Peter Plagens Reviews the Louise Bourgeois Retrospective

'Seduction and Rejection': Bourgeois; an untitled watercolor from 1986; spider sculpture in London
If you are in New York after June 27th, go to the Guggenheim to see the works of one of the most important sculptors of our time! Read the review by art critic, Peter Plagens.
Watch the trailer for the new movie on Louise Bourgeois.
Seoul has one of her Spider sculptures too. Do you know where it is?

Jeff Koons Retrospective in Chicago

As a contrast to the work of Annette Messager, please read the review
in the New Yorker of the Jeff Koons retrospective at the MOCA Chicago.
Koons is a contemporary Andy Warhol and has long been an 'art star'. I think you'll find that what the art critic Peter Schejeldahl, also an artworld 'star', says is quite bold.

Consider his opening statement: "Major artists X-ray the cultures that give rise to them."

Check out the Art is Alive blog, with a Jeff Koons spot.

Annette Messager Reviewed by Elli Park

From March to June 2008, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea has hosted Annette Messager, a female artist’s exhibition, which we visited in June. In general, Messager’s works were very expressive. She mainly showed her feminist views using human bodies and parts of bodies. Born in 1943 in France, she decided to become an artist because she felt offended that only men were role model artists in the past. From 1962 to 1966, she attended Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and created surreal sculptures. Then from 1964, she started to travel around Asia, where she took great photos in Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Cambodia, India, and Israel. Later on, she traveled to more countries, eventually visiting the United States, too. To show that women are important and can be role models too, she viewed all aspects of life through a feminist lens and portrayed them in her artworks. She also portrayed her childhood a lot in her works, such as Children with Their Eyes Scratched Out, which is a part of her album collections created from 1971 to 1974. The work shows photos of babies with scribbles on their eyes, which imply that Messager had a bad childhood and that as a child, she was blinded by her father, who was an amateur painter and her boyfriend, Christian Boltanski, that men are the leading artists of the world. An example that shows her feminist views is Voluntary Tortures created in 1972, also a part of Messager’s album collections. This work shows pictures of women going through various treatments, even painful ones, to become beautiful. It implies the standard of beautiful women in society and that every woman strives to become the standard. Through this work, she wanted to show the corrupted side of society, how women give up their own uniqueness and beauty to become the standard and become just like other women. Another installation artist similar to Annette Messager is Eleanor Antin, who was born in 1935 in New York. Like Messager, Antin also worked with human bodies and explored the feminist concerns in society. In her Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, she shows her naked body when she went on a diet for a month. It shows how women want to be thin, as the media portrays ideal women to be thin and tiny. This shows that the media and society are corrupted, as not all women can be stick-thin and every woman has a different body structure. Another example of Antin’s works, The Eight Temptations, shows Antin posing to resist the temptations of junk food during her diet. Again, this implies the corrupted society and media, as women do anything to become skinny.

Annette Messager’s show in general was very interesting and unique. It had works that had thought and meaning behind them; they were not just works to please the viewers’ eyes. It was also very different from other artists’ shows, as Messager showed her beliefs strongly and did not follow nor copy other typical artists. I want to give my praise and respect to Messager’s bravery of showing her beliefs and views explicitly because she could have received many criticisms from viewers, created controversial issues, and also could have failed as an artist. But she took her chances and showed her extreme views about women and issues surrounding women, and became one of France’s leading artists with a big influence on the viewers around the world. Another thing that impressed me was the unity of Messager’s works. As many would know, she uses many different media for her works, sometimes in just one work. She utilizes random materials including photographs, embroidery, knitted things, everyday household objects, and stuffed animals, and yet manages to use these unrelated materials to create works that somehow unify and flow. Though her works aren’t the most aesthetic and pleasing to the eye in the world, I do not think that is one of her set-backs and weakness because she implies thought and meaning behind her work, which equalizes the outside appearances of her work. One weakness of her works is size and space. It is understandable that since she is an installation artist, she has works that are enormously large, but because some of her most famous works are very large, it can have a different view and thus portray a different meaning than what Messager intends to portray depending on how the work is displayed. If the gallery in which Messager’s works are displayed in is very small and not very spacious, her works would not be as successful as they can be if they are displayed in a much bigger gallery. But I think National Museum of Contemporary Art did a great job in displaying Messager’s works, clearly portraying the meanings that Messager intended to imply. Overall, it was a great experience for me to see Messager’s works, as it was my first time actually seeing an installation artist’s works in real life. (Though some moving parts of her works scared me from time to time)

