The Modern Art Notes Podcast

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has just acquired this Charline von Heyl painting, 2008’s Alastor. (This is a detail, click here to see the whole thing.) It’s on view at the museum now!

Another 2008 von Heyl painting, Melancolia, will soon be on view at the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis as part of “Contemporary German Art: Selections from the Collection.” The installation opens on May 3.

Von Heyl was the lead guest on just the second episode of The Modern Art Notes Podcast. She and host Tyler Green talked on the occasion of her first mid-career survey, which was then on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. A few months after that show opened, a European mid-career survey opened at the Tate Liverpool.

How to listen: Download the von Heyl program directly to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud, RSS. See images discussed on the show.

The art of the Gutai movement hasn’t been much exhibited in American museums over the last 40 years, so it’s rather remarkable that  two major American exhibitions currently put Gutai artists front-and-center. One is “Gutai: Splendid Playground” at the Guggenheim. The other is “Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. It will be on view through June 2. ”Destroy the Picture” is accompanied by a fascinating catalogue.

“Destroy the Picture” examines the way artists responded to the unprecedented killing and destruction of World War II by (often) literally attacking the picture plane. The show, which features 26 artists (but only three Americans) charts the way artists used abstraction to respond to a post-atomic world, and in so doing offers an alternate history about post-abstract expressionism abstract art. It was included on Modern Art Notes’ list of the best exhibitions of 2012. 

The curator of “Destroy the Picture” is Paul Schimmel, the former chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He and I discussed his exhibition — and the six Gutai artists in it — on Episode No. 49 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast. This is a detail from Shozo Shimamoto’s Cannon Picture (1956). 

To listen: Download the program to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. See images of artworks discussed on the program.

“Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962” arrives at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago this weekend. It will be on view through June 2. The show is accompanied by a fascinating catalogue. Exhibition curator Paul Schimmel and I discussed “Destroy the Picture” on Episode No. 49 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast.

“Destroy the Picture” examines the way artists responded to the unprecedented killing and destruction of World War II by (often) literally attacking the picture plane. The show, which features 26 artists (but only three Americans) charts the way artists used abstraction to respond to a post-atomic world, and in so doing offers an alternate history about post-abstract expressionism abstract art. It was included on Modern Art Notes’ list of the best exhibitions of 2012. 

This image is of a work by Gutai artist Saburo Murakami. It features paint literally blistering off the surface of the canvas, an acute reference to Japanese war-time experiences. (Coincidentally, a major survey of the Gutai movement opens tomorrow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum in New York.)

Download the program to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. See images of artworks discussed on the program.

Image: Saburo Murakami, Work [Peeling Picture] (detail), 1957. Collection of the Vervoordt Foundation, Belgium.

The second episode of The Modern Art Notes Podcast featured one of the top painters working in the United States: German-born artist Charline von Heyl. She and I talked on the occasion of her first mid-career survey, which was then on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. 

Her work is on view now at two American museums: This piece, Bluntschli (2005) is in “Phantom Limb: Approaches to Painting Today” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and her fantastic Happy End (2005) is on view in a permanent collection installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A European survey of von Heyl’s career is now at Germany’s Kunsthalle Nuremberg.

If you love painting, you’ll love the von Heyl show. Download the show directly to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast via iTunes, RSS. See images discussed on the show.

This is the last weekend in Chicago for the exhibition “This Will Have Been,” an show that looks at how artists responded to the crises of the 1980s. The exhibition, curated by Helen Molesworth, pays special attention to how feminism motivated American artists to make sociopolitically engaged work. 

I haven’t seen the show, but I’ve read the outstanding catalogue. It seems to me that the key work in the show is Lari Pittman’s The Veneer of Order (1985, above, click to enlarge). Pittman and I discussed that painting and how his art is motivated by the politics of personhood on a really great show that first aired back in March. Don’t miss it — I think it’s one of the best MAN Podcast artist interviews! 

“This Will Have Been” will travel next to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where it opens on June 30.

You may download the program directly to your PC/mobile device here. Subscribe to The MAN Podcast on iTunes here.