Modern Painters

BLOUINARTINFO.COM JUNE/JULY 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 99``````FROM TOP:Karel AppelDe onewesnstesynamischesprong in degeluidloze ruimtevan he paard,2000. Mixed-media sculpture,57 x 64 x 96 in.Taryn SimonAgreementEstablishing theInternationalIslamic TradeFinanceCorporation,Al-Bayan Palace,Kuwait City,Kuwait, May 30,2006 , 2015.Archival ink-jetprint and texton archivalherbariumpaper,85 x 73¼ in.from the sourcing of the flowers at an auctionin the birthplace of the Dutch East IndiaCompany—hence, capitalism—to the massivemahogany frames, which resemble boardroomfurniture, create an airtight structural logicbased on man’s determinism. The 2015 sculpturePaperwork and the Will of Capital, whichclassifies the flowers as dried specimens onherbarium paper, further archives and material-izes evidence of each event, with a likenessto 19th-century horticultural experiments insurvival and evolution.“Black Square” is an open-ended projectthat looks forward a millennium, but first back acentury at Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square,1913. For the series, Simon has sought subjectsto photograph against a black background,depicting inventions and disruptive marks inhistory. Combined, the images form a timecapsule full of contradictions about contempo-rary society, among them a human-skin wallet;the 1964 Picturephone; a 3-D-printed handgun;an artificial heart; and a portrait of HenryKissinger—chosen as an impenetrable object, ahuman encasing of data. Black Square XVII isthe exception. It’s a sculpture built in collabor-ation with Russia’s State Atomic EnergyCorporation from irradiated material that willvitrify into solid black glass and deactivateover the course of 1,000 years, and then, in3015, be embedded in the museum wall.Whereas Malevich’s Black Square was a radicalgesture marking the end of history withabsolute nothingness, Simon’s is a materialmessage to the future made from the ultimatelethal weapon of our times—a soberingreminder that man’s ultimate creation is alsoone of final destruction. —Arielle BierTHE HAGUE``````Karel AppelGemeentemuseum // January 16 –May 16``````THE FIRST MAJOR survey of Appel’swork since his death at age 85 in2006, this exhibition includes 67paintings, 12 sculptures, and morethan 60 drawings made by theDutch artist between 1945 and 2005.Appel was the most famous memberof CoBrA, a postwar avant-gardemovement made up of abstractartists from Copenhagen, Brussels,and Amsterdam. CoBrA, which alsoincluded artists like ConstantNieuwenhuys, Corneille Beverloo,and Asger Jorn, took its name fromWKHÀUVWOHWWHUVRIWKHWKUHHFLWLHVDistinguished by the spontaneoususe of color and form, the experi-mental movement existed only from1948 to 1951 but had a resoundingimpact on the European art scene ofthe 1950s.Divided into 11 sections, theshow begins with a gallery full oflively nudes. The 1962 canvasMachteld (Nude Series) is one of themost compelling. A portrait of hissecond wife, Machteld van derGroen, a Balenciaga model in Paris,the expressionistic painting of awide-eyed, naked woman in a big hatis energetically composed from amultitude of brushstrokes, Appelhaving rapidly applied the paintstraight from the tube to the canvas.Standouts among his portraitsand landscapes include Portrait ofW. Sandberg (Philosophers), 1956,a vigorous rendering of the StedelijkMuseum curator and graphicdesigner Willem Sandberg, who``````RUJDQL]HG$SSHO·VÀUVWUHWURVSHFWLYHat the museum in Amsterdamin 1965; and the 1981 painting TheRed House, a primitive portrayalof a typical Dutch canal houseVXUURXQGHGE\WRZHULQJÀJXUHVThe former reveals the CoBrA artistrebelling against Realism andimprovising the subject’s likeness—similar to how a jazz musicianmight interpret a popular song—while the latter shows that 30 yearshence he was still experimenting,expressing himself freely.Other highlights of the compre-hensive exhibition are 10 crudeGUDZLQJVIURPWKHDUWLVW·VLQÁXHQWLDO“Vragende Kinderen (QuestioningChildren)” series, made between1948 and 1949; his seminal Psycho-pathological Notebook, begunin 1949, in which Appel altered apamphlet from a show of art bypatients at a psychiatric hospitalwith his own primitive pictures;and four of his painted olive-treeroots, which transformed themassive, organic structures intosurreal polychrome creatures.Dubbed a “painting animal” byhis peers, Appel was a brush-wielding maverick whose obviousprimitive instinct and gestural styleRISDLQWLQJWKHÀJXUHKDVSURYHGWRbe important not only to such sub-sequent art stars as Georg Baselitz,Jean-Michel Basquiat, George Condo,and Markus Lupertz, but also to anew generation of abstract paintersand sculptors. —Paul Laster