The Vogel Collection
In spite of what many construe as an ever widening conceptual abyss between contemporary art's development and conventional society since the middle of the twentieth century, the lives and passions of two people spring to mind that suggest otherwise. These would be Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, an unassuming couple that began an exceptional art collection in the 1960s that is now the object of a national gift program in which packets of fifty works will be distributed to museum collections across the United States. One such recipient is the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. Up through May 17, 2009, the museum presents 'The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States,' which shows off artworks from the Vogel collection recently gifted to the museum in relation to a second gallery of related works already held by the Speed. Sculpture by Sol LeWitt and lithographs by Ellsworth Kelly for instance can be compared to recent acquisitions from the likes of Richard Tuttle, Pat Steir, Lynda Benglis, Peter Halley, Jene Highstein, and many others. The gifted Vogel pieces are fine examples of mostly Minimal, Conceptual, and Postminimal art, with a noticeable devotion to the emergence of drawing as a practice and as an end unto itself that gave rise during the period in which the Vogels collected.
The Vogels are a delight in how they deflect stereotypes about important art collecting being the pastime of the wealthy and elite. Throughout their marriage, they covered their living expenses with Dorothy's salary from the Brooklyn Public Library while saving what Herbert earned as an employee of the United States Postal Service. Herbert Vogel is frequently quoted in saying, "You don't have to be a Rockefeller to collect art." In many cases, they began collecting artists early in their careers and made it a point to build relationships with these creative innovators. If one's experience of these particular works exudes a sense of intimacy, it may be because many pieces were birthday gifts and tokens of appreciation from the artists to whom the Vogels gave starts.
One artist who has remained famously close to the couple throughout his art career is Richard Tuttle, who is prominent among the gifts to the Speed. Tuttle, an artist who lives and works in both New Mexico and New York, is easily one of the most deeply profound contributions to the progress of art since the 1960s. Spiritual and reasonable, his abstract explorations in art emanate with elegant humanism and ineffable sublimes that result from the unexpected convergence of difference approaches to materials, mark making, and arrangement in space. One Tuttle bequeathed to the Speed is Space and Time, a multi-part installation of objects that quintessentially embodies some of the basic problems that the artist has explored throughout his career. Rectangles of bond paper are hinged together so that one piece leans against the base of the wall and another lies across the floor. Nine drawings presented in this format sit along a constructed wall in the middle of the gallery, with their lower halves extended out onto the floor plane. Lines and abstract forms in watercolor and graphite overlap the bend in each work. That's about the extent of it. But through such limited means, Tuttle initiates a dialogue about the physics and poetics of drawing and sculpture. These discreet objects simultaneously play into our preconceptions of how drawings are normally presented on the wall and how sculptures occupy the same maneuverable space of a room that viewers do. By looking into the bend of the paper at his pleasant arrangements of shapes, my perception of the mentioned Space and Time are bent as well, so that they conjoin at the site of the artist's action. This isn't the only phenomenal contribution to the exhibition from Tuttle. And every one of them deserves your attention and energy.
Jene Highstein, a Postminimalist whose huge irregular monoliths are usually formed from pieces of dark wood, chiseled stone, or reinforced concrete, is represented by a work on paper in black oil pastel (one of several drawings in the collection by artists known for their large sculptural work). As the title explains, Highstein's drawing is a preliminary sketch for an installation of sculptures. An economy of marks-really just three expressive, vertical lines-possess the same presence as a Highstein sculpture: noble yet playful, only lightly receiving people's projected associations while ultimately sidestepping them into evocative, elusive abstraction.
Lynda Benglis, while reputed as a sculptor, has always worked across mediums, prodding the edges of painting outward, and using media like video, photography, and advertising to compliment her generally abstract work with concrete commentary on global cultures and sexual politics. In a way, the two Benglis pieces included in the exhibition offer a taste of all of those qualities from her oeuvre. Although Gestural Study is made from egg tempera paint on woven paper, it is only disguised as a painting. One will find far more depth to the guttural swipes of paint built up in loose layers if they are considered for their physicality, their sculptural potential. Like her well-known high relief encaustic paintings, paint in Benglis' hands is a means to accumulate a surface and to explore the perception of that surface through contrasting colors and values. Gestural Study is a jungle of marks, a blithering, entangled oracle that plays nicely alongside many incredibly minimal works in the exhibition. Benglis' other piece is a photo collage with washes of transparent, colored wax across different areas of the images. Reminiscent of the offset flats of color in Andy Warhol's screenprinted portraits or the montages Robert Rauschenberg made late in his career, this piece is probably more 'Pop' than would normally be associated with Benglis.
And so it runs. The Vogel gifts exhibited boast of the innovations along the fronts of abstraction and conceptual art in the past forty years. But more, these fifty works variously shine as surprising examples from the included artists, or else as tender, unpretentious objects from artists who, in other circumstances, are represented by bolder pieces in museum collections. These are subtle masterpieces, notably different than the typical fare on show in encyclopedic museums. Perhaps because of the close relationships that the Vogels share with many of the artists, this group of works seems to account more for the creative process and for interim days of exploration that takes place in the artist's studio between what may be thought of as their major contributions to art history. Works on paper, small trifles, and preliminaries infuse the exhibition with a rewarding sense of sincerity. One hopes that once this special viewing of the new gifts has ended, they will continue to cycle through the Speed's exhibition spaces to be appreciated for their understated valor.
The Speed Art Museum, THE DOROTHY AND HERBERT VOGEL COLLECTION: FIFTY WORKS FOR FIFTY STATES, a joint initiative of the Trustees of the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and the National Gallery of Art, with generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. 2008.15.5
© Lynda Benglis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
