Comments by Dan and Chris - 21 Feb., 2007

  Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection

    Comments by Dan and Chris

Miami Art Exchange knew in advance that Dan and Chris (bloggers from the Seattle area) were planning to see the travelling exhibition from the Rubell Family Collection at the Frye Museum. Although I have my own reaction to works shown at the Rubell Collection in Miami itself, specifically the Polish paintings from 2006, I am always curious others reactions, especially those outside the small world of visual art. Both Dan and Chris are articulate and speak their minds about whatever art they happen upon, in the U.S. or anywhere in the world they might take in an exhibition.

Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection presents, for the first time in the Northwest, paintings and drawings by prominent artists associated with the venerable Leipzig Art Academy: Neo Rauch, Tilo Baumgärtel, Tim Eitel, Martin Kobe, Christoph Ruckhäberle, David Schnell, and Matthias Weischer. Life After Death is co-curated by Mark Coetzee, director of the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, and Laura Steward Heon, director and curator of SITE Santa Fe. The exhibition is coordinated for the Frye by Chief Curator Robin Held.

Charles Frye provided for the creation of a free public art museum to house and display his beloved art collection. He died on May 1, 1940, at age 81. The museum, named after both Emma and Charles, opened to the public in 1952. As a museum dedicated to examining the definitions of representational art, the Frye is pleased to help introduce this important art to broader audiences in the U.S., while furthering our investigation of representational art’s varied historical strands and contemporary manifestations.

Frye Art Museum
704 Terry Avenue
Seattle, WA  98104

Chris: They  (the Rubells) have good taste.

If anything, I was amazed by the amount of craft that went into those paintings. It made me remember Jake and Dinos Chapman's Hell that we saw years ago in London - it's exhilirating on some level to see art that is actually artistic in the archaic sense of the word. Yes, Jeff Koons can be awesome but still: it's not easy creating the very best art and it's sometimes awe-inspiring to see people who still know how to do it by hand.

Dan: The exhibition was good stuff. It was seriously good, the Rubells know what they're buying, and getting into :-).

The exhibition was very well presented as well, with good signage and lighting and handouts, though there was a bit too much blathering on about post-structuralist theory which I felt just didn't apply in this case.

These contemporary painters may be in their thirties, but they're from another time. They're not quite East German--they were almost all born in the 1970's, so they were just teenagers when the Berlin Wall came down and not even in art school.

I found that their subject matter is different (perhaps because these were paintings?). There's no sense of anti-corporateness, or the ennui of capitalism, or ironic juxtapositions of consumer goods with {insert your own cause and/or personal meaning here}. As a result, their paintings were more opaque, and I found expression came from the technique and composition more than the actual overt subject matter.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. But seriously: this exhibition was of such quality that it could've filled a small gallery at the Tate Modern--and thousands of people would've paid five pounds at the door to get in.

Comments by Dan and Chris, who both work in the computer industry, are lovers of art and, live in the Seattle, Washington area.

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