Two Lincoln Kirstein Shows

[pherank]

Roberta Smith, the NYT co-chief art critic, and Alastair Macaulay, ballet critic discuss two current Lincoln Kirstein exhibits. The article includes rare 1946 footage of a Four Temperaments pas de deux rehearsal.

Lincoln Kirstein: A Modern Tastemaker With Some Iffy Taste
"An art critic and dance critic talk about two Kirstein shows — and how his protean diversity left its mark on the arts, most productively on ballet."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/arts/design/lincoln-kirstein-a-modern-tastemaker-with-some-iffy-taste.html

 

[Quiggin]

There's also an iffier show at Zwirner New York. (I wonder what Kirstein would have thought of the delightful Franz West show currently at Zwirner London.)

https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/young-and-evil

It's an interesting discussion between Roberta Smith and Alaistair Macaulay. Macaulay makes a misstep by ranking Walker Evans (arguably Kirstein's most important "discovery" after Balanchine) below Tchelitchew, Naldeman and Lynes. And did Tchelitchew's "sense of light, space and metamorphosis transform Balanchine’s work," as AM claims? Hmmm.

Smith says that the clips of Billy the Kid and Filling Station "nearly did her in," but that the excerpt of The Four Temperaments (embedded in the review) is "one of the high points of the show, wonderful to watch, because the dancers are dressed so plainly and none of the men are pretending to be riding horses — or fixing cars."

Edited March 29, 2019 by Quiggin

[dirac]

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 Macaulay makes a misstep by ranking Walker Evans (arguably Kirstein's most important "discovery" after Balanchine) below Tchelitchew, Naldeman and Lynes. 

I agree, and I'd remove the "arguably." Macaulay does seem to indicate that he is not familiar with Evans' work apart from what he'd just seen in this show, so maybe that 's it.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

On 3/29/2019 at 7:33 PM, Quiggin said:

Macaulay makes a misstep by ranking Walker Evans (arguably Kirstein's most important "discovery" after Balanchine) below Tchelitchew, Naldeman and Lynes.

Oh, I just laughed out loud at that one. I suppose one might debate whether Evans was a better artist in his chosen medium than Tchelitchew or Nadelman were in theirs, but Evans was a huge influence on at least two generations of photographers. I for one am not prepared to argue that either Tchelitchew or Nadelman were similarly important to their arts. Lynes was an important photographer—he was a touchstone for Mapplethorpe, for instance—but not the towering figure Evans was and remains.

Sometimes I think Macauley needs to get out more.

[pherank]

My impression of their conversation was that the reactions were completely personal and off the cuff (aside from Smith's comment, "You must reconsider. Walker Evans is the greatest of the whole crowd, with Nadelman. But who’s ranking?" ["But who's ranking" seems to suggest they don't need to worry about the historical importance of the artists, in this conversation, so it's kind of funny that Smith wants to get in the last word on Evans.] For me, it's an apples to oranges comparison of reportage photography and Surrealist/Modernist paintings. Maybe Macaulay is channeling the old café argument that the journey of a painter from student academic sketches to a fully realized unique presentation such as this:  https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c0/3d/cd/c03dcd3054d282c5fef2acaabeb99e3c.jpg
is a much greater journey, and investment of time, energy and thought (and accumulation of skills) than what it takes to photograph subjects in the field. But again, apples to oranges. Walker Evans achieved quite a few remarkable images in his time as a photojournalist. But so did Dorothea Lange. And so did Vivian Maier, whom no one ever heard of while she was alive (and was discovered by accident). Artistic importance is in the eye of the beholder.  ;)

It's not unusual for an artist to be inspired by some quirky things - and that makes the choices much more poetic than a list of "recommended important artists" on a class handout. It's all about the things that inspire you to do something worthwhile.
 

[dirac]

I suspect that Smith was taken aback by Macaulay's dismissal of Evans and obvious unfamiliarity with his work.

No doubt some of the reactions were off-the-cuff, which is why I wish the Times would return to offering carefully thought-through work from its critics instead of these little chit-chats, which are mostly of dubious worth and interest. They do, however, get clicks, so we seem to be stuck with them. 

[Kathleen O'Connell]

13 minutes ago, pherank said:

Maybe Macaulay is channeling the old café argument that the journey of a painter from student academic sketches to a fully realized unique presentation such as this:  https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c0/3d/cd/c03dcd3054d282c5fef2acaabeb99e3c.jpg is a much greater journey, and investment of time, energy and thought (and accumulation of skills) than what it takes to photograph subjects in the field.

It's not a very good argument. 

[pherank]

43 minutes ago, dirac said:

I suspect that Smith was taken aback by Macaulay's dismissal of Evans and obvious unfamiliarity with his work.

