'Rear View': A Surprisingly Thoughtful Show on a Seemingly Humorous Subject

The next two floors are disarming not only because they reveal so many barebacks and backsides but also because they show how we should be looking seriously at works we might normally dismiss, or disdain. One such work is Fernando Botero’s parodic painting The Bathroom which features a massive woman regarding herself in a mirror surrounded by a toilet, sink, and tub in all their architectural solidity. The interior’s curves echo hers, while a slice of her reflection to the right shows her slyly capturing us spying.

Meanwhile, ingeniously confounding our view of this formidable figure is the placement of Aristide Maillol’s 1911 black bronze sculpture standing in front of the Botero. This sculpture is of a shapely woman who dominates our gaze and all the space around her. She offers a contrasting architecture to Botero’s caryatid, one that makes you want to apologize for blocking her gaze each time you pass in front of her. To her left is a flat black figure in a painting by Barclay L. Hendricks, providing an example of negative space as the image seems to dissolve into the canvas. On the opposite wall is a dimpled conception of modernism in Félix Valloton’s Étude de fesses, (buttocks) ca. 1884—realistically highlighting the model’s stretched and discolored flesh. 

Recalling Caspar David Friedrich’s attraction to Rückenfigur --that is, a figure seen from the back—the works here encourage us to follow many lines of thought and vision. We look ahead with them, overseas, as in Anselm Kiefer’s six photos titled “Besetzungen” (Occupations, 1969/2022). Here, Kiefer’s subjects perform the Nazi salute, and nearby, while touchingly motivated, Harry Callahan captures his wife, Eleanor, cinematically peering out over a wall (1949/ca. 1970s). Also in the gallery is a photo by Carrie Mae Weems, In the Mountains of Santiago de Cuba (2002), where a lone woman gazes longingly over mountains. 

 The built world emerges in Jenny Saville’s prodigious painting Juncture (1994), positioned precariously on the stairwell, securing its position and challenging us to examine the figure’s massive back and consider the nature of two-dimensional weight and our perception of it. We are then lured into structural engagement with Yoko Ono’s Film No. 4 (Bottoms 1966–67), a series of segmented multicultural asses, whose rippled quadrants are reminiscent of the late photographer John Copland’s closeups of his body parts. He claimed that by always leaving off the head, he removed references to his current identity and became immersed in the past.

What is most intriguing about this show is the rare glimpses it offers into time’s rear view—what we lose and how we encircle the present and past to weave new realities. The art here is less about materials and more about memory, what we don’t know, and the power of suggestion.