ARE YOU AN ICON, TOO?

Curated by Luigi Franchin and Viola Romoli

Claudio Abate, Berenice Abbott, Nobuyoshi Araki, Peter Beard, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gregory Crewdson, Mario De Biasi, Robert Doisneau, Alfred Eisenstadt, Elliott Erwitt, Ron Galella, Luigi Ghirri,
Mario Giacomelli, Gianfranco Gorgoni, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Yousuf Karsh, André Kertész, Alberto Korda, Richard Misrach, Vik Muniz, Tazio Secchiaroli, Elio Sorci, Wolfgang Tillmans, Oliviero Toscani, Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Minor White, Joel-Peter Witkin

12 MAY-30 SEPTEMBER 2023

Every single day we are bombarded more and more by images of famous and anonymous human beings, in public and private spheres and we should wonder if we ourselves have become iconic for someone, or we could be if photographed in a certain way.

Drooping eyes, half-open lips, fetish feet, crossed legs, talking hands: we could become an icon, but how can we really be one?

In the 21st Century, the tuna tataki with sliced ​​avocado by a well-known chef steals space from the faces of great philosophers or thinkers, why?

We must ask ourselves this question before visiting the exhibition and find the answer after carefully observing the photographs of the great masters, who did not use their mobile phones compulsively immortalizing any image, but looked through an uncertain lens and captured something unique in a single instant and unrepeatable.

The Icon was born as a sacred image painted on wood or tablet which is subsequently embellished with gold, silver or precious stones, therefore something unique; we pass in the blink of an eye from the sacred to the profane with the advent of information technology: the icon becomes a small image that symbolically represents a command, a function or even a document or an operating program, which appears on the screen of a computer.

Just about 30 masters of photo-art, selected from the ones exhibited in Milan through the course of the last 40 years. They are all displayed from the 12th of May to the 9th of September at THE POOL NYC in via Santa Maria Fulcorina in Milan. From Jacques-Henri Lartigue to Gregory Crewdson, these pioneers of the art of photography tell us a story of the Twentieth Century. As a matter of fact the oldest picture in the show is a Lartigue dated 1912 and a Crewdson dated 1999 puts the word “end” to the last Century. Each of the photographers are represented by photo – icons which made a great impact in the visions of our modern social history.

Images which influenced new generations through the years, thus participating to a unique moment in history, “the triumph of photography in the new millenium”.

Some of the artists are very popular personalities such as Via Muniz, Nobuyoshi Araki, Oliviero Toscani, Henri Cartier – Bresson and, among others, the milanese photojournalist Mario De Biasi. Do not miss the opportunity to look at an original print of the Kiss at the Hotel de Ville by Doisneau or the famous portrait of Che Guevara by Korda and Brigitte Bardot on a WC in Cinecittà by Secchiaroli. More over two diptychs by the most relevant Italian photo-artists: Mario Giacomelli and Luigi Ghirri. Some of the works open up to experimental artistic methods such as the deadly reconstructions by Joel-Peter Witkin or some ambiguous digital manipulations by Inez Van Lamsweerde. Their camera is used to depict the thin border between theatre and reality, disavowing the conformism of a classic world. The exhibit opens a particular focus on some of the most popular genres when collecting modern photography: the obsessive research for the uniqueness of vintage materials with rare works by Mario Giacomelli, the constructed photographic metaphors with early pieces by Via Muniz and the relationship between art and documentation with a series of works by Claudio Abate recently passed away after living in close contact with artists such as De Chirico and Kounellis.

THE POOL NYC presenta “I Remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel”: Donald Baechler & Peter Schuyff, una mostra che prende il titolo dalla canzone Chelsea Hotel di Leonard Cohen e celebra due artisti, residenti del leggendario Chelsea Hotel di New York: Donald Baechler e Peter Schuyff.

Lo Show è stato pensato prima dell’improvvisa scomparsa dell’artista americano. Cogliamo dunque l’occasione per salutarlo e celebrarlo.

