Lives of Saints

Further evidence that Portraiture has surpassed History Painting as the 21st century's leading picture genre: an exhibition devoted to the singularity of a singular genius.

Uncharacteristically, the visual art exhibition is late to the hagiography game. Scholarly anthologies devoted to the research and writing of academics (e.g. Culture in History: Essays in Honour of Paul Radin, 1960) have been around a while now, as have tribute records (I'm Your Fan: the Songs of Leonard Cohen, 1991, re-popularized tribute records and revived the career of its subject); but now, in our ostensibly one-mind-is-not-enough moment, we get the many (sixty artists, in this instance) paying tribute to the one.

The exhibition in question is divided into four sections that correspond to American author Joan Didion's most significant migrations. Sacramento and Berkeley, where she was born and schooled (1934-1956); NYC, where she did her apprenticeship in the then-glamourous world of magazines (1956-1963); California and Hawaii, where she wrote her greatest books: the essay collections Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album (1964-1988); and the scattershot that followed, which accounted for the bulk of her life and her greatest commercial success: that grief pour known as The Year of Magical Thinking (1988-2021).

Prior to this appropriately (coyly?) titled exhibition: Joan Didion: What She Means, writer/curator Hilton Als gave us "portrait exhibitions" inspired by the lives and works of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, which has me wondering if this is a thing now, and might we see more of them. Three days ago Sacheen Littlefeather passed away, and my first thought was, What a life! More should be made of it.

A Day at the VAG

With my yearly membership about to expire, and a couple hours to kill before the 6:50 screening of The Black Panther, I visited the Vancouver Art Gallery to tour its shows.

On the third floor, John O'Brian's Bombhead -- a nice and spare and fitting companion to the ecstatic vomitorium that is the Murakami exhibition below it.

Bombhead highlights include Adolph Gottlieb's Untitled (1968), Robert Rauschenberg's Pages and Fuses (Page 1) (1974) and David Hockney's Picture of a Landscape (from A Hollywood Collection) (1965) together on one wall, and a series of five Nancy Spero gouache, ink on paper works from 1966-1968 on another

On the ground floor, The Herman Levy Legacy: A Cultivating Journey  -- a portrait-heavy exhibition that features work from the Impressionists to the Neo-Expressionists of the 1980s.

Is it me or does Portrait of the Painter Richard X (v.1916-1917) by Chaim Soutine

look a lot like this portrait of the critic Aaron Peck by Stephen Waddell?

Mars News 3

The 45th American Presidential Cabinet was announced within hours of the 57th Venice Biennale doing the same with its list of participating artists.

Amanita Muscaria

Finally made it to the Belkin for Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson's The Last Waves exhibition. This is the third iteration of an installation that was first mounted at the Walter Philips Gallery in 2013. On my way to the gallery I pass a cluster of amanita muscaria mushrooms.

Two hours later, while touring through Anne Low and Gareth Moore's Kitchen Midden curatorial project at North Vancouver's Griffin Art Projects, I notice an amanita muscaria switch plate -- the same one I gave to Geoffrey Farmer ten Christmases ago and, according to the exhibition legend, he (re-)gifted to Anne and Gareth!

Four Chinatown Galleries

With an hour to kill before my afternoon design meeting at Arsenal Pulp Press, I thought I would visit the four art galleries nearest to it.

At UNITT/PITT is an exhibition by Joël Doyle, a mysterious self-taught artist who, I have learned, builds expensive Gulf Island houses and, with the leftovers, makes artworks that relate to his experiences. Those who appreciate the work of Fanny Bay's George Sawchuk, Hornby Island's Jerry Pethick and Vancouver's Liz Magor will be at home at this exhibition.

At Center A is a three-channel video installation by the Le Brothers, who hail from Hue, Vietnam. Entitled Underlying, the exhibition features the Les engaged in an "imaginary war that takes place underwater." Though born after the American War, the Les are aware of its echo -- something we see not so much in the video (which takes place away from the shell-pocked city, on a river), but in iconic images derived from U.S. protest culture (flowers stuffed into rifle barrels) and U.S.-made war films such as Apocalypse Now (waterskiing off the back of a patrol boat).

Down the street at 221A is Mime Radio; a novel, an exhibition and a performance (2104) by Benjamin Seror. Here, the artist has laid out over a long narrow table a community of cardboard structures, forms and texts that approximate what is, for most of us, what can only be held in our hands. Although set up to be encircled, I would hesitate to call this a work of sculpture because its eastern side is, like the back end of town, just that -- a back. Which is to say closed. Not a good sign for someone eager to open up the novel.

My final stop was in fact my first stop -- Access. Unfortunately it was closed when I got there and closed when I stopped by a third time at 12:30PM. Far Away So Close: Part III indeed.

Food (1971) and Untitled (Free) (1992)

Two food production and distribution projects by visual artists. The first, Food (1971), was initiated by Gordon Matta-Clark, Tina Girouard, Caroline Goodden, Suzanne Harris and Rachel Lew; the second, Untitled (Free) (1992) by Rikrit Tiravanija, first appeared at Gallery 303 and was later reprised at MoMA in 2012.