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19/9/2003

Saul Steinberg - Raymond Pettibon

The Museum of Contemporary Art MoCA, Miami

AMERICAN SHORT STORIES


Comprised of two adjoining solo exhibitions, American Short Stories provides a comparative study of the work of Saul Steinberg and Raymond Pettibon. The exhibition includes more than 150 drawings and a mural painted on-site by Pettibon.
Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the exhibition is curated by MOCA Director Bonnie Clearwater.
This exhibition explores the common issues, archetypal images, and stylistic resolutions that make the work of Steinberg and Pettibon transcend a specific time and place. These include American icons, American life, customs and social issues, systems of language, imaginary worlds, the sublime, wit and humor.
“Occasionally an artist will come along whose work expands the prevailing boundaries of acceptance, “ Bonnie Clearwater notes. “Raymond Pettibon is such an artist. The stark illustrative drawings he began making in the late 1970s paved the way for the current generation of artists to pursue similarly modest works on paper and illustrative styles. It is work that also revived interest in predecessors such as Saul Steinberg.”
Steinberg and Pettibon were initially known for work that was mass-produced -- Steinberg achieved fame for his drawings in The New Yorker and other magazines; Pettibon garnered an underground reputation for his mimeographed and photocopied fanzines and his drawings that appeared on album covers for the California punk band Black Flag, which was founded by his older brother.
Clearwater writes, “Steinberg’s intended audience is urbane, cultured Americans. Pettibon contends his audience is the same, albeit his is ‘slumming!’ One would have to be of a certain educational class to pick up The New Yorker or one of Pettibon’s fanzines, or catch the literary, historical and cultural references in their work.”
Steinberg and Pettibon are outsiders in their own country. Steinberg, born in Romania in 1914 (died 1999, New York) observed American life with sardonic wit. Women shoppers battling each other over a sales table, worker drones performing mindless tasks, and museum-goers thinking banal thoughts while gazing at modern masterpieces, are subtly lampooned by Steinberg.
Pettibon, born in 1957 in Tuscon, Arizona, and raised in Hermosa Beach, California, looked back with regret at the sixties generation. He had missed out on the excitement of the 1960s Cultural Revolution and grew up in a time of dissolution. His early work brings a sense of critical judgment on the 1960s that came with historical hindsight. Moreover, Pettibon distances himself emotionally from his work. As Ms. Clearwater writes, “Although they may seem personal, his drawings are not autobiographical.”
Steinberg’s first contact with fine art came during his youth in Romania. His father manufactured cardboard boxes, the labels of which occasionally reproduced art works. His family also had large sets of reproductions of the most popular works from the Renaissance to early Modern Art, but he experienced these images without being conscious of them as great art. The commercial signs his uncle painted that were meant for “illiterate peasants” also impressed him. These images had to be comprehensible without the aid of text. At his early age, Steinberg already made no distinction between fine and commercial art. He was intrigued by art as a form of communication that could be grasped in a flash of recognition.
Steinberg learned to draw in architecture school in Milan, but his actual development as an artist started with cartoons. Throughout his career he insisted on preserving elements of humorous drawing and commercial art.
Although his works were included in the Museum of Modern Art’s Fourteen Americans exhibition curated by Dorothy Miller in 1946, along with works by Robert Motherwell, Arshile Gorky, and Isamu Noguchi, Steinberg’s work was rarely displayed with the context of his contemporaries thereafter. American Short Stories is one of the first museum exhibitions to pair him with a contemporary artist.

Pettibon also developed his drawing style from cartoons. With no formal art education, he used cartoon illustrations as his models. As Ms. Clearwater notes, “He clearly defines his work as art, which has nothing to do with commercial art or advertising, even when it is used for commercial purposes.”
Steinberg’s drawings were among the works Pettibon admired. Specific nuances particularly caught his attention. Clearwater writes, “From Steinberg he realized the importance of maintaining a neutral expression on the faces of his characters. “ Expressive faces signify a particular emotion, which for Pettibon, stops the narrative flow.
The face as mask intrigues both artists. The faces in Steinberg’s drawings have a mask like appearance as in his 1966 collage Spanish Woman. Pettibon similarly treats many of his characters’ faces as masks. His fascination with Hollywood screen legend Joan Crawford’s face is evident in his 1997 pen and ink drawing No Title (Oh me if). Crawford created her own mask as a function of her public persona.
Clearwater states, “Narrative drives the work of both artist. Each drawing is structured as a self-contained short story in which all elements are specific to the narrative framed within a single world. No details are extraneous. The same images and symbols may appear in other works, but their meaning must be read within the context of the work at hand.”
Chief among the stories their work tells is life in America. They are fascinated by American customs, social systems, political structures, ideals and failures.

