After Jean-Michel Basquiat, Superhero Portfolio, 1982-87/2022. Editions & Works on Paper New York.
Louise Bourgeois and Andy Warhol: Looking out, looking in
Left: Louise Bourgeois, Together, 2004. Editions & Works on Paper New York. Right: Andy Warhol, Double Mickey Mouse, 1981. Editions & Works on Paper New York.
The dichotomy between ease and anxiety is beautifully synthesized by Louise Bourgeois’ ethereal Together, through which the artist notes, “The spiral is an attempt at controlling the chaos. It has two directions. Where do you place yourself, at the periphery or at the vortex?” and accompanies with a short, declarative verse:
I want them to like
me and to tell me
that I am ok
I want to be noticed
I want to be given
I want to be loved
Bourgeois’ figure radiates outward in search of connection while maintaining a sense of command within whatever disorder emerges from its proliferation. It is an embrace of the self while acknowledging the external, unwieldy nature of sprawl.
Consider then the reach of Mickey Mouse. From his humble beginnings on a steamboat, his trademark ears have since reached every corner of the earth on airplanes and cruise lines and well beyond to the farthest reaches of space via intellectual property. Galactic battles on down to family vacations reduced to a flat image of a smiling mouse, rendered here in kaleidoscopic fragmentation by Warhol. Through his hallmark use of iconography, Warhol presents Mickey as the core image of an ever-growing catalogue of experiences, memories, ideas, and representations, all returning to the central figure in his 1935 color debut.
Robert Longo and Banksy: Less fighting, more therapy
Robert Longo, Frank & Glenn, 1991. Editions & Works on Paper New York.
Choose your weapon: fists, banana gun, or ‘90s nostalgia; any will do – when violence isn’t appropriate, it can be appropriated, as Robert Longo and Banksy deftly navigate in this pairing. It was somewhat of a thing in the late 1900s (as the kids are saying) to put a man in a nice suit and let him go berserk across television, film, and culture, as if the coming millennium needed a four-in-hand knot to justify the violent means that were bringing us there. For Longo, the vernal push and pull of Frank and Glenn’s roughhousing is given away by their clean faces, jocular smiles, and shirtsleeves that any Brooks Brother would object to, giving it a playful, fraternal feeling. Contrast to the stone-faced professionalism of Messrs. Vega and Winnfield, whose point collars and pleated trousers are emblematic of ‘90s power dressing. Hand them a gun or a banana, it doesn’t really matter – they mean business either way.
Ruth Asawa and Anni Albers: Two stitches in a great weave
Left: Ruth Asawa, Chair, 1965. Editions & Works on Paper New York. Right: Anni Albers, Second Movement IV, 1978. Editions & Works on Paper New York.
Ask a philosopher to talk about chairs and you’ll get winding citations from Plato to Wittgenstein and be no better off than where you started – the idea and artistic technique of meandering, however, led to Ruth Asawa’s Chair lithograph. Under the mentorship of Josef Albers, Asawa developed her signature linework, which emphasized an autonomy of space and its relationship between subject, form, and concentricity. As a substrative domain, space occupies, moves, weaves between positive and negative, and acted as the condition in which Asawa approached each medium in her remarkable oeuvre.
Such is the confluence that brings this pairing together that Asawa’s partner can be none other but Anni Albers, whose Second Movement IV perfectly balances Chair’s fluid geometry with the equilibrium of Albers’ structural harmony. Albers references Andean weaving and an immaculate sense of spatial balance to reflect her early Bauhaus training and modernist sensibility. Where Asawa gives the work personal touch – Chair is also known as Addie’s Chair, named after her daughter – Albers opts for the anonymity of her historical references. Albers offers an element of assemblage between cultures, times, and techniques that gives both works timeless relevance, best bonded by Charles Sherrington’s metaphor for the brain as a loom: “Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns.”
Mike Kelley and Jean-Michel Basquiat: Who will save the day?
Left: Mike Kelley, Lenticular 4, 2007. Editions & Works on Paper New York. Right: After Jean-Michel Basquiat, Superhero Portfolio, 1982-87/2022. Editions & Works on Paper New York.
The city can feel a bit like living in one big bottle at times, what with all the important things happening here and nowhere else. Is it any wonder our masked and caped crusaders leap from building to building, rather than subdivision to subdivision? As Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Superhero Portfolio and Mike Kelley’s Lenticular 4 show us, there is an inverted relationship between superhuman dreams and spatial reality: the places we call home and the idols we adore can be just as alienating as they are liberating.
Basquiat’s heroes and nemeses – Batman and Robin, The Flash, The Joker and Riddler – are all creatures of the city, renderings of the good and evil that manifest through its rhythms and dynamism as seen through the private logic of a child’s frenetic notebook scribbles. Their likenesses and storylines melded, they become murals on the page. Kelley’s Superman is a transplant to himself, his home planet, and his experience in our world. As the artist notes, he is “saddled with the responsibility to watch over his hometown forever. What a horrible scenario – but everyone is stuck with their past.” The Man of Steel, faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, is just as disaffected as the rest of us.
Sam Francis and Roy Lichtenstein: Anything but guileless
Left to right: Sam Francis, Veiled Sail, 1969. Editions & Works on Paper New York. Sam Francis, Untitled, 1968. Editions & Works on Paper New York. Roy Lichtenstein, Painting in Gold Frame, from Paintings Series, 1984. Editions & Works on Paper New York.
“Artists at their windows” constitutes a subgenre of art history that anyone with a library card or museum membership can embark upon for personal discovery, if not inclined to write a dissertation or two. For our purposes, we will instead focus on the fundamental, almost subliminal shape guiding our eye towards the view: the simple rectangle. Paper, canvas, and windows share the same shape for multiple reasons, chief among them cost efficiency, ease of orientation, and form-fitting relative to other structures and items around them – this relational courteousness allows our eyes and hands to focus on whatever the shape frames for us, rather than engaging through necessity with the architecture of the object to reach a subject. This is, rather, until we examine Sam Francis’ Veiled Sail and Untitled and Roy Lichtenstein’s Painting in Gold Frame, which both directly use framing as substance and device.
Francis immediately goes for the outer limits of the print, enclosing the central space and punctuating the negative area with splatters, as if to create a layer between the view itself and our perspective of it. Lichtenstein too employs a gestural style, creating a tension between the scene and the frame which makes the field of view possible. Taken together, the three works are expressive explorations of the endless prospects of a simple configuration.
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