AT THE PULITZER - JOE

The courtyard of the Pulitzer contains Richard Serra monumental sculpture Joe, named for his friend and patron Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. You can hardly take a bad picture of it on a clear day but it's also impossible to view the whole unless you find an elevated viewpoint. Maybe that's part of the point. It is made of bent slabs of COR TEN steel, solid as rock but with a lovely rusted patina. The walls are at least twice as high as me and I'm medium-tell. You wander into the curve as if into a maze of light, dark and space. I think we'll see what you get to tomorrow, depending on what happens overnight.           

AT THE PULITZER-ELLSWORTH KELLY

This painting was in the background of yesterday's photo, Ellsworth Kelly's Blue Black. It is one of the two large works that have been in the Pulitzer since it opened. The other is Richard Serra's monumental steel construction Joe, which we will come to shortly.  

Kelly's work is often super-minimalistic color field painting. It leaves some people shaking their heads and others in rapture. Kelly, though, could be a bit of a prig about it. When the place opened in 2001, there was a public discussion at the symphony hall with Kelly, Serra and Emily Pulitzer. Serra was warm and funny. Kelly was a bit arrogant and uptight. He claimed that when Blue Back was installed he could tell from down the hall if it was a quarter-inch out of position. The audience laughed. Serra laughed. Now you can look at it for yourself.         

AT THE PULITZER: THE LAST TRUMPET

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is small enough that an exhibition is often about the work of a single artist. The current show is devoted to Terry Adkins, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Adkins. His oeuvre and resume are spectacular. I wondered why I'd never heard of him. Perhaps for racial reasons, but he certainly made an impact on the art world.  

This work is called Last Trumpet. Adkins used sousaphone and trombone bells attached to tubes of cast brass. You can actually play them.           

AUTUMN AT THE PULITZER

The architecture of the Pulitzer is decidedly spare. It was designed by the multi award-winning Japanese designer Tadao Ando, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadao_Ando. The walls are featureless concrete slabs that direct the viewers attention entirely to the art work. (For similar reasons, there are no placards on the wall describing the art. There is always a brochure to read after the visitor engages the the work.) Ando makes ingenious use of outside light and water to create spacial and material balance.

Visitors can step outside into courtyard. It contains a site-specific monumental sculpture that we will come to. Last weekend the simplicity had fiery accents.              

AT THE PULITZER

Mrs. C and I paid a visit yesterday to the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, a small, exquisite museum not well known outside STL. The plan was conceived by the late Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and son the person who founded the prize, along with his wife, Emily Rauh Pulitzer. The building and its contents were based on their fortune and collection.

We will see something about the unique architecture and current show in following days. For now, I'll note that the place is open Thursday through Sunday by reservation only. You get a timed ticket and up to four people have the place to themselves for 45 minutes. It wasn't enough. We'll go back before the current show ends.