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Saturday, June 13th, 2009
I spent yesterday afternoon at the MoMA with some friends, where I found two exhibitions devoted to word-based art. Both are really engaging and interesting, although by the time I got to the second I was already towards the end of my attention span... Tangled Alphabets is a show of the calligraphic art of León Ferrari and Mira Schendel. I was particularly taken with Ferrari's work -- Schendel's mostly left me cold, though I could see how it makes sense to exhibit the two together and how Schendel's work sometimes offers a nice counterpoint. I was sorry there was no print available of Ferrari's Cuadro escrito, which seemed like the highlight of the show to me: -- the text is a description of the painting Ferrari would compose "if I knew how to paint, if God in his embarrassment and confusion had accidentally touched me..." There is a catalog of the show, and additionally a bilingual edition of León Ferrari: Obra 1976-2008 -- this latter does not have a whole lot of the calligraphic works but does contain some really interesting texts and paintings. Downstairs there was an exhibition of printed art and techniques of printing, The Printed Picture -- the primary focus of this was on technology used to render graphic images in printing, but what really caught my eye was a room of typography in different faces and made with different printing technologies.
 Si yo supiera pintar, si Dios en su apuro y turbado por error confuso me hubiera tocado, agarrarÃa los vellos de la marta en la punta de una rama de fresno flexible empapados sumergidos en óleo bermejo y precisamente en este lugar iniciarÃa una lÃnea delgada flaca ya con la intención de cubrirla después maniobrando con la transparencia. Al lado un pozo absolutamente negro y definitivo. Enganchados en las ramas algunos repugnantes amarillos circuncisos como nidos de codesera el cochino pájaro del ártico que utiliza sus mismÃsimos hijos para alimentar las focas que le placen (nadie supo nunca por qué siguen naciendo) colgantes arracimados a la tela ayer virgen de la cual dejo dos cuartas cuadradas libres y enseguida un caballo formidable pero frustratorio por retaceado blanco corriendo espumante con las crines y las colas desplegadas, un verdadero corcel del malón resuelto con realismo fotográfico pero con cierto aire metafÃsico para introducir uno de los elementos de confusión y también un sospechado sugerido signifÃcado opaco bajo el barniz, no simbólico, como para que al verlo alguien ni siquiera se de cuenta que en sus entrañas se refriega preguntándose qué significa ese caballo blanco veloz hacia el monte de Venus entre las hierbas altas oscuras enruladas la gran quebrada magnética y luego el volcán.
↻...done
posted morning of June 13th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, June 14th, 2009
 Another set of paintings by Ferrari that I found very interesting, showed saints -- rendered in a recognizable style that I don't know the name of to search for examples, one that seemed very familiar from religious iconography -- in the foreground with armaments and explosions in the background. Along similar lines to his "Civilisación occidentale y cristiana" (1965), shown here hanging at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art.
Now I'm really wanting the catalog of this exhibition! Another piece from it that really captured my imagination was  "Unión libre," an image of a nude woman with the opening of André Breton's poem of the same title printed over her body in braille: Ma femme à la chevelure de feu de bois
Aux pensées d'éclairs de chaleur
A la taille de sablier
Ma femme à la taille de loutre entre les dents du tigre
Ma femme à la bouche de cocarde et de bouquet d'étoiles de
dernière grandeur
posted morning of June 14th, 2009: Respond
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