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Rita Ackermann at Hauser and Wirth Gallery London

PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:18 pm
by jasperjoffe
http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/1594/rita-ackermann-fire-by-days/view/

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this show. I thought it was some old dudess from the 1950s but she was born in 68. The paintings are crusty and big and look like pinocchio and a figure at the same time. I found it hard to work out whether they were just ok or good, whether the red was old fashioned or cool. I do wonder about the way every show must follow the tired format of 6 to 8 big works all around the same size and with the same theme, I know this "body of work" idea is the stuff taught in art schools, but really, why. It's become one of those deadening cliches of art exhibition.
Yes, you can get kind of lost in these paintings, and then go closer and see lots of surface, and then you go can round the corner to the National Gallery and do exactly the same thing with a Veronese, whose touch was somewhat better, but hey the wheel turns and so does the world.

Re: Rita Ackermann at Hauser and Wirth Gallery London

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 2:09 am
by CAP
I didn't enjoy it. And I used to love her girly stuff in the early 90s. She disappeared for a while (started a family?) then came back late naughties with rather severe, stilted symbolic figures - worthy but dull.

Clearly an insider, she gets the inside running when it comes to galleries - why H&W are showing this stale cack is beyond reckoning, given the rest of their stable. The more she changes, the more desperate and superficial she looks. She's chasing it now and it's kind of sad. Don't watch, maybe she'll go away - back to Hungary? Not much chance, probably. Then again, she always was kinda pushy...

:roll:

Re: Rita Ackermann at Hauser and Wirth Gallery London

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 5:19 pm
by jasperjoffe
Hey CAP i like artists who try different things, don't be so hard on her!

Re: Rita Ackermann at Hauser and Wirth Gallery London

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 12:21 am
by CAP
I'm all for trying things but I only applaud when they work. Trying things for the sake of it is the preserve of the hobbyist or dabbler.

Any artist with ambition will always want to test their ability or style against new forms or content - try things - and where they succeed we have a deepened appreciation of their world and means - an altogether bigger picture. But Ackermann just doesn't deliver for mine. A lot of artists I know (or knew) would simply keep this kind of stuff in their studios and keep working until they could demonstrate some compelling linkage within it to the rest of their work - until they could really make it their own. I think Ackermann these days is content to just thrash around with a clutch of vague and shifting enthusiasms and surf the rep.

When people have a reputation that can withstand this kind of indulgence there's no harm in 'going hard' on them. They're fireproof. And criticsm means nothing if you can't pull the trigger occasionally, with confidence, that the harm is limited.


8-)