artist's diary



by Robert Goldman








April 19, 1996--On my way up the opening of 

Katharina Fritsch's show at Matthew Marks 

on Madison Avenue [Apr. 20-June 8, 1996], I 

read on Page Six of the New York Post an 

item about the demimonde photographer Nan 

Goldin and some friends getting into a 

fight over her taking place at the Tribeca 

topless bar, the Baby Doll Lounge. It said 

she was hauled down to the police station. 

This is legendary Goldin.


Fritsch is showing 36 silk-screen 

enlargements on extremely white paper of 

cartoon-like line drawings that had served 

as illustrations in a 1936 German 

children's encyclopedia. They all have 

shiny, curved silver frames and no glass. 

Fritsch has grouped them together by 

categories, making single works out of 

multiple panels. So, for instance, 

Superstitions is one work consisting of 

four identically framed panels with 

illustrations of "Fortune Telling," 

"Flagellators" and two more. Other works 

are Family Celebrations,Popular 

Celebrations and Church. There are two 

fairy-tale pieces, each with seven 

silkscreened panels. A volume of Grimm's 

Fairy Tales, with different illustrations, 

is conveniently provided on a table in the 

second room. 


So, we have a children's book illustration 

of the wolf talking to Little Red Riding 

Hood on the path to Grandmother's house, or 

a May Day Celebration, or Communion at 

Church, or Christmas and so on. Fritsch's 

compendium is undoubtedly a fascinating 

sociological document with many inferences 

to be made. But for me, the work is about 

her act of choosing and her presentation. 

There is a dynamic theatrical effect in the 

gallery rooms. The 36 illustrations are put 

on display. Their scale is enlarged and 

enhanced through grouping and repetition of 

format. She used this technique in a show I 

saw at the Basel Kunsthalle in 1988 curated 

by Jean Christoph Ammann with Fritsch and 

Rosemarie Trockel. Fritsch filled a huge 

hall with a big installation of a very long 

table at which were seated a considerable 

number of identical white figures of men 

dressed in black with black fedoras. 

Society stamping out identical models.The 

Organization Man.


It is interesting that Katharina Fritsch is 

showing here within a month of Rosemarie 

Trockel's drawing show downtown [see 

below]. They have been compared in the 

past. In fact, they are probably the two 

most important German women artists of 

their generation, and they have very 

contrasting temperaments. Trockel's show is 

also about German ritual, but is a very 

different, funny and quirky vision of it. 

It is the vision that is lived in all its 

complicated messiness; one that doesn't fit 

into perfectly ordered groups. Trockel and 

Fritsch represent two poles of German art 

that are analogous to the divide between 

Polke and Richter. One conjures and invents 

coincidence, while the other is colder, 

more calculated, but also very smart.


On the fifth floor of the Marks Gallery, 

Fritsch is showing a retrospective of her 

multiples, some of which are produced in 

seemingly unlimited editions and have 

bargain basement prices for you poor 

collectors. Some are sold, typically for 

Fritsch, only in groups. 


April 6, 1996--I first met Jack Pierson 

about six years ago while I was hanging out 

for an afternoon in Donald Baechler's 

studio. Now you can hang out in Pierson's 

studio--or at least in his "Studio for a 

Month," an installation in the front room 

of Luhring Augustine [Apr. 6-May 4, 1996]. 

On the first day of the show, the Saturday 

before Easter, pink and white lilies filled 

the room with the sweetest fragrance. A 

frayed, cheap Indian bedspread hangs like a 

curtain in the entrance. The floor and 

walls of the studio tableau are painted 

pale pink. In the room are three odd chairs 

and an old striped hand-woven textile on 

the floor. A couple of small wooden boxes 

hold a portable stereo player, an ashtray 

and some books: a Polke catalogue; "All of a 

Sudden" by Jack Pierson published by 

PowerHouse Books Thea Westreich; the 

magazine "Out" with Philip Johnson on the 

cover. Above the table are shelves holding 

photographic prints and various other 

things, including a box of Milk Bone dog 

biscuits. Pinned to the wall is a large 

photocopy of Jimmy Durante and a copy of a 

bad review of Pierson's 1995 Chicago show 

that called his work "retro."


On opposite walls, spelled out in 

mismatching letters from signs, are two 

wall pieces:Jesus Christ and Jerry Lewis.