No doubt some of the reactions were off-the-cuff, which is why I wish the Times would return to offering carefully thought-through work from its critics instead of these little chit-chats, which are mostly of dubious worth and interest. They do, however, get clicks, so we seem to be stuck with them. 

Ah, but this article is so social media-esque.  ;)
Doesn't it feel very "now"?
 

33 minutes ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

It's not a very good argument. 

But I can't imagine the life of an artist or musician without those goofy discussions. That's how friends, alliances, and enemies, are made.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

53 minutes ago, pherank said:

But I can't imagine the life of an artist or musician without those goofy discussions. That's how friends, alliances, and enemies, are made.

I can imagine the life of a mature artist without them. Believing that one's art form requires a greater investment in time, energy, thought, and skill and that one's journey from student to master is therefore somehow greater than that of practitioners in other art forms seems like a young person's conceit. Most artists I've met have tremendous respect for their peers in other forms and genres.

It's not like Evans and Lynes were out there snapping selfies with their cell phones. Lynes was apparently more invested in darkroom technique than Evans was, however, perhaps because of his interest in surrealist effects. As artists, their visions were almost diametrically opposed. 

 

[pherank]

25 minutes ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

I can imagine the life of a mature artist without them. Believing that one's art form requires a greater investment in time, energy, thought, and skill and that one's journey from student to master is therefore somehow greater than that of practitioners in other art forms seems like a young person's conceit. Most artists I've met have tremendous respect for their peers in other forms and genres.

It's not like Evans and Lynes were out there snapping selfies with their cell phones. Lynes was apparently more invested in darkroom technique than Evans was, however, perhaps because of his interest in surrealist effects. As artists, their visions were almost diametrically opposed.

Mature as in "careful and thorough"? Or as in, "an advanced stage of mental or emotional development"?
Was Picasso being mature when he stated that "sex and art are the same thing"? Or was he good at getting people to keep thinking and talking about Picasso, and Art?

We can't stop people from being people, and saying what they think/feel (thus the Ballet forum!). And these outbursts are often a product of one's current situation and environment. "Subject to change", indeed.
You don't want to see the list of inane, hypocritical, argumentative, acrimonious, etc. comments that artists have made about one another, their "audience", the critics, humanity, life, whatever. And some of the time the remarks are even quite justified. What must have been going on for the composer Frederick Delius when he stated, "if a man tells me he likes Mozart, I know in advance that he is a bad musician"?

The problem is, sometimes talk is just talk.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Artists are certainly free to trash talk each other as much as they like, though I will note that they tend to trash talk their rivals rather than their peers in other art forms. I read your comments as somehow justifying Macauley's dismissal of Evans in favor of Tchelitchew, which is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether. 

Picasso was indeed very good at getting people to talk about Picasso. 

[Quiggin]

All the photographers I've known have studied the history of their medium as assiduously as artists in other mediums, and bring that knowledge to every photograph they take – often not necessarily following it but fighting against it.

Interestingly Evans originally intended to be a writer and Kirstein nudged him over to photography. Cartier-Bresson started out as a painter and graphic artist, something he tried to return to (unsuccessfully). Robert Ryman, the painter, came to New York to study with Lennie Tristano and be a jazz saxophonist. Sometimes we're not the best judge of our talents – or you could say that the cross of two disciplines, a successful one built over a failed one (e.g Balanchine the choreographer over Balanchine the composer) strengthens one.

Here's a nice set of Walker Evans photographs for a 1945 Fortune magazine article that Kirstein might have facilitated – Balanchine & Ballet Theatre –

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https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/276721

Also there's always some truth and some poetry to what Picasso says. Even his catty comment about Bonnard – "a potpouri of indecisions" – rings true for me after having wearily just gone through room after room of Bonnardy hesitations at the Tate. 

[pherank]

50 minutes ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

I read your comments as somehow justifying Macauley's dismissal of Evans in favor of Tchelitchew, which is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether.

If you mean do I agree with Macaulay's brief assessment of Walker Evans (so brief as to make me want to know just what he really means) - not really. But neither is Evans one of my most favorite photographers. For social "reportage" photography, I prefer someone like Henri Cartier-Bresson. That's just me.

I don't feel it's my business to justify/defend someone else's statements - just their right to make their own thoughts and impressions known. That, is a different thing. Macaulay gets to defend himself. Have at it, Alastair!

25 minutes ago, Quiggin said:

Also there's always some truth and some poetry to what Picasso says. Even his catty comment about Bonnard – "a potpouri of indecisions" – rings true for me after having wearily just gone through room after room of Bonnardy hesitations at the Tate. 

