Palm Springs Museum of Art

photo from Lonely Planet on Google search

On a desert  afternoon during Labor Day weekend, I left off lingering in the inviting swimming pool in our friends' backyard to venture out to  the museum.

The museum is a fine one for such a small city, with mostly modern and contemporary art.  Exhibits salute George Montgomery's woodworking hobby, Palm Springs modernism (particularly fine), a star walk of fame that documents actors and the film industry who made Palm Springs a legendary destination for sun and play, and western and indigenous themes. An exhibit of sculpture from the Weiner Family Collection gave me the opportunity to see work I'd probably never see again, privately held as it is. The art glass gallery is distinctive and glamorous.

I appreciated seeing accessible, well-selected and displayed and sometimes unusual works of familiar artists, and the opportunity to discover some I didn't know.  

Modigliani

I think this sculpture by Modigliani 
far more interesting than his paintings. Odd, somewhat disturbing distortion of the lower face - swollen, the tiny mouth tucked beneath the pinched long nose.

Giacomo Manzu,  Cardinal,  1965

A large Manzù (Cardinal Seduto) is at the Getty, and I've often marveled at it, and the magnificent placement it's given. Each seems to be brooding, guarding the secrets of faith, history, and the Vatican.  The mitre seems to compress his brain to accommodate the narrowness of his beliefs. Cardinal Seduto sits before the vista of the great city and bay beyond, yet seems be intward-turned,meditating upon his sins and God.

Gerhard Marcks,  Woman of Herero Tribe,  1955

The Gerhard Marcks sculpture seems formally related to the Manzù, each bronze a figure of great dignity, silhouette, and iconic presence.  I didn't recall that Marcks was one of three founding members of the Bauhaus, teaching pottery until it was discontinued.  He taught in Halle at the School of Applied Art after 1925, and was declared a degenerate artist by Hitler in 1937. Despite this, he did not leave Germany, and after the war continued his teaching career. I just love this sculpture, which seems to embody and reverence every magnificent accomplishment of African art. But, alas, as it does this, the sculpture gazes in silent and eternal witness to the genocide of the Herero tribe, who lived in present day Namibia, begun in 1904 by the German emperor. The Germans performed genetic "experiments" upon them, and the book written about this was the basis for Hitler's eugenics program, adding to the horror of this story.  It's a story of an atrocity that I think is little known, and changes my first love of this sculpture and fills it with pain, and a call to witness. 

Melvin Schuler, Caged Form, 1968

I didn't know this artist, either, who taught at Humboldt State; his sculpture could be described as monumental organic forms carved from natural woods,(in later years, redwood) sometimes copper clad.  He seems to me to connect to Northwest coast native American art and the Northwest Coast school of artists (Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Albertson) in their expressive spiritual energy. There is a totemic presence in most of his work, quite elegant and solemn, unlike
Caged Form, which seems spooked yet wryly amusing, the sightless "eyes" turned upon the wondering viewer.   

Peter Voulkos,  Pottery #2,  1959

Most museums on the West Coast don't show enough ceramics and art craftwork to suit me.  I so enjoyed being in New York and Hartford and seeing the extensive fiber, ceramic, and other works on display there.  And seeing another Peter Voulkos is always important. His redefinition of the use of clay to create sculptural forms subverted the divide between art and craft, and form and surface. He interpreted east coast Abstract Expressionism   in his own original manner.  Clay became rugged, bulging, visceral in his formidable hands. By 1959, he was working at UC Berkeley where he remained, firing in Japanese wood-fired kilns which lent a spontaneity to the surfaces of his vessel/forms. The unglazed pottery's surfaces are marked by the ashes as the kiln burns with wood for up to 5 days.  This piece seems to have been painted/glazed as well; it reminds me of Japanese samurai forms or a large landlocked bird. 

Victor Pasmore, Line, and Concrete: Space,  1961

Pasmore was a seminal, revolutionary

figure in British post-war art. He began as a figurative painter, and after being a conscientious objector in WWII, turned to European abstraction working frequently in architectural materials, inspired by the publication in 1937 of Circle, which advocated a constructivist approach to art. 

This is a rather small "plaque" a bas-relief concrete block marked with implements and stones, I think.  I love the open, rhythmic progressive relationship of the shapes upon the textured concrete surface.    