A plywood table sits in the room holding 

the flowers, a bowl of oranges, postcards, 

a rubber eraser, some notebooks, a boxed 

portfolio of large color prints with a 

series of off-center close-ups of a young, 

good looking Italian male fashionably 

unshaven, a box of pins and a pair of white 

gloves.


When Jack was in the room you felt like his 

guest. When he wasn't there, you felt like 

an invited voyeur looking for things that 

might be interesting. A small spiral 

notebook I uncovered under a pile had words 

and phrases from a Hollywood-hotel stay 

scrawled across each page in a dark soft 

pencil. A different notebook had pages that 

said "Cootch," Bad Tit Job," "Burlesque," 

"Only God Above Knows How I Feel" and "Over 

the Hill and Looking for Love."


Pierson uses language to name things in a 

way that reminded me of Jean-Michel 

Basquiat, despite Jean's more deliberate 

and poetic stroke. "Only God Above Knows 

How I Feel" is a twist on that. Pierson 

shies away from casting judgment. He leaves 

that to God or to us. Rather, he plays on 

his unassuming coyness to create desire. 

It's a pose, but he is very good at it. 

There is a large framed drawing leaning 

against the wall near the exit of a thin 

girl with long dark hair, who's wearing 

across her mouth an elegant black mask for 

the eyes. A caption scrawled out above her 

reads, "I'm not who you think I am, and I 

hate you, too."


When I walked into the main gallery, Ada 

and Alex Katz were there, looking at 

Pierson's wispy, landscape-like large 

canvases. They are machine-made, painted 

with acrylic lacquers by a computer-

controlled spray-gun from a scan of one of 

Pierson's photographs of Bougainvillea, 

ivy, the soft focus shadow of a chain link 

fence, or a wall. The colors are 

understatedly beautiful in their emptiness. 

The technique and size leaves unnecessary 

shadows and shapes that are like whitish 

ghosts. Jeff Koons and Joseph Nechvatal are 

two artists that have made work using this 

computerized technique. Bougainvillea is 

named for the French navigator Louis 

Antoine de Bougainville (d. 1811). 

Pierson's canvases are named for Mae West 

Songs:Franky and Johnny,Sister Honky 

Tonk,Thats All Brother and Slow Down. They 

come in small editions. I like them. There 

is a sign piece that runs across the 

entrance of the gallery that reads, "Being 

Alive." A friend of mine thought the whole 

show was romantic.


Mar. 16, 1996--Went to a small reception 

for a show of drawings and photographs by 

the German artist, Rosemarie Trockel, at 

Nolan-Eckman in the 560 Broadway building 

[to Apr. 27, 1996]. Walk in and you see two 

photographs, one in color and one in black 

and white, of an unshaven critic, Wilfried 

Dickoff, wearing a long thin plastic 

Pinocchio nose and a towel or shroud over 

his head. Right away you know something 

funny is going on here. Ostensibly, the 

show is images of the Cologne Carnival, but 

is more than that. There are three drawings 

of featureless faces except for long 

Pinocchio-like noses in a dark grayish ink 

wash. Then there are three drawings of 

poodles. Then photographs, one in color and 

one in black and white, of a man wearing 

pajamas and a white sleeping cap standing 

in front of an alley. He looks like an 

escaped mental patient or Vincent "The 

Chin" Gigante, the reputed Mafia don who 

runs around the West Village in his 

bathrobe. Then there are two drawings of 

faces with spirals for features, six or 

seven protrusions for noses and one with a 

sucked-in mouth. They look like they could 

have been done by Henri Michaux in one of 

his drug-induced states. Then there were 

intricate, obsessive drawings of what look 

like fine chain-mail, mostly in pencil, but 

partly in color. Another photograph shows a 

little girl who seems to be protecting 

herself from all this madness with the hood 

of her purple parka. A line drawing of a 

baby's face looks quite normal except for a 

deep disturbing red spreading down from the 

top of her head. There are photographs, 

again one in color and one in black and 

white, of a young woman with a black eye 

and a bruised mouth standing beneath a 

"sheltering" blue and grey sky.