I'm envious that you spent a day at the Tate.  ;)
Bonnard is a painter I came to rather late, but I do enjoy some of his work (the colors!), and that of other members of Les Nabis.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

I'd rather evaluate an artist's oeuvre on the basis of the work itself and on its influence than on the artist's bons mots. In the specific case of Picasso, one also gets gems like these:

"Women are machines for suffering."

"For me, there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats."

“Every time I change wives I should burn the last one. That way I'd be rid of them. They wouldn't be around to complicate my existence. Maybe, that would bring back my youth, too. You kill the woman and you wipe out the past she represents.”

"To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved." (If the testimony of his family and the many women he used up and abandoned is any evidence, I gather he rolled up his sleeves and really dove into the difficult work of making himself hated. Ideally we could just ignore an artist's biography too, but that's hard to do.)

I think Macaulay's pronouncement that he cannot rank Walker Evans with Pavel Tchelitchew based on the evidence of MoMA's Kirstein exhibition is at best glib. Roberta Smith's response—"Who's ranking?"—redirects the discussion in a more useful direction, which is to try to place these artists in context and understand why Kirstein esteemed them rather than their (ultimately) more famous and influential contemporaries. (I'm frankly intrigued by the fact that Kirstein championed both Evans and Lynes: it's difficult to imagine two more different sensibilities.) Still, I'm glad she pushed back on Macaulay's assessment of Evans.

17 hours ago, dirac said:

No doubt some of the reactions were off-the-cuff, which is why I wish the Times would return to offering carefully thought-through work from its critics instead of these little chit-chats, which are mostly of dubious worth and interest. 

Just nodding my head in violent agreement. A little video of Smith and Macaulay walking through the gallery together and chatting about what they were looking at and their responses to it in real time might have been delightful. But I think the print (ahem, or words on a screen) product should be reserved for a more considered assessment. Oh, and I hate the article's headline: "Lincoln Kirstein: A Modern Tastemaker With Some Iffy Taste." "Iffy" isn't the term I'd use to describe Kirstein's choosing the figurative over the abstract. I wouldn't want to spend too many hours of my life looking a the work of Paul Cadmus, but it's not like it's junk and I can see where it slots into the art history timeline next to Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. (Looking at "The Fleet's In" makes me think that maybe R. Crumb is his real heir ...) I can also see the link with Lynes.

13 hours ago, pherank said:

Also there's always some truth and some poetry to what Picasso says. Even his catty comment about Bonnard – "a potpouri of indecisions" – rings true for me after having wearily just gone through room after room of Bonnardy hesitations at the Tate. 

I feel your pain.  I happened to change offices at work many years ago, and my predecessor had installed a very large framed poster from some Bonnard exhibit or another on the wall right across from the desk. There wasn't any money in the departmental budget to replace it with something different, and there was a prohibition on hanging something of one's own without permission, so I had to look at it for what felt like an age until I managed to leap through enough bureaucratic hoops to get something more suitable for day-in-day-out gazing up on the wall. I vastly prefer Bonnard's exact contemporary (and fellow Nabi) Édouard Vuillard, who doesn't seem to get the "room after room" treatment nearly often enough. 

ETA: since Evans, Cartier-Bresson, and Dorothea Lange have been mentioned in this thread, I thought I'd enthuse about their much less well-know but wonderful younger contemporary William Gedney, who works in the same tradition, along with his own great contemporary, Robert Frank. Just about the whole of Gedney's work has been archived at Duke University and just randomly pointing and clicking at the collection unearths wonders. 

Edited April 2, 2019 by Kathleen O'Connell

[dirac]

Quote

 

I'd rather evaluate an artist's oeuvre on the basis of the work itself and on its influence than on the artist's bons mots. In the specific case of Picasso, one also gets gems like these:

"Women are machines for suffering."

"For me, there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats."

“Every time I change wives I should burn the last one. That way I'd be rid of them. They wouldn't be around to complicate my existence. Maybe, that would bring back my youth, too. You kill the woman and you wipe out the past she represents.”

 

Not always easy to separate, particularly if you think, as the late John Richardson did (I just posted his obit in this forum, I'm sorry to say) that Picasso's art entered a new phase with each new woman in his life.

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Oh, and I hate the article's headline: "Lincoln Kirstein: A Modern Tastemaker With Some Iffy Taste." "Iffy" isn't the term I'd use to describe Kirstein's choosing the figurative over the abstract.

I wondered at that, too. "Iffy" is bit too demotic and frivolous for the context.

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 A little video of Smith and Macaulay walking through the gallery together and chatting about what they were looking at and their responses to it in real time might have been delightful.

Exactly - in these little dialogues the attempts at simulating spontaneous give-and-take are often just labored and self-conscious.