Dale Chihuly,  End of the Day #2,  1996

Now for the genuine glamour and lush beauty of Dale Chihuly's large glass sculptures.  HE's very popular, probably because his work is decorative, easy, attractive, and gaspingly a no-brainer technical accomplishment: the viewer struggles with wonder at the tension between the fragility and monumentality of the form. And the reflective quality of glass, its ability to take color and return it in even more magnificent power, has fascinated since stained glass endowed God's grace upon the waiting congregation in medieval cathedrals.

detail, Chihuly

I saw a marvelous ceiling in the Bellagio Hotel lobby when we passed through on the way to Utah. He pursued the art of glass blowing and sculpture, studying in Murano with the teams of artisans there, and only began to work as a director/designer when he injured himself in an accident and could no longer blow glass himself.

Lino Tagliapeitra is a Murano-born glass artist who collaborated with Chihuly and is regarded by him as the finest glass artist in the world.  He became a independent studio artist in 1990.  His sculptures of the planet Saturn are his signature artwork.  Surely this vase-like form, with its astonishing warm colors (he mixes them himself) and the designs embedded in the form are just too luscious and beautiful to believe.  Glass is such an appropriate medium for the desert; it is as hard, fragile and luminous as the desert ecosystems themselves. 

Lino Tagliapetra, Saturno,  1934

I already knew the artist David Bates, and found his neo-German Expressionist figuration, somewhat crude palette and forms direct, sometimes amusing(Feeding the Dogs), tragic(the Katrina series) and direct.  

David Bates, North Jetty II,  1989

Bates' paintings depict regionalist figurative narratives: blacks, fishermen, landscape, flowers, dogs of the South.  All seem somehow "classic" subjects, yet bold and profoundly human. His technique and style have altered little since he began exhibiting; if anything, it's become bolder, more energized, more crudely powerful.  Always worth looking at.

Agnes Pelton,  Smoketree in a Draw,  1950

This is a later painting by Pelton, who settled in Cathedral City, CA, (outside Palm Springs)in 1932.  She also painted abstractions, inspired by a profoundly spiritual nature grounded in the natural world.  She studied with John Wesley Dow and was a contemporary of Agnes Martin and Georgia O'Keeffe.  I know I've seen her work in other southern California venues - maybe at the Casa del Zorro in Anza Borrego, the Gene Autry Museum?  She deserves attention because she is quite an overlooked, underrated woman artist of America, and also quite a beautiful tonal painter-observer. She was one of the early painters to be inspired by Asian philosophies, as well as Theosophy.
I think her abstract works are uninteresting and weak, though she intended them to be deeply symbolic windows to meditation and the world of the spirit.

Robert Therrien, No Title (Stacked Plates),  2007

Robert Therrien is best known for his large sculpture Under the Table, on view at the Broad in LA. I've seen it, and walked beneath the giant legs, delighted, laughing, and a bit humbled. The stacked plates are another famous sculpture - a reference to the importance of womens' work, a feminist statement, I think. The spiraling quality makes the pile of plates rhythmic - will the spin out of control? How tenuous the balance for women between work, art, and life, so easily upset by the demands of culture and biology.  That pea-green color - so '50's palette, rather awful and muddy. Still, fun to see; one can't help but smile.Other work of his is small scale, more enigmatic and abstract.  

Jane Hammond,  Caught and Called, 2003

Hammond is a very successful conceptual multi-media artist.  This painting, of a notebook filled with seemingly unrelated images, forces a search for meaning.  She's seems to hybridize surrealism and semiotics energies in this images - which remind me of Magritte, for some reason.  I think it's the European-style cursive lettering.  I think the painting is supposed to be an anagram, (a word formed by rearranging the letters of a prior word).  I'll have to get back to you on this one, folks.

I've seen Jean Lowe exhibits at Bergamot Station at Rosamond Felson Gallery (recently closed - such a shame!) a couple times. This artwork/installation was included in The Bookshop: Artworks as Books, Books as Artworks). The other was called Empire Style, an installation of a French room.) They're really wonderful, and so is she! This one I recall seeing there a few years ago - laughing a lot over the titles and half-wishing they were really books to read.  Nice synergy between Hammond and Lowe works. There's also an Anselm Kiefer book sculpture (photo didn't turn out). 

