Monthly Archives: February 2022

Feb11

Abstract Expressionism

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Abstract Expressionism

A few days ago, Linda Loveland Reid gave a wonderful talk on Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns as a fundraiser for the Sebastopol Center for the arts. As I though about Abstract Expressionism and its impact on artists, I sent this Email to Linda.

I have been thinking about what you said about Abstract Expressionism. I remember Judy Chicago’s rage at being excluded from prestige museums despite producing art that seemed to be exactly what they defined. The ones we saw at the DeYoung show were “perfect.”

Judy Chicago Abstract Impressionism

I think the art establishment used the stringent intellectual shibboleths as a way to exclude people they didn’t like — clangorous Judy Chicago, for example, or not-straight white males like Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The Art Establishment clinging to their elite status was like trying to hold a wolf by the ears.

Their forceful superiority got knocked down so far that the neo-Dadaists were supplanted by Pop artists. And yet two prime examples of tall, slim, elegant, educated, congenial, social male artists are Diebenkorn and Jeff Koons. I never could figure out why Koons got away with the stuff he peddled until I saw him speak on a panel at the Getty Museum in Malibu as part of their “Plato” show. The Getty was actually displaying his “Play-Doh” as part of the exhibition ancient Greek and Roman art as a play-on-words. The room-size sculpture is made of enameled aluminum, and yet somehow it seemed to smell like the children’s toy.

Koons Play Dough

When elegant, refined Koons spoke, I could see why the new-money in L.A. swooned over him. It really felt, to me, like “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Koons’s work made me long for abstract expressionism in all its christian-white-male-chauvinist glory.

Feb3

Agency – Feminist Art

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Agency – Feminist Art

Agency Feminist Art
Linda treated me to a visit to the Sonoma County Art Museum to see the feminist art exhibit. It was great and had much more READING than I expected. My favorite was the video of balloons pinned to a wall, each with a different positive personal attribute including “sexy” and “cute.” Eventually, all the unnecessary attributes were exploded except the only ones that count in a patriarchal, narcissistic, addicted world. It was funny.

The main building had an interesting display of old-time things like a really heavy canoe, old pictures of the area as a resort for the wealthy San Franciscans, and a telephone switchboard. I liked this yellow sculpture in the courtyard between the two buildings.

Feb1

Book: A Gentleman in Moscow

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Book: A Gentleman in Moscow


The Metropol Hotel in Moscow (above), scene of Amor Towles “A Gentleman In Moscow” which was recommended by two members of the OLLI Art Club. The gentleman in the title spends most of his life there under house arrest by the Soviets. At more than 460 pages, it took me a month to read but now I understand how it got on the NYTimes reader-generated list of 25 Best Books.

I wrote to my art club friend, saying “I just finished “Book Two” of the books-within-the-book and I see an interesting pattern. “The Bishop,” the waiter who didn’t know much about wine but pompously gave bad advice anyway, just got the central committee to remove all the labels from the wine bottles in the cellar. The Count remembers a time he tried to … I don’t know — motivate? — the Bishop to do better, but apparently the Bishop took offense and spent years plotting his revenge against the Count for making him feel bad.

And the Hussar, who gobbled up all the roast beef and drank too much wine, then gambled with the Count, lost big, and fled from the table to “return his dinner to the field from which it came” spent years plotting his revenge for the Count publicly tearing up the Hussar’s marker. He wooed the Count’s sister, and on her birthday ravaged her maid. He might have ravaged the sister but the Count was there to visit. The Count shot the Hussar but failed to kill him. Apparently the Hussar had taken offense and spent years plotting his revenge for the Count making him feel bad.

Is the writer saying something about the grandiosity of the nobility trying to pass itself off as virtue and the resentment of the proletariat? Is he trying to say something about how to defend oneself from a narcissist? The Count was dignified and civil, but did he treat the Bishop and the Hussar with respect? I wonder what the author is implying. Any thoughts? Is this resolved in Book Three?

My friend replied with this link to a talk Amor Towles gave at the Pequot Library. After watching the author speak about what was going on in Russia at the time the Gentleman was there, I realize how brilliant Amor Towles is. The talk provided no spoilers for those who had not yet read the book, and filled in so much for the people who enjoyed the thick book.