All’interno della mostra sono visibili lavori degli anni ’90, tra cui una serie di tele di Schuyff presenti nel suo appartamento al Chelsea Hotel.

Le camminate a New York sono infinite passeggiate: si parte da Chelsea e si finisce nell’East Village, senza rendersi conto dei chilometri e passando in rassegna mille volti, mille sapori e una varietà enorme di accenti e architetture.

Camminare a New York è molto più che fare semplici passi, è scoprire nuovi mondi e assaporare nuove culture. Ogni block ha avuto una storia e ne ha una che si farà.

Ogni settimana, rigorosamente, ci fermavano al Chelsea Hotel, 23rd Street and 9th Avenue, uno di quei posti in cui i muri raccontano molte vite, alcune tragiche e altre che sanno di fiaba.

Al Chelsea Hotel ci ha vissuto mezzo mondo dell’Arte: Donald Baechler, Peter Schuyff, Jackson Pollock, Diego Rivera, Robert Mapplethorpe, per non parlare dei cantanti: Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Patty Smith, Leonard Cohen e poi gli scrittori: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, solo per citarne alcuni.

Come tutti gli alberghi che hanno fatto la storia della Grande Mela, alcune camere sono intrise di mistero, sesso e sangue. Famosa è la notte del 1979 in cui Sid Vicious, bassista dei Sex Pistols, uccide la fidanzata Nancy Spungen (ha confessato e poi ha ritrattato).

Ci soffermavamo spesso nella Hall, squallida, mal tenuta, ma sicuramente vera, così conservata per decisione della vecchia proprietà. Si aveva la netta sensazione di essere entrati in un luogo in cui la festa era finita da un pezzo e pure male. Nella stanza a sinistra al lato del camino campeggiava un enorme vaso di fiori di Donald Baechler: era un grande dipinto con un fondo bianco, sporco, ricordava per certi aspetti lo Schifano più in forma, più randagio, onnivoro, che fagocita tutto a qualsiasi ora.

Un soggetto di una disarmante semplicità grafica, nero come la notte, molto potente. La vera protagonista del quadro rimaneva la superficie, lavoratissima, con pezzi di stoffa applicati e ricoperti, tanti strati che traboccavano di colature, un insieme molto sessuale.

Baechler, pittore intrigante, ironico, uno dei pochi che riusciva a rendere sensuale anche un pallone da calcio. L’artista nato in Connecticut e scomparso pochi giorni fa, ritraeva soggetti semplici, un insieme di memorie: nelle sue opere usava frammenti di stampa e tessuti, fotografie, cartoline, souvenir di viaggi per creare un immaginario personale.

Ogni settimana scoprivamo nuove storie d’amore nate al Chelsea Hotel e nuovi inquilini. La favola di New York dove tutto accade non in mezzo a mari cristallini e cieli stellati, ma negli zozzi corridoi di un albergo che non conosce il termine pulizia, ma che ha visto soggiornare stelle e anime ribelli.

Così si scopre che per venti anni ci ha vissuto un altro grande nome dell’Arte degli Anni ’80: Peter Schuyff, olandese volato in Canada e fermatosi infine nell’East Village. La camera di Schuyff era piena di suoi lavori, con un letto a una piazza e mezzo in legno, la coperta bordeaux e poi un camino con tipiche decorazioni di fine Ottocento. I lavori di Schuyff nascono su tele esistenti sulle quali l’artista vi dipinge motivi geometrici ripetitivi, quasi optical, creando nuove superfici, inaspettate e geniali. Nella New York degli anni Ottanta i due artisti convergono nell’East Village, quella parte di Manhattan che da sempre pulsa e raccoglie avanguardie.

