Tracey Emin’s coterminous who (brilliantly!) handed out My Bed (1998) (unmade, and cards to people that explained Sarah Lucas littered with vodka bottles), that she was rendered uncom- at the Hammer Au Naturel doesn’t evoke fortable by their racist remarks. deep feeling. The presence In the 1990s, Lucas’ refusal Museum of a gritty bare mattress on to agonize may have made the foor does convey a sense viewers feel less accused by June 9–September 1, 2019 of emotional poverty, but its her work, allowing them to straightforward allusion to consume it without shutting If you’re going to depict a body parts lacks the emotional down defensively. In this way, woman bending over a toilet depth of Emin’s scorching perhaps Lucas’ art belongs with a cigarette stuck up document of loneliness. more in the company of her anus, you should have Lucas’ work helps us Andrea Fraser’s bananas a good reason. Unfortunately, understand how certain artis- Museum Highlights: A Gallery a compelling motivation, tic gestures once loosened Talk (1989), which wrapped up aside from a loosely articulated an ossifed social structure gender critique in wisecracks. impatience with gender without necessarily ofering The meaning of Lucas’ discrimination, does not fully a way forward. In the 1980s and work dries up a lot faster than reveal itself in Sarah Lucas’ ’90s, Emin harnessed pathos Fraser’s, however, because retrospective, Au Naturel, to describe women’s condi- it doesn’t speak to the larger now on view at the Hammer tions, and Adrian Piper reveled scope of human existence. Museum by way of the New in raced and sexed confronta- Simply put, intersectional Museum. Still, visitors excited tions in ways that still shed light feminism’s emphasis on the to see the work of this grunge- on the current moment. For her connection between sex, class, era bad girl will encounter part, Lucas didn’t muck around race, sexuality, and disability, seven plaster casts of women’s explicitly with the agonies has taught us that we can’t just cigarette-em bedded bodies, of racism, rape, or the denial talk about gender anymore. 40 naked from the waist down, of reproductive freedoms. Lucas makes herself the some splayed on a table Rather, in her smoggy Smoking dominant subject of her photo- (Michele, 2015), while others (1998), we see Lucas staring graphs and installations, faint across refrigerators calmly at a ceiling while blow- which also allows her to side- (Margot, 2015). ing smoke from her mouth, and step the calls to actions of Lucas, who is associated in Self-Portrait #1, #3, and #5 her peers. Meanwhile, Fraser with the Young British Artists (all 1993), she faces the viewer followed up Museum Highlights (YBAs), became famous in with wide-legged, IDGAF with installations like Down the 1990s for works like Eating charisma. In the ’90s, her the River (2016), which flled a Banana (1990) (a black and ability to unneurotically take the Whitney Museum with white photo of the artist mood- up space was thrilling, but in the ambient sounds of correc- ily fruit munching) and Get the new millennium, the long- tional facilities, thus bringing Hold of This (1994) (two green standing problems of white race into her circle of care. rubber arms positioned in an supremacy, class warfare, In works such as Self- obscene faggoussa gesture). and sexual trauma make such Portrait With Fried Eggs (1996) In the 1990s, this female eforts seem incomplete. (Lucas looking blasé while defance went a long way in Lucas’ work raises the wearing eggs on her breasts), espousing Lucas’ disruptive question of what we should Lucas is confrontational but brand of feminism, but today, expect of female artists who noncommittal towards it feels thin in its lack of a more delve into themes of gender any specifc cause or senti- specifc critique. within their work—can’t they ment, and so she remains hip Perhaps the most telling just wittily observe and dissem- without becoming shrieky product of Lucas’ oeuvre is the inate? Lucas seems to argue and embarrassing. Yet today’s title work, Au Naturel (1994): for such a position with her mix of cultural horrors— a slumped mattress littered refusal to lose control. And, prevalent racism, classism, with objects symbolizing in her use of humor and and sexism—don’t leave much female (two melons and a pail) exhaustion, she does allow room for skirting the issues. and male (a cucumber and two for a calmer conversation It is unfair to judge work oranges) anatomy. Unlike about politics than, say, Piper, made in the 1990s according Yxta Maya Murray to the cultural standards of broader. The exhibition was than Joseph Cornell’s discreet today, yet this retrospective, an homage, a