Humor is an essential element in Steinberg’s and Pettibon’s work. For Steinberg, humor was a way to express certain observations without appearing presumptuous. Among the works in the exhibition, which captures this humor is Saul Steinberg’ s famous drawing for a 1976 New Yorker cover titled View of the World from 9th Avenue, which provides a skewed depiction of the world from New York’s 9th Avenue to the Pacific Ocean as only a Manhattanite could imagine it.
Pettibon comments that just about everything he draws has humor. Getting the humor right in a drawing often makes a work successful for him. Clearwater writes, “Each artist depicts a work we know, but renders it so strange that we can best understand it through our emotions. If they hear us laughing, they know they have succeeded.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a special boxed catalog, which includes three booklets featuring over 60 drawings by Saul Steinberg and Raymond Pettibon, and an essay by Bonnie Clearwater.
American Short Stories: Saul Steinberg / Raymond Pettibon is made possible by Rita and Benjamin Holloway, and Paul and Estelle Berg, with additional support provided by The Leo P. Chestler Visual Arts Fund.


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INSTALLATION BY HAITIAN ARTIST
MARIO BENJAMIN ON VIEW AT MOCA
SEPTEMBER 14 – NOVEMBER 9

Born in Port au Prince, Haiti in 1964, Mario Benjamin is among the most celebrated Haitian artists of his generation. A new site-specific installation by Benjamin will be on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) from September 14 through November 9, 2003.
Benjamin’s provocative installations incorporate elements of traditional Haitian culture while at the same time defy expectations of what is considered traditional Haitian art.
For his untitled site-specific project in MOCA’s Pavilion Gallery, Benjamin will transform common materials of everyday life into an environment in which shapes and shadows mysteriously evolve and challenge the viewer’s perception of space and movement. Nearly 20,000 projected images will ebb and flow as if in a magical underwater world while the ambient sound of a television is heard in the background --- a reminder that while Haiti is an island country, its inhabitants are very much connected with the world.
Mario Benjamin’s work has been included in the Havana Biennale, 1997, the Sao Paolo Biennale, 1998, the Venice Biennale, 2001, the Biennale de Caribe, Santo Dominico, 2001. He lives and works in Haiti.
Mario Benjamin is made possible with the support of Florence and Sheldon Anderson and Dr. Anna A. Simkins.

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PAINTINGS BY ROBERTO JUAREZ ON VIEW AT MOCA
SEPTEMBER 14 – NOVEMBER 16

A Sense of Place
The exhibition includes more than 30 mostly large-scale paintings by Juarez and explores how working in New York, Miami Beach, Rome, and other cities has influenced his work of the last 15 years.
Juarez’s sense of place is governed by two realities -- the outside physical surrounding that includes the minutiae of what these “places” bring, and the interior life which he brings with him, including feelings about other places, media, dance, buildings, paintings, and people.
Juarez recently remarked, “I have found that when you leave your home you think about what you left behind, and what is different about these ‘forms’ that live inside us.”
Juarez’s solo gallery exhibitions in New York, which typically have occurred in two-year intervals since 1980, freeze frame moments in his career. Consequently, his work seems to change radically from show to show. This new exhibition fills in the gaps between his solo exhibitions
with the time that he spent living his life, working in new locales and responding to a variety of stimuli.
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Roberto Juarez was born in Chicago in 1952. He currently lives and works in New York City.
Roberto Juarez: A Sense of Place is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and is curated by MOCA Director Bonnie Clearwater. A fully illustrated catalog featuring an essay by Bonnie Clearwater accompanies the exhibition.
Roberto Juarez: A Sense of Place is made possible with the support of Northern Trust, with additional support from Francine and Leslie Rozencwaig.



Museum Hours and Admission:
MOCA hours are Tuesday – Saturday from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm; Sunday from noon – 5:00 pm. MOCA is also open from 7:00 – 10:00 pm on the last Friday of each month by donation, in conjunction with Jazz at MOCA.
Admission is free for MOCA members, North Miami residents, City of North Miami employees, and children under 12; $5 for adults; and $3 for seniors and students with ID.

Exhibitions at MOCA are made possible through grants from the City of North Miami, the Florida Arts Council, the Department of State; the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Cultural Affairs Council, the Mayor and Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners.



Museum of Contemporary Art
770 NE 125 Street
North Miami, Florida 33161
[t]305.893.6211, ext. 27
[f]305.891.1472

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