Opie Ice Houses
In New York, art is everywhere. There are so many aural and visual stimuli that one can at once be engulfed in the detail of a particularly moving wall mural (I like this one of Joe Strummer a couple of blocks from our apartment in the East Village), and then immediately forget it as you stumble into the middle of an impromptu drumming circle.
We have seen two notable shows here in the last couple of days. Two women artists, both portraitists using different media- painter Elizabeth Peyton and photographer Catherine Opie.
At first, I loved Elizabeth Peyton’s show at the New Museum on the Bowery . Her confident brush strokes and rich jewel tones on small tableaux had me straining to take in every detail. Almost all portraits, I loved the intensity of her lone subjects, the perfect rendering of tossled hair, fine red lips, and the recognition of many of the subjects at first look (Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty, the Gallagher brothers…).
But then those very details became annoying. I didn’t need to see anymore portraits of pouting, gaunt, slightly vampiric young men staring out in the distance at nothing in particular. No doubt many of these subjects, including Peyton’s friends and former lovers, are interesting, thoughtful and articulate human beings, but in her portraits too many of them look like they spend their days half-sleeping in scroungy bedsheets, and evenings waiting for their next overpriced drink at the newest hipster watering hole.
Peyton’s best work in my view is her most recent – where she focusses on more current friends and family and their pets. These are much less studied Brit, and much more real Americana – scenes from everyday life.
Her modern portraits of the famous are also improvements over earlier work. I loved the depth of her portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe - full of confident defiance. I was moved by the drawing of a young Prince Harry being trundled off to school. And her study of the film The Age of Innocence captured true passion.
I left this show hugely admiring Peyton’s technique, and hope that as she gets older, she applies her talent to more mature and moving subjects.
Catherine Opie, an American photographer from California, is also a master technician. Or should I say Mistress Technician. Like Peyton, Opie too rose to fame through portraiture. But instead of photographing the famous, Opie’s photographed her non-famous friends in classic style. They pose, bodies adorned with tattoos and piercings, against rich coloured backdrops – royal reds, oranges, purples and blues. These famous portraits taken in the late 1990s were a brave claiming of different gender identities.
Watching others look at the exhibit was almost as captivating as the exhibit itself. I loved the mom taking notes about all things Opie for her son, who she said was doing a university paper on Opie’s work. “You could help me!,” she commanded her husband, as she wrote down the display explanations in a room featuring a giant polaroid of a heavily tatooed man dressed in a heavy velvet gown, with long string of pearls draping out of his, well, ass.
When confronted with Opie’s most chilling work -a self-portrait in a leather mask, arms pricked with dozens of hypodermic needles and the word “pervert” lavishly carved into her chest – the mom earnestly asked the tour guide how her son could explain the meaning of this particular piece at his Christian university.
A blond German family with three small kids, led by the mother wearing pearls around her neck, ran-walked through every room. While an elderly woman in a wheelchair, pushed by a younger relative, craned her neck to delight in each and every photograph properly. And one man couldn’t contain himself. “Freaks!” he said far too loudly as he sidestepped the collection of drag kings bejewelled with pasted-on facial hair.
A masterpiece placement in the Opie show is the twinning of the her Ice Houses and Surfers series in a long narrow room. It’s like walking into a beautiful alternate reality of cool water and white light , created by Opie’s artistic vision and the technical mastery of her craft. (Apparently some of the Ice House series took hours and hours of setting up and standing on frozen lakes in the dead of winter).
The show also includes a newer series of empty cityscapes, and her older series of freeways. And this is one of the best things about Opie’s work - you cannot fit her into a photographic box. This fact particularly comes to the forefront on the top floor of the exhibit, where Opie focusses her lens on her home and community. Living in an ordinary lower middle-class LA neighbourhood, this collection is community and political commentary wrapped together.
For all of its diversity and the fact it is about community, in the end, Opie’s work still left me a bit cold. Her landscapes famously contain no people, and her portraits contain little passion. Her subjects, while almost all named, too often stare beyond the lens, their faces too mask-like. Even her “Domestic” series portrays couples who exhibit very little tenderness for one another.
Still, if you’re in New York and you want to see a photographic genius and may I even say, true maverick, see Catherine Opie’s show at the Guggenheim.
Finally, I want to take this opportunity to name a Canadian artist I really admire. Jane Isakson is a Whitehorse-based artist, Olympic athlete, outdoor enthusiast and lovely person. She draws inspiration for her landscapes from her life in the north. She has been to remote and rugged places very few people have seen, and through her talent for shapes, perspective and light, brings you with her. I personally wanted to shrink to minature and jump into Jane’s paintings, to scurry over the hills and jump into the luminous waters. If I had a huge wall I would buy this one of migrating caribou, and imagine I could hear their feet sinking and pulling out of the deep snow. If you are considering a landscape of the north, truly look no further and get in touch with Jane.
