Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art, image from http://www.andersonranch.org/

Robert Storr is an American curator, academic, and critic. He was named Dean of the Yale School of Art in 2006 and was director of the Venice Biennale in 2007. From 1990-2002 Storr was Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. He has written for the following publications: Art in America, Artforum, Art Press, New York TImes, Washington Post, Village Voice, etc.

Richter, Johns, and Tuymans

The idea behind this lecture grew out of Storr’s own curating experience as well as his own personal experience looking at art. Storr tries not to talk about who is hot and who is not but focuses more on the quality of the work–work that he thinks has value. There is no such thing as “absolute” quality because it is a debatable notion. “Art is important because of the different perspectives we have on it and bring to it.” Storr talked about the murmur he hears in museums, the murmur of disagreement. Disliking art is often good because in an attempt to come to terms with what has gotten under one’s skin, the work begins to become digested and understood.

Jasper Johns
There is no artist who is better known visually in the United States than Johns. But his work is also the most “unknowable.” Of course that is why he is one of my favorite artists. Other artists don’t imitate his work, but they understand it and it has tremedous influence on them. Canvas from 1956 is one of Storr’s favorites. It is a canvas faced into another canvas. The image of the smaller canvas is not able to be seen and the larger canvas’s focus is the back of the small canvas. This is a painterly object that is more object than painting. It is not a “window on to the world” which painting had been throughout most of history. In this work, the window is blocked.

Gerhard Richter. Self-portrait (Selbstportrait). 1996. Oil on linen, 20 1/8" x 18 1/4" (51.1 x 46.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Gerhard Richter
In this German artist’s Self- Portrait from 1996 (one of four that exist) he paints the illusion of reality. Comparing it to Johns’ work it is a painting of a photo versus an actual image or thing. But Richter removes the viewer from the photo by making the image blurry, out of focus. Also, in most portraits the sitter looks directly at the viewer; in this work, Richter looks away and therefore the viewer cannot connect with him. The work is direct in nature, but it removes the viewer all at the same time.

Jasper Johns, False Start, 1959, Oil on canvas, 67 1/4 x 54 inches, Private collection, New York

Both of these artists create “estrangement” in their works. There is a romantic expectation that art will reach out to us because the artist has often been viewed as seer, presenter. However, a lot of contemporary art is about distortion, making the work inaccessible. Giacometti and Picasso did this too. These artists are showing the viewer how photography and painting can lie. In Johns’ 1959 work False Start, words do not name the colors they are painted in. “RED” could be painted in the color blue, etc. Though Johns is a predecessor of Richter, they both address similar problems in art without knowing anything about each other’s work. Richter’s work often has historical elements (usually regarding events of WW2) that Johns’ does not.

Vija Celmins, Ocean Surface, 2000

Vija Celmins is an American west coast pop artist who is very influenced by Johns. In her ocean paintings she uses Romantic subject matter but bleeds it dry of the color that we often associate with the sea. In this sense she uses a familiar scene but alienates the viewer. Richter’s CC of 1970 also uses the ocean as subject matter but he splices together two photos of oceans making the one on the bottom the sea, while the one on top appears to be a sky scene full of clouds (it’s really another photo of the sea). In this way he evokes things but does not deliver them; he manipulates.

Luc Tuymans Die Zeit (detail), 1988 Courtesy the artist & Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp; David Zwirner Gallery, New York

Luc Tuymans

A Belgian artist of a younger generation, Tuymans too blurs works to hide things from his viewers. Like Richter he paints scenes from history but in his work, painting is not quite painting and photographs are not quite photographs. He drains his images of color and positions the viewer so that he/she does not know what is being looked at, thus being forced to really think about the work and what is being presented. The viewer is challenged to rediscover the world by looking at things in a different way. Familiar images are used, but something is off. Like most European art, the content is quite high with historical references even if it is hard to get at. He often uses images from the Congo and its decolonization in his work. History haunts us in these images and these artists tweak the imagery just enough to demand that the viewer be challenged.

Douglas Blau, The Naturalist Gathers, 1992, installation view, SteinGladstone, New York

Other artists that Storr mentioned who use “estrangement” in their work are the artist Douglas Blau who uses found images to create ensembles based on similarities among the photos; YZ Kami is an Iranian born American who paints portraits of people for whom the viewer is given no information, context, or narrative at all.  And of course, Baldessari who uses humor to alienate the viewer by using movie stills but covering portions of them up with colorful circles.

Y. Z. Kami, Untitled, oil on linen, 2004-5, courtesy of the Artist and Gagosian Gallery, New York

By not providing a narrative for the work, all of these artists ask the viewer to supply information in order to create the meaning of the image on his/her own. Another link between all of these artists is that though the subject matter is often heavy, the works are beautifully rendered.