Annette Messager Reviewed by Sohyae Lee

The works in Annette Messager’s show were unusual and somewhat different from the three-dimensional art pieces I have seen before. Everything was unique—you would never see similar pieces in any other artist’s exhibit. The movement in most of her pieces created by the fans was new. Although it was a good experience to see her exhibit, I thought it was very confusing. The exhibit seemed like a mixture of totally different things and I did not understand the purpose behind her works. Throughout the show, I asked myself why she would do such things. The way in which she put knitted clothing on birds, covered animal heads with the heads of stuffed animals, and did other bizarre things confused me. Not only this, but I realized that there was a language barrier between artists. Despite the fact that we perceive art to be a topic that connects the world, Messager’s work proved me wrong. Some of her works incorporated language that I did not understand.

The work in the show was random and unusual. Messager once stated that the world has changed her, keeping her from creating a series of artworks. There was a large range of materials used. Not only this, but the materials were put together in unusual ways. In her interview, she states “Regarding what impedes my art work, I feel that because there are more and more wars, diseases, broken homes, that everything in the world today is totally pathetic and vulnerable, I am no longer able to make a series of works. I have always worked in bits and pieces, ripping, cutting, and pasting, but today I can no longer consider working in series and this is a dramatic change for me.”

The artist seemed to be telling her audience something though her pieces, but unfortunately, I was unable to understand what she was trying to say, most of the time. Messager stated that: “We must not try too show to much, to divulge everything, to unveil too much. We must give some small clues, even unnecessary clues. Art is a secret shared between the individual and the collective.”

At the exhibit, there was a bunch of dolls, stuffed animals, fabrics, animal statues, wire or string, inflatable animals, and so on. In an interview Messager states: “I have always used materials that were in the home, colored crayons, cloth, stockings, nets, sewing material, newspaper clippings, everything that arrives into the home and stays,” further stating “by using the kinds of timeless materials-cloth, paper, crayons-that are not directly linked to today's technologies, I am interested in transcending a certain temporality.”

Annette Messager is a French contemporary installation artist who uses various mediums to create pieces of art by modifying the way gallery or even public spaces are experienced by others. Messager incorporates various materials into her pieces like any other installation artist. Most of her three-dimensional pieces seemed to have incorporated dolls, animals (especially birds), movement (fans), fabrics, books, “photography (her's and others'), drawing, knitting, embroidery, sewing and objects she has collected. All of her pieces seem to deliver a message, making her works expressive pieces.

According to the research I did, Annette Messager dealt with “issues of sexual and physical abuse, fragmentation of the body, sin, obsession with appearances, fairy tales, children, symbols, effigies, disguise, distortion, repetition.” In short, issues surrounding women.
Annette Messager was born in Berck-sur-Mer, France, on November 30, 1943. She started art at a young age, encouraged by her father who was an amateur painter. Throughout her lifetime and to the present, she has created many installations such as My Little Effigies (1988), a piece in which she hung photographs of body parts around the necks of stuffed animals, and The Pikes (1991–93), a piece in which she impaled various objects on rods. She currently lives and works in Malakoff, Paris.

Like Ann Hamilton, a famous contemporary installation artist, Annette Messager was a female artist who worked with three dimensional objects. Annette, though, worked with dolls, nets, fabrics, and photos while Hamilton worked with textiles. Not only this, but Hamilton used the aid of many others while Messager favored working alone. Despite their differences, the two female artists created many complex installation pieces with deep meanings.

My personal favorite was the “Casino,” created in 2004. “Casino” won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in June 2005.
“Casino” is composed of red cloth, inflatable white translucent flower-shaped objects, light, wind, a wall with a rectangular hole, and many hanging black animal head cut-outs. When you first see “Casino”, all you see is red. Red cloth overflows out of the hole, pushed by air, creating a lavish mood.

