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A Slow-Art Wanderlust in Worcester and Clinton, Massachusetts
J. Fatima Martins
I’m one of those art lovers that needs variety on her aesthetic
menu and seeks out thoughtful slow-art experiences. The
visual combination of traditional, sophisticated, quirky and
avant-garde can be found on an intimate weekend in Central
Massachusetts.
Start your weekend at the Worcester
Art Museum (WAM), 55 Salisbury
Street, on a Saturday morning,
when admission is free until noon.
Located in the heart of downtown
Worcester, WAM is one of the oldest
museums of its kind in the country,
with an impressive collection of
35,000 works spanning 5000 years.
A visitor can spend an entire day
studying everything from ancient
European and Asian to Modern
and Contemporary art. Edouard
Manet’s 1864 oil painting, “The
Dead Toreador,” is on loan from
the National Gallery of Art through
March 31, 2011. WAM’s exploration
of Spanish art and culture continues
with two bullfighting print series by
Francisco Goya from December 18
through April 17.
I was on a mission to explore
conceptually-driven modern and
contemporary art, so I brought along
my five year old son, Harry, whose
perspectives on everything can be
rather insightful, especially in an
art museum. We headed straight
to WAM’s current contemporary
installation, “Place as Idea.” The
exhibition, curated by Susan Stoops
and on view through February 13,
features work assembled from the
museum’s permanent collection.
The photography, videos, prints, drawings, assemblages and sculptures
from 1969-2008 explore the literal
and figurative “place” as a vehicle
for visualizing time, displacement,
memory and fantasy by a roster
of contemporary artists, including
Robert Smithson.
Many similarities resonated from
studio to studio: plants crowded
the windowsills of almost every
room, providing natural inspiration.
Many of these artists have a hand
in constructing the medium on
which they work, and I walked in
on several of them in the process of
stretching their canvases. The rolls
looked like enlarged, ancient scripts
and the wooden frames were set
up to the makers’ likings, building
a relationship of intimacy and
appreciation between the artist and
the craft.
We immediately spotted against the
gallery’s back wall Rachel Whiteread’s
“Demolished,” a narrative series of 12
large-scale, black and white screen
prints documenting the gentrification
process in London’s East End, and
in the center of the gallery the
rectangular, table-like installation
presenting the travel postcard
collaboration by German artist Martin
Kippenberger (1957-1997) and
Matthias Schaufler. Kippenberger’s
purposeful work creates a physical
and visual connection, via postcards,
between different individuals,
geographies, economies and cultures
across vast distances.
After lunch in WAM’s cafe, I headed
over, this time alone, to the Dark
World Gallery at 179 Grafton Street,
a small, alternative exhibition space
attached to a tattoo shop. It’s not
glamorous and slick, and is only
one long wide hallway wall, but it
offers art connoisseurs an excellent
view of the growing, so-called “low
brow” art scene. Its exhibitions are
always interesting and dynamic and
feature mostly emerging artists. For
his November show, curator Jonathan
Hansen hosts internationally
respected, Puerto Rican born, Antonio
Fonseca Vazquez’s first United States
solo show. Fonseca Vazquez will
present his recent iconographical
narrative drawings that are part of a
larger Seven Deadly Sins project.
I finished off my day with a perfect
night at Nick’s Bar and Restaurant,
124 Millbury Street, Worcester, a
charming and elegant European
supper club featuring a German menu
and nightly live music including
favorites from the Great American
Song Book by Cole Porter, cabaret
and jazz.
On Sunday, the traditional day of
rest, I was on a search for depictions
of the holy Madonna, ancient saints, gilded frames and secret iconography,
so I invited Worcester contemporary
icon painter Scott Holloway to join
me on a short, 35 minute northerly
drive from Worcester to Clinton to
indulge our visual senses, fill our
art soul and find inspiration at one
of Massachusetts’ most impressive
museums, The Museum of Russian
Icons at 203 Union Street.
The Museum of Russian Icons is the
only venue to host the important
“Treasures from Moscow: Icons
from the Andrei Rublev Museum”
exhibition, which is on view through
July 25, 2011. Rublev is considered
to be the greatest fresco painter
of his era and most important icon
writer of all time. Born in 1360,
he combined the two traditions of
austere asceticism and Byzantine
mannerism which redefined forever
the look of icon writing. One of his
most important works is the Old
Testament Trinity.
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