William Christenberry & Pat Oliphant joint exhibition at Andrew Smith Gallery
3
Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Jul 16, 2010; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8 Art Issues PALS, POWER & POVERTY Artists best known for cartooning and photos show in intimate space MALIN WILSON-POWELL For the Journal Washington, D.C., is not known as a city of living American artists. Other than the Washington Color School’s first- and second-generation of painters from the 1950s into the 1970s, the art reputation of our nation’s capitol rests primarily on its great museum collections by mostly dead artists. In the ’70s, Pat Oliphant and William Christenberry were in D.C. because of their day jobs. Oliphant had emigrated from Australia in 1964 to work as the political cartoonist at the Denver Post, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1967. In 1975, he joined the nowdefunct Washington Star in our nation’s highest per capita concentration of selfinterested buffoonery: “If only good people populated the political scene, I would have nothing to do. Good people make poor targets. I like villains,” he said. In the lineage of Daumier and Goya’s dauntless and ferocious critiques, Olpihant is a nonconformist malcontent in continual foment against the follies of the day. Christenberry invited the cartoonist to talk with his students at the Corcoran Gallery School. Their friendship began over a beer after class. Christenberry is known primarily for his color photographs of rural Alabama, where he was born in 1936. In reality, both Oliphant and Christenberry are prolific and accomplished in the multiple media all on view here, including paintings, drawings and sculptures. Artists like Oliphant and Christenberry grow the largeness and expansiveness of their ambitions and talents in the backwash of their own work. Both of these artists have created a complex, surprising, ever-evolving oeuvre. For a small museum, this exhibition of 70 pieces by Christenberry and 47 by Oliphant would be a big show. At Andrew Smith’s, all of this work is packed into small rooms in his oldhouse gallery. The works are hung salon-style or displayed on shelves and easels amidst shelves of books, flat files, desks, big windows, office and antique photo equipment. It is definitely not the pristine white cube with dramatic lighting art experience. It is much more lively than that and well-suited to the nonpretentious tone of the diverse work on view. Despite the distractions, individual pieces body forth and grab our attention, all the while provoking laughter and second thoughts. The first peach-colored room is filled with Christenberry’s signature photographs of neglected country buildings on played-out dirt, mixed with drawings of “gourd trees” as well as spiky, untended trees, and silkscreens titled “Alabama Wall” of rusty logos. The artist’s rural Alabama, photographed on annual return trips, is a faded place frayed by time and weather, and lack of human care. He further enhances the washed-out nature of the place and the feel and textures of decay by printing his images in a softened palette on creamy matte paper. The middle room of the installation combines the work of these two masters and begins to introduce common interests in method and iconography. In addition to Christenberry’s great image “Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama,” 2002 –– perhaps my favorite photograph of his to date –– there are two of his 3-D Ku Klux Klan dolls from the late 1990s. Each is a little tableau of a single doll in white satin robes subjected to a scenario of being tied to a tree in one and being securely held in a humane trap in the other. Remembering a childhood encounter with a Klansman, Christenberry has kept a locked, claustrophobic room in his studio since the early 1960s. It is filled floor-toceiling with eerie and disturbing Klan dolls and effigies, and in this way he miniaturizes and contains the Klan’s unforgettable and monstrous torchlight parades, rituals and lynchings. The culminating room of the exhibition has terrific Christenberry serial photographs and wickedly astute Oliphant political cartoons and bronzes, most notably a bust of Obama looking like an Easter Island monument. On first view, the sculpture’s narrow head and full lips radiate dignity and presence; on second view, the eyes are absent, the vision vacant. Here, also, is Oliphant’s small bronze of a naked, flabby, pot-bellied Klan figure forever embodied as a coward hiding his face under a hood. Nearby is a terrific 2008 post-crash