Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Mar 25, 2011; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8 POETRY & TERROR Two exhibits play into viewers emotions: one, a moving response to Baghdad carnage; the other an uplifting collection of landscapes Art Issues MALIN WILSON-POWELL For the Journal The bomb-flattened Baghdad taxi that was brought to Santa Fe’s Plaza two years ago by British artist Jeremy Deller has arrived at its final destination, London’s Imperial War Museum. It was named No. 1 of the “10 best British artworks about war” by veteran broadcaster Jon Snow, heading a list that included Henry Moore’s “Tube Shelter Perspective” (1941) of survival in the subways during the Blitz, and Steve McQueen’s “Queen and Country” (2007) tribute to British soldiers who died in the Iraq war. Deller towed his ravaged “Baghdad, 5 March 2007” taxi around the U.S. for six months accompanied by an Iraqi refugee and GI, including a turn at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Deller didn’t salvage just any car used by insurgent bombers. This hulk of twisted and rusted metal was the car they blew up on Al-Mutanabbi Street, the Baghdad street dominated by booksellers, a winding old street that had come to be regarded as a nexus of decadent western culture. The explosion killed 30 people and wounded 100 others in what for centuries had been the “heart and soul” of Baghdad’s literary and intellectual community, a street named for the great 10th century classical Arab poet, Al-Mutanabbi. Sixty broadsides created in reaction to this attack are on view on the walls of the John Gaw Meem Community Room at the New Mexico History Museum. They were brought here through the efforts of Tom Leech, who runs the Press at the Palace of the Governors. In April 2007, San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil formed a coalition, and a call went out to letterpress printers to craft a personal response to this targeted carnage. Since then, 133 printers from Great Britain, the U.S. and Europe have responded to four successive calls. The full collection of literary printed broadsides is housed at the Arthur & Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts and digitized by the Florida Atlantic University Libraries, for any one in the world to view (www.library. fau.edu/depts/spc/JaffeCenter/collection /almutanabbi/index.php). Among the 60 artists’ works on exhibit here are three distinguished letterpress printers from New Mexico, including Leech. Leech’s broadside — a gun-metal inked sheet that looks like it has been run over by a bloody tire — with its balance of Arabic poetry, strong graphics, intaglio printing, and shifting color, is among the most powerful and resolved. As is Suzanne Vilmain’s bold, yet delicate, multi- layered broadside that is simply called “Attention” and reminds the viewer “Mutanabbi Street starts here,” i.e., that we are all implicated. Janet Rodney is the third book artist who calls New Mexico home and she is both poet and printer in her haunting broadside “The Twisted” with an image that originates in the shaky trail of automobile tail lights taken through a car window at dusk. Among the most memorable examples of these selected letterpress broadsides are “The Ways to Count the Dead” featuring Sam Hamil’s now famous poem. They are all worthy of close study. Ideally, this show would be staged in a book-filled place with each broadside displayed on a library table, with a comfy chair for the viewer. In the meantime, it would be nice if there were a list identifying all the authors, artists and printers, since they range from legible to inscrutable scrawl. Land of BIG skies After so many sobering sentiments you might want to lighten your mood by crossing the street to visit a perfect little recently installed exhibition “Cloudscapes: Photographs from the Collection” at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Organized by curator of photography Kate Ware, the selection plays to the strengths of the museum’s permanent mid-20th century holdings as well as to the overwhelming condition of living in the land of BIG skies. Almost half of the 32 photographs on view are by masters of the art, including the impresario of American art photography Alfred Stieglitz and those he championed — Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston. These fine prints are very fine, and make it is easy to see why their work is revered. They hold up and also prove themselves in a new way in our current cultural and social climate. They look different than they did when they were first made decades ago. They seem smaller, more jewellike, and more pristine. For the most part, they were made before photos were on billboards and big screens, before the constant bombardment of humans by images made with camera lenses. The prints of Ansel Adams’ 1941 “Moonrise Over Hernandez,” certainly his most famous New Mexico image — if not his most famous image of all time — still startle, as does another icon in his oeuvre, “Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California.” POETRY& TERROR http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol... 1 of 4 5/3/11 5:28 PM
Al Mutanabbi Street Project at NMHM & Cloudscapes at the NMMA
Mar 30, 2016
Review of Al Mutanabbi Street Project at New Mexico History Museum & Cloudscapes permanent collection exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art
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Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Mar 25, 2011; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8
POETRY & TERROR Two exhibits play into viewers emotions: one, a moving response to Baghdad carnage; the other an uplifting collection oflandscapes Art Issues
MALIN WILSON-POWELL
For the Journal
The bomb-flattened Baghdad taxi that was brought to Santa Fe’s Plaza two years ago by British artist Jeremy Deller has arrived at itsfinal destination, London’s Imperial War Museum. It was named No. 1 of the “10 best British artworks about war” by veteranbroadcaster Jon Snow, heading a list that included Henry Moore’s “Tube Shelter Perspective” (1941) of survival in the subways duringthe Blitz, and Steve McQueen’s “Queen and Country” (2007) tribute to British soldiers who died in the Iraq war.
Deller towed his ravaged “Baghdad, 5 March 2007” taxi around the U.S. for six months accompanied by an Iraqi refugee and GI,including a turn at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Deller didn’t salvage just any car used by insurgent bombers. This hulkof twisted and rusted metal was the car they blew up on Al-Mutanabbi Street, the Baghdad street dominated by booksellers, a windingold street that had come to be regarded as a nexus of decadent western culture.
