Utah painted.

Here's a surprise. The Salt Lake Art Center is not open on Sundays, which has always bugged me a little bit because I think Sunday afternoons were meant for museum visits. The surprise? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' Church History Museum is open on Sundays.  For an organization that believes in keeping the sabbath day holy, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Church agrees that visiting a museum is an appropriate activity for a Sunday afternoon.

How did I discover this fact?  Well, I went to the museum as my second stop on Salt Lake City's current circuit of LeConte Stewart exhibits.  There are two shows featuring the artist's work; a joint effort by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) and the Church History Museum.  I started at UMFA to see more Stewart paintings in one location than you'll ever see again.  And all of those paintings represent places in Utah. 

The exhibit at UMFA is titled LeConte Stewart: Depression Era Art.  I wasn't expecting to like the show as much as I did.  Stewart's paintings from the 1930s are melancholy, even bleak.  That realization that things were troubling for many Americans during the depression makes this show relevant today.  Here are some paintings I found interesting.

A whole gallery is dedicated to the idea that small businesses struggle in a bad economy.  Hometown businesses shutting down were featured in a number of Stewart's paintings.  As the son of a small business owner, I found these paintings beautiful.  Here's Untitled (The Golden Rule) (c. 1930s, oil on board), my photo may not show the detail, but the business shows torn curtains and broken windows.

And here is the Green Front (1935, oil on canvas), which shows a general store in Kaysville, Utah owned by W.D. Adams and Sons.  While the store survived the depression, the painting still evokes the realities of doing business in a struggling economy.

I enjoyed seeing Stewart's painting process in action.  Stewart worked from real life, not from photographs.  He made sketches and then painted studies before completing the final work, and many of those studies were beautiful and on display.

For example, Smith's House (1937, oil on canvas) was shown next to one sketch and two oil studies.

Then there's this photo of a brilliant painting, Approved by Postmaster General (1936, oil on canvas) shown next to a small study for the same painting.

One of my favorite paintings in the show is Private Car (1937, oil on canvas) showing unemployed men hitching a ride on a train in hopes of finding work somewhere else. By the way, what a great title for a painting exploring this subject matter.

In the study for the painting, the men are absent.  While beautiful, it somehow lacks the same emotional impact.

Stewart also had a fascination with houses.  Bleak, lonely houses that were struggling to survive in a time when households around the country were facing foreclosures.  Here's one of my favorites featuring three homes; The Smiths', the Jones', and the Browns' (1936, oil on canvas).

My second stop was at the Church History Museum where the exhibit was titled, LeConte Stewart: The Soul of Rural Utah.  Side note: What's with the carpeting?  I don't think I've ever been to an art museum with carpeting.  Polished concrete? Sure. Hard wood? Definitely.  But carpeting?  But other than the carpeting, this show was displayed beautifully; maybe even better than at UMFA.  Most of the paintings were landscapes which I found less interesting than the introspective paintings at UMFA.  But there were some standouts.

Here's Country Funeral (1948, oil on panel).  This is a painting that forces the viewer to create stories.

Some of my favorite paintings were about religion.  Stewart was a Mormon.  He was commissioned by the LDS church to paint murals in several temples.  For me, religions are at their best when they're commissioning artists to celebrate their beliefs.  And in this show some of the best paintings are Stewart's depictions of LDS temples in which he painted murals.  I like these paintings for two reasons.  First, they're buildings that are architecturally interesting, built when the church was dedicated to making each temple unique, unlike now when temples seem to be little more than glorified, cookie-cutter stake centers.  Second, I love the way the buildings reference temples built by the great cultures of the Americas; which seems appropriate considering the Book of Mormon's story line.

This is Hawaii Temple Construction (1918, oil on canvas).

And here is Alberta Temple, Evening (1921, oil on panel).

If you like Impressionism mixed with a good dose of the American west painted by the likes of Maynard Dixon, both of these shows are worth a visit.  Or, if you just want to take a little pride in the art of Utah, both shows are worth a visit.

Lady Gaga isn't the first celebrity Polaroid enthusiast.

Long before Lady Gaga became the Creative Director for Polaroid, there was Andy Warhol, much of whose art relied on Polaroids.  He acquired his first Polaroid camera (a Polaroid Big Shot) in 1970. Warhol took hundreds of the old peel-away Polaroids, many of which were turned into black and white acetates that became the foundation for his silk-screened canvases. But a lot of them were just taken as snapshots.

A few years ago, the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts gave away a bunch of Warhol works to museums around the country. The Utah Museum of Fine Art (UMFA) received a collection of Polaroids taken by Warhol.  For the first time, they are on view at the UMFA as part of a show called Faces: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art.

These are pretty much straightforward old-school Polaroids.  But as a true Polaroid aficionado, I love old-school Polaroids with their muted colors and their candid instantness.  And certainly Warhol handles the unknowns of Polaroid photography better than most with perfect framing and intriguing faces.  Of course these pictures are extra interesting due to the featured subjects, many of whom are celebrities, socialites, or art-world luminaries.

