Category — Review

Reese's-Rosie, by Mel Ramos

PAY IT FORWARD: 

Mel Ramos and Gabriel Navar

By    Dr. José Rodeiro,

The “Pay It Forward” art exhibition is an inspiring look at a remarkable mentor/mentee relationship initiated in 1991, when Gabriel Navar enrolled in Mel Ramos’s “Painting 1” course at California State University, East Bay.  Additionally, the show provides insight into the California School’s stylistic legacy: a continuum from one generation to the next, charting an art historical trajectory marked by the four great sequoias of Bay-Area painting: Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, Mel Ramos and Gabriel Navar.  Thereby acknowledging “a” generous artistic inheritance genially passed down from Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) to Wayne Thiebaud, and then from Thiebaud to Ramos, and manifesting in the 21^st Century in Navar’s oeuvre.

Express Nonsense 2, Gabriel Navar, 2012

Since the 1960s, Ramos (more than any other US-artist) vividly envisioned imaginative Pop Art fantasies (which in truth) pioneered an early groundbreaking form of radical-Postmodernism.  This merger of Pop Art with radical-Postmodernism is evident in his images that ingeniously reference the old masters (i.e., Botticelli, Velazquez, Boucher, David, Ingres, Manet, Bonnard and Modigliani). In fact, not since Modigliani and Matisse has a painter so appropriately apprehended the sublime sensuality of feminine beauty as Ramos has.   Ramos’s signature Pop Art style consistently depicts sensual female subjects posing (in pin-up poses) alongside icons of “The America Dream” (i.e., commercial products, groceries, animals, and other mass-media props).  A sublime Neo-Classicist unconsciously inspired by muses (especially Erato, the muse of sexuality and music), his art is simultaneously lyrical and monumental; these marvelous contradictory aesthetic tendencies are also apparent in all the great California Rock ‘n’ Roll songs generated by The Beach Boys, The Mamas & the Papas, The Grateful Dead and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.   Ramos is unquestionably the only contemporary visual artist that has boldly endeavored to metaphorically portray the Jeffersonian “The Pursuit of Happiness,” while symbolically approximating or pursuing (via his art) an authentic and unfeigned California-version of “The American Dream.”

Richard Diebenkorn's "Cityscape", 1963

Unlike Ramos, muses do not inspire the disturbing and bizarre images of Gabriel Navar, whose motivation, according to Federico Garcia Lorca’s essay The Play and Theory of the Duende (1933), probably derives from a confluence of angels/devils.   Yet, despite Navar’s obvious fascination with the apparent (although poorly veiled) underlying Gothic horror of American life, which is described throughout US literature, i.e., Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James, Edith Wharton and John Updike; Navar’s  viewers must be warned that (like a cobra) he captivates his audience with shocking images that intrigue, and then, unexpectedly forces unsuspecting viewers to confront their deepest fear(s).  Via Youtube™ references and “platforms,” he generates innovative and new “push/pull” effect(s) that satirically afford an iconological critique leveled against high-tech media-culture with its glut of visual information, intending to brainwash, control, side-track, seduce and/or sell something to intended audiences.  Navar’s Web-based imagery examines 21^st century technophilia, which utterly permeates contemporary social-consciousness, manifesting as web-surfing; participating in numerous social networking sites, enjoying chronic Youtube™ viral-phenomena, or roaming through the vast world of “apps.”

Pay It Forward

If Ramos is lyrically (musically) and harmoniously painting the “American Dream,” then Navar is poetically depicting the “American Nightmare.”  By analyzing 21^st Century digital communication, smart applications, and other Habermasian ideal-communication EtherNet intrusions, Navar offers a techno-world where sadomasochistic self-victimization and hyper-alienation accentuate isolation and paranoia, similar to the prophetic Mexican Surrealist poems of Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, or the Italian Metaphysical School paintings of Georgio DeChirico, as well as is evident in Diebenkorn’s lonely and abandoned stark California coastline vistas.   Thus, the California School is split between the bright hopeful optimism of Ramos and Thiebaud; and the empty tragic despair that haunts the paintings of Diebenkorn (conveying distant vast sociological alienation) or Navar’s panache for dramatic confrontation (devising and divulging intimate domestic psychological alienation).

