Covering Architecture

There is a lot going on right now in Philadelphia. The big NCECA (Ceramics) conference arrives March 31; it's going to blow the town apart from the looks of the program. More on that to come.  Another extraordinary event which started in January and will continue until April 11 is  PHILAGRAFIKA, 'an international festival celebrating print in contemporary art.' This is the first year of what is intended to be an annual event, and it's gotten off the ground with such smooth enthusiasm that I'm sure it will be a major event for years to come. 300 artists are participating at 80 venues all around the city, from tiny gallery spaces to events and exhibits at PMA, including a conversation with Kiki Smith on the subject (PMA - March 30) One of my favorites under the Philagrafika umbrella is a small exhibit at the Athenaeum, a wonderful place of books in an elegant historic space close to Independence Hall. The exhibit, in cooperation with the Philadelphia for the Book, is called "Building By the Book," and it features 6 book artists, each of whom used an historic book from the Atheneaum collection as a jumping off point. The collaboration between old and new methods,  technology, visions, and subject matter makes for compelling results, fascinating in both conception and construction. Pia Pizzo, a well-known book artist and former stage designer, using "Le Nouvel Opera de Charles Garnier" from 1876-81 as her inspiration, shows an multi-fold construction that marries the dramatic integrity of the sophisticated Paris Opera building with Baroque romance, particularly inspired by "The Phantom of the Opera." Her limited colors - matte black, white, vibrant red, and rich gold - meet with her virtuosic handling of paper, sometimes precisely cut and sometimes torn, to make a stunning, satisfying piece of theater in book form. Joseph Magnan's work, "Diorama," derives from the straightforward inspiration of Owen Biddle's "The Young Carpenter's Assistant," a trade textbook from 1805. The match is remarkable for the affinity between men at home with wood-working skills, one interested in merely practical ends that are aesthetic by nature (the stately architecture of historic Philadelphia) and the other, a contemporary sculptor who knows how to make magic out of the common substance. His carved book, with a cover of white oak and interior pages of maple, is a tour de force of space, art, and skill. One experiences it much like architecture, entering the book through a door and following into space that leads further into spaces beyond. The human imagination, coupled with consummate skills and standards of craftsmanship, can work wonders - this exhibition is proof.

Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris in Philadelphia

Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris just opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It's a great show, with some astonishing masterpieces - but before I say anything else, I have to be sure to emphasize that the entire exhibit is from the museum's own collection, an amazing statement for such depth and breadth. The exhibit covers the first 

half of the 20th century, with all that implies for art, progress, and human tragedy. The viewpoint of Paris was pivotal for what was going on and these artists are good witnesses, even the ones whose names are not as well known as the title character. The show begins with Picasso's 1906 Self-Portrait, a kind of trumpet blast for what was to come in terms of stripping away the old order and starting something new. Analytical Cubism is well represented by both Picasso and Braque, an unusual chance to see this phase in depth, and then we see how their ideas broaden out to be understood - and misunderstood - by a wide range of others. The 'Salon Cubism' is a central feature of the show - a replication of the viewing experience in the early 20th century, complete with upholstered banquette and dark walls hung from floor to ceiling. A featured example is "Tea Time," by Jean Metzinger, in which the artist attempted to make Cubism accessible to the ordinary person - it seems very mundane and banal to modern eyes, but was the most celebrated 'Cubist' painting of the time. Leger's 'The City' is here - one of the great offshoots of the original idea, mixing Cubist principles with a zingy Futurist chaos. There is also an interesting look at the 'backlash' to progress after WWI, when we see even Picasso seeking a comforting 'NeoClassicism." By the end of the period Paris, Europe, the world, and these artists are tired and in shock at what has transpired. Powerful responses, especially the paired sculptures by Picasso (Man with a Lamb) and Jacque Lipchitz (The Prayer) end the show with a dark cry of anguish. There's a gentle quality in Picasso's work, however, that as in the Guernica, still seems to hold out some hope for the future; one of his great strengths was that he was always looking forward.

A Feel for Time

There are many ways to look at time. It seems an idea only to be pondered in the abstract, but there are ways to actually LOOK at time. At A-X-D Gallery, in Center City Philadelphia, two artists give us their versions of how to do that in a show titled "Fabricated Stories." David Carrow is a found object sculptor who loves stuff - old stuff. I don't ever want to know what his house looks like, but what he does in making art with his stuff is pretty interesting. He has a predilection for tools, both domestic and industrial, a number of which seem valuable enough on their own to make an antiques dealer drool. In one of the most successful pieces in the show, "Masonry," he takes a kitchen shelving unit and fills it with objects that are fun to look at but keep prodding at you until you realize the work isn't as whimsical as it first looks. The central shelf holds large mason jars, stuffed with things such as wooden clothespins, buttons and marbles, and above them hands a neat row of hand eggbeaters. It's a little "Leave it to Beaver" tableau - but then you start thinking about how those objects don't mean much anymore, and how our fast-advancing technological age has little need for what's on offer. The eggbeaters are rusting away before our eyes. Carrow adds a further prod towards work that's over and done with in the caked artist's palette tacked up behind the display, and also in the strings of wooden beads that hang loosely from side to side, bringing to mind an abacus counting off the minutes until it all crumbles and dies. Hidden below the shelf, behind a metal screen, one finds an axe, a tool he repeats in other works, a working aid that also does a great job of ending life. His exhibition counterpart, Dolores Poacelli, takes an entirely different tack, but her elegant, carefully worked pieces also have a subtext of time. She works with recycled metal, but in neatly arranged wall-hung squares and rectangles in which she emphasizes the shine and reflection of the material. It is only when one looks closely that finds faint remnants of print and image, a legacy of the old technology of printing plates. She uses rust on some of the works, painting it on and then neatly scratching it away to make an art of controlled form and design. In some ways her work is 180 degrees from Carrow's but with her rust and recycling, she is also dealing with ideas of the gradual ebbing of time. The show is at A-X-D Gallery on 10th Street through March 6th.