I spent Friday evening at MOMA viewing three shows which I’ll briefly cover here – Design and the Elastic Mind had a few things in it that I liked but the rest of the show looked like a free for all – a lot of work but no real emotional connection to most of it. What I did like was the “New City” installation which has it’s own Mini Theatre.

This was an image shown at the Theatre installation which people had to sit or lie down to fully view. I liked it though I’m not sure what it was actually trying to say (or was it anything worth saying ….don’t know). At any rate, most of the works in this show, while many have merit, don’t really tell much of a cohesive story – that’s probably more the fault of the curator than anything else.

Color Wheel also wasn’t a very good show except for a few pieces of work in it like the two paintings of Blinky Palermo, a German artist who died way too young, in 1977 at the age of 34. Too bad, the world lost a great artist.

Blinky Palermo, Untitled, 1969

Considering that this show was about the Color Wheel, and Color, in general, it was amazing to me how superficial the treatment of color was for most of the artists in the show. Blinky Palermo was only artist, I saw, who actually “did” something with the color – the color poped out at me and there was an intense “push-pull” that worked better, to me, than Hans Hoffman.

I also liked, but not as much, Jim Dine’s The Studio (below) but again, the treatment of color was more superfacial – but atleast there was some real feeling there – based on an emotial experience Dine had when he was younger.

Lucien Freud’s Etchings show, closing on Monday, was a disappointment – not that his work isn’t great, or worth seeing, but while I saw some interesting work, his limitations as an artist are also clear – he’s struggling with everything – and the paintings show it (maybe that’s what people like about it – but I think Lucien Freud takes the human being and makes it ugly and repulsive but somehow, manages to get you to look at it anyway.  However, didn’t Francis Bacon do the same thing, but better?

Among the show’s best piece is “Bella” painted in 1981 (below) and “Man with a Blue Scarf” painted in 2004 (also see below).

The rest of the etchings are superb – but I can’t help but feel the struggle, which in most cases, doesn’t really help me. The Man with a Blue Scarf probably had the brightest palette of any of his paintings – and yet, it too is subdued. I wonder what he’s afraid of (or maybe it’s a Freudian Slip).

At any rate, when I left MOMA (did buy a sketchbook in the Design Store) it was still raining hard and on my way home I was Tweeting (on Twitter) just how impersonal and cold a place MOMA is – where did didn’t need to be – the IAC Building designed by Frank Gehrys (see below) is a modern building and yet, much warmer to be in – a great piece of Art and an amazing building with some amazing capacities:

For one thing, the “windows” change color and transparency based on the time of day – also there age giant video screens inside and a lot of really good space and energy.

But MOMA is, for all it’s space, a building all about Process – and the feeling is, for me, of people being “herded” in and around the building – treated almost like “sheep” who are being ready to be slaughtered; that’s why I don’t enjoy going to MOMA that much, it feel dehumanizing, somehow, to be treated like a like part of a mob, that needs to be “regimented” and directed.

And while we’re at it, the Whitney Museum of American Art is also a modern building but feels a lot more plesent and human to be in. Like I said, MOMA is impresonal and cold – and the art, I feel, is colored by that – but it didn’t need to be that way.

Just because a building or a work of Art is Modern, that doesn’t mean it has to be cold, impersonal or devoid of human feeling.

I went to see Jim Dine’s print show at the CUNY Graduate Center last night - it’s unusual to find much happening in the Art World on a Monday night, and I was unexpectedly happy with being present and seeing Jim Dine, who I decided not to speak to, at his own opening.  I spoke with Jim Dine at his last opening and I didn’t want him to remember me, to be honest, since I kinda expressed my dislike of his The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet series (which really makes no sense to me).

Fortunately for me, Jim had other prints that were not about Pinocchio that were much better for me, as artistic statements.  I think when Jim Dine deals with plants, flowerpots, hearts and even his own robes, he’s much better, in terms of what he’s actually conveying than when he goes after the puppets.

And I’m sorry, I just have to say that ….. most people that I noticed at the gallery last night, if I could read their minds (which I can’t) seem to be snickering at the Pinocchio work.   What made it worse for me last time, in May, was that Jim Dine was dressed with suspenders and short pants that made him look like a puppetmaster…. and that made it even harder to appreciate the work he was displaying…because for me, Pinocchio is really a Disney Cartoon with Jimmy Cricket – not this deep story he wants to explore.

The question is this … if Pinocchio really is that deep a story, and I don’t doubt that it is…. how can Jim Dine express that, with out drawing a bunch of stick figures…how does he actually translate the pathos he says he feels over Pinocchio in a way that other people feel it.   

It’s the same kind of problem as taking a song that everyone knows has been sung by Elvis, or someone else well known, and singing it – you can’t easily disambiguate what you remember in your memory of the song with the song your hearing now, as it’s sung.   By picking Pinocchio, and yet not really moving past the illustrative aspects of the story, Jim Dine might be getting off on the story, but he hasn’t really succeeded in changing anyone else’s perception of Pinocchio…had he done that, he would, indeed, be the greater artist – be he fails here – and I’m pretty sure that’s how people will look at this Pinocchio series, 50 years from now (if any of this is around then…).

