BWW Reviews: The Germ: Where Did That Idea Come From and Some Trickster Visual

The Germ: Where Did That Idea Come From and Some Trickster Visual.

Early Christo Communist Coverings, Kelly's Camouflage days, Serra Ship Structures a Son Sees? Noguchi Drawn in by "The Leonardo."

By Barry Kostrinsky

Christo Non-Jay-Z Wrapped Reichstag and President Reagan in Bronx streets of decay.

Christo's form can be seen as deriving from his forced voluntary work as a young art student in Bulgaria draping and bundling, wrapping and tying hay near the road for Capitalistic Orient Express riders-by to see and be impressed by the wealth and growth of the Communist Country in the 1940's. Retro Bulgarian boys bundle and wrap their calve leggings-Navushta style. Hitur Petur's a bad boy folk legend of the B's not G's hides his poor roots with tongue-tricked wit to deceive and make himself look large in Society. Sounds like an art world God and not just Bulgarian specific. Fake dress-up play is not so idyllic and brings to mind Reagan's painting the windows pretty in the Bronx circus circa 1980s.

What is the germination of an artistic idea and where does it spring from? Often these trails are left off the tour of art history. A few years ago I saw a great exhibit," The Ghost Army" in, of all places, Rockland County at the Historical Society. In the early 1940's special troops used visual tricks to make it look like tanks and troops were deployed to divert the enemy's attention and perception of the scale of the opponent.

ce ci n'est pas un Razzle Dazzle? Ellsworth Kelly, Study for Meschers, 1951, moma An inflatable tank designed to fool German soldiers

Ellsworth Kelly and a few others like Bill Blass (I'll leave the fashion for another day) can be seen as developing their visual form from these military projects. You can see Kelly's in the side panels and maybe premonitions of warped quadrilaterals to come. The tank evokes odd similarities with Oldenburg's soft sculpture and scale play.

Serra's work mixes well in this grouping of modified sea worthy forms

Was Richard Serra, the big steel guy for whom MOMA had a facelift, influenced by his dad being a ship builder?

Early Noguchi at Rockefeller center and his early figurative drawing teacher Attilio Picirrili from his first art school "The Leonardo."

The Picirillis were THE sculptures of their day making the Large Lincoln in D.C., The Lions at the NY Library and so many more iconic works, even at some very dead spots, the great cemetery art hot spots of Lawn Gisland. These 5 Italian gone Bronx boys studio'd themselves in the Mott Haven art section: a hot spot for art for many years to come including Fashion Moda, Haven Arts and so much more. Neighboring Longwood Arts Gallery was founded originally by Fred Wilson and has a history rich and deep with important artists and curators of today. Sometimes the trial of art history is in the land. Artist come and go and somehow gravitate to the same locations as if magnetized by metalized rocks buried below the ground.

Kandinsky Composition VII 1913 (200 Kb); Oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm

I Spy.....

Malevich's "White on White" 1918 and tiles moved a bit

Heck, Many of Kandinsky improvisations have boats and folks and maybe Malevich was looking at badly maintained tub tiles of his day when he jilted the white square a bit.

Is this how their art evolved, does it ever evolve from one source or is it the influence of many? Was it critical? This varies for every artist. War veterans I have spoken to tell tales ringing War's sounds strongly resonating a steady sentence. Many photographers and journalists that have experienced war coverage are both maimed and enlightened.

The history of art is a steady weight on every artists mind, unless he is living with Thoreau. We'd all love a book of the all important truths, a true history of art and (wo)mankind, but a good scribe is hard to find. Bartleby hardly did what you wanted him to do anyway, not an easy fish to push around. We write our own history with our mind's eye. How open is yours and how deep do you dive?

Just as it is not about eye spying the objects in a Kandinsky composition and instead is about feeling the whole work (the gestalt thing baby) so too it is not just about what did an artist see as imagery as he grew. The content, the coming to the form, the meaning behind the materials and the momentum for the art that is the road the artist must travel. It is a lone lee path walked step by step as we find and define ourselves.