REAL WORLD: PARRISH
Michael Wilson at "All the More Real" at the Parrish
August 13, 2007 12:00 am
“I should keep going, right? I’m hot now!” As I arrived at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton for Saturday evening’s opening of “All the More Real: Portrayals of Intimacy and Empathy,” the exhibition’s cocurators, painter Eric Fischl and the institution’s Merrill Falkenberg, had already embarked on the first of two double-act routines, and Fischl was making the most of his turn. Circled by a rapt crowd of silver-haired supporters, the odd couple were midway through a tag-team tour of the galleries that revealed as much about their personalities as it did about their project: Fischl was avuncular and unhurried, the younger Falkenberg ambitious and efficient. Fischl was an able guide, if not always a tremendously enlightening one (on a Joan Goldin photograph: “She saw in the watermelon some potential to talk about something outside the watermelon”); Falkenberg was clearer but a touch mechanical in comparison, even seeming a little naive at times (on Robert Gober’s Untitled [Candle]: “Everyone recognized it as a phallic symbol except me!”). This was a show concerned largely with representations of the human body—hardly an unfamiliar theme, but one that allowed Fischl and Falkenberg to sneak in a few works that might otherwise have been considered too confrontational for a museum best known for its Fairfield Porter collection.
Collected no. 55 Untitled Copyright © Joan Goldin
“I was going to use this occasion to announce my retirement!” In a subsequent discussion between the curators, introduced by director Trudy C. Kramer and staged in an adjoining hall, Fischl got some mileage out of the idea of giving up painting for curating. He was clearly having fun, but a curmudgeonly side emerged soon thereafter in his comment about contemporary art’s purported “removal from human values.” “I have strong feelings and no ideas,” the artist continued. The line sounded well worn but nonetheless made an impression on those present, who either lapped it up or tutted disapprovingly.