The artist uses three colors; red for luxury, white for neatness and curiosity, and black for mystery, giving “Casino” depth. The soft, red cloth creates a feeling of luxury because red is usually related to celebrities and prosperity; teeming red is like teeming prosperity.
Light is incorporated in this work. When the pillows are inflated underneath the cloth, the cloth expands due to air, light shines the pillows, and the cutouts spin, a mysterious mood forms. The light reveals unknown things.

According to research, “Casino” was a tribute to the Italian fairy-tale character, Pinocchio, but I saw it in a different light. I believe that Messager wanted to show the world that people, although they look luxurious on the outside, can be mysterious and flawed on the inside when scrutinized. At first, I only saw the red and was amazed by how luxurious “Casino” looked, but when I looked closely, I saw the bizarre cutouts and as time passed I saw the inflating objects. This conveys the message that you have to look into things deeply. When you meet new people, you shouldn’t judge them by their appearances; instead, you should find out more about them. I suppose the artist created this work to change the way people see each other. We usually look at appearances, but good outsides do not always mean good insides.

I think this work has intrinsic value. Messager catches the attention of her viewers by using a bold color like red. She then conveys the message. This work lacks neither the use of the elements and principles of art nor personal expression and a major focus, and I believe it was effective in getting a message across. Although this was so, the fact that “Casino” used up continuous fanning and lighting made it a waste of energy and the fact that “Casino” was different from the rest of Messager’s exhibit confused me.

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Annette Messager Reviewed by Eric Kim

For the past few weeks, the National Museum of Contemporary Art housed various pieces by the famous artist, Annette Messager. It seems to me that Annette Messager is the type of artist who focuses more on the depth and the meaning behind her artworks, how they can be interpreted, etc. over the quality of her work in terms of aesthetic beauty. Of course, this does not, in any way, mean that Messager’s work is ugly. While to a young child, many of her works may not make sense and may resemble a big mess created by throwing random objects around, there is a lot more behind Messager’s works than its somewhat arguable physical attractiveness.
The true beauty within Messager’s pieces lie within its meaning, which is at times implicit and thus is given a greater breadth for interpretation by the viewer.
According to research, much of Messager’s work is based on issues that concern her, or women in general. Messager also incorporates many different kinds of techniques and materials in her work, and many of the materials that go within her work are made by herself as well.
Because Messager leaves so much room for interpretation in her work, she is unlike many other famous, historical artists. Famous artists like Da Vinci and his works mainly focused on the realistic nature and the aesthetic quality of their work, which often times costs its meaning and leeway for interpretation.

Messager’s show was a decent one, but I would not say it was strikingly good. Of course, preference and style in art is quite subjective, and I cannot say that the rating I have given is not subjective. Yet, I will try to present my rationale in the most objective manner possible.
Messager’s work is interesting in the sense that a lot of thought can be derived from it, and is very meaningful and thought-inducing. Yet, much of this comes at the cost of the pieces’ physical beauty and aesthetic quality. Not many of her works are particularly “pleasing” to look at, and to some viewers whose value for aesthetic quality supersedes their value for meaning, her works may not seem very great. Nevertheless, Messager’s works does include a lot of artistic qualities to it. Messager seems to be adept at utilizing space and balance within her work, both of these qualities being used in different manners to different extents in her pieces. The use of space and balance plays a large role in conveying the meaning and significance behind her work, at times making it more explicit, making it more powerful, and sometimes even creates the meaning as a whole.
One thing that has left me thinking as I left the show was the museum’s presentation of Messager’s work. Because the National Museum of Contemporary Art is a very spacious museum, many of Messager’s pieces were displayed in large spaces, which may or may not have had an impact on how her works could have been taken. So I sit here now wondering just what kind of impact the museum’s presentation of her work could have had on viewers like me, whether it enhanced the experience or undermined other potential ways the pieces could have been looked at.
Overall, the show held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art was quite thought-compelling, to say the least. The show was interesting conceptually, though it could have looked better aesthetically. It’s definitely something a curious artist should check out, and for the cheap entrance fee, it’s really a bargain you wouldn’t want to miss.