She's witty, incisive, and lightens up anyone's perspective with her fresh and unusual approach, somewhere between illustration, cartooning, and painting. 

Jean Lowe,  Elegant and Easy, date unknown

detail, Jean Lowe,  Elegant and Easy,  

Faig Ahmed,  Osho,  2015, wool carpet

This fiber artwork is by an Afghan artist and it's so easy to find metaphors for this work.  It's about Orientalism - a huge vague word formerly used by historians to describe the fascination with and result of relations between Western and Eastern culture.  The rug "melts" as the fibers experience the stress of hanging. The shape is at once a Christian cross and a kimono, and the floor has a "puddle" of curved forms that suggest an integration and dissolution of meaning.  

But is the direction downward?  If it's upward, the swirls of chaos are separating themselves into stripes and then motifs with clear boundaries.

Nearby, stripes of a very different nature, formally balanced like two colored columns, maybe a multi-lane highway, the symmetry of the past acquired then directed for the purposes of modern Minimal abstraction.

Morris Lewis, #2-00, 1962

I don't recall seeing much Helen Frankenthaler in my museum-going.  It's as if she only exists in my art history books and criticism.  Mountains and Sea, 1952, is the only artwork of hers that comes to mind at all.  So I was glad to find this one. I see a a glowing yellow shroud, the form concealed within perhaps a Greek sculpture? Of course not - it's about the unknown, the miasma of non-form. Then that strange green dribble-dash down the side - so enigmatic.  

Helen Frankenthaler, April Screen, 1972

I so wished my grandchildren were with me to see this astonishing special effects trick with lights and mirrors.  This photo is taken looking down into a box of cement blocks about three feet high and squared.  The eye perceives an endless tunnel, a rabbit hole or a nuclear fallout shelter entrance, or a gate to a cold and empty hell. 

Chul-Hyan Ahn,  Tunnel,  2008

Peter Shelton, Little Sister,  1999

Peter Shelton is another favorite. His public art sculpture beside the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, sixbeaststwomonkeys, was considered insulting to the police by many, but I found it funny and really unrelated to the personalities of the building's users.
Little Sister is the nightdress of his sister, looming like a balloon from the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. 

George Hamilton, personal dining table

In space attending other regional art accomplishments,     
this dining table by George Hamilton, has no legs. It's suspended on rods. If the style was modern instead of generic "hispanic", it would be a seminal modern piece of furniture, surprising and, like much modern furniture, in use, rather uncomfortable and problematic.  Diners would have to reach and peer about and around those rods during their meal. 

I loved this rather small and dense part of the museum - marvelous "settings" of classic and distinctive modern home furnishings, art, and craft.   

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Here, a Helen Lundberg painting is flanked by  taut chrome and leather seating - not the usual items found in contemporary furniture stores. 

I love the verticality  and delicacy of this coffee service, columnar and urban.  

  

Clarity, urbanity, inwardness: this is furniture for dwellings in skyscrapers, urban spaces, in contained spaces that arc skyward.

Textures, natural fibers,the natural world remembered and lit by modern spotlights, and a painting that seems a window to the desert landscape that surrounds this museum.

I think I know this couple, when I see them sitting patiently on the bench beside the stair. Met them at temple, perhaps?  But, fool me again, they are a Duane Hansen "tourist" sculpture, super-real, bedecked in cheap clothing that subtly mocks their dignity, though chosen for a love of the decorative, of comfort.  They are here, in the museum, sitting in respect and repose, seekers, receptors. I'm smiling.

But the affection awakened is not done.  I move through the last gallery exhibition, themed "water", and find this couple, benched, watching a video artwork that I passed over, not willing to take time.

Hansen's sculpture lived!  Younger than me, they took time, they had time.  

We chatted.  They come to Palm Springs over Labor Day weekend every year from Long Beach.  They were well-informed about this desert city, describing events they attend here, urban development they've seen.

One never knows how far spread the widening circles of influence, of chance - what an argument for chaos theory. 

I left with an uplifted heart, the late afternoon heat receding as I left the museum to return to the swimming pool.