Destroying History, Unearthing Truth.

The Seattle Art Museum follows a predictable pattern: its major shows of the year are trumpeted to the public as life-changing!, important!, entrancing!, but in fact are, cautious, sprawling and bland.

The pattern also dictates that the SAM’s minor shows—less publicized and less costly—are vastly more unique, gutsy and worthwhile. While the crowd flocks up to the top floor for second-rate Matisse and portraits of George Washington, the hidden gems of the museum wait around corners and in back atriums for the slower and more curious visitor. The current show in the Jacob Lawrence/Gwendolyn Knight room is exactly such a treasure, and the most audacious thing in the entire museum.

Titus Kaphar, a contemporary black American painter, questions what is presented and what is omitted from historical art with tenacity and skill. Repainting 18th and 19th century portraits in minute detail, Kaphar then dramatically alters their content to challenge inherent assumptions: he cuts figures out of the canvas whole cloth, slices portions of them to ribbons, burns, sews or dips portions in tar, or flips the entire piece backwards. The result is a piece that the audience may have been familiar with initially, but now asks provocative questions about how history is painted and portrayed, who has a voice within our historical record and who is kept silent.

In 2009’s “Push Yuh Own Damn Boat,” Kaphar recreates a well-known Thomas Eakins painting of two men on a boat. The black man—in the back with the oar—pushes, while the white man hunts game in the reeds. By cutting the upper half of the oarsman out of the canvas and changing the orientation of his body just slightly, Kaphar dissipates his servile body language completely. Suddenly, the oarsman is an active character, rather than a silent non-entity. Whether his movement is to step off the boat, or to clock the huntsman with his oar is left up to the viewer to decide.

2008’s “Conclusive” stands in the middle of the gallery alone and upright. A towering recreation of a 17th-century painting by Simon Vouet in jewelline colors, “Conclusive” depicts a martyr/soldier in slumped exhaustedly on his spear. Or, it would, if Kaphar hadn’t sliced the soldier clean out of the canvas and laid him on the floor below his own empty silhouette. To Kaphar, this martyr/soldier was reminiscent of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he wanted to “lay this tired soldier to rest.” Splayed out on the white pedestal below the frame, the tortured figure does look as if he has finally found the respite and repose denied to him.

One of the simplest and most striking compositions is a double portrait series, which puts the issue of pride, race and identity at the fore. A repainted portrait of a pasty-white European noble hangs on the left, a young black servant child staring up at him with starry-eyed admiration from the corner. On the right is the portrait of a black French soldier who fought in the the American Revolution (and became a leader in the Haitian revolution). By simply cutting the child out of the first portrait—where he stands as a symbol for white superiority and the supposed admiration of colonized nations for their masters—and placing him at the side of the Haitian general, Kaphar fixes the imbalance. Where is the admiration of the white nations for their black servants, slaves and soldiers? is what this conversation seems to ask. What and where is the place for an empowered, fully adult black male in the late 1700s, one who is not a child, not a subordinate and not a soldier?

Run through the special American Art show that sprawls exhaustively through half the third floor of the SAM, and instead take your time with the demanding questions raised by Titus Kaphar. That longwinded exhibit will still be up there when this one has slipped away as quietly as it arrived, and your art experience will be the blander for missing it.

SAM Second floor. April 3–September 6, 2009

Suggested at the SAM

The Seattle Art Museum has recently added something to their display, and it’s not a Pollock: the words “suggested donation” to their ticket fees. Now, admission is not $13, but a suggested donation of $13, which (as a Stranger staffer tested) really is just “suggested.” Want to see the entire collection for $1? $5? $25? Be their guest.

This could be indicative of the dire straits that the SAM is in, including: less memberships being bought, less out-of-towners wandering in, and of course the fact that WaMu headquarters shares their giant, newly constructed building and may or may not be able to make their rent or even remain there.

