It is a relief that Julie Mehretu’s paintings, the subject of an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, are as innocuous as they are. Mehretu’s encompassing and relatively low-key abstractions are, in aesthetic effect, divorced from the obnoxious nature of much contemporary art—you know, the high-profile stuff that trades in Pop spectacle of one sort or another. She’ll have no truck with outrage; deep thoughts are her thing. Who wouldn’t prefer that to the latest cause célèbre?
Mehretu’s sweeping vortices of architectural tracings, densely layered surfaces and gestural brushwork portend a heady amalgam of information overload, historical memory, “the machinations of politics,” and “the formation of social identity.” What they deliver is somewhat epochal, but more mundane: lobby art for the digital age. The paintings are accomplished enough in their dizzying superficiality to be swiftly mooted, roundly applauded, and happily ignored. We never question the work because it doesn’t encourage much in the way of questions in the first place.
As a painter, Mehretu makes a handsomely contrived argument for the benefits of efficiency. The six gargantuan canvases ensconced in one of the Guggenheim’s tower galleries have little to distinguish themselves save for a suave uniformity. Different imagistic motifs and variations in stylistic emphasis notwithstanding, one Mehretu is as good as another—which is to say, not good but predictable. The work isn’t soulless, exactly, but it comes close enough to make you think twice.
The accompanying catalogue features black-and-white photos of the artist’s studio and