December 3-4 - Pittsburgh

The last official stop of the Museum Legs book tour--a non-commercial tour about the importance of non-commercialism in the arts--was the home turf of one of the most honestly commercial artists of all time: Andy Warhol's Pittsburgh.  

I was lucky to be hosted by the lovely Tom Sokolowski of the Warhol Museum, and to have a day to take in a bunch of other art sites there.  Here is a close-up of the gift shop at the Mattress Factory:  

The plan was to arrive in Pittsburgh the 3rd, speak at the Warhol the 4th, then start the drive back to New York that night, in time for my dear friend's wedding in Manhattan the next day.  


If you visit Pittsburgh, the Priory is a lovely place to stay, a converted monastery near an interesting neighborhood with a great general store / post office where you can overhear all local news and a restaurant called Serendipity.  I holed up and finished the last Harry Potter book, precursor to the end of the tour itself.

Art stop, no. 1: The Mattress Factory, which looks like an art institution on one side, and is accessible via residential alleyway on the other:

Nicole of the front desk kindly forwarded news of my reading to the rest of the staff.  I spent time in the non-arts parts of the museum.

The Mattress Factory is a contemporary enough space I truly do not mind paying the $10, though had to remind the bookstore worker of this fact when he tried, in "would you like fries with that" manner, to upsell a membership.  He doesn't know that I don't even have an address, much less one in Pittsburgh.

I loved Yayoi Kusama’s permanent installations.

 

The installations are like a visual surround sound, including a painted floor and mirrored walls, with doors that close flush behind you.

But the first thing you see is this:

The basket full of blue "shower cap" shoe covers.  

I was creeped out and captivated, in turn, by this Paul DeMarinis piece that changes over the course of five minutes or so as these laser beams, a bit like the one-pass light bar of a Xerox machine, articulate the photo until it is destroyed as if by ink bomb, mutated in that film noir police photo sort of way.

A list of materials you don't see everyday: computer, video projector, photoluminescent powder, bass speaker, and an artist who used to collect photographs of missing children.

The fourth story installation was a hole in the ground that went through a third story window.  For me it instantly called to mind tort law.  For the couple thinking of planning a wedding there and seating guests somewhere maybe it called to mind their eccentric cousins and where to seat them.

 

As the museum's materials said, the artist Sarah Oppenheimer "opens apertures in existing architecture."

The view from the floor below:

Another room showed people dressed up as the Statue of Liberty.  Part of my interest in these pictures was that I dressed up as the Statue of Liberty for Halloween at least three or four years running, thanks to a costume my mother made in which the crown was stuffed like a pillow and the torch, also stuffed, occasionally bent over if you held it too tightly.

As it turns out, the artist Greta Pratt photographed these people because they were already dressed as the Statue of Liberty for work.  It was their job to stand on a street corner dressed like this and dancing to try to drum up business for Liberty Tax Service, a tax preparation firm.  

The second floor of the Mattress Factory was nearly pitch dark, another work calling to mind tort law.  Each hallway had just enough light to get you around a corner to see something like this: 

The works were by James Turell, whose light studies I have loved before -- whether a square hole cut in the ceiling framing the sky like a painting so you can watch sunset at P.S. 1, or anytime at the Nasher Sculpture Garden.  The red square above is flat, levitating in a corner.

I have loved Tony Oursler's work in the past.  This one was intimidating, lots of yelling:

(This is the size of a room)

Outside the Oursler was this captivating installation of two stereo speakers covered in red powder that jumped (low and wide) across the surface which vibrated for no apparent reason.  It's a permanent installation by Rolf Julius:

And if you can judge an art gallery by its bathroom, or the contrast of chair to exit:

Art stop, no. 2: I moved on to a much, much larger museum.  A bit like going from a charter school to a big ten university, here is the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, art and natural history, which are adjoining:

I started at the gift shop, a marvel of women's clothing:

Then, for the second time, had the wonderful if dubious distinction of trying to chat someone up to suggest stocking Museum Legs, only to have them pull it from the shelf.  The man working, Jerry, was really kind, and also introduced me to the front desk staff who gave me free admission into the museum.  

The Carnegie has an installation that (unless you know your way around the museum better than I do), forces you to experience art in a Begin and the Beginning way, with a side, parallel-track photography show that lets you opt out of the French decorative furniture section (as I did).

