Contemporary art

Why do we raise monuments? Why do we tear them down? These questions hover over MONUMENTS, now on view at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick. The premise is straightforward enough: gather the remains of America’s shattered sculptural conscience – decommissioned Confederate statues and their graffiti-marred plinths – and display them alongside contemporary works on racial topics. This comparison is supposed to reveal something about America’s nature and history, and it certainly does: it shows us just how attached we are to grievance. Both the raising and the destruction of monuments nourishes convictions on either side, ensuring that the argument can never end.

I was standing in front of “A Soldier’s Journey,” the centerpiece of the new National World War One Memorial in Washington, DC, chatting with its creator, sculptor Sabin Howard, when I raised a question. “So, are you the new Saint-Gaudens?” I asked. “No! No, God no!” exclaimed Howard. “That guy sucks.” Sabin Howard is nothing if not direct in expressing his opinions, which are refreshingly free of the artspeak that saturates most of the contemporary art world. It’s a frankness that is best appreciated by examining his current commission as well as trying to understand the artist himself.

Art market reporting tends to be more sensationalist than, say, the news about corn futures. Breathless accounts of high-stakes bidding abound, remarkable discoveries of forgotten treasures in thrift shops get big headlines, and who’s up or down and how much money the fluctuation involves become fodder for salacious gossip. Interesting though these tales undoubtedly are, though, they don’t provide a realistic picture of the art business. While they may be less gossipy, some nuts-and-bolts stories away from the headlines can be just as compelling for those with an interest in the art market, and how what we see displayed in our homes, public spaces and cultural institutions depends upon very practical considerations to get there.

“This is why I hate art.” “Why, because this is pants?” A friend and I were at a contemporary art show, standing before a mixed-media work featuring trite sayings, glittery flowers and a spaniel. A few days earlier I had suggested to her — once rather ominously described to me as an “art philistine” — that a visit to a few local galleries might provide an opportunity to acquire art for the new home that she and her fiancé recently purchased in the area. Somewhat to my surprise she agreed, so one evening we trundled along to some exhibition openings, to see what we might find. Our first venue, housing three exhibition under one roof, was quite crowded when we arrived. The works ran the gamut from installations and video art to painting, drawing and collage.

The career of artist Alberto Guerrero has been driven by an overarching desire to look for what is behind everything that we merely, and only dimly, perceive at present. The work of the forty-something Madrid-based Guerrero ranges from abstract, highly textured canvases and three-dimensional images which he calls “spherical paintings” to realistic presentations of daily life — such as his illustrated book Diary of a Quarantine showing life in the Guerrero household during Covid — and deeply reflective images of sacred art. There are few contemporary artists who have such a broad range and vision.