s
edy
Connie for tea; “Why you kill your wife the back of such careless talk?”, her sharp m of Shakespearean criticism, brings him short. “English audiences have a prejudice in our of European features”, states one of se damaging reviews, although it goes on concede that on the night in question the dience applauded and the manager could y announce that Aldridge would be repeathis Othello, despite his “faulty” declaman: “false emphasis, incorrect readings, and . vulgarisms of pronunciation” (antimericanism is at work here, too, perhaps), hough Lester, as ever, delivers his lines so oothly that it is difficult to believe that his dridge ever had a rough edge to his techue. Red Velvet does not suggest that such iews were wholly the product of prejudice ence its own handkerchief scene, acknowlging Aldridge’s supposed limitations. But akrabarti does give him some of the trapgs of tragedy, dressing him up, finally, not Othello but King Lear (“they told me I was erything; ’tis a lie”) – an old man cheated his place at the heart of things. The director, Indhu Rubasingham, has ivened Red Velvet with touches such as ift, dance-like scene changes and having mbers of the company making up or seemto talk in their dressing room to stageht. Entertaining and fast-moving though it however, the most powerful scene is also simplest, as Aldridge and his manager, an friend who ultimately has to betray him sacking him, circle one another on a bare, akly lit stage. With this reluctant Judas, sing on society’s condemnation of its saccial victim, the true history of Ira Aldridge mpletes its metamorphosis into myth.
drian Lester as Ira Aldridge
17
Joyous, pointless information JUDITH FLANDERS
snapping march it is impossible not to be cheered by, even as the rational mind accepts that its purpose is to indicate lack of purpose. The “Thesaurus Paintings”, for which Bochner is perhaps best known, are a partial return to the list-portraits of the 1960s, but in the intervening decades these works dating from the 1990s to the present have been expanded and universalized. Their frequently bright, almost circus-like colours prime our emotions and senses with one story, while the words create another for the logical and rational parts of our brains. Bochner has taken art-historical dichotomies – the tensions between perspective and the picture
“Blah, Blah, Blah” (detail), 2011, by Mel Bochner plane, between figurative and abstract art – and transformed them into threads of language and colour, meaning and emotion. He thinks of his work, he says, not as finished or unfinished, but as a process. To him, the images are gerunds, verbs that function as nouns, both doing and done, at one and the same time. The words in these paintings are initially taken from the thesaurus; Bochner then selects, adds, refines and expands. (The catalogue shows some of the artist’s working
drawings, marvels of nuanced attention to gradations of meaning, as well as of calligraphic complexity.) In general, the order they finally appear in moves from formal to demotic, from urbane to vulgar – from “Master of the universe” to “Gotcha by the balls”, from “Nothing. Negation” to “Pffft”. Many of the paintings are psychological pen portraits of a busy, buzzy, constantly chattering world of despair, even as the colours that embody the words glow and shimmer and vibrate with happiness. The way “Oh Well” (2010) starts
one can fail to recognize the reality of the world his words depict. The Whitechapel Gallery has done Bochner proud with this beautifully mounted, carefully selected exhibition, the first major showing in Britain of an essential, essentialist artist. For this show he has painted a vast (2.8 x 5.3 metres) entry piece: “Blah, Blah, Blah”, it tells us, forty times over. Here the squidgy, smudgy letters replicate only too starkly the contentless content we are all forced to endure daily. “Your call is important to us, please hold” is perhaps the ultimate abstraction – meaning without meaning anything at all. Blah blah blah.
Mel Bochner IF THE COLOUR CHANGES Whitechapel Gallery, until December 30
M
el Bochner, one of the founders of the conceptual art movement (his 1966 show, Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed as Art, included the work of Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt and Robert Smithson and has been called the first conceptual art exhibition), is gripped by classification, by the shapes that general laws or principles impose on their material. Patterns, sequences, numbers, measurements – all are used to create a scaffolding to carry ideas, just as punctuation, paragraphs and chapter breaks do for writers. Born in Pittsburgh in 1940, Bochner imbibed the idea of information delivery from a childhood spent as the son of a signpainter. Some of his earliest works (not on display in this otherwise extraordinarily fine, even thrilling, exhibition) are shaped inked lists that describe, sum up, and subvert the characters of his friends and influences. “Portrait of Borges” is a squared off spiral of lettering that spins around an empty centre, beginning “STRAIGHT LINE, DIRECT LINE, BEE LINE, STRAIGHT COURSE, SHORT CUT, HAVE NO TURNING”, even as, Borges-like, the words jauntily turn in the middle of that last phrase. The portrait of his friend Ad Reinhardt is blunter, moving from “QUIESCENCE STILLNESS QUIETNESS QUIETUDE CALMNESS” to “STANDSTILL STAND STOP DEADLOCK INERT INERTIA PASSIVENESS TORPID” through “SMOTHER STIFLED” before returning to more positive traits. Bochner may have used minimalist tools, but there is never any doubt about the sensations his work intends to arouse. “Theory of Painting”, a large installation piece of 1969–70, sees Yves Klein blue paint sprayed on to newsprint spread across the floor. Lettering on the walls presents the possibilities for abstraction as either/or: “Cohere / Disperse”, “Disperse / Cohere”, “Cohere / Cohere”, “Disperse / Disperse”. That is, one can have a coherent figure on a dispersed background, a dispersed figure on a coherent background, a coherent figure on a coherent background, or a dispersed figure on a dispersed background. If at the time this was understood as a map for the future, it must have seemed mighty depressing. But now, in retrospect, it is clear that it was, instead, a rejection of the past, particularly of the rigid Clement Greenbergian formula of the purpose and function of abstraction. For, says Bochner’s work, if language is our mind, then colour is our body; if language is meaning and thought, then colour is emo-