I due artisti appartengono alla generazione postmoderna, quella del “Ritorno alla pittura”. In America la decade dell’Ottanta è stata un periodo di prosperità economica e di grande bolla speculativa, ma anche di moralismo bigotto. Fu un decennio adrenalinico, iperbolico e ipertrofico, come fosse stato pompato con gli steroidi. Ogni intellettualismo viene bandito, il quadro non vuole più essere opera, ma “tela e colore”, intriso soltanto di piacere. Nel tipico pastiche postmoderno, particolare importanza aveva la pratica manichea che connetteva astrattismo e figurazione, polarità solo in apparenza antitetiche.
Senza via di scampo, ci si trovava di fronte a una pittura ibrida, incline alla contaminazione degli stili e al rimescolamento delle tecniche. Ancor più che disinvolta, la pittura viene percepita come “disturbante”.

La mostra proposta da THE POOL NYC non vuole certo essere un’operazione nostalgia, bensì una scommessa su quello che potrebbe succedere a breve se l’umanità non è cambiata, se Dostoesvskij è ancora attuale e l’uomo non si è trasformato in un essere tutto buono o tutto cattivo. L’attualità del Postmodernismo e della pittura di Schuyff e Baechler si conferma ancora vincente e ispirante per future generazioni di artisti e creativi, che vivendo senza le certezze della storia dell’arte, prenderanno proprio spunto dall’ironia e dal sarcasmo dei due pittori dell’East Side.

Curated by Maurizio Bortolotti

12 November 2021-2 April 2022

THE IDENTITY OF MONGOLIAN ART IN THE HEART OF EURASIA.

It is difficult to understand art in Asia without taking into account its complexity. While globalization has provided an important opportunity in recent decades, enabling it to develop economically and in some cases to overcome the West, it has also confirmed its cultural reception, concealing the most dynamic parts that are local identities. Asia is made up of a myriad of different realities that make the continent a fertile ground for economic and cultural events that are changing the course of the 21st century.

Within this mosaic of identities, Mongolia deserves a place of its own. The country is located on a single large plateau, bordering Russia and China, with a population of about 3 million inhabitants, 800,000 of whom still live as nomads. After gaining independence in 1992, the country is the only democracy in the area still seeking its own identity as a modern country.

The recent constitution of Mongolia has in fact produced a climate of change that has stimulated artistic production. After the end of the Soviet influence with social realism, the Mongol artists directed their production towards two poles: the international art movements of Global Conceptualism, which appears as a form of legitimate updating, and the tradition of Thangka painting, combined with the celebration of the myth of Genghis Khan and the nomadism that still today, centuries later, influence the daily life of Mongolia.

From a more general point of view, we can say that in Asian art the Western concept of “new” has never been assimilated. Even when Western artistic modes spread through globalization, art in Asia remained anchored in a constant dialogue with local tradition. For the same reason, one of the most lively artistic currents in contemporary Mongolia is the one that today re-presents the tradition of Thangka Buddhist painting, declining it in an infinite variety of ways.

The modes of actualization of this tradition pass through contamination with other visual-narrative genres, such as that of the Manga cartoons or the insertion of episodes related to everyday life, to build a new type of narration, who wants to represent the present time.

Originally, it was a kind of religious painting related to the description of Buddha’s prerogatives. Although the approach to this genre is free and not subject to rigid stylistic canons, Thangka painting follows decorative schemes codified with compositions of figures suspended in a perspective space.

In the paintings of the younger generation, the motifs or figures rather than having the meanings proper to the tradition, refer to social and political facts of contemporary Mongolia, developing a self-narration of the current destiny of the country. Figures of horses, knights or Buddha are mixed with contingent facts, which belong to the life of the present. In a vision of reality in which even earth and heaven are spiritual entities that are set against the background of the daily life of a people whose roots are nomadic culture.

Nomadism is present in the stories and in the social and family imagination, handed down also by those who have urbanized in the capital Ulaanbaatar for over two generations. The search for a contemporary identity by a country where nature maintains the strength of its origins, dating back millions of years ago, and part of the population still lives in the nomadic state, with precise rules of life, clashes with the urbanization of the Mongols in the capital Ulaanbaatar, where you live a modern life.

