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IJARTISAN REVIEW
Frelinghuysen (George
L.
K. Morris's wife) was conspicuously absent, for
example. But the show raised important questions about inf1uence and
originality, the role of women in twentieth-century America, the mean–
ing of professionalism in the modern-day art world, and much more.
These questions, like the concept of the show itself, warrant more ex–
haustive investigation. Kraushaar Gallery is to be applauded for initiating
this research. Maybe some smart museum will continue to probe the is–
sues.
The cynical wi ll point out that a desire to reclaim ignored or forgot–
ten artists can be prompted by intellectual curiosity, a sense of history, or
the pressures of the marketplace, and that the group show, however
scholarly, is the refuge of the prudent nowadays. It protects an art dealer
from having to commit to a sin gle arti st or even a single approach.
Certainly, dismal group shows abound, paeans to randomness, often se–
lected by guest curators, themselves usually practicing artists. Not that a
coherent theme is any guarantee of quality - witness the ambitiously titled
Nilleties
at John Gibson Gall ery this winter. If it was an accurate view of
this decade, things are worse than I thought.
Dreary accumu lations of stuff prevailed, piles of everyday objects -
like a pathologically untidy teenager's room. Eve Andree Laramee
strewed cast lead hearts (anatomical, not valentine) on the f1oor,
a
fa
Kiki
Smith, accompa nying them with someth in g like the set-up for a high
school chemistry experiment. Cameron Gregg tied bits of unprepossessing
detritus neatly with string and hun g them up as a sort of calendar, a
record of thirty days' worth of
trolflJailles.
Someone trashed a bicycle and
studded it with little trees made of sponge - the kind you see in crude ar–
chitectural models - to comme nt on the environment. I think this was
assoc iated with a wreath of dead f1owers, but it was hard to tell where one
piece ended and another began.
I was surprised to see two drawings by Sheelagh Keeley, an artist who
has interested me for some time, in this company. Her juxtapositions of
dreamily blurred anatomica l drawings - here bronchial tubes - and crisp
geometrical interiors were not the most compelling Keeleys I've seen . She
has explored related anatomica l imagery, as well as tribal and prehistoric
allusions at scales ranging from site-specific wall drawings to intimate
books, with greater subtlety and inventiveness, but compared to those
mindless heaps of cobblestones and peculiar machinel)" Keeley's works
looked like masterpieces.
The themes of the works in
Nilleties,
whateve r the show's weaknesses,
are certainly current and probably real. Concern for the environment and
dissatisfaction with contemporary urban life compete with despair over
AIDS these days.
Repair Work,
a curious effort of the Organization of