18
A grand aesthetic sweep arts
tion and sensation. This comes together most brilliantly in “Event Horizon” (1998), where a year we have witnessedare the eighty-three ithin standard-sized canvases of two of theacrylics, world’s covered withreopening shop-bought, unmixed great collections of that Protean and assembled into a random-seeming row of subject, “IslamicThe Art”, a term so together sweeping sizes and shapes. whole is tied someline waysrunning so specific its meaning byyeta inwhite downin the centre that itatstill defiesintervals, definition. Oneoff of athe most which, irregular marks series diagnostic The tests length is probably the ofbasic measurements. of the still piece most effective: you know it when you see (nearly 30 metres) means that the viewer is it. And see it we certainly can, at the Metroobliged to stand some way off to see it in its politan before Museum in New Yorkand after nearly entirety, moving closer, walking ten years’ closure, and out at the along its length to work the Louvre system, after or almost as long, where the new form non-system, of measurement. Thegalleries standardizaa conclusion to the twenty-year enterprise tion of colour and canvas is counterbalanced “lehand-drawn grand Louvre”. byofthe nature of the numbers and use ofin the The Met bets over thevisible the white line,hedged and theitsbrushstrokes term, “Islamic”, preferring “Galleriesbyofthe the the acrylic; the pointless information Art ofjoyous the Arab Lands, Iran,moves Central sheer shout of Turkey, colour that Asia and later South Asia”, though the volacross the wall. “Event Horizon” is the heart accompanying thepromiscuous, opening referred unofume Bochner: a vibrant, kneeabashedly to “the of Islamic snapping march it is Department impossible not to be Art”. Sophie the director of the cheered by, evenMakariou, as the rational mind accepts that its purpose is to indicate lack of purpose. The “Thesaurus Paintings”, for which Bochner is perhaps best known, are a partial return to the list-portraits of the 1960s, but in the intervening decades these works dating from the 1990s to the present have been expanded and universalized. Their frequently bright, almost circus-like colours prime our emotions and senses with one story, while the words create another for the logical and rational parts of our brains. Bochner has taken art-historical dichotomies – the tensions between perspective and the picture
W
JANE JAKEMAN
away, now extend in great silky stretches of rich colour. The Islamic department has taken the LOUVRE – ISLAMIC GALLERIES opportunity not only to have major works Sophie Makariou, editor cleaned and restored but to re-consider matLES ARTS DE L’ISLAM ters such as dating and the reading of inscripAU MUSÉE DU LOUVRE tions, making the catalogue accompanying 550pp. Paris: Hazan. ¤39. the opening a valuable academic contribu978 2 75410 619 1 tion. Thus it has been possible, inter alia, for Gwenaëlle Fellinger to revise the attribution Islamic department of the Louvre, has care- of a celebrated fourteenth-century enamelled fully qualified the French understanding of flask and for Claire Déléry to further research the term: in French, “islam” designates the the provenance of the “Lion de Mazon”, an religion and “Islam” the civilization, the iconic Andalusian fountain-head which the respective adjectives being “musulman” and new galleries have adopted as their emblem. “islamique”. In Paris, we are unequivocally Like the arrangement within the galleries, in the presence of the second version. And the book is divided into four broadly chronowhereas the Met, as the new title implies, logical sections plus a fifth, “Les Arts du broke up its display into a number of sec- Livre”. The four areas are not inflexibly tions, the Louvre has gone for the grand arranged according to regional cultures but sweep. If there was any Blah, patronizing doubt see thebydevelopment of an early artistic unity “Blah, Blah” (detail), 2011, Mel Bochner about the status of “applied art”, it is ban- within the Arab territories, moving towards ished here by two huge galleries, which make the emergence of elites and regional plane, between figurative and abstract art – drawings, marvels of nuanced attentionfragmento graa claim for “Islam” havethreads produced tation,ofand take the storyasonofto the rise of and transformed themto into of one lan-of dations meaning, as well calligraphic the greatest aesthetic cultures ever known. empires, concluding at the start of the nineguage and colour, meaning and emotion. complexity.) In general, the order they finally thework, much-vaunted “golden teenthincentury. Eachformal section HeI found thinks that of his he says, not as appear moves from to includes demotic, examifrom canopy” by Rudy Ricciotti and Mario Bellini nationtoofvulgar particular aspects such as finished or unfinished, but as a process. To urbane – from “Master of ornament, the uniwhich covers are the gerunds, upper gallery was funcdisap- verse” technical innovation andballs”, the urban him, the images verbs that to “Gotcha by the fromsetting. “Noth-A pointingly dull grey underneath, failing to do series of maps at the end of the volume forms tion as nouns, both doing and done, at one ing. Negation” to “Pffft”. Many of the paintjustice to thetime. collection, but the lower floor, ings a valuable practical resource. and the same are psychological pen portraits of a busy, in thewords basement, provides a thrilling display buzzy, So constantly vast was the task (some 3,000 are The in these paintings are initially chattering world of works despair, of treasures emerging fromBochner the darkness. displayed the newthat galleries) Sophie taken from the thesaurus; then even as theincolours embodyfacing the words The great “Basin of St Louis”, a superb Makariou and her team that one hesitates selects, adds, refines and expands. (The cata- glow and shimmer and vibrate with happi-to pieceshows of medieval metalwork, glows like a ness. criticize, one notable logue some of the artist’s working The but waythere “Ohis Well” (2010)omission starts sun; the gorgeous carpets, hitherto hidden from both the display and the book: there is
blithely, before darkening, is characteristic: “OH WELL, THAT’S THE WAY IT GOES, IT IS WHAT IT IS, WHAT CAN YOU DO? WHAT WILL BE WILL BE, DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP, SHIT HAPPENS, NOTHING EVER CHANGES, JUST LEARN TO LIVE WITH IT . . .”. “Silence” (2012), cream on cream, is a mute shriek of impotence, the words becoming more overtly hostile as the lettering becomes fainter: “SILENCE! BE QUIET! CAN IT! COOL IT! GAG IT! ZIP IT! MUZZLE IT! STUFF A SOCK IN IT! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!”. Producing some of his most powerful work as he moves into his seventies, Mel Bochner categorically repudiates the stark choices he presented four decades ago in “Theory of Painting”. There is, he shows, no defended border between realism and abstraction. His Indianand elephant knocker, from the lettering colourdoor choices are matters of Islamic Galleries thesame Louvre pure abstraction, even as atinthe time no one can fail to recognize the reality of the little his concern world words with depict.religious context. This seriously undermines the “Les Livre” The Whitechapel Gallery hasArts doneduBochsection, which ner proud with lacks this extensive beautifullyconsideration mounted, of that quintessentially Islamic carefully selected exhibition, the achievement, first major the calligraphy andan illumination of the showing in Britain of essential, essentialThethis Louvre beautiful later istQur’an. artist. For showhas he some has painted a vast Persian and Ottoman manuscripts, but the (2.8 x 5.3 metres) entry piece: “Blah, Blah, major French holding of Qur’ans is Blah”, it tells us, forty times over. Here thein the Bibliothèque nationale whichonly inherited squidgy, smudgy letters replicate too the Royal It might have starkly the Library. contentless content webeen are more all convincing to accept inherent forced to endure daily. this “Your call isweakness imporin to theus, Louvre’s otherwise rich collections, tant please hold” is perhaps the ultiand abstraction not to attempt a separate section which mate – meaning without meaning does notatplay to theblah museum’s anything all. Blah blah. strengths, so stunningly demonstrated elsewhere.
A grand aesthetic sweep TLS NOVEMBER 9 2012
W
ithin a year we have witnessed the reopening of two of the world’s great collections of that Protean subject, “Islamic Art”, a term so sweeping yet in some ways so specific in its meaning that it still defies definition. One of the most basic diagnostic tests is probably still the most effective: you know it when you see it. And see it we certainly can, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York after nearly ten years’ closure, and at the Louvre after almost as long, where the new galleries form a conclusion to the twenty-year enterprise of “le grand Louvre”. The Met hedged its bets over the use of the term, “Islamic”, preferring “Galleries of the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and later South Asia”, though the volume accompanying the opening referred un-
JANE JAKEMAN LOUVRE – ISLAMIC GALLERIES
Sophie Makariou, editor LES ARTS DE L’ISLAM AU MUSÉE DU LOUVRE 550pp. Paris: Hazan. ¤39. 978 2 75410 619 1
Islamic department of the Louvre, has carefully qualified the French understanding of the term: in French, “islam” designates the religion and “Islam” the civilization, the respective adjectives being “musulman” and “islamique”. In Paris, we are unequivocally in the presence of the second version. And whereas the Met, as the new title implies, broke up its display into a number of sec-
away, now extend in great silky stretches of rich colour. The Islamic department has taken the opportunity not only to have major works cleaned and restored but to re-consider matters such as dating and the reading of inscriptions, making the catalogue accompanying the opening a valuable academic contribution. Thus it has been possible, inter alia, for Gwenaëlle Fellinger to revise the attribution of a celebrated fourteenth-century enamelled flask and for Claire Déléry to further research the provenance of the “Lion de Mazon”, an iconic Andalusian fountain-head which the new galleries have adopted as their emblem. Like the arrangement within the galleries, the book is divided into four broadly chronological sections plus a fifth, “Les Arts du Livre”. The four areas are not inflexibly
Indian elephant door knocker, from the Islamic Galleries in the Louvre