Things in this show are and are not what 

they seem. The mental patient turns out to 

be someone whose kids Rosie had baby-sat a 

long time ago and ran into by chance when 

he was dressed up trying to look funny for 

the Carnival. He was standing in front of 

her house, which was the coincidence that 

initiated this piece. A strange play-acting 

is going on. The black-eyed woman is not 

the real thing, as in a Nan Goldin photo, 

but staged with makeup. When you look 

closely at an ink drawing of a naked man 

with a couple of extra feet drawn to the 

side, you see that a hand rubbing one eye 

is the hand of a skeleton. My favorite is 

an ink-wash drawing of a big-eared monkey 

with a giant tear coming out of one eye. 

David Sher remarked that the tear looked 

like it had a sailboat inside of it. 

Trockel tests our alertness. It turns out, 

things are and art not what they seem. 

Contradictions, in this case, illuminate 

the force of life itself.


Donald Baechler, Christopher Wool, Vincent 

Fremont, Barbara Gladstone and Paul Kasmin 

were among the attendees at a small private 

reception. Rosie seemed sanguine and 

perspicacious.


Mar. 6, 1996--Out doing the SoHo rounds 

when I met by chance Artist Space curator 

Anastasia Aukeman coming out of the Paul 

Kasmin gallery on Grand Street, where 

Bianca Sforni's black-and-white photographs 

of oysters on the half shell, suffused in 

saltwater and juices, look sexy and wet. 

Anastasia wanted to see the Ellen Cantor 

show at Thomas Nordanstad, but neither us 

knew where his new space was located. 

Instead we walk through the freezing, wind-

swept rain to around the corner to her 

favorite neo-Conceptual gallery, Stefan 

Basilico Fine Arts. 


Stefan didn't know where Nordanstad was 

either. He was having a meeting with Mario 

Diacono, the Italian thinker and gallerist 

who, in 1961, was signed and authenticated 

as a work of art by Piero Manzoni. 

Basilico was showing Mathew Antezzo 

(covered by Robert Mahoney in "Reviews"). 

My favorite work of Antezzo's is an oil 

painting from his previous exhibition, a 

copy of a photograph of Alan Sonfist's Last 

Piece (proposed 1973), Artist's Body Placed 

at Death in a Sealed Transparent Enclosure. 

"I feel that the decay and growth of my 

body will present the continuance of my 

artwork," Sonfist said. Antezzo titled his 

painting, An Authentic and Historical 

Discourse on the Phenomenon of Mail Art, 

Art in America, vol. 61, #18, p. 54. A 

conceptual precedent for Damien Hirst's 

decomposing cows in tanks.


A couple of doors down Wooster Street at 

American Fine Arts were Moyra Davey's 

photographs of collections of books, 

buttons and magazines. They're presented 

framed in groups, on shelving, in boxes or, 

in one case, just stacked up in a bathroom 

by the toilet. This show provoked a 

conversation about collections, lost and 

saved, the problem of storage and the 

inevitability of life to stuff. The back 

room had that outrageous sculpture by Mark 

Dion of a tree with dead animals hanging 

from its branches, a cat, a rat, birds--the 

whole thing tarred and feathered. Amidst 

all the noisy backroom goings on, 

hardworking Colin de Land told us that 

Thomas Nordanstad is at Spring and Hudson.


We trudged westward through the rain but 

there was no gallery in sight. Windblown 

and exasperated, we asked a wise and 

wizened concierge at 304 Hudson, who 

directed us to the southwest corner of the 

intersection, above the deli. Alas, the 

door was locked with a notice that read 

"Closed." We never saw the Ellen Cantor 

show, but I understand it was about sex.


In order to salvage something from this wet 

westward walk we headed toward Gavin 

Brown's Enterprise on Broome. Taking a 

circuitous route in order to avoid the 

onrushing traffic of the Holland Tunnel, 

we arrived to find a warm, dry room 

with a black foam-covered bench 

facing two TVs, one on a refrigerator 

filled with beer and the other on a wooden 

box containing, among other things, a 

bottle of single-malt Scotch. The video 

playing was by Dinos and Jake Chapman, who 

apparently had hired porno actresses to 

have sex with their sculpture, which is a 

life-sized head with a erect penis for a 

nose. Pornography or art? I couldn't tell 

you. Michiko Kakutani in her review of A. 

M. Homes' novel,The End of Alice, (New 

York Times, Feb. 23, 1996) cites Nabokov's 

comment on pornography: "action has to be 

limited to the copulation of clichés." In 

this case you decide. For us it was funny 

and a fitting end to the afternoon.