Óscar Muñoz

Back in June I found myself wandering the halls of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Although the riches there are endless, one exhibition, now closed, really enraptured me. "Permission to be Global/Prácticas Globales" showed a collection of Modern Latin American artists grouped together into four thematic categories. Latin American art is nothing unusual around Houston and Texas, but, naively, I was surprised to learn that this was the first exhibition at the MFA in Boston. Even my mother, mildly interested in art, European mostly, was entertained and thrilled by some of the works. I swear she spent more time in those galleries than anywhere else in the museum. I was certainly not complaining. One of the artists I was introduced to was Oscar Munoz, from Colombia. The clip below is from a longer black and white video piece entitled Sedimentaciones (Sedimentations), from 2011. Projected onto three tables, the video loops a simple act. 

Oscar Munoz, Sedimentaciones

What we presume to be looking at is a darkroom, laid out with identification pictures in various states of development and a sink on either side. A disembodied arm reaches in from off camera, to lift a photo into or out of the fix solution. These arms move the photos to the sink where they either reveal a portrait or erase it, born or washed away by the liquid. That the video is projected onto a physical table, exactly like the one holding the photos, is very effective. It's almost as if you're complicit somehow in this terrible, gentle act of erasing identities.

I might not have understood what the artist was referring to if I hadn't encountered two things over my Houston tenure. First was a book given to me by a new friend, Great House by Nicole Krauss (2010) and second, the Antonio Berni show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2014). Although I only read some of Great House, it is so hypnotic and complex that I had to reread it several times, it was enough to plant a new piece of historical information. One of the first characters, a poet from Chile, is thought to have been kidnapped and made to "disappear." I didn't know if this was part of the novel or part of history really, until I saw the Berni show. An Argentinean artist, also working in the 20th century, makes visual references to social issues like these disappearances (desaparecidos) in his masterful works in many media. Truly one of my favorite artists.

Antonio Berni at the MFAH

In Chile and Argentina, and other countries, forced disappearances, when political dissidents are kidnapped and murdered without a trace, have claimed tens of thousands of lives. One nasty detail that I remember reading was that many of these people were pushed out of airplanes, while still alive.

Now Munoz's video makes total sense.
Although there may be connections to the political history of Colombia, where disappearances have happened much more recently, Munoz is also interested in concepts of memory, time, and optical illusions.

I'm so taken by this artist that I'm translating parts of his book, Documentos de la Amnesia, from Spanish to English. This process, however challenging, is truly rewarding in that the thoughts, his ideas, have burrowed much more deeply into my psyche.

The MFA, Houston Fall Exhibitions: Marvelous

There is so much good stuff going on here at my little museum.

Koloman Moser: Designing Modern Vienna 1897-1907 through January 12, 2014
Austrian delights abound at this small show of graphic works, furniture, decorative objects, and textiles. Even though I'm not a fan of "graphic design," these works are luscious and thought provoking.

Koloman Moser, Schwämme (Mushrooms), design no. 4003, 1899, execution: Johann Backhausen & Söhne, Vienna; wool, silk, and cotton, MAK–Austrian Museum for Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna

Koloman Moser, Poster for Frommes Kalender, 1899, execution: Albert Berger, Vienna, colored lithograph on paper, Serge Sabarsky Collection, New York. Photo: Hulya Kolabas, New York

Antonio Berni: Juanito and Ramona through January 26, 2014
Mid-century Argentinean works from collage artist Berni. Having these around the museum completely changes the environment from solemn to playful with a human touch and a wild bit of whimsy. The installation is superior.

Antonio Berni, Las vacaciones de Juanito, 1972, acrylic, metal, rubber, fabric, and various materials on wood. © José Antonio Berni

American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World through January 20, 2014
Two major artists meet with their most well known works and it's pretty exciting to see these paintings together. The exhibition itself is captivating as it evokes the era so well by including various ephemeral items such as textiles and clothing and the artists's tools. Despite my lethargic interests in eighteenth-century American art, this show, curated by Rice and UT, Austin graduate Emily Ballew Neff, totally won me over.

John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund. Image courtesy National Gallery of Art

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1779, oil on canvas, Ickworth, National Trust, Suffolk. 

Image © Hamilton Kerr Institute, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

I especially love this watercolor painting of Sir Lever's cabinet of curiosities (Wunderkammer!) and the curatorial notes I found from the British Museum are so fascinating I had to include the whole story below. It's definitely worth a look!

Interior of Leverian Museum, London; view as it appeared in the 1780s (drawing made on the spot).
Sarah Stone, c1835, Watercolour, The British Museum

The Leverian Museum was founded by Sir Ashton Lever (1729-1788), a gentleman of substantial means whose property included both coal mines and Manchester real estate. He was also a man of many interests, of which ornithology was the overriding passion. In the 1760s and 1770s he acquired an enormous collection of birds, amongst other materials, which he displayed in the former royal palace, Leicester House. As a friend of Captain James Cook, Lever acquired exceptional Pacific ethnography, which was displayed alongside the natural history collections.

Unfortunately Lever overreached himself financially and had to dispose of his collection, by lottery, in the 1780s. Before doing so he commissioned Sarah Stone to depict the birds, ethnography and antiquities. However, this version is most likely a copy since it is dated 1835.

The British Museum, opened in 1759, permitted artists and amateurs to draw and paint objects in its collections and many private museums, like the one set up by Sir Ashton Lever in 1775, also permitted, even encouraged, drawing and painting, by providing 'Good Fires in all in the Galleries.' Sarah Stone's earliest dated drawings are of objects in the Leverian Museum painted in 1777, two years after it opened; by 1784, she had painted over a thousand.  

In 1789 she married John Langdale Smith, a midshipman who shared her interest in painting and exhibited a portrait at the Royal Academy in 1791 when she exhibited paintings of birds at the Society of Artists. She contributed a view of the interior of the museum in its new location in the Rotunda to a published companion to the museum, which showed some of her framed drawings of birds, shells, flowers, etc. hanging on the entrance arch, but she painted little after her marriage, apart from live birds her husband brought back from his voyages. Following a pattern which seems to have been typical for young women who gained reputations as artists, she exhibited at the Royal Academy before her marriage as 'Miss Stone', when she was described as a 'Painter', but afterwards, as 'Mrs Smith', she was an 'Honorary Exhibitor'. There is no doubt that her watercolours, whether she was paid for them or not, served as an additional exhibit or attraction for the owners of the museum, their 'curiosity' value in being produced by a young woman perhaps underlined by her lack of skill in comparison to works produced by her male professional contemporaries.