In this week's Art Seen, Robyn Maree Pickens looks at exhibitions from Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, Louise Bourgeois and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington.
"Untitled", by Pedro Comas.
"Histories of madness: the drawings of Juquery" (Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo)
tinyurl.com/vcxs3h3
In light of our current situation, it is all too easy to make connections between madness and Brazil (particularly President Bolsonaro’s stance on Covid-19). While this initially piqued my interest in "Histories of madness: the drawings of Juquery", it would be a mistake to hold on to these associations. The online exhibition closely reflects the original 2015 exhibition at MASP of 102 drawings by patients from the Hospital Psiquiatrico do Juquery (Juquery Psychiatric Hospital), particularly the works by patient-artist Albino Braz (1893-1956), who had two gallery spaces dedicated to his drawings, and is the most represented artist in the online exhibition. The focus on Braz is well deserved: the artist’s fantastical, hybrid animal drawings, which sometimes feature humans, are especially imaginative. Many animals are recognisable, but what sets these drawings apart are Braz’s stacked compositions, which are reminiscent of medieval paintings, and the multiple narratives he combines in one composition. While figurative drawings dominate the exhibition, the first (untitled, undated) artwork after the exhibition’s introduction is a geometric drawing by Pedro Comas, which seems to speak uncannily, if unintentionally (and perhaps problematically) to our present moment. Two large circles are filled with irregular circles resembling cells that are mobilised to form pathways and clusters.
"Untitled", 1970, by Louise Bourgeois
“Drawings 1947-2007”, Louise Bourgeois (Hauser & Wirth)
tinyurl.com/u8fyz2k
As an artist primarily known for her large-scale sculpture and installation works (and to a lesser extent her paintings and prints), Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) described her drawings as "thought feathers" — a characterisation that captures the slightness of embryonic thoughts which manifest softly or as piercing flashes. Hauser & Wirth’s select presentation of her drawings provides the perfect platform to explore the medium in which many of the artist’s ideas first took material form. The thought feathers included in this online exhibition are perhaps too few to fully encompass the breadth of Bourgeois’ thematic explorations, which centred on childhood trauma, family, domestic enclosure, sexuality, and the body, but there are nevertheless hints of the artist’s rich engagement with the exchange between inner and outer worlds and experiences. In one drawing, a funnel-like opening appears to emit psychic leakages onto a timber decking below. In another work (Untitled, 1970), Bourgeois has reversed the traditional foreground through middle ground to background direction to set up a pleasurable tension between beauty and the ominous. Compressed between bulbous clouds and rolling hills, a vivid pink sky bleeds forwards, cutting a path between the creases of hills to meet the viewer at the drawing’s edge. As would be expected in a selection of drawings that spans six decades, the works inhabit a continuum between figuration and abstraction. This exhibition functions as a sampler and invites further exploration.
"Composition No. 1", by Fanny Sanín.
"Balancing Act: The Paintings of Fanny Sanin" (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington)
tinyurl.com/vaf2bst
"Balancing Act: The Paintings of Fanny Sanin" provides a largely considered and informative textual introduction to the work of Colombian abstract artist Fanny Sanín (born 1938) on the one hand, but is frustratingly limited in terms of visual images on the other. The online exhibition includes only one full image of the artist’s work; the rest of the images are only details. With only one digital reproduction of a single painting in its entirety, it is difficult to get a sense of how Sanin’s paintings work as complete compositions. The one full image by Sanin, titled Composition No.1 (2011), is organised around a central, irregularly coloured stripe. This enlivening stripe bisects the mirrored compositional elements on either side. Interestingly, the artist who came to mind when I viewed this work was Gordon Walters, especially his later stylised koru works. There are some similarities in terms of colour and form between Sanin and Walters. Although it is difficult to fully appreciate Sanin’s body of work and her contribution to geometric abstraction from this pared back online exhibition, the exhibition itself, which was first shown at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington) in 2017, can be seen as part of the "movement" in recent years to make amends for the obscuration of women artists. Whether the role of these necessary exhibitions will result in a commensurate rewriting of the canon remains to be seen.