The rest of the prints were pretty darn good – not great though.   Why?  It’s probably due to Jim Dine’s presentation – it’s too “literal” – he just takes a bunch of plants for flowers and thinks because he can jazz up the textures and hype the colors, that’s going to do it.   Nevertheless, I enjoyed just about everything he’s done, except the Pinocchio work and the show is worth seeing.

I wrote about the Pinocchio series before and kinda wondered why Jim Dine was so fascinated with Pinocchio.  Well…I had a chance to ask him, personally.

Last night, I walked in to Pace Wildenstein in Chelsea and saw more statues of Pinocchio than what was exhibited at the New York Public Library earlier this year.   It was a good show to walk in on – a lot of buzz along with the artist, himself.

Like I said in January:

“….My biggest problem with these works is I don’t understand why Jim Dine painted them in the first place.  What about Pinocchio does he find so fascinating?”

So I went up and asked him:

Me:   Jim, I saw your show at the New York Public Library earlier this year when I attended Google Unbound, and the whole show was about Pinocchio.  What is it about Pinocchio that “does it for you“? 

Jim Dine: Pinocchio is a tremendously moving story.  Have you read Pinocchio? 

Me: No really, I have only seen the Disney movies.

Jim Dine: The whole story is filled with a lot of pain and turmoil and is incredibly deep.

Me: OK, well I guess I have to read the book because not all of that comes though the stereotypes from the Disney Films (along with Jimmy Cricket, etc).

I did not try to engage Jim Dine any more (I probably upset him a little by asking him if “Pinocchio did it for him“) but I can see where I got my notion of Pinocchio from … good old Walt.  

I can’t think about Pinocchio, so easily as a deep subject, because I keep thinking of the Cricket and the cartoons.

I admit, when you compare Jim Dine’s work against the Disney there is a disparity - maybe I should read that book on Pinocchio ..but it’s not on the top of my reading list.

Also Jim Dine kinda looked a little like the puppet-master or whoever the guy in the mustache in the Disney movie is supposed to be – minus the mustache.

I’ll end this post by noting that while think of myself as someone with deep insights – life is never that simple and each person is a ball on contradictions; for someone with “deep insights” I am also seduced by the 2D stereotypes of Pinocchio that I saw as a child via Walt Disney.    I was more interested in why Jim Dine was focusing so much on a Disney character – making shows, upon shows, of work, rather than something more in line with what is really happening in the world today.

But part of me wanted to get a rise out of him too.

I think I’ll stop here.

I attended  the Google Unbound one day conference (my morning coverage is posted here, here and here) at the New York Public Library today (which I wrote up in detail on my Webmetricsguru.com blog) and, while there, happened to notice a Jim Dine Pinocchio print show that was located on the 3rd floor of the library.  I decided to take a brake, go up to the third floor and take a look at the Dine’s work.  The only sculpture in the Jim Dine show is shown below.

My biggest problem with these works is I don’t understand why Jim Dine painted them in the first place.  What about Pinocchio does he find so fascinating?

“….Painter, print-maker, sculptor, photographer, performance artist, and poet, Jim Dine (b. 1935) has devoted the last three years to a personal interpretation of a story that has engaged and intrigued him for much of his life, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. Dine has made his own the tale of the temptations, trials, tribulations, and ultimate triumph of this mischievous but endearing wooden boy in a series of thirty-nine prints, on view in this exhibition, which have been reproduced in a new edition of Pinocchio published by Steidl. This exhibition celebrates Dine’s promised gift of these uniquely hand-colored lithographs to the Spencer Collection of The New York Public Library. “

Ok, I find it so hard to relate why someone would go out of their way to paint a fairy tale – and honestly, I can’t see anything about this series of Pinocchio that stands out and says – I’m unique – I deserve to be remembered.

“….Of his fascination with Pinocchio, who first appeared in his prints in 1998, Dine writes: “Thanks to Carlo Collodi, the real creator of Pinocchio, I have for many years been able to live thru the wooden boy…. His poor burned feet, his misguided judgment, his vanity about his large nose, his temporary donkey ears all add up to the real sum of his parts. In the end it is his great heart that holds me.” Dine perceives that “this idea of a talking stick becoming a boy, it’s like a metaphor for art, and it’s the ultimate alchemical transformation.” His Geppetto is a self-portrait, alluding to the artist as creator, who in giving life has a connection with the Divine. “

Ok Jim, if the Pinocchio story works that way for you, great.  To me, the idea of a Pinocchio as a metaphor for my art sounds like a romantic, good idea till you start thinking about it more.   Likening art to Pinocchio is like saying your life is a lie and only though “art” can you redeem yourself and become real.   

Hmm… Pinocchio as Jesus, or the Pope…sorry, it just does not work for me …. and the more I think about it, I get a worse and worse headache.

I was glad to get back to party that was going on at the end of Google Unbound.