Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portraits @Skarstedt

JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against grey walls in the two second floor gallery spaces. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, made between 1980 and 1988. Physical dimensions range from roughly 15x15 to 24x20 and edition sizes are either 3, 10, or 15. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This small show of Robert Mapplethorpe's self portraits is a focused subset of the work he made in the last decade of the his life. It gathers together many of the self portraits he took in the 1980s, leaving out the early Polaroids and the bullwhip in the ass aggressively sexual pictures of the 1970s. What this edit gives up in inclusiveness and comprehensiveness, it gains in tight attention, as it allows us to see the small, evolving changes in his artistic approach, played out in a handful of important images.

In Mapplethorpe's early 1980s self portraits, he still has his swagger on, but his eye has turned to the nuances of gender roles. He casts himself as the effortlessly cool rebel with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, as an androgynous bare chested male in eye makeup, and as a diva in drag wrapped in a lush fur collar. The pared down classicism of his staging allows him to shift from persona or persona like a chameleon without losing a sense of control, trying on identities and challenging conventional attitudes within the confines of quiet formal elegance.

Just a year or two later finds Mapplethorpe exploring background geometries and more overt iconography. He stands in front of layered squares (the graphic design looking a bit dated now) and uses the triangulating lines of the back of his hair and the trim of his leather jacket to precisely echo a sharply angled striped backdrop. In another work, he tackles religion with a bold pentagram wall hanging, posing as an outlaw armed with a tommy gun. His self portrait with horns follows this thread, spookily lighting himself from below and casting himself as either a satyr or a devil.

The last self portraits, made in the years before he died, find him turning inward and looking at himself with more vulnerability. His many roles collapse into a blurred, shape shifting image of his face in motion, and a portrait in a tuxedo is somehow haunting rather than debonair, the last disguise in which we might expect to find him. By 1988, he stares at the camera with unvarnished openness, his face drawn and gaunt with disease, armed with a cane topped by an ebony skull. He seems to float out of the darkness, looking death straight in the eye, confronting himself as much as the camera.

Even in the span of the dozen pictures on view here, it is possible to see both continuity and change in Mapplethorpe's work. Even as the content of his self portraits began to evolve, his eye for classical harmony never faltered, his forms always clean and refined, regardless of his emotional intentions. There's underlying power in every one of these photographs, and together they pack a durably surprising wallop.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are for the most part on loan and therefore not for sale, although a few were apparently available at prices between $150000 and $200000. Mapplethorpe's prints are routinely available in the secondary markets, with dozens of images up for sale every year. Prices have generally ranged between a few thousand dollars for his lesser known works to more than $300000 for his most iconic images.

 

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Mapplethorpe Foundation site (here)

 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portraits

Through June 15th

 

Skarstedt Gallery

20 East 79th Street

New York, NY 10075

Book: Laurie Simmons, Color Coordinated Interiors 1983

JTF (just the facts): Published in conjunction with a 2007 exhibition by Skarstedt Gallery (here) and Sperone Westwater (here). 56 pages, with a total of 21 color images. Includes an artist interview conducted by James Welling. All of the works in this volume are chromogenic c-prints, roughly sized between 25x25 to 60x45 or reverse, and were made between 1982 and 1983. (Cover shot at right, via Amazon.)

Comments/Context: I recently came across this thin catalog from a Laurie Simmons gallery exhibition that I missed a few years ago. The book documents one of her earlier, lesser known projects, where plastic dolls (from Japan, known as the "Teenettes") have been placed in front of various interiors scenes, which have been projected from behind. In each staged setting, the color of the dolls matches the colors of the room with a level of perfection that is altogether unnerving.

While the premise here is pretty straightforward, I found the resulting images to be both witty and powerful, with a Stepford Wives kind of satirical creepiness. Each room has an exacting perfection, an obsessive desire for things to be "just right", with strong ties to hard questions about traditional women's roles and ideals. Many of the rooms have a sterile, dated quality, a feeling that time has passed these people by, even though they are trying so hard to be current and beautiful. The gestures of the dolls made me want to invent some kind of back story or narrative for each picture, where the dining room or the kitchen is the setting for some small but unknown human drama. (Yellow Dining Room, 1983, at right, via the artist's website.)

In general, while Simmons' more recent images of houses, cakes, cameras and guns walking on doll legs might be more familiar to many collectors, I think these earlier works deserve attention as well, especially for their sly reflections on an impossibly controlled life that is both a paradise and a prison.

