Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Discovering Sam Maloof


Maloof was born in 1916 in Chino, CA, the son of Lebanese immigrants. Encouraged by his wife, Alfreda, Maloof began his woodworking career around 1948, giving up a job in graphic design for his first furniture commission. Completely self-taught, he had no formal training in woodworking whatsoever. Within ten years, his name was known to woodworkers and collectors around the world.

In the 1960’s Maloof turned down an offer of $22 million for the rights to mass-produce his original designs. He believed passionately in the handmade object: "We marvel and exclaim about the machine, and yet nothing has been designed or made, nor ever will be, as wondrous as the hands of man. What it produces has no element of surprise or feeling that an object made by hand may have. It leaves no room for change."

In 1985, Maloof became the first craftsman to receive a MacArthur Genius Fellowship. His furniture is in the collections of the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the White House Craft Collection.

One of the first things you learn when you enter the Maloof property is that the house you are about to tour wasn't always in its current location. The original site had been in the path of the Foothill Freeway expansion project, but fortunately could not be torn down because it was on National Register of Historic Places. A new house was built for Sam and the old house and woodshop were moved to the new site in 2001 to be preserved as a living museum. Sam lived and worked there until his death at age 93 in 2009.



Since we had arrived a few minutes early for our tour, the docent took us for a quick look at two climate-controlled storehouses where raw planks and boards are stored, and the woodshop, where Sam's hand-picked assistants still make his furniture. The shop, filled with saws, lathes, tools, patterns, partially made furniture, wood and saw dust, offered us a tantalizing glimpse into the magic that turns raw wood into functional art.

Meandering through the compound on wooden pathways surrounded by lush vegetation, we started our formal tour at the original house, which was built by Maloof. It is immediately apparent that this was an artist's house -- lived in, worked in, added on to as time and money allowed. The downstairs floors are made of unmortared brick, because Sam liked the sound they made when he walked on them. No two doors are alike -- the handmade sculptural locks and latches for each are a marvel in and of themselves.

The 26 rooms meander maze-like and vary in size, shape and function. A spectacular wooden spiral staircase that Maloof built climbs from the main floor to a sleeping loft above. Suspended in a two-story atrium is a handcrafted wooden canoe that Maloof commissioned from a craftsman to fit between the balconies. The house contains the largest collection of Maloof furniture anywhere, as well as the Maloof's collection of pottery, rugs, blankets, art, toys, kachina dolls, masks and contemporary art.

Sam's wife of 50 years, Alfreda, who managed the business side of Maloof woodworking, died in 1998. Sam remarried in 2001, to a collector, Beverly Wingate. Beverly still lives on the site and has developed a beautiful six acre garden with California natives and Mediterranean climate compatible plantings. Dedicated in 2004, the garden is Certified Wildlife Habitat. A self-guided tour of the gardens is open to the public and free of charge.



As part of the the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time collaboration, the Huntington Library will present The House that Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley 1945-1985, from September 24, 2011 - January 30, 2012. The exhibition will showcase about 30 important Maloof pieces spanning more than three decades of his career in a display integrated with approximately 80 works by about 30 of his friends and colleagues who worked in other media.

Click here for more information about the Foundation and tours.

Click here to purchase products from the Offramp Gallery Blog Store

Upcoming events at Offramp Gallery

Theodore Svenningsen: Truth and Self Deception
When the name Sam Maloof came up twice in one day recently, I realized I didn't know much about him -- I had a vague image of a rocking chair in my mind. A quick Google search later I discovered that not only was Maloof considered one of the greatest woodworkers of all time, but that his house, woodshop and gardens are open for public tours in Rancho Cucamonga, just 35 miles east of where I live and work.
February 20 - March 20, 2011
Closing Reception: Sunday, March 20, 2-5pm


Offramp Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition, Theodore Svenningsen: Truth and Self Deception from February 20 - March 20, 2011. There will be an opening reception on Sunday, February 20, from 2-5pm.

In Svenningsen's text pieces the work exists at a place where narrative meanings of words can give way to being seen solely as aesthetic objects. The work explores this conflation of the narrative and the aesthetic. Some of the pieces are self-referential. These pieces investigate, critically, the underpinnings of theory-driven art. Some explore the interrelationships between individual persons and the larger group, and look at the difficulties and inabilities of these certain individuals to fit in. Logic symbolism forms the bases of the aesthetic element in a number of the pieces.

