Review

Reviewed Work(s): Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s by

Source: The Print Collector's Newsletter, Vol. 23, No. 2 (May–June 1992), pp. 66-67
Published by: Art in Print Review
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feeling that his packed paragraphs could directly about the Charles Manson mayhem Mike Kelley, Mike Kelley's Proposal for the Decoration
become chapters or books in themselves. He of the sixties. The name actually occurred to of an Island of Conference Rooms (with Copy Room) for
an Advertising Agency Designed by Frank Gehry, instal
begins with a discussion of the relation of me over tea with an Englishman collector. I lation shot, Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s,
Soviet silent cinema to photography, noting was telling him about the post-apocalyptic 1992. Courtesy Temporary Contemporary.
that the Russian need to report on the devel Blade Runner-like vision of Los Angeles that
opment of the new society "led to an early was emerging while Alma Ruiz and I were
accent on the documentary." But, under Sta researching this show. He made the observa
lin's control, what presented itself as docu tion that people don't see LA like that any Goedde's classes. Sell and the others empha
mentary abandoned the particular, and "the more." Schmimmel, in effect, worked size stylistic and technical links between
visual moment had to bear the supposedly against the established vision—the polish of Italy and Northern countries, rather than
public weight of a 'collective'—everyone's Hockney and Bell and Irwin, even Baldes stressing their differences. 207 pp. 136 illus
and no singular—consciousness." Through sari—and chose 16 of the "more iconoclastic trations. Price: $24.95 plus $3 postage.
"documentary" images of ethnic groups, artists" currently working in the city. Their
WALKER ART CENTER, Vineland
heroic workers, and impersonal technology, work is admittedly uneven, but some of it is
Place, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403.
and with the help of occasional rare snap good and the show fresh and mind-changing.
Less tnan a year alter uary oarreis
shots, Kozloff points out underlying govern The catalogue is as gutsy, though there are
arrived at the Walker as senior curator last
mental fears and conflicts. 56 pp. 40 some unavoidable problems. So many works
May, he has mounted a major exhibition,
illustrations, one with spot color. Price: $20were created for the exhibition that the cata
Photography in Contemporary German Art: 1960
plus varying postage. logue cannot easily convey the look or
to the rresent, and written an excellent cata
impact of the show. Raymond Pettibon's
PIERPONT MORGAN LIBRARY, 29 East puerile drawings, anemic on walls, actuallylogue to accompany it. American viewers
may have first become aware of contempo
36th Street, New York, New York 10016. gain punch enlarged for a printed page. Liz
rary German art from the early '80s "Neo
Iruiy, lyyi was Anthony Van Dyck year, Larner and Richard Jackson are represented
Expressionists," associating German
the 350th anniversary of his death in Antby different installations done elsewhere,
production with thick paint and aggressive
werp at the age of 42. The National GalleryMike Kelley's brilliant installation is barely
in Washington celebrated with an extensiveglimpsed in an early proposal, Victor
gesture. In the long run it's clear that the
hardier strain in German art is a hybrid in
exhibition that went a long way toward hoist Estrada does a bit better with early drawings,
ing Van Dyck from the awesome shadow ofand so on. But the Heller Skelter breadth which photography plays a seminal role. To
be welcomed, then, is this major museum
his mentor, Peter Paul Rubens. The Morgancomes through, with pages of works by the 16
show that surveys recent German photogra
Library and the Kimbell Art Museum in visual artists alphabetically spliced by poems
phy cum photography, relatively free of paint.
Forth Worth echoed with an exhibition of his and stories by ten L. A. writers, among them
The spirit of Joseph Beuys hovers mightily
drawings, accompanied by a major cataDennis Cooper and Amy Gerstler. An intro
over these artists, his photographic multi
logue by Christopher Brown, chief curator ofduction by Schimmel is followed by an essay
the National Gallery in London. Brown proon L.A. as "noir city" by Norman Klein and only partly documentation of his per
ples,