collaboration, boxes, Herms’ seemingly shown in two major cities this and a look at the personal slapdash arrangements beg year, brings renewed attention connection between artists a similar kind of poetic free to Lucas and the gender politic of two generations. Yet, more association in the viewer. Reviews that she espoused, and begs suspect, the exhibition also In Therapeutic Rose (2001), the question, why now? In felt like a cribbing of the older a paint can supported the the ’90s, Lucas’ self-possessed, artist’s work by the younger, slipcase for the three book gentle jokes were ground- illustrating what can happen set, The Life and Work of breaking and new, and her when reverential homage Sigmund Freud, itself topped by disruptive punk rock attitude slouches towards undistin- a suggestive frework canister. felt thrilling in the face of overly guished appropriation. The elegiac For Dizzy (1993) sexed depictions of women in The frst room in the was a metal hoop holding art and culture, but c. 2019, we gallery set up a respectful a feather, a scrap of red velvet, desperately need feminist hierarchy, honoring Herms as and the L.A. Times obit for jazz artists who admit that we’re in a godfather of West Coast legend Dizzy Gillespie. The trouble. And that’s what we assemblage art. A dozen or pleasure in these works came require this minute, a show so modestly-sized sculptures not just from what Herms has in a powerful venue like the by Herms were displayed assembled, but how he put it Hammer, which can devote across an L-shaped plinth, all together. Each work set up money and space to work that from simple abstract composi- a tension between its compo- expresses this time of anguish. tions of wood and metal to nents’ previous lives and the In its straightforward way, more complex juxtapositions new formal and narrative Lucas’ work keeps its shit of once-purposeful objects. context Herms has established. together, but what we need Since the mid-1950s, Herms Economy never looked so rich. now is honest, raw art that has been trafcking in his In the second gallery, Koh feels unfettered and ready to own brand of Beat-infected drew on Herms’ large archive fght—a more apt depiction assemblage, piecing together of found materials to create his 41 of the dangerous and chaotic found and discarded objects own installation, simply titled times that we live in. into constructions that are boats (2019). Using “assem- more than the sum of their blage materials relinquished by George Herms parts. “I turn shit into gold,” George Herms,”² Koh created he remarked in 2013.¹ an armada of boats laid out and Terence Koh Herms’ works in the Morán on the foor in a triangular at Morán Morán Morán show were dated formation, all headed towards from 1983 to 2013, but they a sculpture at the far end June 1–July 6, 2019 all had the worn, sepia-toned of the room. Herms’ familiar patina of neglect and disuse. pie tins, books, and medical The pairing of Herms and Koh Assembled from chunks of apparatuses, along with may feel like an odd one at frst: wood, tin cans, pine cones, weathered wood and metal, Herms, the bohemian elder light bulbs, rusted metal, and were fashioned into little statesman of assemblage, who more contemporary—but boat-like assemblages. Each has been consistently experi- still dated—detritus like CDs held a candle or small plant, menting in his signature mode and an old fip phone, Herms’ which stood in for the ships’ for the past 60 years, and Koh, abstract fabrications were all masts in several instances: the fashionable, shape-shifting form, material, and whimsy. a fip-fop sported a paper sail, bad boy who got his start Like junk shop Calders. a speaker was tethered to making zines under the moni- In Nose Cone Rose (2005), a black light bulb, twin IV bags ker “asianpunkboy” before a pine cone hung of the end trailed long tubes in their wake. becoming a rapidly rising of a metal rod, part of some The overall efect made the art star with a penchant for disassembled machine, simple efcacy of Herms’ performative spectacle. Billed elegantly balanced by a curv- sculptures that much more as a two-person exhibition, ing piece of wood. Onto this, impressive by comparison. a recent show at Morán Morán Herms stamped “LOVE,” Pressed into service as one big featuring the two artists in a phrase repeated on several illustrative metaphor, Koh’s fact ofered something much other works. More exuberant boats had little of the charm 1. Fan Zhong, “George Herms 2. Morán Morán, George Herms and Re-Emerges,” W Magazine, September 13, Terence Koh, checklist, 2019. Matt Stromberg 2013, https://www.wmagazine.com/ 3. Morán Morán, sleeping in a beam of story/george-herms-emergio.