Click here for more information

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

L.A. Rising

I've been fortunate enough to have lived and worked in the arts for many years in both Los Angeles and New York City. I love both cities and know the advantages and disadvantages of each. I also know that New Yorkers tend to have a superiority complex about Los Angeles and its cultural life -- or lack of one as they see it.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but like everything else in Los Angeles, the cultural scene is spread out over a large geographical area and tends not to have a well-defined center. In her recently released L.A. Rising, SoCal Artists Before 1980, author Lyn Kienholz takes a big step forward in marking out a non-geographic center. L.A. Rising is an encyclopedia of 500 Southern California artists living and working in L.A. before 1980. Each artist is given a page with reproductions of their work from that era and information and reviews about their work excerpted from publications of the same period.


Author Kienholz, who was married for a time to artist Edward Kienholz and worked the front desk at the legendary Ferus Gallery, has made it her mission to spread the word about art in Los Angeles. In 1980, she founded the California/International Arts Foundation to increase the visibility of LA art and artists worldwide. The Foundation has organized exhibitions in 56 museums and 23 countries, including the 2006 exhibition Los Angeles: 1955-1985 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Besides finding L.A. Rising an invaluable reference tool that every visual arts professional should have, it is also a lush and highly entertaining stroll down memory lane for anyone who has watched the L.A. art scene. There are the big names that you would expect: David Hockney, John Baldessari, and Judy Chicago. There are artists you've never heard of, but would like to know more about. There are artists you've forgotten and are happy to rediscover. There are friends, teachers, colleagues and more -- some living, some sadly departed. Most of all, there is the richness of the art, which includes every medium from ceramics to performance, printmaking to installation, photography to sculpture.

The one thing I found missing from L.A. Rising is biographical information about the artists. The text, which is culled from newspaper and magazine articles referencing each artist, while interesting, doesn't go far enough. I realize what a tall order that is, and hope that in some future edition it will be rectified.

Meanwhile, thank you Lyn Kienholz for this beautiful, informative, must-have art book.



News & Events at Offramp Gallery

Thanks to everyone who came out on Sunday for Anita Bunn artist's talk. Congratulations to Anita, whose show, The Sun Tells Quite Another Story, was an all-around success!
 

Anita Bunn, artist's talk at Offramp Gallery 2/6/11

Anita Bunn, artist's talk at Offramp Gallery 2/6/11















Upcoming
February 20 - March 20, 2011
Opening Reception: Sunday, February 20, 2-5pm


Offramp Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition, Theodore Svenningsen: Truth and Self Deception from February 20 - March 20, 2011. There will be an opening reception on Sunday, February 20, from 2-5pm.

In Svenningsen's text pieces the work exists at a place where narrative meanings of words can give way to being seen solely as aesthetic objects. The work explores this conflation of the narrative and the aesthetic. Some of the pieces are self-referential. These pieces investigate, critically, the underpinnings of theory-driven art. Some explore the interrelationships between individual persons and the larger group, and look at the difficulties and inabilities of these certain individuals to fit in. Logic symbolism forms the bases of the aesthetic element in a number of the pieces.

Click here for more information

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

The Gardner Heist, Stendhal's Syndrome & Double Rainbow Mash-Up

 
(updated 8/15/11) The Gardner Heist, Ulrich Boser's 2009 bestseller about the largest art heist in history, is a fascinating true-crime whodunit, a wild ride through the underbelly of the art world -- a dangerous place described by experts as the "Lost Museum" where enough stolen artworks exist to make the "Louvre seem like a small-town art gallery in comparison."

Early on the morning of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, tied up the two guards on duty and stole 13 works of art, including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer. Estimates place the value of the stolen works at around $500 million and the case remains unsolved to this day.

The paintings were not insured and in any case couldn't be replaced with other work because of Gardner's will, which forbade any changes to her museum. "Nothing could be added or taken away. Not a Chippendale chair, not a Rembrandt canvas, not a bamboo window shade. Everything must remain in the same Victorian patchwork of wood-paneled corners and draped alcoves, or the trustees would be required to sell off the collection and donate the profits to Harvard University."

Author Ulrich Boser stumbles into the Gardner case after contacting veteran art detective Harold Smith in 2005 to write an article about him. Boser soon learns that there is one case that haunts Smith, the Gardner heist: "Smith had been searching for the missing masterpieces for years. He hopscotched the globe to meet with sources. He spent hundreds of thousands of his own money on leads . . . [he] swore to everyone that he met that he wouldn't stop working the case until the art hung again on the walls of the museum."

