Smithsonian.com

In terms of art stewardship, there are a handful of institutions that we simply could not do without. The Louvre, one of the oldest and largest of these museums, is among these precious places.

Not known for its cutting-edge offerings (with works like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, David’s Oath of the Horatii, and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, there’s really no need to be trendy), the Louvre has recently taken steps to assure that its “wow” offerings aren’t only historically seated.

German Anselm Kiefer is the first of four contemporary artists who will create permanent installations in the museum since Georges Braque painted an antechamber ceiling in 1953. These new works will not just hang on a wall or move from hall to hall, but will become part of the complex’s interior design.

The other artists who will be leaving a permanent mark on the museum will do so over the next three years. They are Cy Twombly, Francois Morellet and a fourth, yet unannounced, artist.

Kiefer’s offerings, recently finished, are housed in a stairwell leading into the Egyptian and Mesopotamian antiquities wings. They include a self-portrait riddled with lead, silver and gold, as well as two arrangements of sculpted sunflowers—one surrounded by lead books and the other, titled Danaë, displays a lone flower stalk, sans petals, with gold-tipped seeds at its base.

It’s not a particularly new idea, but the Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona is staging an exhibit that traces the crass commercialization of “Guerrillero Heroico.” The description of the show claims Alberto Korda’s iconic 1960 photograph of Ernesto “Che” Guevara is “the most reproduced image in the history of photography.”

The exhibit tracks the ways in which the image of a communist freedom have been used to buy and sell all manner of things–among them beer, soda and tacos. The commercialization of “Guerrillero,” and the unintentional irony that inevitably ensues, have fascinated me for a long time.

My most recent brush with this image and its contradictions came a few weeks ago, when an American friend living in Venezuela e-mailed telling me she had just set up a new business, venezuelamania.org.The idea came to her after she had spent a year in Caracas seeing street vendors selling hats and t-shirts that pair the Che image with photos of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s controversial president. She figured she might be able to market t-shirts and hats in the States and Europe, and the Web site was born.

“No, I’m not trying to spread a message or fight capitalism,” she wrote. “Actually, I’m capitalizing on capitalism.”

Much of the merchandise is made in China, to add another layer of strangeness. The marketing of a single photograph has truly turned Che into a populist hero.

In an age of abstraction and synthetic pop art, RB Kitaj re-vitalized narrative, figurative painting. He died last week at age 74.

Like many great artists, Kitaj endured public acclaim and charged disdain. His 1994 retrospective at London’s Tate Modern was panned in a stormy critical concert. Kitaj, an ardent reader and writer, included explanatory texts with each of his paintings—presumably circumventing the critics, much to their understandable yet misguided ire.

Working primarily during an age of abstraction, Kitaj and his paintings defy easy categorization. Though known as a British pop artist, Kitaj was in truth an American; a British expatriate, he was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1932. No matter his nationality, later in life Kitaj keenly allied himself with his Jewish faith, even embracing the stereotype of the “wandering Jew” from Anti-Semitic folklore.

Ever restless, Kitaj made for an unlikely modern art hero. He willfully ignored “art for art’s sake,” the reigning Abstract Expressionist doctrine; in thought and act, he referenced a realm far richer than glib pop, often alluding to existential literature and philosophy in his lyrical, figurative compositions. Using line even in his painterly works, critics claimed he could at once draw with the facility of Edgar Degas, and paint with the shimmering, multi-faceted style of Paul Cezanne.

His compositions seem almost cubist, with their figures and landscapes unmoored from ordinary constraints, geographic and temporal—a fitting feeling for an artist who, however embraced, viewed the world through the fragmented lens of an exile. This kaleidoscopic approach seems akin to collage; the collaged effect and Kitaj’s fresh, expressive use of color perhaps led to the unfortunate “pop artist” misnomer.

Critics may also want to re-consider Kitaj’s experimental technique of including texts with his paintings. Such texts may dampen the wordless mystery of art, but they also complement the paintings well, expressing the vividness of the artist’s vision in a distinctive voice. At his 1994 Tate retrospective, Kitaj gives the last word on his art, composed amidst the tumult of our times: “It is, perhaps, an original concept, to treat one’s art as something which not only replaces the inertia of despair, which may be common enough, but to press art into a fiction which sustains an undying love.”

(The Autumn of Central Paris (after Walter Benjamin) courtesy of the collection of Mrs. Susan Lloyd, New York)

Check out Tuesday’s NY Times for the amazing story of a woman who found a stolen Rufino Tamayo in an Upper West Side trash pile. I enjoyed Gawker.com’s take on her story.

Like other (alleged) finders of priceless artwork, Elizabeth Gibson could be termed a tad … eccentric.

“Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it,” wrote Vincent van Gogh. The non-profit artist workspace Dieu Donné does van Gogh one better, by putting the poetry in paper as well as on it.

“Per Square Foot,” the exhibition that inaugurated the paper-making studio’s new 7,000-square-foot workspace in New York City’s garment district and showcased the 178 works up for bid in its benefit auction tonight, revealed the myriad possibilities of paper– bleached, pigmented, molded, sewn, collaged, painted, salted, embossed, debossed, oil-stained, treated with urethane, inscribed with sumi ink, fashioned into a 72-inch chain, dusted with crushed pearls, infused with high-voltage electrostatically-charged carbon pigment or simply sketched upon with a pencil.

“While it is a benefit auction, it’s not just a bunch of donated C-prints,” says Peter Russo, Dieu Donné’s program manager. “It’s all brand new work created on paper that we produced here in the studio, so the work is made especially for the event.”

Among Russo’s favorite works is Dieu Donné Exploding Word Horse (above, right), a sculpture by Lesley Dill that transforms paper made at Dieu Donné and archival glue into a small horse from which bursts a veritable alphabet soup. The ten-inch-tall construction is inscribed “How ruthless are the gentle,” which only sounds like a Jenny Holzerism; it’s actually a line from an Emily Dickinson poem.

For Russo, Dill’s piece helps to explode some of the misconceptions about works created on or with paper. “When people think of paper, they typically think of flat, two-dimensional drawings, and we do things that are sculptural and incredibly vibrant,” he says.

“’Per Square Foot” echoes the literal dimensions of the works and the notion that adding square footage can positively impact the creative process,” notes Dona Warner, executive director of Dieu Donné. Most of the 61 works in tonight’s live auction are 12-by-12 inches, while the 117 silent auction works are smaller, most of them 5-by-7 inches.

The star-studded list of donating artists includes Polly Apfelbaum, Jim Hodges, William Kentridge and Kiki Smith, all of whom are among the approximately 500 artists that have collaborated with Dieu Donné over the years.

Meanwhile, the organization is reaping the benefits of added square footage in other ways, having moved in late August into its stunning new 7,000-square-foot headquarters designed by architect Stephen Yablon. The expansion will allow Dieu Donné to offer more studio time to artists and to expand its public programs, which include paper-making workshops for children and adults.

“In paper-making, as in most things, it is best to capitalize on the natural tendencies of the material, rather than fight against them,” says artist Kirsten Hassenfeld, a 2005-2006 Workspace Resident. “Paper is a very specific and particular material. It wants to do what it wants to do.”

On view through November 21 at the gallery at Dieu Donné is “Basic Divisions,” a solo show of work by Polly Apfelbaum.