Art Review
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/12/04/arts/04nypl_CA1ready.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/12/04/arts/04nyplready.html
Politically Charged Prints Cause Talking in the Library
By KEN JOHNSON
Controversy has erupted from the sleepy third-floor hallway galleries at the New
York Public Library, where a modest exhibition of contemporary prints called
“Multiple Interpretations” is on view.
The work that has prompted protests from some library patrons, attracted
coverage by The Daily News, Fox News and USA Today and has stirred the
blogosphere is called “Line Up,” a series of politically inflammatory prints by
the team of Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese. Each black-and-white digital print
is a mug shot-style diptych in which a member of the Bush administration appears
in profile and face forward, holding a police identification sign and the date
on which he or she made a statement of questionable veracity relating to Iraq.
A video accompanying the prints allows you to hear an actual recording through
headphones as you view each speaker’s fake mug shot reproduced on screen.
President Bush announces the discovery of Saddam Hussein’s effort to purchase
uranium in Africa. ***** Cheney says, “Nobody has produced a single shred of
evidence that there’s anything wrong or inappropriate here,” presumably a
reference to Halliburton. (The entire video is available on YouTube.)
It is at first mildly shocking to come upon such bluntly partisan artwork on a
New York Public Library wall. Biting political satire is deeply a part of
printmaking history — see Goya, James Gillray and Daumier — but handmade prints
are no longer a significant form of political communication, and we don’t expect
anything so brazenly tendentious in the public library context.
Seen elsewhere, the prints would not be so provocative. As a commenter on one
blog pointed out, Ligorano/Reese’s work would hardly raise an eyebrow, much less
get a laugh, were it shown on “Real Time With Bill Maher” or on “The Daily Show
With Jon Stewart.” So the news media squall it has precipitated seems overblown.
That said, Ligorano/Reese’s piece does pose a challenge to the rest of the
exhibition, which looks quiescent by comparison, even taking into consideration
that the show is not meant to focus on political work. Organized by the library’s
curator of prints, Roberta Waddell, the display is intended to present the range
of contemporary printmaking styles that the library has collected during the
last 10 years.
There are some other politically animated works, but only Daniel Heyman’s
drypoint portraits of Iraqi prisoners drawn from life are nearly as provocative.
They are not impressive visually, but the subjects’ descriptions of abusive
treatment by United States guards and interrogators — handwritten by Mr. Heyman
into the spaces surrounding the images — are appalling, infuriating and
heartbreaking.
A number of the show’s artists work abstractly. Thomas Nozkowski’s subtly
colored etchings representing bulbous forms, geometric shapes and patterned
fields are wonderful, and they are as interesting as the paintings for which he
is best known.
Which raises another problem. It appears that some of the artists are included
not because they are such great printmakers but because they are known for their
work in other mediums. If it didn’t come with the name of the international
installation star Olafur Eliasson attached, a set of small photogravure copies
of scientific diagrams and oscilloscope waves would be almost completely without
interest.
The same can be said for copies of pages from old Erector Set manuals, done by
the noted conceptualist Chris Burden, and for prints by E. V. Day, Kevin Appel
and Juliaő Sarmento. Too often the work suggests that the prints were made not
because the artist was especially interested in the medium, but as tokens for
collectors who could not afford the real thing.
There are a few artists in the show who are primarily committed to printmaking.
David Avery, for example, created a series of small, Neo-Gothic style
illustrations for Grimms’ fairy tales that are crammed with magical details
rendered in eye-straining miniaturism. And Andrew Raftery uses traditional
engraving tools and techniques to create wide-angle views of men trying on suits
in a luxurious clothing store. The style calls to mind the early-20th-century
advertising illustration of J. C. Leyendecker — creator of the Arrow Collar
Man — as well as the homoerotic narrative paintings and prints by Paul Cadmus.
On the other hand, David Shrigley’s funny, absurdly rudimentary etchings — one
depicts a stick figure crushed under a giant, Minimalist cube, while two
companions helplessly look on — prove that technical mastery alone is not
enough. Mr. Shrigley shrugs off the weight of high-culture expectations and in
so doing achieves something oddly liberating.
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