Domestic globalism at the Carnegie - 1995 Carnegie International; various artists, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Art in America, Feb, 1996 by Brooks Adams

Painting plays an important if largely ceremonial role. An entire room of big figurative canvases by Georg Baselitz looks especially strong in the wake of his Guggenheim retrospective [see A.i.A., Nov. '95]--stronger to my mind than Sigmar Polke's comparably imposing quartet of works on the theme of Hermes Trismegistus, reportedly derived from mosaics in the floor of the Duomo in Siena. These handsome paintings struck me as standard-issue Polke: erudite subjects on sleazy, chevron-patterned fabric grounds. An especially beautiful suite of seven abstract works by Agnes Martin (to be installed in a permanent gallery at the Harwood Museum of the University of New Mexico in Taos) stand up well in Pittsburgh. Smaller and more discursive, gestural semi-abstractions by Israeli Moishe Kupferman, pale-hued and mostly grisaille, fare less well in this large show, although I admire their irascible spirit. Somewhat more successful are Louise Fishman's dour, "ridded abstractions, which are shown in enough number and size (and in effective juxtaposition to Leonardo Drew's "ridded wall relief) to seem both high-serious and luscious.

By contrast, I had little patience with Chuck Close's overly familiar "ridded portraits of famous artist-friends. I went to the 1995 International to discover something new and found instead a few too many old acquaintances. I must say that the proximity of Oursler's kvetching video sculptures did enliven Close's paintings a bit, suggesting nagging subtexts for those august artists' faces. South African-born, Netherlands-based Marlene Dumas's ink paintings-on-paper of heads and crucified bodies, which I have admired on other occasions, appeared surprisingly weak, altogether too fragile and various to be the culminating point of one long enfilade. Similarly, Swiss artist Remy Zaugg's printed texts on canvas looked somewhat boring to me in the crypt-like calm of the atrium he shared with the Donald Judd installation. (I do look forward to seeing Zaugg's collaborations with the Basel architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who are represented in the show "Monolithic Architecture" concurrently at the Carnegie's Heinz Architectural Center [through Feb. 11].)

Walking down the long passage that leads from the Chuck Close room to the Doris Salcedo gallery, I eventually encountered, off to either side in individual bays, cast-bronze reliefs of bamboo thickets by Cristina Iglesias (which provided effective backdrops for a couple of black-beaded ball gowns at the opening); distinctly underwhelming, flotsam-and-jetsam reliefs by Richard Tuttle, which do not adequately galvanize their space; and an equally low-key but macabre sculptural fireplace by Robert Gober in which children's legs, decked out in sandals and socks, are seen to burn in place of logs.

Photography, film and video enliven the proceedings to a certain degree, while helping to underline the show's essentially doleful mood. Cindy Sherman's photographs of dismembered dolls are hung in individual bays on the balcony of the Hall of Sculpture, above the Judds and Zauggs, where they look almost as elegiac as the casts of ancient figurative works. Gary Hill's murky video and sound installation Dervish, with its whirling cacophony of black-and-white imagery on a curved screen, creates a somewhat obscurantist world of its own, in a separate (and easily missed) room behind the Joan Mitchells on the first floor.