Category Archives: Iowa

We’ve had several days of grey damp dreary weather – so yesterday I tried to chase the blahs away by visiting the Des Moines Art Center with two friends.  It was quiet on a Sunday afternoon and peaceful. Admission is free – which always amazes me given the $18 to $25 fees charged to get into big city (albeit bigger) museums. I try to drop in a few bucks donation regardless.

The Art Center’s  new exhibit – large modern installations by German artist Anselm Reyle – didn’t do much for me but worth a look. And I always enjoy wandering around the galleries – for the art and the architecture. The IM Pei wing’s giant windows offered a dramatic view of a snow squall blowing across the Andrew Goldsworthy Cairn sculptures and Greenwood Park’s frozen rose garden which will soon, I hope, be full of blossoms.

Before visiting the Reyle exhibit it does help to read the art center’ s blurb about him:  (I must look up the word: perspicacity)

Anselm Reyle is a taxidermist. He breathes life into the exhausted or dormant visual motifs of Modernism and reenergizes these familiar forms to make them new. Reyle frequently utilizes clichéd modernist shapes, artificial colors, and non-traditional materials such as Mylar foil and straw bales to extend the prevailing aesthetics of painting and sculpture. In the process, he constructs a bond between art and popular culture, while simultaneously questioning the authorship of the artist and forging a distinct bond between the production of art objects and the marketplace. (

Reyle updates the history of modern art by borrowing its visual elements that have become overused or even considered tasteless in contemporary dialogues. These elements range from stripes to gestural drips of paint to fractured abstractions. Each format in Reyle’s arsenal recalls a predecessor and reflects his interest in the codes of taste that determine our attitudes and thoughts. Although an enlivenment or reconsideration of the past is a cornerstone of post-modern thought, Reyle’s approach retains vestiges of the modern era through his emphasis on the personal experience afforded by abstraction. This archeological memory, its subsequent manipulation, and the resulting shift in perspicacity formulate Reyle’s contributions to the art of our time.