Political Art in Chelsea

Martha Rosler
GREAT POWER
Mitchell-Innes & Nash Chelsea
September 6 – October 11

David LaChapelle
Auguries of Innocence
Tony Shafrazi Gallery
September 12 – October 24


After a month of “summer hangs” and closed doors, September brings a slew of art openings and a revitalized energy buzzing around the fall season in Chelsea. Two adjacent exhibitions on 26th street, Martha Rosler’s GREAT POWER at Mitchell-Innes & Nash and David LaChapelle’s Auguries of Innocence at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, show artists in a heated engagement with political subject matter.

GREAT POWER includes new photomontages, sculpture, video and digital prints. Rosler first used photomontage to critique U.S. war practices and their portrayal in the media in her Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful series, 1967-72, produced during the peak of U.S. military engagement with Vietnam. Assembled from the pages of Life magazine, where images of mangled bodies, dead children and anguished victims intermingle with photo features of stylish interiors and ads for luxury products, Rosler’s montages explore the relationship between American lifestyle and the Vietnam War. For her new works at Innes & Nash, contemporary war images from grainy newspaper clippings are combined with beautiful interiors and people that ooze luxuriousness. In several of these works male and female models dressed in expensive clothing strut through war-zones filled with tanks, explosions, grieving women and soldiers wielding guns. Here the war is not only brought home; US culture is brought to the war, suggesting cultural imperialism and reminding us of the ways in which greed has fueled our extended stay in Iraq.

This message is explicitly communicated through Prospect for Today, a billboard-like piece in which a gas pump feeds gasoline into a tank surrounded by fire and battling soldiers. In Invasion, 2008, an army of tall male models dressed in sleek black suits and skinny black ties walks confidently next to a tank that rolls down a street in what is probably somewhere in Iraq. Transplanted into a war zone, the men look like CIA agents. These images speak about our unbridled lust for power and the unchecked confidence with which we often practice foreign policy.

A few doors down at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, the technique of photomontage is translated into 3D to make works that, like Rosler’s, critique American greed and explore its relationship to the current political climate. David LaChapelle is known for his brightly colored sensual photographs, mainly of celebrities, that mix Pop and surrealist sensibilities, both indulging and commenting on the chronic hunger for celebrity culture and the vanity that surrounds Hollywood stardom. More recently LaChapelle began to explore photography’s sculptural potential, creating elaborate stage-set like scenes that integrate religious iconography with war imagery and perverse accounts of our gratuitous lust for luxury.

The centerpieces of the show are two monumental tableau rife with religious symbolism and cultural reflection. Holy War, 2008, is a tale of hope and destruction, heaven and hell, goodness and darkness. At the left side of the scene, bloodied and mangled soldiers are strewn about a battleground, some in the throws of death and others still fighting. Fire and dark clouds of smoke loom in the background. At the opposite end stands Jesus surrounded by several children and a flock of sheep, the sun gleaming down on them. Directly across the room is Children's Bacchanal, an allegorical scene about object-obsession, hyper-indulgence, sin and the possibility for change. A naked man restrained by gold handcuffs lies in a pile of jewels and gold coins, and behind him Paris Hilton stairs adoringly at herself in a mirror. At the other end of the piece beautiful nude women mourn a man whose naked body lies prostrate, evoking traditional depictions of Christ, while small putti-like children roam at the sides. Figures engulfed in flames peer out from a strip of hell at the center of the setting, grasping for money.

Such scenes read like Renaissance depictions of damnation and salvation. I’m thinking specifically of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, ca. 1500, or Jan Van Eyck’s The Crucifixion and The Last Judgment diptych of 1430. LaChapelle’s inclusion of children and Christ figures surrounded by women suggests hope and sadness over the inheritance of future generations as well as the importance and purity of family. The show also includes traditional photographic prints, some of which utilize playful, childish imagery, and several gigantic sculptures made from photographs of smashed expensive-looking cars. Something about the gallery’s layout coupled with the nature of these works makes the pieces seem like disjointed thoughts rather than part of a cohesive visual narrative.

With the Presidential election just weeks away, these shows seem all the more poignant as critical, albeit subjective and limited, reflections on the current political climate. However, as I walked back to the subway I could not shake the feeling that neither exhibit sends a forceful message. Perhaps this is not so much the fault of the art but of its location. The stiff, pretentious atmosphere of Chelsea is a bad fit for political art; it tempers its energy and the possibility for substantial social impact. I felt the same way about Raymond Pettibon’s show at David Zwirner last fall. Political art should be in the public eye, and Chelsea is not known for drawing diverse crowds. These works seem suffocated by the gallery walls. What if we plaster photocopies of Rosler’s photomontages on telephone poles and construction sites around the city and stick waterproof versions of LaChapelle’s Holy War and Children's Bacchanal at the bottom corner entrances to Central Park? That would be so much more fun, and so much more powerful.