The great narration of the nomadic condition is in fact the nourishment of the Mongolian art, since this narration acts as soundtrack also to the urban life of the great city; on the outskirts of which, and in the vast territory of the country, Nomads still stay in typical Ger tents and ride horses. The tension that arises from Mongolian art is born precisely from the contrast that the Mongols live between modern life and their imagination, populated by the memory of nomadic life. It is a state of mind, but also an identity condition, in which there is an obvious attempt to connect traditional roots with contemporary life. And although there is a widespread knowledge of international art, the Mongolian art scene is mainly focused on itself, in search of its own position that distinguishes it from the rest of Asian art.

Paradoxically, the great theme of Mongolian art is the representation of the myth of nomadic life at a time when the tendency to abandon it in favour of urban life is becoming increasingly evident. It is the reservoir of inspiration of many artists, closely connected with the phase of political and social transformation that the country is experiencing.

For this exhibition we have selected some artists who are representative of the artistic scene in Mongolia, of which we present for the first time in Italy a review.

The issue of urbanization, the transition from nomadic life to the urban condition is the background to the social narrative of the photographer Esunge, who portrays the nomads who have recently settled in the suburbs of the capital Ulaanbaatar. Their lives in the traditional Ger, permanently installed in the suburbs of the city, near the houses, are told without embellishments, trying to grasp the traits of a once proud existence, which represented the national pride. The realism of the images deeply digs the myth of nomadism, even in the condition of survival of the dusty suburbs of the city. The series of portraits is an attempt to fix in the eyes and bodies, old and young, the otherness of the nomadic condition. The portrait of a young man, whose regular features recall a warrior of other times, in his red blouse of traditional workmanship is distinguished from the others because he appears to us as the hero protagonist of an epic narrative of the nation. The attention to the suburbs of the capital, which recall the many shanty town scattered around the world, contrasts with the faces of the nomads, whose intense looks seem to keep the vision of the boundless prairies even in the condition of segregation of the suburbs. It is the tragedy of the process of change in the country in progress, in which the protagonists themselves participate in amazement. The changes affect this exemplary humanity that has abandoned a condition of secular life because of the uncertainty of a future that appears inevitable. In the images of Esunge there is concentrated the search for identity of a people, which is gradually abandoning the traditional costumes while continuing to wear them with pride. Family life in the Ger is timeless, but outside the context of the suburbs describes the urgency of a radical transformation of the country. Modernity dazzles and attracts nomads like moths to the light of a future that seems to offer them no space other than miserable life and without conditions of the outskirts.

Contrary to Esunge’s realism, the imaginary of nomadic life is well represented in the work of Dolgor Serod, who was a pupil of one of the leading masters of Thangka painting in Mongolia. In her work, the decorative and narrative components find a harmonious balance in the name of the Buddhist painting tradition. The scenes of traditional nomadic life are adapted to the decorative structure of the paintings, with flows of figures that move in accordance with secular compositional schemes. In the painting “Mongolian Life” there is the evocation of a glorious past, in which all the ideal elements of nomadic life are orchestrated: the structure of the gear with its internal organization, the altar dedicated to the ancestors opposite of the entrance, to the left the male area, to the right the area of women and children. The herds and horses, traditional means of transport, complete a mythical Eden in the imagination of the Mongols, dreamed even today despite the city life made chaotic by traffic, where the inhabitants live in modern buildings such as those found in residential areas of Chinese cities. The series “Cherry Blossom” is the tale of an ideal nomadic life lost forever. The erotic scenes blend with the resumption of nature and men are in perfect harmony with natural life. While the series dedicated to markets, with the combination of gear to buildings or the representation of the old black market (“Old Back Market”) more closely reflect the reality of contemporary Mongolia. The structures of the paintings in this series follow an archaic scheme of presentation, but the swarm of everyday life, which is the real protagonist of the images, tells of a lifestyle and a sociality with an open structure, organized according to a horizontal scheme instead of pyramidal and hierarchical, which is typical of sedentary civilizations.