ceeds conservatively, following Van Dyck'sanother by Lane Relyea that relates L.A.'s formances, serving as a point of departure
for the exhibition. He was the teacher of not
career through chronological phases orgaart-historical path from Minimalism to the
a few of the other 18 artists in the show,
nized according to the artist's residencies incurrent very mixed scene. All in all, a show
Antwerp, Italy, and England. Drawings areto make all miss the Temporary Contempo among them Lothar Baumgarten, Bernhard
Blume, Anselm Kiefer, and Katharina
grouped around either the major paintingrary, temporarily closed to accommodate
projects for which they were studies or indedevelopment at the First Street Plaza. 184 Sieverding. Photography is never "pure" in
pendently; much comparative material frompp. Copious illustrations, most in color.German practice, always vitalized by
Van Dyck's own ouevre or that of other influPrice: $34.95 plus $4.50 postage. "incursions" from other media and popular
ential artists fleshes out the picture. Brown culture, historical deconstruction, and polit
cites recent scholarship on the artist and on UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, Bayly Art ical and representational critiques. The
particular pieces, providing a valuable overMuseum, Rugby Road, Charlottesville, range is breathtaking, from the flattened lyr
icism of Bernd and Hilla Becher to the Con
view 30 years after Horst Vey's definitiveVirginia 22903.
two-volume 1962 corpus. Van Dyck's was a Masterpieces of Renaissance and Baroque Print ceptualist strokes of Hanne Darboven, the
spectacular draftsmanship, with a controlled making, A Decade of Collecting marks the anni more-than-Warhol repetitions of Peter
and subtle drama. Print afficionados should versary of the establishment of the Prints Roehr, the museological critiques of Thomas
take special note of the gorgeous drawings Acquisition Committee at the University of Struth, and the irreverent pastiches of Mar
used for the 1627-35 print series The IconograVirginia. Prints for the recent exhibition tin Kippenberger. And, naturally, the bril
phy, Van Dyck's Who's Who of famous and and catalogue were selected from ten years of liant maneuverings of Richter and Polke. A
powertui men. Abrams has produced a acquisitions for the museum, as well as from knowledgeable text by Garrels, bios and bib
handsome book in which illustrations are the Charlottesville collection of Gertrude liographies on the artists, and reproductions
faithful to subtle nuance. 294 pp. 371 illus Weber. Over the decade, the committee's of Garrels' intelligent selections make this
trations, 106 in color. Price: $39.95 plus personnel varied, but included such notablethe catalogue to buy. Currently at the
$5.95 postage. art historians as the late Frederick Hartt,Walker, the show will travel to Dallas/Fort
Paul Barolsky, David Summers, and the cat Worth and to the Guggenheim's SoHo
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART/ alogue's editor and one of its essayists,
branch next year. 142 pp. 80 illustrations, 21
TEMPORARY CONTEMPORARY, 250 Lawrence O. Goedde. All of these men were,in color. Price: $17.95 plus $5 postage.
South Grand Avenue at California Plaza,at one time or another, associated with the
Los Angeles, California 90012. University of Virginia's Mclntire DepartWHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN
Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s cata ART, 945 Madison Avenue, New York, Ne
ment of Art; not surprisingly, the emphasis
logues the recent blockbuster show orga has been on putting together a good teaching York 10021.
nized by MOCA chief curator Paul collection. The prints represent a wide sam Born and raised in southern ualilornia,
Schimmel, his first on L.A. As many now pling of artists north and south of the Alps,Alexis Smith was inclined from the start of
know, he made quite a splash. "So, why from Rembrandt to Bellange to Castiglione, her career in the early '70s to work in col
'Helter Skelter'? That's the obvious ques arranged alphabetically. Eighty-five soundly lage, where she could cross-fertilize the cul
tion," he notes, and goes on to explain. "It'sresearched, academic entries are by doctoraltural extremes of her milieu—high art and
not a history of the time of Helter Skelter orcandidate Stacey Sell, who also contributed popular culture, text and image. Even her
about the song by the Beatles. Nor is it the second essay, and by graduate students inname, appropriated from Hollywood star
66

