Annette Messager at David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI - Map of temper, Map of tenderness

Annette Messager

Map of temper, Map of tenderness

David Winton Bell Gallery, 

Brown University, Providence

January 31 - March 15, 1998 

David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island, USA) presents an exhibition of works by French artist ANNETTE MESSAGER, titled Map of temper, Map of tenderness.

The exhibition title was suggested by the artist and refers to a 17th-century allegorical map, the Carte de tendre (Map of Tender [Regions]), from Clélie, a romantic novel by the French writer Madeleine de Scudéry. Annette Messager likes the idea of maps, adopting their formal elements while subverting their usefulness. In 1988, she created the "Garden of Tender [Regions]," which existed as a schematic drawing and an actual garden. The work included such fanciful creatures and sites as the path of good luck, grove of indiscretions, mirage of tears, branches of forgetfulness, tortoise of longevity and hill of despair.

"Anatomy," from the current exhibition, is a map of human anatomy but certainly not one that could be followed by the medical profession. Comprised of yarn unraveled from 15 sweaters and colored pencil drawings of body organs, the installation stretches across three walls of the gallery. The yarn is draped from drawing to drawing in a weblike configuration. Annette Messager describes the yarn as roadways and the drawings as cities and offers insight into her fascination with the human body by explaining that she grew up in a "town by the sea for people who were sick." She says that because of this experience, "sickness is normal for me." She is referring to Berck-sur-Mer, which is known for its curative waters.

Three related works, which are shown for the first time at the Bell Gallery, turn to the topic of relationships, mapping one possible course of love. Presented on the floor, each piece includes two gloves, colored pencils and black ropes. The pencils protrude from the fingers of the gloves like long fingernails, while the ropes surround them, laid out in shapes that are symbolic of the titles. The work charts a dance that proceeds from "Encounter" to "Love" to "Separation." In "Encounter" the gloves meet straight on, the fingers entwined as if holding hands. They embrace in "Love," one protectively or erotically lying atop the other. In "Separation" they turn away from one another, curled up (as in pain) and unraveling.

In "Equilibrium," 35 small photographs of body parts are suspended parallel to the ceiling, above the viewer's head. Interspersed among the photographs are mirrors of the same size. As the viewer walks under the piece, images of body parts combine with images of the viewer's own body as it is reflected in the mirrors. Annette Messager likes the awkwardness of the piece, the fact that one must strain to view the work, and the somewhat macabre and grotesque combination of self and other.

Annette Messager has exhibited extensively in Europe since the mid-1970s and more recently has caught the attention of an American audience. A retrospective of her work, organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, traveled to those institutions and the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996.

David Winton Bell Gallery

List Art Center, Brown University

64 College Street, Providence, RI 02912

www.brown.edu

Peter Saul: Early Paintings and Related Drawings, 1960-1964, George Adams Gallery, NYC

Peter Saul: Early Paintings and Related Drawings, 1960-1964
George Adams Gallery, New York
January 1 – 31, 1998

In 1956, Peter Saul graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and moved with his first wife to Europe. After a brief stay in London, they lived in Amsterdam (1956-1958), near Paris (1958-1962), and finally in Rome (1962 -1964) before returning to the US and settling in Mill Valley, California. It was during this period that Saul defined himself as an artist. At the outset a self-described expressionist painter of landscapes and interiors, Peter Saul soon developed the major themes that remain central to his work even today. The present exhibition consists of paintings and drawings made during his years in Europe which reflect Peter Saul's artistic development as a social critic as well as his involvement with Pop Art, a movement with which he was identified during this time.

Peter Saul was fascinated from an early age by movies and the comics, and even after art school their influence persisted. According to Peter Saul, "The years 1959 - 1961 were pretty much used in reconciling specific drawings from Mad [Magazine] with my need to resemble deKooning." The influence of popular culture - especially the comics - is evident not only in Saul's style and use of cartoon characters - Superman, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck appear as early as 1960  - but also of dialogue balloons, and multi-panel compositions. Along with a cast of characters out of Disney, greed, sex and violence - tabloid subjects that continue to remain central to Peter Saul's work  - make their first appearances during this period.

Peter Saul was not interested in simply making cartoon painting, however: "The problem with cartooniness is that it smooths out too many bumps... To get those 'bumps' back is a lot of work... I summon my memory of drawings on lavatory walls. That usually does it." These early paintings and drawings employ an over-all composition and mark-making typically associated with abstract-expressionism and, at the same time, a visual vocabulary composed entirely of images from popular culture. For all their references to popular culture, Peter Saul was not in fact a "Pop" artist. While he was initially considered a member of the movement and was even included in several Pop surveys (Lucy Lippard's Pop Art of 1966, for example), he was soon dropped and only recently reinstated through his inclusion in the LA County/Whitney Museum's recent "Hand Painted Pop."

The most important distinction between Peter Saul and the artists usually identified with Pop Art is that Peter Saul was interested in the psychological. And, while his early works share similarities with artists such as Lichtenstein, Rivers or Rosenquist, it is artists such as deKooning, Beckmann and Francis Bacon who should be looked to as more important sources. Paintings such as IceBox #3 or Valda Sherman, for example, are rooted less in the Pop Art of Rivers than in social commentary of Bacon and Beckmann. According to Peter Saul, as far as Pop Art was concerned, "my painting had too much emotion." 

GEORGE ADAMS GALLERY
www.georgeadamsgallery.com