app_4_beingdistrac2, Gabriel Navar, 2011

Notwithstanding their clear distinctions, Ramos and Navar have numerous things in common, e.g., they both challenge innate US-Puritanical-conservativism; both create prolifically with an energetic inborn work-ethic;  both utilize “high-key” clashing, pulsating, and intense “punchy” chroma; both predominantly employ human figures in their work (unlike  Diebenkorn with his vistas and Thiebaud with his bodegones), Ramos and Navar exploit advertising, billboards, logos, products (subliminal merchandise sales-strategies) and their art is constantly alluding to pop-culture.  Their formal compositions rely generally on “centralized” monumental heroic figural images, replete with subtle or abrupt emblematic iconology (for Ramos, sexuality, sensuality, seduction and erotic-fantasies are key elements); while Navar transmits, in a “tongue-in-cheek” manner, prospective horror-film-scenes, which capture both sinister and, at times, comical human dramas.  These Navarian dramas are disturbing scenes from a “new” hyper-technological Neo-Theater of the Absurd, signifying irrational, nihilistic, and anxiety-ridden Post-Information Age vignettes that fosters alienation, and “Neo-neosurrealism.”

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Michael Elmgreen/Ingar Dragset:

The One & The Many, Rotterdam

Art Review by Miklós Horváth

After enchanting audiences and critics with the sumptuous exhibition Infernopolis last year, the curators of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen have decided to host another spectacular installation, The One & The Many in the Rotterdam’s Submarine Wharf. The exhibition is now open to the public and can be visited until 25^th September 2011.

Submarine Wharf can be reached by a 15-minute boat trip from busy Willemskade to a desolate harbour without shops or crowds. You are alone with those you came with on the boat from Willemskade. The experience a visitor may discover is similar to how Mr. Lockwood felt upon his arrival at Thrushcross Grange, described by Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights. Far from the stir of society, Lockwood felt the desolation and considered his new living area a misanthrope’s heaven.  Though he intended to spend some splendid days in the grange and wanted to enjoy its treasures, most of the time Lockwood was disturbed by those around him.

Visiting the exhibition alone can give visitors an experienc similar to Lockwood’s. Being removed from society for a short time, visitors are encouraged to reconsider their desires – their needs and their desires. This exhibition is a psychological experience, definitely for those who like taking risks. For those who choose to participate in this enticing journey, it will broaden the understanding of how the mind works.

Visitors who come alone to the exhibition often will come across completely unexpected  situations. They might be provoked by wandering performers, such as a screaming young mother, young men selling themselves on the street, or an auto mechanic busy working on a luxury limousine. Due to these interruptions, single visitors may find it difficult to completely enjoy the treasures of the wharf. But, as they are advised beforehand, a visitor to this exhibit never simply observes, but becomes an object in it, as well.

For those who visit with a relative or a friend, the art project no longer offers a fearful experience on dark streets. These visitors will not be followed by performers, they do not have to consider what to do and how to act in an unexpected situation, and can enjoy their walk in a secure place of meditation.

The Exhibition Hall is reached through a tunnel, which Elmgreen suggests is a kind of vacuum cleaner hose. Although this-suctioning-you-in feeling is pronounced, you always have a choice to turn back. A reassuring poster on the tunnel wall states, “There is a light at the end of the tunnel, a reference to the Promised Land offered by God to his chosen people after their tribulations. Elmgreen and Dragset deconstruct and discredit the message of God as it becomes a soap-opera-like sentence, an advertising of a new reality show instead of a real message. Therefore, the collaborative duo claims, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. They intend to show that many people could not experience the light in their life and could not turn back when they felt a certain danger.

During the Nazi regime some people did not have a choice to avoid an unwanted situation. The vacuum cleaner (tunnel) and the fake promise therefore can be read as the symbols of the oppressive powers which guide people to their final destination. These symbols recall a circumstance when certain people did not have a choice to turn back and their private lives were under threat.

The struggle between one’s private and public lives is one of the main issues of this exhibition. Visitors  can peep through the windows of a housing block, get access to the toilet, and look into a limousine. Single visitors soon realize they are part of the exhibition, as they are monitored by the performers, as mentioned above. Private life can become a public affair as young men solicit on the street with discourses of sexual intimacy.

In her review of the exhibition, Nicolette Gast says The One & The Many is the third in a trilogy, a bridge between the two first parts: The Welfare Show, and The Collectors, which were shown at various venues in London and Venice. The Rotterdam exhibition is set in the social milieu of the middle class, and addresses how we are searching for new  identities in a world of constant transition.

For further information about the exhibition, visit the Boijmans official website.

(http://www.boijmans.nl/en/7/calendar-exhibitions/calendaritem/770/elmgreen-dragset-in-the-submarine-wharf)

About the author:

Miklós Horváth  is an undergraduate student at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, and Leiden University,  The Netherlands, where he received an Erasmus Scholarship to study.

