Don Ed Hardy, Ron Nagle and Martin Puryear in San Francisco

Eleven (and a half) interesting notes:

1. At the Ron Nagle/Don Ed Hardy Duo Mysto opening at Rena Bransten Gallery, tattoo art is liked by tattoo-wearing affectionados. Small ceramic vessel sculptures are liked by recent, aspiring MFA graduates…as well as 60+ year old veteran artists in paint-stained pants (showing their continued artistic production, natch…), or very extravagant shawls that drag on the floor.

2. Ron Nagle‘s vessels have color combinations that glow with an inner iridescence, almost like miniature samples of a martian landscape. On the other hand, Martin Puryear at SFMOMA masters basic wood, tar, stone and metal tones in monumental wood, tar, stone and metal sculptures: the tones can best be described as ‘egyptian’. In both cases, the intensity of extreme color versus natural understatement as it relates to texture and “skin” is stunning.

3. Don Ed Hardy coats everything with an acrylic medium, while Puryear coats with tar. Art is so very toxic, which is why everyone should own a copy of The Artists Handbook of Materials and Techniques.

4. Nagle, Hardy and Puryear all began their professional careers in the very late nineteen sixties to early seventies. That’s collectively over 110 years of artsmanship to kick your ass with.

5. Nagle makes some skinny, pedestal-based wing-like vessels. Puryear makes some skinny, wall-sculpture wing-like vessels. Both artworks remind me of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, with a little bit of Steven de Staebler, or a little bit of Ruth Asawa influence thrown in.

6. Martin Puryear has retrospective at SFMOMA as well as a show of prints at the De Young. That’s two out of five of the main stages. Nagle and Hardy make a hilarious video.

7. If I was bold enough, I’d pocket one of Nagle’s vessels and secretly install it in the Puryear show, for artwork dialogue/contrast war! Don’t think a Puryear sculpture would fit in my pocket…it’s a one way daydream I’m having here.

8. The Puryear show makes me think: in a retrospective, an artist’s entire production is often curated to show a continuity: the first artwork in an artist’s career defines her through to her latest…if one can contextualize it as a defining theme in her oeuvre and it is revisited over time (Puryear’s exhibition spans 30 years). Yet, as a working, emerging or unknown artist, your three year old artwork is supposedly old and unwanted for a current portfolio review, something to deliver to potential, willing galleries. I’m still considering this as a disconnect from any fair sense of reality, but I continue to ponder the possibility of a situation in which one only has the capacity to produce one or two artworks per year, leaving you with no other option but to have a 20-slide set that literally spans 10-years. And then I thought: wait, there are no rules, so fuck it, just change the completion dates when necessary…let the historians figure it out later.

9. Nagle chases down the Art of the “A” side view, with some simplistic yellow pad drawing/sketches for added info. Hardy gives us flat wall art with artificial acrylic layered depth (a default “A” side), as well as some ceramic jars with images painted on to view from all angles. Puryear has many free-standing sculptures that have been pushed too close to the wall, while other wall-hanging works sit just fine. The jury is out on whether Puryear is thinking about an “A” side, or the “A” view, or not…or whether we can blame the curator. The Puryear catalog has some very “A” side view photographs to document previous installation-based or situation-reflective sculptures in architecturally inspiring interiors, so maybe…

10. Don Ed Hardy has a lovely painting of a masted vessel that steals his own show, and was an apprentice to Sailor Jerry. Ron Nagle makes ceramic sculptures that are referred to as vessels, which sometimes seem as if mounted on slices of water. Martin Puryear makes numerous and similar references to boats/vessels sailing through gallery space…and it’s not just all that wood, yo! Is there a theme here or what?

11. In my opinion, objects continue to reign supreme…for now.

11 1/2. And, as a final half-note: “A thing is a hole in a thing it is not” -Carl Andre