It’s startling to step away from the Guggenheim spiral of Rashid Johnson’s “deep thinking” and swirl into the brightly colored world of Beatriz Milhazes.
The latest in science is that the right brain /left brain theory is largely a myth and yet to see these shows juxtaposed feels like it requires a cranial reorganization.
I would imagine that most people go to the Guggenheim to see Johnson’s work and might happen upon Milhaizes—I went for Milhazes and happened upon Johnson.
Trying to figure out what to say about their differences, I bogged down and decided to google Conceptual art:
“Conceptual art emphasizes the concept or idea, and deemphasizes the actual physical manifestation of the work.”
Conceptual art is now a historical genre, resulting in there being Post-conceptual and Black Post-conceptual varieties, Rashid Johnson being an example of the latter. Except for the mosaic pieces, there is no reason to look at the pieces individually for very long. The power of it is achieved through accretion and the relentless signifying and questioning of identity.
Psychologists consider an “identity crisis” as something to work through but for Johnson, it’s an opportunity to work with—but can a personal identity be found in ethnic and cultural history?
The saving grace is his ironic sense of humor, and the sweetness in creating “living areas” filled with plants. There is so much sadness too. The show has stayed with me—I argue with it in my mind.
You might not be surprised to find that I prefer “the physical form” of art—its beauty and complexity; I think too much already.
I’m excited by Milhazes, whose many circles function as cogs in the machine of life!
Milhazes makes her works by painting the elements individually and in reverse on a plastic sheet and then pasting them on the surface of the canvas and pulling off the plastic. One of the pleasures of looking at the work is figuring out the order of the elements; they are built back to front and later additions occlude earlier ones. In the earlier paintings like The Four Seasons, there are crisp edges and there are imperfections caused by incomplete adherence and pentimenti created by using the plastic sheets again.
In albis is composed of stylized decorative elements: chandeliers, medallions, rosettes, arabesques, ironwork, etc. It should be simply decorative, flat and static but it isn’t. She has used these stylized elements to create spatial depth and the jostling exuberance of a garden.
Partly it is the subtle interaction of the color—the oranges for example, that function as both near, middle and far ground. And the blue roses that waver back and forth.
“In albis” means “left in the dark”.
After 2000, Milhazes’ work became less interior, more confident—I miss what I saw in the work of the 90’s—a hesitant exploring and complexity of lighter and darker notes, echoes of colonialism and Catholicism.
But I am also admiring her insistence on joy. It’s not as easy as she makes it look. A cynic might see it as more acceptable commercially, but not me, I need it to go on.
The Carnation…, for example, a strie-ed sky blue ground, a mysterious glowing black flower with an arabesque, a lacy circle with its shadow—that isn’t really—an orange and white flower, all overlapping except the miniature bouquet offered at the end. It is very witty.
In contemporary art, it seems that artists like Johnson are seen as more serious and more directly political—which seems to be everything these days.
A funny coincidence is that Milhazes was part of a group of Brazilian painters, musicians and authors in the 80’s who also considered their work as political, as forging a new identity: They turned away from conceptual work; they wanted to inspire and reflect the optimism they felt at the end of the military dictatorship and the return to democracy.
I hope that’s inspiring.
—CNQ