The elderly Smith dies suddenly (of natural causes) a few weeks after his initial meeting with Boser, but not before Boser has become interested in the case. With the family's blessing and access to Smith's files, he picks up the trail of the investigation and ultimately becomes obsessed with the crime:

"It was more like a mystery with a capital M, the sort of enigma that you find in church pews or philosophy lectures or on the canvas of an Old Master painting, something clear and compelling but also abstruse and obscure, something essentially unknowable."

Your hopes will soar and come crashing down as Boser tracks down every lead, only to find countless dead-ends, nefarious characters, encounters with the Irish mob, death threats, bodies in trunks of cars, and endless speculation.

You'll learn that "most art crooks are motivated by the lure of easy money and, relative to their size, top-notch paintings represent some of the most valuable items on the planet. A minor Picasso or Van Gogh carries a bigger price tag than the finest diamonds or the purest gold, and a major canvas by an Old Master might have the value of a Gulfstream jet or a small ocean liner." You'll also learn that because famous stolen paintings are almost impossible to sell, they are used as a type of underworld cash or bond, traded for guns, drugs or jewels.

You will cringe as you read how the thieves mishandled the priceless paintings, breaking them from their frames and slashing them off the stretcher bars, leaving behind "bits of canvas, flecks of paint, and the dreams of countless art lovers."

Speculation about what condition the paintings might be in today will make you want to cry: "An Old Master painting is as dry and brittle as a potato chip, and if it's removed from its setting, the canvas can bend and buckle and crack, the paint peeling off in thick flakes like dried glue."

After tracking down hundreds of leads and conducting over 200 interviews, Boser feels he is no closer to solving the case than when he started. He believes that brutal Boston mob boss Ray "Whitey" Bulger holds the key to finding the Gardner paintings. Having been told that Bulger is hiding out in a seaside village in Ireland, Boser impulsively books a flight there. After moving from village to village, strolling the streets hoping to spot Bulger, he realizes his obsession has gotten out of control: "It had been a wild, harebrained scheme from the start. My zeal had gotten the better of me. I felt stupidly naive. There were never any concrete clues of an Irish angle."

In the end, Boser returns home and doesn't solve the case. He does, however, put forth a plausible scenario based on his research and new evidence that he uncovers by interviewing witnesses that the police ignored. He believes that the mystery may ultimately be unsolvable due to the untimely and violent deaths of key figures. We, like Boser, are left knowing the masterpieces are out there somewhere and wondering if they will ever resurface to be replaced in their empty frames awaiting them at the Gardner.

Click here to buy The Gardner Heist from Barnes & Noble

Stendhal's Syndrome

Wikipedia describes Stendhal's syndrome (or hyperkulturemia) as:

"a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place."

The syndrome is named after the 19th century French author Stendhal (pseudonym of Henri-Marie Beyle), who described his experience with the phenomenon during his 1817 visit to Florence in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio.

Stendhal recounted: "On leaving the Santa Croce church, I felt a pulsating in my heart. Life was draining out of me, while I walked fearing a fall."

It wasn't until more recent times that a Florentine psychiatrist, Dr. Graziella Magherina, labeled the phenomenon "Stendhal's Syndrome" having treated many patients with similar symptoms. Magherini wrote a book on the subject, La Sindrome di Stendhal, where she looks at over a hundred case studies.
While I don't know if it would qualify as Stendhal's Syndrome, I did burst out crying in front of a painting years ago, at LACMA here in Los Angeles (that just doesn't have the same ring to it as the Uffizi in Firenze).
Wassily Kandinsky, Lady in Moscow,
1912, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus,
Munich, Germany


It was an emotionally difficult time in my life and the painting was an early Kandinsky, Lady in Moscow (left). That black blob hovering over an otherwise normal, happy-looking scene did me in. Embarrassed, I made a beeline to the nearest restroom until I could get myself under control.

Anyone else dare to admit to such 19th century hysterics? Let me know.





Double Rainbow/Donald Judd Mash-Up

Speaking of art and hysterics, thanks to artist Susanna Dadd for sending me the following hysterical video:


Untitled from VJ Peter Rand on Vimeo.




Currently on View at Offramp Gallery

Please join us for a closing reception and artist's talk with Anita Bunn on Sunday, February 6, 2-5pm.In her second solo show at Offramp Gallery, The Sun Tells Quite Another Story, photographer Anita Bunn presents a new series of works that continue her exploration of the act of noticing as well as the temporal nature of the still and moving image. 















Upcoming at Offramp Gallery


Theodore Svenningsen: Truth and Self Deception
February 20 - March 20, 2011
Opening Reception: Sunday, February 20, 2-5pm