cartoon titled “Our Troubles Are Over” that shows a naked woman and man living out of their formerly gas-guzzling four-wheel drive vehicle without tires, next to a tiny garden patch. Opening a “FREE” credit card offer, the man runs toward his wife, who is washing their only clothes in a tub, gleefully proclaiming that with their new credit card they can get another car. All these naked people come from many years of drawing nude figures, and the exhibition includes a hilarious Oliphant watercolor cartoon of these old friends drawing from the same model. It is a riff on the old saw about how we see what is in our minds. Christenberry’s many iconic photographs in the third gallery room include a terrific three-image sequence of the same little white clapboard Palladium-inspired church in Sprott, Ala., captured in 1973, 1977, and 1981. His most extensive series, however, is the portfolio “House, Near Akron, Alabama” of 20 photos taken between 1978 and 2005. This 18-year time lapse documents the decline of a still-occupied but already badly weathered house with a old blue and dented sedan out front. The sequence progresses through the home’s abandonment in 1988 and the loss of its red tin roof in 1997. The final photograph from 2005 shows the final collapse into itself, with a only a bit of rusty tin and a fragment of chimney remaining. What a good idea for an unexpected, pertinent, and lively exhibition. If you go WHAT: “OLD FRIENDS: Pat Oliphant and William Christenberry “ WHERE: Andrew Smith Gallery, 122 Grant Ave. WHEN: Through July 26. HOURS: Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5.p.m. COST: Free CONTACT: 505 984-1234 or www. AndrewSmithGallery.com PALS, POWER & POVERTY http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol... 1 of 3 5/3/11 3:02 PM
-
Upload
malin-wilson-powell -
Category
Documents
-
view
225 -
download
0
description
Review of William Christenberry & Pat Oliphant joint exhibition at Andrew Smith Gallery
Transcript of William Christenberry & Pat Oliphant joint exhibition at Andrew Smith Gallery
Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Jul 16, 2010; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8
Art Issues PALS, POWER
& POVERTY Artists best known for cartooning and photos show in intimate space MALIN WILSON-POWELL
For the Journal
Washington, D.C., is not known as a city of living American artists. Other than the Washington Color School’s first- and second-generation of painters from the 1950sinto the 1970s, the art reputation of our nation’s capitol rests primarily on its great museum collections by mostly dead artists.
In the ’70s, Pat Oliphant and William Christenberry were in D.C. because of their day jobs. Oliphant had emigrated from Australia in 1964 to work as the politicalcartoonist at the Denver Post, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1967. In 1975, he joined the nowdefunct Washington Star in our nation’s highest per capita concentration ofselfinterested buffoonery: “If only good people populated the political scene, I would have nothing to do. Good people make poor targets. I like villains,” he said. In thelineage of Daumier and Goya’s dauntless and ferocious critiques, Olpihant is a nonconformist malcontent in continual foment against the follies of the day. Christenberryinvited the cartoonist to talk with his students at the Corcoran Gallery School. Their friendship began over a beer after class.
Christenberry is known primarily for his color photographs of rural Alabama, where he was born in 1936. In reality, both Oliphant and Christenberry are prolific andaccomplished in the multiple media all on view here, including paintings, drawings and sculptures. Artists like Oliphant and Christenberry grow the largeness andexpansiveness of their ambitions and talents in the backwash of their own work. Both of these artists have created a complex, surprising, ever-evolving oeuvre.
For a small museum, this exhibition of 70 pieces by Christenberry and 47 by Oliphant would be a big show. At Andrew Smith’s, all of this work is packed into smallrooms in his oldhouse gallery. The works are hung salon-style or displayed on shelves and easels amidst shelves of books, flat files, desks, big windows, office andantique photo equipment. It is definitely not the pristine white cube with dramatic lighting art experience. It is much more lively than that and well-suited to thenonpretentious tone of the diverse work on view. Despite the distractions, individual pieces body forth and grab our attention, all the while provoking laughter andsecond thoughts.
