I just spent a few days in Atlanta, Georgia, a city of moderate beauty, but it has a pleasant feel to it. And it has a very nice museum, the High Museum of Art, formerly the Woodruff Arts Center. It recently received two beautiful modern additions, the Stent Family Wing by architect Richard Meier and the Wieland Pavillion by Renzo Piano; both are luminous spaces. The resulting “arts village” encompasses the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta College of Art, the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Young Audiences of Atlanta and the 14th Street Playhouse.

My cab accidentally dropped me off at the Theatre entrance and so, though annoying because it was pouring, I first got to see the giant Tony Cragg sculpture “World Events”, which was commissioned by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games Cultural Olympiad – a gigantic aluminum pile of hundreds of artist’s mannequins together forming the shape of a human being studying the globe. Little did the Committee know in what terrible way Atlanta was to become a world event itself ...

The lady who sold me my ticket asked where I was from, and when I said “Washington, DC”, she gave me the hairy eyeball and intoned darkly: “Ah, the city of the FREE MUSEUMS!”, then proceeded to charge me twenty  bucks. That’s a lot  of bucks. By the way, I just love it when people ask me where I’m from and I can answer “Washington, DC” - the question is of course prompted by my Dutch accent, not by any interest in my hometown, and my answer always causes a satisfying degree of bewilderment.

Outside on the balcony I first encountered a huge sculpture entitled “Balzac-Pétanque” by Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg – peaches and pears with a knife on a white and blue checkered napkin lying in the sand. Made in 2002, it is an example both of Van Bruggen and Oldenburg’s literary inspired work, in this case the French author Honoré de Balzac (who loved pears and peaches), and of their interest in ball and knife forms, while also honoring the various 18^th and 19^th century French painters of fruit still lives, notably of course Cézanne. Although amusing, I somehow didn't feel the wow-factor of the two artists’ other work (see http://www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com/), like their festive giant typewriter eraser with the fringe on top; the piece felt more like an exercise by the Disneyesque Impressionist-outdoor-diorama maker J. Seward Johnson (see http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/c_jjohn.htm - but the museum and the “real” sculpture are well worth a trip to Hamilton, NJ).

I callously bypassed the “Louvre, Atlanta” exhibit as I had seen most of it in the "Louvre, Paris", and followed the advice of the lady with the hairy eyeball to not miss the folk art exhibition, so I first headed first to the top floor.

I was rather confused by a really curious juxtaposition of many incongruous elements I found. There were a small (!) Kiefer sculpture, an Artschwager “Volcano”, a “New Figuration” discarded-plastic wall sculpture by that fantastic Brit (living in Germany) Tony Cragg, one of Californian sculptor Deborah Butterfield’s handsome metal horses, as well as two good pieces by the Swedish glass artist Bertil Vallien, a cut glass Janus head and a life size glass canoe, which must weigh a ton. Vallien, judging by his website, seems to lack an inner curator and his work thus spans the entire distance between the sublime and the ridiculous. Next to that was a small collection of bentwood furniture, and some older moderns, like two Otto Dix dry points. I later found out that the High has a good collection of modern art on another floor; I hope that one of these days someone will explain to me what these pieces were doing here, especially together with furniture and folk art.

And then there was a very curious little pavilion entitled “Improbable Objects” where the work of Eugene von Bruenchenhein stole the show. I doubt you have ever heard of Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) but he’s well worth knowing more about (http://www.ktfgallery.com/artists/eugene_von_bruenchenhein/). He was a “visionary artist” in Milwaukee who thought himself of German aristocratic extraction, worked at a bakery during the day and making his extraordinary art by night, completely privately – much like Henry Darger (see the previous blog entry, on Paula Rego), but less lonely, as he had friends and a juicy wife. The description of his life and work on the above website is definitely worth your time, like this small extract: “Von Bruenchenhein's prolific work crammed every corner, closet and cabinet of his house, where nearly everything was available to be exploited by his ambitious creative energies. He rendered paintings on cardboard and Masonite, in addition to furniture, ceilings, walls, doors and windows. He developed photographs in the sink. He erected sculptures from TV dinner chicken bones and model airplane glue. Ceramics were formed from hand-dug clay and fired in the parlor stove. Poems and philosophical writings littered the home, as though no thought would be lost for lack of a proper writing surface or instrument. Reel-to-reel tapes that recorded continuous conversations and background music serve to chronicle an everyman's everyday approach to art.” And he painted, too, with brushes made of his wife’s hair. His wife's hair! Chickenbones! I’m all for the weird and wonderful.

By the way, I'm also all for Google - Google is my very best friend (no, they don't (yet) pay me), I google constantly and everything, including for this blog and the images on which I base my own art. It’s an amazing, super fast way to learn things, the magic of knowledge at your fingertips and an ironclad excuse to sit at the computer for hours (“Will you $#%^&!! get off my case? I’m doing important research here!”).

But then I reached the folk art section and entered a magic and wonderful world of which I knew too little. There were Linda Anderson naives, carved creatures by Jimmy Lee Sudduth, brilliant all-kinds-of-everything work by Nellie May Rowe, who succinctly described her art as: “I see people crippled and I draw them to ask the Lord to help.”  Most “folk art” is by African Americans and quite frankly, some of it, no, much of it, is brilliant. See the photo accompanying this blog entry of  Ned Cartledge’s “The Flag Waver”, expressing all his anger at the southern racial strife. It’s hard to understand why many of these works are not considered “high” art, but then there are so many bizarre distinctions in the art world that I’m by now inclined to not pay too much attention anymore and to simply “follow my own nose” as we say in Dutch. It usually leads me to good things. Anyway, artists like Thornton Dial had what he called his “things” exhibited at the New Museum in New York and the Whitney Biennial, so the distinctions are blurred, to say the least. 

A non-African American folk artist whose work was on prominent display was Howard Finster, who died in 2001 and made “sacred art”, having been called to make art by a heavenly voice. Before that, he was a lawnmower and bicycle repair man for about nine-tenths of his life. He was apparently also a preacher. His offspring now runs what looks like a profitable business managing his “Paradise Garden” and selling things over the web at http://www.finster.com/ - but it is not the best place to learn about Finster, whose work is worth looking at and who was incredibly prolific, despite his late start in art; better look at sites like http://www.interestingideas.com/out/finster/index.htm.

But my absolute favorites were the spare but very expressive, and very “African” drawings of Bill Traylor, who became an artist at age 85, drawing with pencil and poster paints on cardboard, sitting on the sidewalk on Monroe Street in Montgomery, Alabama. Before that, he worked on the land, first as a slave (he was born in 1854) and then as a laborer. Now his work is in museums, including DC’s own American Art Museum. It makes you think: right, in that case, there must be a god.

That’s enough for now - next time more on the High Museum in Atlanta. There is still a lot to see!