Collector’s POV: Laurie Simmons is represented by Skarstedt Gallery (here) and Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art (here) in New York. Her photographs have become more readily available in the secondary markets in recent years. Prices have ranged between $1000 and $96000, with a sweet spot between $8000 and $15000, consistently rising over time. (Blue Den, 1983, at right, via the artist's website.)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Review: NY Times, 2007 (here, scroll down)

Barbara Kruger, Pre-Digital, 1980-1992 @Skarstedt

JTF (just the facts): A total of 44 collages and 1 silkscreen painting, shown in the first floor and two second floor galleries (North and South). The collages are made of photographs and cut out type, mounted to paper. They are framed in black and matted, and are generally 10x8 or smaller, with a handful of works approximately 10x14. All of the works were made between 1980 and 1992. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Even after twenty years of time to age gracefully, Barbara Kruger's collages from the 1980s still seem aggressively confrontational and bitterly ironic. While her work in recent years has been predominantly enlarged to billboard and wall sized murals that seem to shout their penetrating slogans, these smaller early pieces have a more hand crafted personal feel and expose more of her working process.

Most of her collages started with a symbolic photographic image, often dripping in Cold War noir. Kruger then cut and pasted words and phrases in a clean typeface (both white on black and black on white) straight onto the images, sometimes adding other graphic elements, like lines or borders. The result was an attention grabbing montage of words and pictures, steeped in the styles of product advertising and political propaganda.

While collage and photomontage went through periods of great activity during the first part of the 20th century (think Hannah Höch and her feminist/Dada collages and the Russian Constructivist posters and collages of Klustis, Lissitzky, and Rodchenko), the form seems to have been consumed by the graphic designers and advertising creatives of the 1940s, going somewhat dormant as an artistic mode until Kruger came along decades later and co-opted the clichés for her own purposes.

While it is a relatively simple idea to take a single image and make it more potent via the use of a clever caption, it is the consistent quality of Kruger's execution that is clear from this show. In work after work, the juxtaposition/contrast of a strong visual with tightly edited, sparse prose leads to incisive commentary and spontaneous combustion. Here are a few of the most memorable phrases:

We are the objects of your suave entrapments

Admit nothing. Blame everyone. Be bitter.

It's our pleasure to disgust you

You are not yourself

Who will write the history of tears

Your moments of joy have the precision of military strategy

We are astonishingly lifelike

Your body is a battlefield

Even in our oversauturated world of media, Kruger's 1980s collages still have enormous energy. While some of the topical questions may have changed, the works themselves have aged extremely well.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced between $35000 and $45000; the large silkscreen is not for sale. I think these early Kruger collages will end up being considered iconic, ground breaking works from the 1980s, especially since they show the hand of the artist. While they don't fit into our collection, this is a tremendously thought provoking and challenging show, well worth a visit before it closes.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Barbara Kruger, Pre-Digital, 1980-1992
Through April 18th

Skarstedt Gallery

20 East 79th Street
New York, NY 10075

Cindy Sherman, History Portraits @Skarstedt

JTF (just the facts): 18 color portraits, all larger than life sized, negatives from 1988 through 1990, displayed in 3 separate rooms on the first and second floors of the gallery. The works are made in editions of 6. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: It's been nearly 20 years since Cindy Sherman first displayed prints from her History Portraits series and much has been written about these popular works. As a reminder, in these images, she took the conventions and mannerisms from several centuries of European painting and expanded her process of self transformation to create a rogues gallery of madonnas, aristocrats, salon ladies, artists, and priests (both male and female, with nearly equal success). Each image is a self contained art history spoof, with her costumes, wigs, elaborate makeup and prosthetics (noses and breasts being the most common) clearly visible and part of the joke.

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Seeing these works again reminded me that they were made in the age of photography before the advent of digital technology. These images were not Photoshopped together and touched up; every last detail was elaborately and carefully staged, including all the props and backdrops, and photographed in one shot. As a group, the images are just as funny and mind bending as before; only now, I was even more impressed with the craft of picture making that underlies the art. In addition, these images now present an interesting bridge to Sherman's new work (currently on view at Metro Pictures, review here) where she has begun to use the digital tools now available to make her incisive portraits.

Collector's POV: The History Portraits have aged very well and have been available from time to time in the secondary market in the range of approximately $25000 to $250000 (matching most of the Film Stills), with a marked run up in prices in the past few years. I didn't ask about prices while I was in the gallery, so you'll have to visit the show to find out what the going retail rates are. Perhaps with the softer market, these prices will stabilize a bit. Overall, this is a terrific show of work that continues to surprise and entertain.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Cindy Sherman, History Portraits

Through December 20th

Skarstedt Gallery

20 East 79th Street

New York, NY 10075