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 ARTIST'S BOOK BEAT

Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) (New York,

Begos, 1992, edition of 350, $450; de
edition of 95, $1,500) could be a co
tional livre d'artiste. Inside a slick me

lFASSH0l-eS box, it is evocative to a fault: there is

looking honeycomb board and distre
COUtD FL>Y newspaper framing a substantial boun
ume with a singed cloth cover. The boo
THIS PLACE tains a half dozen etchings by De
Ashbaugh (reproduced offset in the
edition)—abstractions in rich sepia t
£ WOULD BE with plenty of textural and tonal range
there are twists. The abstractions conve
3 AN AiRp0RT) formal but scientific information, each
IsfeL resenting a fragment of a human geno
an individualized biological bluepr
More immediately apparent, there is b
prewar advertising imagery obscuring
image.
And then watch as the past gives way. These
overprinted images are executed in a slow-dis
solve variety of disappearing ink. Within a few
hours of cracking the cover, they vanish forever.
dom when she was 17, bespeaks a flair for bound Peter Nadin: Recent Work is a beautifully Read on, and Ashbaugh's abstractions them
pastiche. Alexis Smith is an exhaustive cata printed and thoughtfully designed cata selves give way to page after page of genome
logue, right from the classy embossed and
logue of the artist's mid-career retrospective fragments as scientists know them—the letters
letterpress-printed front cover. Nick Law
at the Whitney this winter, traveling to the ACTG in varying combinations, printed in
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los son's lucid and informative interview withmind-numbing four-column series. And
Angeles, March 29-July 5. More descriptive the artist meanders through sections on eachdeeper still, within a square recess cut into
than critical, Richard Armstrong's inter series like a gallery talk. The two catalogue back pages like some long-forgotten drug
blank
essays are less interesting, Jeff Rian's for
view, introduction, and catalogue essay, and stash, is a standard computer disk (DOS and
Amy Gerstler's "fictional biography" of theostentatious language and Kirby Gookin's, Macintosh versions both available). This disk
though well written, for duplicating the
artist, are continually interspersed with pro represents something of a small-press coup,
fuse reproductions of Smith's work, includ interview's information. 72 pp. 110 illustrasince it contains a new autobiographical novel
by science-fiction heavy William Gibson. In
tions, 17 in color. Price: $24.95 plus $3.50
ing many past installation shots that amplify
the exhibition. One assumes this format was postage. Neuromancer and Count Zero, among other titles,
meant to parrot the work itself, but the inter Gibson has created an ominous, anthro-elec
pellation of Armstrong's with Smith's tran ZIMMERLI ART MUSEUM, Rutgers tronic realm he calls "cyberspace." And that's
scribed texts is frequently repetitive andUniversity,
in New Brunswick, New Jersey just where Agrippa is headed, for it has a self
08903. destructing virus. Publisher Begos is confident
places downright distracting. Why read
twice about Smith's artistic education, or a The Zimmerli Art Museum recently the very great majority of readers can't prevent
synopsis of the plot of Porgy and Bess? Moreincreased its late 19th- and early 20th-century the text from fleeing forever into the electronic
editing might have better complemented holdings with the acquisition of 56 Art Nou netherworld as soon as it scrolls by their screen.
work that is refreshingly terse despite its veau
sat posters and three preparatory works from Farewell conventional books—and conven
the Belgian Wittamer-De Camps Collection.
urated cultural references. 244 pp. 227 illus tional collecting, and reading, and remember
trations, 191 in color. Price: $27.50 plusThe $4 purchase is being heralded as a cultural ing. Hello electronic communication.
postage. exchange between Belgium and the United But sit tight; it will be a long goodbye.
States, with the Belgian Embassy helping to Among those who don't consider "user
YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART, support the exhibition, catalogue, and recep friendly software" an oxymoron, the death
1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecti tion. Contributors to the catalogue Homage to of the book has been heralded as regularly
cut 06520.
Brussels: The Art of Belgian Posters 1895-1915 and vehemently as the death of painting has
le ter INadin is a Liverpudlian who has include curator Trudy Hansen, Jane Block, elsewhere. That both forms of expression are
been living in New York for the last 15 years.
professor at the University of Illinois, and Juan still with us is not conclusive. Such prophe
By the early 1980s Nadin's career as a con Cassiers, ambassador to the U.S. from cies may well come true; some say that for all
ceptual artist and art consultant had comeBelgium.
to Block's essay and annotations give abut practical purposes they already have.
a crisis, and he began painting therapeutic history of the art poster from its origins in huge Meantime all variety of marriages are being
still lifes. He found them revitalizing, and circus advertisements to the decline of Art brokered between the old and the new. As
since then has produced six series of paint Nouveau with the approach of the First Worlddifficult as it is to define the field of artists'
ings, now convinced that painting is "the War. She measures the immense success of books when the conventions of the printed
perfect medium for the representationthese of posters not only in terms of sales (whichpage remain palpably concerned, it is expo
consciousness." The brightly colored works were prolific) but also in terms of fulfilling thenentially harder to do so when electronic
range from Minimal canvases to dense accu artists' goal of bringing to posters "the status ofpublications are included. But there are
mulations of images, words, and objects, Fine Art." Reproduced and catalogued aremany good reasons for extending the
organized by memory and emotion. The numerous examples from Art Nouveau's heyembrace. Some artists have followed the
Yale Center for British Art has compiled daya by such Belgian masters as Gisbert Comimplications of their bound-paper—or oth
"handsome notebook," as director Duncan baz, Adolphe Crespin, and Privât Livemont. erwise tangible—work into the realm of
Robinson calls it, to accompany its recent 122 pp. 114 illustrations, 30 in color. Price: computing and imaging that best enables its
exhibition of selected works. The spiral $21.95 plus varying postage. development. Others have come to elec
67

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