The holidays are high times for both the saints and the sinners among us. In honor of the season's strange coupling of devotion and indulgence, Ybor's Gallery Hoffman Porges has organized a witty showcase of diametrically opposed prints designed to appeal to art lovers both naughty and nice.
For those of us who made Santa proud this year, a set of delicate 19th-century etchings of Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child invites solemn, respectful contemplation. For those better at being bad, a set of slyly titillating American pin-ups from the 1940s will surely elicit a lecherous grin.
You've got to applaud gallery owner Marcie Hoffman Porges' sense of humor. Both sets of collectibles come from her personal stash, and for all her serious admiration of the Renaissance painters represented in the etchings — greats including Andrea Del Sarto, Bellini and Mantegna — her enthusiasm for the dime-store pin-ups is at least as great. That's not just because the sassy pin-ups are a hoot, laden with visual puns and the sort of mid-century innuendos that now seem quaint, but also for a compelling aesthetic reason: their vibrant color.
The dainty Mutoscope prints, roughly the size of a small postcard, burst with the candy-colored power of pastels. Pastels — those smooth sticks of pigment, chalk and a touch of oil — were the medium of choice for a cadre of erotic artists who created original illustrations that were mass-produced as prints; Zoë Mozert (a rare female artist engaged in the genre who often used herself as a model), Earl Moran and Earl MacPherson, all represented here, were among the most popular. Back in the day, the inexpensive collectibles would have provided some sweet relief to deprived soldiers; when Hoffman Porges stumbled upon them in the early 1980s as a young woman touring antique markets in California and other Western states, they struck her as deliciously subversive in the aftermath of bra-burning feminism.
In the images, wasp-waisted femmes in scanty attire pose provocatively against rich clouds of pink, yellow or green. Wickedly bad double entendres serve as rousing taglines. "Get a load of this!" reads the caption below one long-legged beauty perched on a wheelbarrow; "How Do You Like My Frame?" reads another in which a young lady in lingerie and an apron hoists a gilt picture frame. Caption-less Vargas Girls calendar pages, on view nearby, aren't quite as whimsically charming, though they do show off artist Alberto Vargas' trademark airbrush technique (especially good for rendering flawless gams).
The Renaissance etchings offer a different sort of pleasure. Produced around 1840 by French print house Lemercier, the set of black-and-white and sepia-toned bookplate etchings commemorate a medium that was overtaken by the cheaper, simpler lithographic process later in the 19th century. The super-fine detail and subtle tonal range of etching create a glow that's well-suited to the images' religious subject matter. The different styles on display, from the late Gothic stiffness of Fra Angelico's "Annunciation" to Luini's Leonardo-inspired, smoky-edged "Madonna and Child" serve as visual touchstones along the Renaissance's rapid advances in naturalistic representation. Among the most appealing: Botticelli's circular vignette of Mary and the infant Jesus surrounded by angels rendered in the same slightly flat, neo-Platonic style that makes his "Birth of Venus" so memorable.
For Hoffman Porges, the unusual show is also a gambit to bring new visitors to the gallery she has run for 20 years in ever-changing Ybor City. To that end, the framed pieces are meant to be affordable, she says. (When Hoffman Porges collected the Mutoscope prints, they were worth a quarter a pop; now they fetch anywhere from 25 to 100 times that amount.) The tongue-in-cheek theme may even lure in some of Ybor's younger thrill-seekers — or anyone who likes a little spice with their sugar.
Sketchbook
The onslaught of holiday-themed shows around the Bay area continues with the Arts Center's Holiday Invitation Exhibition, opening Fri., Nov. 30, with a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. This always-good show — often the best place locally to find truly unique and artistic tree ornaments — includes works in a variety of media by Arts Center regulars like Susan Gott, Chuck Boux and Duncan McClellan (glass); James Michaels, Jack Barrett and Betsy Lester (painting); Robert Giordano, Nancy Cervenka and Kyu Yamamoto (sculpture); and Russ Gustafson-Hilton and Yasuko Nakamura (ceramics). The exhibit runs through Dec. 31; for more information, go to theartscenter.org.
The Tampa Museum of Art's Guilders Museum Store hosts its annual holiday sale Wed., Dec. 5 from noon to 7 p.m. This year's retail fundraiser has a special note of urgency because the entire contents of the store must be sold before the museum's January move to Centro Español de West Tampa. (This interim location, where the museum will reside during construction of Stanley Saitowitz's sleek new modernist building, will not include a retail store.) Museum members get an additional 30 percent discount on the store's stock of jewelry, art books, toys and more; complimentary gift wrapping will be provided by the museum's Friends of the Arts (FOTA) organization. The Guilders Museum Store will be open through Dec. 16. For directions and hours, go to tampamuseum.com.
On a final note, I'll be heading south next week for Art Basel Miami Beach, an annual international art fair and celeb-sighting extravaganza of mind-boggling proportions. In next week's Creative Loafing, I'll give you my take on what events and exhibits shouldn't be missed and tell you where to find the handful of Bay area artists who will be taking part in Miami Basel's satellite events. Starting Wed., Dec. 5, I'll also be blogging about Miami Basel's many — and often outrageous — sights and sounds on artsqueeze.com, my new visual arts blog. I hope you'll join me, vicariously or in person, at one of the most important international art events of the year.
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2007.