The explosion killed 30 people and wounded 100 others in what for centuries had been the “heart and soul” of Baghdad’s literary andintellectual community, a street named for the great 10th century classical Arab poet, Al-Mutanabbi. Sixty broadsides created in reactionto this attack are on view on the walls of the John Gaw Meem Community Room at the New Mexico History Museum. They were broughthere through the efforts of Tom Leech, who runs the Press at the Palace of the Governors.
In April 2007, San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil formed a coalition, and a call went out to letterpress printers to craft apersonal response to this targeted carnage. Since then, 133 printers from Great Britain, the U.S. and Europe have responded to foursuccessive calls. The full collection of literary printed broadsides is housed at the Arthur & Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts and digitizedby the Florida Atlantic University Libraries, for any one in the world to view (www.library. fau.edu/depts/spc/JaffeCenter/collection/almutanabbi/index.php).
Among the 60 artists’ works on exhibit here are three distinguished letterpress printers from New Mexico, including Leech. Leech’sbroadside — a gun-metal inked sheet that looks like it has been run over by a bloody tire — with its balance of Arabic poetry, stronggraphics, intaglio printing, and shifting color, is among the most powerful and resolved. As is Suzanne Vilmain’s bold, yet delicate, multi-layered broadside that is simply called “Attention” and reminds the viewer “Mutanabbi Street starts here,” i.e., that we are all implicated.
Janet Rodney is the third book artist who calls New Mexico home and she is both poet and printer in her haunting broadside “TheTwisted” with an image that originates in the shaky trail of automobile tail lights taken through a car window at dusk.
Among the most memorable examples of these selected letterpress broadsides are “The Ways to Count the Dead” featuring SamHamil’s now famous poem. They are all worthy of close study. Ideally, this show would be staged in a book-filled place with eachbroadside displayed on a library table, with a comfy chair for the viewer. In the meantime, it would be nice if there were a list identifyingall the authors, artists and printers, since they range from legible to inscrutable scrawl.
Land of BIG skies
After so many sobering sentiments you might want to lighten your mood by crossing the street to visit a perfect little recently installedexhibition “Cloudscapes: Photographs from the Collection” at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Organized by curator of photography KateWare, the selection plays to the strengths of the museum’s permanent mid-20th century holdings as well as to the overwhelmingcondition of living in the land of BIG skies.
Almost half of the 32 photographs on view are by masters of the art, including the impresario of American art photography AlfredStieglitz and those he championed — Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston. These fine prints are very fine, andmake it is easy to see why their work is revered. They hold up and also prove themselves in a new way in our current cultural and socialclimate. They look different than they did when they were first made decades ago. They seem smaller, more jewellike, and morepristine. For the most part, they were made before photos were on billboards and big screens, before the constant bombardment ofhumans by images made with camera lenses.
The prints of Ansel Adams’ 1941 “Moonrise Over Hernandez,” certainly his most famous New Mexico image — if not his most famousimage of all time — still startle, as does another icon in his oeuvre, “Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California.”
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Not only is the breathtaking grandeur and dominance of New Mexico’s everchanging skyscape captured here, the collection also reflectsthe history of New Mexico’s attraction for artists in the 20th century. Paul Strand made his 1930 image of “Badlands, Near Santa Fe,New Mexico” during his summer as Mabel Dodge Luhan’s guest, as did Edward Weston, whose three prints were made on assignment forNew Mexico Magazine in 1937.
Many of the images are majestic in nature, including miles-high cumulous clouds, as well as walking rain, and “Jesus Rays” of lightstreaming through apertures in clouds. There is humor in Laura Gilpin’s “Maria Martinez Baking Bread” where — by a trick of perspective— the far away “S-shaped” puff of cloud looks like smoke coming out of the horno in the foreground. And, the magic of Paul Caponigro’stranslucent solo wave cloud making its way across the trackless empyrean is fresher than ever.
Among the delightful surprises here are the 1959 color dye transfer prints, four by Eliot Porter and a brilliant rainbow by Laura Gilpin.While color is an exception for Gilpin, who is known for her blackand-white Southwestern documentary photography, Porter is known forhis environmental color work. The four Porters are extraordinary small prints that totally shift the scale from human scale to purewonder. The small format images of huge clouds made with a view camera, the better to record every passing detail, focuses attentionin the way early stereo-optic devices did. As you lean into Porter’s glorious images, everything else drops away. Sometimes that’s agood and necessary thing to do. If you go
WHAT: “Broadsides from the Al-Mutanabbi Street Project “
WHERE: New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors Press, Palace Avenue on the Plaza
WHEN: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 5 p.m.-8 p.m. Friday. Through May 1.
COST: Museum admission. Free Friday evenings.
CONTACT: Tom Leech, 505-476-5096 or e-mail [email protected]
WHAT: “Cloudscapes: Photographs from the Collection”
WHERE: New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Ave.
WHEN: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 5 p.m.-8 p.m. Friday
COST: Museum admission. Free Friday evenings.
CONTACT: 505-476-5072 or e-mail: NMArtMuseum.org
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ANSEL ADAMS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park” is a 1942 gelatin silver print by Ansel Adams (1902-1984).
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COURTESY PHOTO
“Attention,” a poem by contemporary Iraqi poet Saadi Yousef printed with a letterpress on marbled paper by Suzanne Vilmain atCounting Coup Press, is a broadside created for the Al Mutanabbi Street Project.
COURTESY THE NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF ART
“Maria Martinez Baking Bread, Rio Grande” is a 1946 gelatin silver print by Laura Gilpin (1891-1979).
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