For Nomin Bold the traditional representation is the background to insertions of figures that recall the feminine identity. In her compositions, which refer to Thangka painting, female images or those of the Buddha alternate with skulls and other figures wearing gas masks. In her works there is a reinvention of iconography and traditional space. It is a modern space where decorative patterns create a three-dimensional representation. The classical representation, while being the basis and support to the narrative, is continually broken and renewed. Compared to traditional iconography, the artist completely rethinks the decorative structure on which the narrative rests, creating rigorous grids on which are grafted the compositions made with myriad of figures that refer to modern life. There is a double research that completely modernizes the Thangka representation, both in the reinvention of the space of the representation and in the choice of the subjects. In her works the two researches appear complementary but well distinct. In a recent installation, gas masks are crocheted with colored wool and hung on a horizontal wooden bar suspended from the ground, or resting on vertical metal rods. It is a strong stand against pollution and environmental sustainability issues. Despite the apparent fidelity to tradition, the works of Nomin Bold are highly innovative in terms of both iconography and composition, as well as the modernity of the issues addressed. The frontal presentation of the images contrasts with the complexity of the narrative, in which the decorative structure becomes the support for an epic narrative to the feminine.

Even in Baatarzorig Batjargal’s work, tradition is reinterpreted, but   the composition with decorative patterns in favor of a broad epic narrative, in which appear battles of the past in which ancient knights participate, in a tangle of half-human and half-animal figures. Its warriors, human beings with animal heads, or giant snakes with dragon faces, give the complex narrative of Baatarzorig Batjargal (curiously, the prefix “Baatar” of its name means hero) the traits of the mythological Monarchy. The Thangka iconography is developed here with symbolic representations of animals and mythological creatures present in Buddhist decorations and ceremonies.  The great epic narrative is the central theme of his work, but even in his paintings the reinterpretation of traditional iconography is punctuated by the insertion of elements that populate the imagination of modern Mongolia. In addition to the facts of current politics, he includes quotations that refer to the times of the influence of the Soviet Union. The fantastic traditional repertoire is enriched by the inclusion of bold pop images, such as the series of paintings and sculptures of the Buddha with the head of Mickey Mouse. This quote is not a superficial reference to Western modern art. It shows us the contamination of traditional culture, and it is once again the demonstration of how much the clash between modern life and that of the past is the center through which the search for a cultural and social identity of Mongolia develops. The fantastic figures of the paintings and the references to the profane iconography of modernity tell how the clash between the demons of the past and those of the present did not subside in the vision of the artist, who, although apparently far, it deeply captures the turmoil of today’s Mongolia. 

Finally, in the work of Munkhjargal Munkhuu, the youngest of the artists invited, there is the coolest attempt among those proposed to renew Thangka painting combining it with an iconography that recalls the imaginary Manga. In this contamination between the two genres, actuality themes are touched by mixing them with figures of the Buddhist tradition, which only marginally appear in the complex compositions. In his paintings the crowding is greater than in tradition and the three-dimensional space is fluid, solely determined by the movement and the interweaving of the figures. The iconography and type of narration are completely renewed. There are only vague references to the images of the past, the whole representation is projected into the actuality. The works are full of references to events that have influenced social life, with portraits of politicians and leaders of public life in the country, alternating with images of cartoon characters armed, or icons of modernity such as the Rubik’s Cube, KFC fried chicken bags, signs of Mongolian Americanization. In his compositions often stand out numbers that have a symbolic and magical value that are intertwined with the direct coverage of the country. The composition in the paintings is decidedly modern and break with traditional patterns, while maintaining a general layout that recalls the traditional but making it more crowded with characters and objects, almost asphyxiated. There is a dynamism and vitality that tell the frenzy of modern life in the country. His paintings are great allegorical narratives of Mongol society and a pitiless mirror of life in the modern city. The artist’s attitude is critical of a society that, seen with his eyes, appears chaotic and in search of a difficult balance for the identity of an ancient country, but still extraordinarily at the dawn of a new era.