In honor of E and S, "bottoms!":

Much of the museum collection originated with the Carnegie International, a still lively, juried show of contemporary art that started in 1896.  They have a lot of interesting work that is atypical of the given artist.  For example, a Degas bath scene:

An Edward Hopper sailboat:

Though, under "typical", yet another Bonnard of a naked woman in a bathtub:

Diebenkorn, darker palette than usual though not so atypical:

But an Alex Katz with much, much smaller people:

Though I recognize the woman on the right from a painting in Cleveland.  Under truly "atypical," Pittsburgh also had a huge orange Alex Katz of a bunch of leaves.

Under "art I liked," Nam June Paik's The Thinker, after Rodin:

Here's a classic piece of video/filmic installation art, one of those where you round the dark corridor having no idea what to expect and immediately come upon a siren:

That cuts to an owl, and back, etc:

There seemed to be a lot of symbolism here:

I enjoyed seeing a Rachel Whiteread up close:

They had a whole Mel Bockner room.  I think of Mel as being a close friend of Bruce, the head of painting when I was in art school.  In addition to being a fixture at Bruce's house, he is a charming and, I thought, rather funny artist.  Here's a plant with its growth chart on the wall:

We all know this feeling:

This seemed like an earlier version of what Fiona Banner got a lot of credit for doing first:

These were just things I thought were pretty.  These sugar cubes were part of a series of photographs:

I liked these colors:

 If this isn't the Pacific Coast Highway just north of LA, it is at least an Impressionist color palette of what it feels like to be stuck in traffic there.  (Please write in if this work is in fact a coded essay on something like global warming and I will update.)

Art stop, no. 3: Later in the afternoon, I arrived at the Warhol in plenty of time.  I consider it supremely welcoming that they have art on view right when you walk in, before you stop to get a ticket.

On into the galleries, there are proper places to sit.  The Warhol room at the Dia Beacon has similarly plush sofas, and I imagine whether there was a stipulation in the artist's will.  (This seems like an artist stipulation I might try.)

I met a lot of the staff in the gift shop and at the front desk 

(Alex in the middle)

(Paul and Jason)

and then met with Tom, the director, kindly introduced by Katy Kline. 

As Tom pointed out, Pittsburgh has a history of industrial magnates, but also of Scotch Presbyterianism, and is small enough a town that people never felt the need, or moral justification, to build, wear, or do anything ostentatious to demonstrate their wealth because everyone else already knew who they were, and it would have been tacky, in the Calvinist sense.   Tom is charming and immediate, the sort of person who speaks his mind on everyone and everything, lulling you into doing the same, which can be dangerous, but very funny.  He reminded me graciously of no promises on attendance and invited me to work in their conference room, which I did:

On tour of the museum, who knew there would be a taxidermized lion in the stairwell:

Ryan, my events host, introduced me to the auditorium, and pointed out the dividing line between their new and old chairs, hence the color change:

Ryan (on the left, is not standing on the stage, with the super-helpful tech, a very kind man who had a really unusual name I will remember shortly):

In the front hall having a glass of wine with Tom and Ryan before the talk:

After the reading, Tom took me to dinner.  And after dinner on the walk to the car, we were talking about Harry Potter and how much I appreciated the values in the book that there is a time and a place to vanquish Lord Voldermort and a time and a place to work and have friends and family and be a good, obscure contributing member of society.  He told me that in the 1980s he was part of the group Visual Aids, who came up with the original red-ribbon campaign after people in the group had so many friends dying.  I love when people share one of their defining stories.  (I would, weeks later, meet a woman who got into publishing because she was a tennis pro and tried to help a man having a heart attack on the court.  He didn't survive but his friend invited her to lunch to thank her.  She arrived at the office of a major publishing company where he worked, asked the receptionist what he did there anyway, and the receptionist replied, "He's the president of the company."  She happened to be an even more avid reader than tennis player and the rest was history.)


I got in the car from the Warhol and drove.  Western Pennsylvania has tunneled roads through big iron ore mountains, vertiginous and surreal.  You could be underground anywhere:

I stopped for the night at about two in the morning, checking in behind a guy paying in cash from a large roll of bills.  I got into the car the next morning to the first snowflakes since Idaho, and started the official homestretch.