 | "A Day In The Irish Museum of Modern Art"
At
the end of the third week of August Carol and I went to I.M.M.A. -
where we saw three very interesting exhibitions. 'Order, Desire, Light'
was first show we looked at. It consisted of about 250 contemporary
drawings - by various world-renowned artists. It was early in the day
and I was not in a critical frame of mind. I felt tired and stoned. So
I found it enjoyable nonsense. There were strong works by Sigmar Polke,
Chris Ofili, Albert Oehlen, Miquel Barcelo, Mark Bradford, and Raymond
Pettibon. However most of the other works were total rubbish. Many of
the frames - made for these notes on paper – required greater labour
and required more skill to make. I told Carol that I had burnt drawings
better than most of these feckless
doodles. In the midst of all
this PO-MO childs-play - the Charcoal drawings of William Kentridge
stood out a mile. His muscular drawing of ancient ruins was beautiful –
if somewhat conventional and boring. However, his other drawing on torn
and glued sheets from a book made Carol and I snort with disgust. We
had both become sick of the sight of drawings on torn up book pages –
it was a gimmick long past its sell by
date.
Then we saw paintings, photographs and videos by the German/Brazilian
artist Janaina Tschape. I thought her photographs and videos were
generic art world junk. She posed in funny cellular and biomorphic
outfits in the jungle and in the sea. I had seen its type done a
hundred times already. However, she was saved in my estimation by some
beautiful abstract oil paintings - which again played with vegetative,
botanical and microscopic forms in a kind of twenty-first century
parody of Gustav Klimt's semi-abstract
ornamentation. Finally,
we saw a show of works inspired by Africa by the Spanish painter Miquel
Barceló. The show included; ink drawings, watercolours, oil paintings,
pottery and sculptures - all inspired by his numerous vacations and
residencies in West Africa and Mali in particular since 1988. To be
honest I had not seen anything like it in Dublin for decades. It all
reeked of the 1980's and not in a very good way. I found it hard
to write about such mediocrity. Barceló's work was worthy, skillful,
inventive and sincere – yet at the same time it lacked true
originality, feeling or vision. Although I delighted seeing expressive,
well drawn and sensually painted works – most of it had a second-hand
quality to it. Barceló' was a wriggly and spritely draughtsman –
somewhat in the vein of Tiepolo and was an adventurous manipulator of
paint. However I was continually reminded of better painters who had
undoubtedly influenced him like; Jean Fautrier, Wols, Jean Dubuffet,
Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Julian Schnabel, Sandro Chia, Francisco
Clemente and Enzo Cucchi. Overall I had the impression of seeing yet
another playboy painter with a facile talent and too much money for his
own good.
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