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MoMA's new Armando Reverón exhibition opened this morning, and within 20 minutes was already quite well-attended, rather impressive for a cold Sunday in February. The museum is quick to underscore how this exhibit is like no other in the museum's history, which might be subtitled the moody blues. As you gradually meander towards the back of the sixth floor, the complex evolution of Reverón's style becomes apparent. Early in his painting career, Reverón relocated from Caracas to the northern Caribbean coast of Venezuela, and the canvases reflect the muted colors of the harsh light of that latitude. For example, "Coastal Seascape" (1927) on burlap with its coarse texture hints at the severity of the landscape, as does "El Playón" (1929), even brighter and whiter, with dabs of blue brooding on the sky and water. But the "White Landscape" (Paisaje blanco, 1934) beautifully evokes these glaring qualities, appearing as it does almost as a diapositive.
The doll-like figures in his portraits from the 1930s have intriguing features. In "Five Figures" (Cinco figuras, 1939) for example, their aspects are muted and the surroundings hazy, whereas a painting on burlap such as "The Creole 'Maja'" (La maja criolla, 1939) seems almost a bit mad, vaguely suggestive of Seurat and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in a more subdued setting, stripped of brash colors. A pro pos descent into madness, later portraits, landscapes and figural works clearly hint at his increasing schizophrenia. Life-size dolls, whom Reverón apparently treated as people, became his models. Though his dolls are obviously imbued with human qualities—as opposed to the Vivian girls his American contemporary, Henry Darger, was painting a continent away—the staged dramatic scenes nevertheless have similarly-haunting aspects. Dolls figure repeatedly in his late self-portraiture, and curiously the museum displays some of these objects and dolls that appear in his paintings. Most touching and also most unusual is a birdcage with around a dozen decaying little birds, seen at the very end of this exhibit. Their integral meaning to Reverón's mental illness becomes more clear when viewing photographs of his redoubt, El Castillete, which is neither imposing nor immodest. (The structure was wrecked in the ruinous mudslides of Venezuela's Macuto region in 1999.) For here was a talented painter whose stylized fantasy world yielded a bountiful harvest of artwork. How and exactly why this exhibit came to MoMA is a bit trickier—though it clearly has much to do with MoMA trustee Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.
photo: "Self-Portrait with Dolls" (Autorretrato con muñecas, 1949), Collection Fundación Museos Nacionales, Caracas
Tags:
Armando Reveron, henry darger, moma
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Posted on 2/11/2007
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