But, it also could be a simple acknowledgment that there are more people than ever with lots of free time but very little money to fritter away. What better way to keep spirits up and brain synapses firing during the unemployment drag than to spend three hours in a museum? Especially if it’s for the price of the coffee you’d otherwise be buying to gain access to a cafe table for the afternoon.

What’s swinging at BAM?

Well, she is, for one. “Pulse” is one of six sculptures by Northwest artist Tip Toland, and she glides silent and luminous over the black sand at her feet.

Toland’s scupltures dwell on the imperfections of aging bodies or on the embarassment or indecision of youth, but imbues these potentially off-putting or uncomfortable subjects with towering dignity, wry humor or an otherworldly sense of grace.

Take a look at “The Whistlers,” reportedly a double self portrait of the artist. The initial reaction might be surprise, hesitation, even a recoil (old nude women? why would we want to see that?) But their expressions are what make the pieces almost magnetizing: one is trying to teach the other how to whistle. The expression of the woman on the left is that of an instructor who has been patiently working with her pupil for quite some time, and is inching closer to exasperation. On the left, her counterpart questions with her eyebrows if she is improving at all, or if she is properly in harmony. If the observer chooses to see past the iconically unbeautiful bodies, the pair become a wonderfully alive duo who enact a scene we would love to watch.

Jen Graves of the Stranger has a lot to say on the exhibit, Melt, The Figure in Clay, which is at the Bellevue Arts Museum. On another piece in the show, “Milk for the Butter Thief,” she presents this definitive statement: Coming across this woman is surely one of the great Northwest museum moments of 2008-2009. Check out her gushing praise (deserved? that’s up for debate) here.

Sonja Blomdahl and Shelley Muzylowski Allen at the MoNA

Two beautiful shows are currently on display at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Washington. Washington glass artists Blomdahl and Muzylowski are on opposite sides of the spectrum, career-wise and in their subject matter, but the side-by-side shows are each notable on their own merits. Additionally, it’s a welcome thing to see two female artists showing at a museum without having a pointed “women’s” theme on the marquee.

Sonja Blomdahl’s retrospective collection, Incalmo/Glass, returns to its point of origin after traveling the country. The luminous, curvaceous vessels for which she is known represent “a history of my breath,” as the artist so poetically puts it. Exploring color and form with these trademark vessels, Blomdahl has been a fixture in NW glass for over 30 years. She has very recently closed down her comfortable and funky studio on Lake Union, harkening a change—and possible eventual halt—in the production of her most recognizable forms. The time to see her experiments in color and shape is now, under the pinpoint spots at MoNA.

Shelley Muzylowski Allen’s work could not be more different than the quiet, stately vessels in the adjoining room. Using a variety of glassworking techniques, including coldworking, acid-etching, graal and lampworking, Muzylowski’s totemic animal forms are vivacious and surprising. Toy-like elephants line up trunk-to-tail and glide on platforms with little wheels, while a herd of unicorn horns and noses emerge magically from a persimmon colored wall. The patterned glass bodies of horses hang from springs and metal mesh, literally disjointed and separate, and a menagerie of little animals peer and poke out of every surface. Often working in conjunction with her husband, and fellow glass artist, Rik Allen, both of their works can be seen at the Traver Gallery in Seattle as well.

Both shows run through January 4th, 09.

The Art of Staring

As photography rapidly became a widespread art form, painting began to mimic its technique and feel straight across the board. Suddenly, portrait subjects were being painted mid-word, mid-gesture, or blurred as if too long exposed. Faces were patches of intense light and deep shadow, dappled and un-demarcated, as if crystallized in the light of a flashbulb. Landscape and city street became an imprint or an impression of sight/sound/motion, rather than a meticulous recreation. When film could capture such detail so effortlessly, painting was freed from the laborious task of preserving memory.

From an essay I wrote on the Seattle Art Museum’s current show, “Hopper’s Women.” To see the full essay and a few photos of the Edward Hopper paintings I’m referencing, go here.