the lifelessness, alienated gazes, and anonymity of Hartigan's brides. These two men are two distinctive people who connect with us. The viewer feels immediately engaged with them as individuals. We want to know more about them and about their suitcases. What are these men trying to tell us with their eyes and stances? Where are the men coming from and going to with those large bags? What is in the suitcases? We feel concerned about them, and know their lives are not easy. This is also a large canvas (80" x 84"). There is room in it for the men, the painter, and for us.
“ ...painting a portrait is already political.
“For me painting the portrait is about recreating the sensation of presence, the experience of having the sitter in my studio. ”
And then, there was this portrait:
Andrea Zittel, A to Z 1993 Living Unit, 1993.
Andrea Zittel (1965-) is an artist living in California who explores objects and spaces for living, interested in displaying structures that speak of who we are through what and how we live. I am intrigued by this as a form of portraiture -- a person depicted through the objects that constitute her or his living environment (remember the suitcases in the Sonsini painting). For Zittel, who was living in a 200 square foot Brooklyn apartment when she made this piece, the installation represents the necessities: Only just what one has to have in a living space (folding bed and seat, toaster oven, two notepads, a sweater, digital clock, two bowls, etc.).
There are anti-materialist, anti-consumerist statements here that are well spoken to a society that needs to hear them. And Zittel's portrait provokes other political questions and the hope for other political statements through portraits.
Here are my musings. This piece was done in 1993, many years ago, when there were not as many people forced to live nomadic lives, forced to carry only just the essentials with them, if they are lucky enough to do that. What might a portrait dedicated to the living environments of refugees look like?
“ Art, to me, is all about perception. Historically, it was usually a form of visual perception, but now this has expanded to a more cognitive kind of perception. An artwork allows you to understand something in a new way.”