Bowl Food, Jon Nickoll

When we last checked in with Jon Nickoll, Cinema Music was his most recent release. (See “My Imaginary Friend Has a CD” in ragazine, April 2010). With his new album Bowl Food, Nickoll finds himself a first-time father without the free time to head to the recording  studio.

The recording is decidedly and unapologetically low-fi. Think Springsteen’s Nebraska meets Lennon’s Double Fantasy. Nickoll’s voice is his strongest point, a soothing Elvis Costello.  Weighty themes — emerging from periods of black, the passage of time, the transition from personhood to parenthood — are delivered with the spoonful of sugar that is Nickoll’s vocal signature. Baby Charlie appears as himself in “Liberty.” It’s a beautiful bit of harmony and, I’ll admit, made me a little teary.

An effortless tunesmith, Nickoll’s numbers flow smoothly. That’s not to say it’s a slow  album. At 25 minutes, it cruises along, veering a steady course between reflective and up-tempo.  “Which Friend First” exemplifies the former; “Still We Try” the latter, “Friend” contains my favorite line: “Though I didn’t cry/ I carried tears around.” Very relatable. Any guy who starts a song with a nod to “a box of records with Pet Sounds on the  top” (“Beginnings and Ends”), wins my heart.

Hints of influence pop out: a little snatch of The Doors’ “The End” in “Fasten Your Seatbelts,” a dash of The Beatles’ “It’s Only Love” on “Slowly,” but this is singularly Jon Nickoll and that’s good.

– Jeff Katz

No Banjo Hitters They:

The Baseball Project’s Vol. 2,

“High and Inside”

By Jeff Katz

The marriage of baseball and music has been a rocky one. Most attempts are jokey novelties: The Treniers tribute to Willie Mays (1954’s “Say Hey”), Teresa Brewer’s 1956 love song to Mantle, “I Love Mickey.” John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” connects with the joy of playing, but 26 years of incessant overplaying has rendered the tune impotent.  But who will speak to the nerdy devotion of the rabid fan who listens to good music as he or she scours the daily box scores and devotes disproportionate brain space to the names and games that mark the long seasons of their lives? Terry Cashman with “Talkin’ Baseball?” Certainly not.

Coming to the rescue like Mariano Rivera, The Baseball Project strode forth with 2008’s Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. Finally, great musicians tackled baseball in a way that was satisfying to the ears of rock fans and the researchers at SABR. Two great tastes in one musical bar, The Reese’s Cup of hardball pop. (But don’t think of Pee Wee Reese’s cup; that would be gross!).

Like the 1997 World Champion Florida Marlins, The Baseball Project brought big stars together to win it all. After their debut album, Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows), Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate), Linda Pitmon (Golden Smog) and Peter Buck (R.E.M.) went their separate ways, but are back again with a new collection, Vol. 2, High and Inside.

The thirteen new tracks cover a wide range of baseball history — Tony Conigliaro’s lost possibilities, the travails of the ’86 Red Sox, the death of quirky phenom Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, to name a few — and runs the gamut from straight ahead indie rock, to surf music, to Steely Dan inspired rock. The level of detail shows these band members are no dabblers in the national past time. In “The Straw That Stirs The Drink,” a look back to Reggie Jackson’s debut season with The Yankees, a reference to Manager Billy Martin’s drunken fight with a marshmallow salesman (which took place a few years after Jax’ 1977 start with The Bronx Bombers) comes across as both minutiae that works for an obsessed fan and a bizarre bit of imagery for the unknowing.

It would be easy to fall into the “Van Lingle Mungo” trap, a straight listing of funny ballplayer names that Dave Frishberg worked to magnificent effect in his classic jazz piano nostalgia trip. The Baseball Project sets themselves apart by combining a media guide knowledge of the game with a healthy amount of philosophy. Bemoaning the early death of “The Bird” in the opening number “1976,” Wynn sings “What does it say for the rest of us when our heroes die and leave us alone?”  That’s deep stuff.  “Fair Weather Fans” reels in the years as each band member recounts their own lifelong love of their hometown teams as they grow up and move on to other cities. And woe to that sad soul who grew up without a nearby pro team!

“Here Lies Carl Mays” closes the album. Yankee Mays, whose pitch killed Indians shortstop Ray Chapman in 1920 ( still the only fatality as a result of a thrown ball), croons from the grave, defending his career and expressing the remorse he never showed in real life. It’s a beautiful song about the curves life throws and how we are often left futilely explaining our actions to no one. Sad and touching, it’s the epitome of what The Baseball Project does well, presenting universal emotions disguised as a sports song. It’s the old hidden ball trick, performed masterfully. Gene Michael would be proud.

Look it up.