The first peach-colored room is filled with Christenberry’s signature photographs of neglected country buildings on played-out dirt, mixed with drawings of “gourd trees”as well as spiky, untended trees, and silkscreens titled “Alabama Wall” of rusty logos. The artist’s rural Alabama, photographed on annual return trips, is a faded placefrayed by time and weather, and lack of human care. He further enhances the washed-out nature of the place and the feel and textures of decay by printing his imagesin a softened palette on creamy matte paper.
The middle room of the installation combines the work of these two masters and begins to introduce common interests in method and iconography. In addition toChristenberry’s great image “Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama,” 2002 –– perhaps my favorite photograph of his to date –– there are two of his 3-D Ku Klux Klandolls from the late 1990s. Each is a little tableau of a single doll in white satin robes subjected to a scenario of being tied to a tree in one and being securely held in ahumane trap in the other. Remembering a childhood encounter with a Klansman, Christenberry has kept a locked, claustrophobic room in his studio since the early1960s. It is filled floor-toceiling with eerie and disturbing Klan dolls and effigies, and in this way he miniaturizes and contains the Klan’s unforgettable and monstroustorchlight parades, rituals and lynchings.
The culminating room of the exhibition has terrific Christenberry serial photographs and wickedly astute Oliphant political cartoons and bronzes, most notably a bust ofObama looking like an Easter Island monument. On first view, the sculpture’s narrow head and full lips radiate dignity and presence; on second view, the eyes areabsent, the vision vacant. Here, also, is Oliphant’s small bronze of a naked, flabby, pot-bellied Klan figure forever embodied as a coward hiding his face under a hood.Nearby is a terrific 2008 post-crash cartoon titled “Our Troubles Are Over” that shows a naked woman and man living out of their formerly gas-guzzling four-wheel drivevehicle without tires, next to a tiny garden patch. Opening a “FREE” credit card offer, the man runs toward his wife, who is washing their only clothes in a tub, gleefullyproclaiming that with their new credit card they can get another car.
All these naked people come from many years of drawing nude figures, and the exhibition includes a hilarious Oliphant watercolor cartoon of these old friends drawingfrom the same model. It is a riff on the old saw about how we see what is in our minds.
Christenberry’s many iconic photographs in the third gallery room include a terrific three-image sequence of the same little white clapboard Palladium-inspired church inSprott, Ala., captured in 1973, 1977, and 1981. His most extensive series, however, is the portfolio “House, Near Akron, Alabama” of 20 photos taken between 1978 and2005. This 18-year time lapse documents the decline of a still-occupied but already badly weathered house with a old blue and dented sedan out front. The sequenceprogresses through the home’s abandonment in 1988 and the loss of its red tin roof in 1997. The final photograph from 2005 shows the final collapse into itself, with aonly a bit of rusty tin and a fragment of chimney remaining.
What a good idea for an unexpected, pertinent, and lively exhibition.
If you go
WHAT: “OLD FRIENDS: Pat Oliphant and William Christenberry “
WHERE: Andrew Smith Gallery, 122 Grant Ave.
WHEN: Through July 26.
HOURS: Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5.p.m.
COST: Free
CONTACT: 505 984-1234 or www. AndrewSmithGallery.com
PALS, POWER & POVERTY http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...
1 of 3 5/3/11 3:02 PM
COURTESY ANDREW SMITH GALLERY
“Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama,” 2002, is a Fujicolor crystal archive print by William Christenberry.
Pat Oliphant’s 2009 bronze bust of Barack Obama radiates dignity and presence, but it lacks eyes to see.
PALS, POWER & POVERTY http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...
2 of 3 5/3/11 3:02 PM
PALS, POWER & POVERTY http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...
3 of 3 5/3/11 3:02 PM
![BY HENRY OLIPHANT] AUBURN, CAYUGA CO., …nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn87070067/1846-08-12/ed-1/seq-1.pdf · by henry oliphant] auburn, cayuga co., (n.y.) wednesday, august 12,](https://static.fdocuments.us/doc/165x107/5b8779d27f8b9a435b8b7a68/by-henry-oliphant-auburn-cayuga-co-n-by-henry-oliphant-auburn-cayuga-co.jpg)