There's Carolina Herrera (1978, Color Polaroid, Polaroid Type 108):

And Vogue cover girl Evelyn Kuhn (1977, Color Polaroid, Polaroid Type 108):

Keith Haring is seen with his boyfriend and Eighties DJ Juan Dubose.  (1983 Polaroid, Polacolor ER):

Of course not everyone is famous like Unidentified Woman #1 (Asian) (1974, Color Polaroid, Polaroid Type 108).

Or Madonna and Child (1981, Polaroid, Polacolor 2).

Of course there are other works in this exhibit.  There are a bunch of Alex Katz works with their superflat style.  I know Murakami is responsible for the idea of "superflat."  But I think Alex Katz was perfecting perfectly flat imagery a long time before Murakami got there.  Here is Anne Lauterbach (1977, Aquatint).

You can see Faces through February 13. 

Year of Japan: UMFA edition.

This fall, I'm planning a trip to Japan.  I've already booked my plane tickets for September.  To prepare, I plan to familiarize myself with Japanese culture.  I've got several Japanese themed novels waiting to be read.  And I've bought my Japanese immersion software.  So imagine how excited I was to discover a small exhibit currently on view at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) with work by a Japanese artist. 

The show is called Decades and features the art of Yayoi Kusama.  I'd never heard of Kusama.  And considering her background, I feel that someone who spends as much time in museums as I do should be familiar with her work.  But maybe I'm just another white male who refuses to acknowledge the contributions of women to contemporary art; I hope not.

Here's what I learned. Yayoi is one of Japan's most important contemporary artists who's been working since the 1950s.  During the '50s she lived in New York City where she was friends with the likes of Donald Judd and Joseph Cornell.  In my defense, when she returned to Japan in the 1970s, Kusama was largely forgotten in the U.S., but since the 1990s she's received significant renewed attention.

All that background information is boring if you don't see her artwork.  Her art is a trippy, dazzling expression fueled by painstaking execution, with patterns that can make your eyes hurt, but in a good way.  I can't tell if this is Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, or some strange version of Op Art.  But however you categorize it, it's fun to see. 

The first painting I liked is Dots (2000, Acrylic on canvas), whose card notes that Kusama has struggled with mental illness since childhood.  And get this: She currently lives voluntarily in an institution for the mentally ill.  She still produces plenty of work at her studio where she employs several assistants.  Here is Dots:

Here's a detail from Kusama's mind-bending, large work entitled The Night (1985, Acrylic on canvas; triptych).  This just might cause hallucinations in those of us who aren't troubled by mental illness.

In the '60s, Kusama took pattern to a new medium.  She began to produce sculpture which consisted of household objects covered with bunches of small, stuffed fabric phallic forms.  The card for this work suggests that while these sculptures are playful, they also carry undertones of anger.  Maybe she's pissed that white, male art fans like me don't know enough about women, foreign artists.  I don't blame her.  Here is a detail from Compulsion Furniture (1962-63/1993, Sewn stuffed fabric, household objects, wood, paint):

And finally, here's an installation view from the exhibit featuring The Night and Compulsion Furniture.

Really? A gay man graduated from BYU. Really!

I hadn't been to the Utah Museum of Fine Art (UMFA) for a long time.  But now is a good time to visit because there's a lot of new, good stuff to see.  It's been a while since I've seen this much intriguing art at UMFA.  So my next few posts will be about exhibits currently on view.

I'll start with the Trevor Southey retrospective titled Reconciliation. This is a big show with a significant amount of work crammed into the back galleries of the first floor.  But that crowdedness works well for this show. Southey paints with a brilliant technical ability.  But that's not what makes his art great.  There's something more.  His work exudes quiet emotion set against an intellectual intensity.

Southey was born and raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and studied in England.  He came to the US in 1965 and received two art degrees from Brigham Young University where he later was a faculty member.  He married and raised a family in Alpine. In 1982, he came out and as a gay man redefined his life.  

Yes, my headline for this post may be a bit sensational considering the content.  But I think knowing this background helps inform Southey's art, much of which is religious and features beautifully painted male figures that sometimes have a homoerotic sensibility.  

Here are just a few of the works I found interesting.

I loved Irrigation Turn at Dusk (1977, oil on canvas) for it's American Gothic attitude.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this is an homage to Grant Wood, another artist who lived much of his life as a closeted gay man. 

Some of the most beautiful works in the show are the bronzes which seem to make bodies magically float in air.  These works reminded me of Rodin bronzes with a modern twist.  This is Fatherhood (1994, bronze).

And this is Softening (1980, bronze).

What Trevor Southey does best is represent the male nude.  His canvases frequently feature multiple men painted with surprising attention to anatomy.  But they never feel like academic illustrations.  Frequently the individuals appear suspended in air set amid interesting planes and shapes.  The paintings reminded me of the works of Michelangelo. One of the more dramatic paintings in the show is this large canvas titled, Vyacheslav (1999, oild on canvas).

Reconciliation is on view through February 13.