March 2015 Archives

I generally stay out of public arguments about MoMA. I feel too close, yet I'm not an insider. MoMA doesn't need my apologia, and my firsthand experiences within the museum are not going to sway anyone. Everyone there is a grown-up who should be able to handle the responsibility for their decisions and actions.

Though I won't see it until next week, I am fully prepared to be disappointed by the Bjork show. The museum went to an extraordinary effort on the show, to some very specific ends, that turned out to be the wrong ones. I would like to find out how things went wrong, and what can be done about it. I'm certain I'm not alone.

But Christian Viveros-Fauné's artnet column yesterday, which purported to pull back the curtain on Klaus Biesenbach's reign of curatorial terror at MoMA, is not going to help; it is not only poisonous and pointlessly personal, it's inaccurate. I'll give CVF the benefit of the doubt that his outrage skewed his interpretation of every rumor and anecdote, and that he's not as reactionary or willfully ignorant as his errors make him seem. But it's a non-credible non-starter for an actual discussion of MoMA's situation.

Here's a drive-by of some of the things that made me wince, and then a factcheck on what strikes me as a disqualifying error: the claim that Klaus ruined Marina Abramovic's entire performance in The Artist Is Present.

What's that? #20 - Soyuz TMA-5 Flown Flag? Oh nothing, just a flag, like you'd see anywhere.

Next month RR Auction is selling a Confederate Flag that flew on the International Space Station. It is signed by Salizhan Sharipov, the Russian cosmonaut who brought at least five of the flags to the ISS in 2004-5, and by NASA's own Leroy Chiao, who was the commander of the pair's 6-month expedition.

The flags caused an uproar when they first started appearing on the flown souvenir market in 2006, and both Chiao and Sharipov acted like they had no idea how those flags might've--Confederate flags, you say? Well how'd that--who coulda--

Which seems like total crisis PR-driven bullshit, and a lot of needless racist hassle for a couple hundred bucks. But anyway, here one of the apparent five flown is.

#20 - Soyuz TMA-5 Flown Flag, est. $200, sold for $437.33 [rrauction]
How Did A Confederate Flag Get Aboard the International Space Station? [spaceref]

study for The Social Mirror, Recycled, 2015

Recently I entered an open call for a public art commission. It was sponsored by the District of Columbia's Department of Public Works, which was looking for designs in which to vinyl wrap DC's single-stream recycling trucks.

I was compelled to enter for several reasons. One is my own long-standing interest in the highly under-utilized medium of vinyl wrapping vehicles. The other is a strong sense of responsibility and history surrounding any artistic endeavor involving garbage trucks.

The Social Mirror, 1983, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, image: feldmangallery.com

The examples shown in the RFP of vinyl wrapped garbage trucks in other cities were, to put it mildly, atrocious. Maybe underwhelming is more politic. Whatever, it turns out there are jurisdictions in this country who have been putting art on garbage trucks without the slightest apparent regard for the alpha and omega of garbage truck art: Mierle Laderman Ukeles' 1983 The Social Mirror. It just didn't seem right. It didn't seem possible.

Yves Klein had two shows in 1957 titled Proposte monocrome (Monochrome Proposition): the first was in January at Galerie Apollinaire in Milan [above], the second in October at Galerie Iris Clert in Paris.

In each case, Klein presented a group of eleven blue monochrome paintings of identical size, production, and appearance, but with different prices. Klein argued that despite initial appearances, each painting was in fact quite different:

Each painting's blue world, although all of the same color blue and treated in the same way, revealed itself to be of an entirely different essence and atmosphere; none resembled the other, not anymore than pictorial moments and poetic moments can resemble one another.

The most sensational observation was that of the buyers. Each selected the one that pleased them the most among the displayed paintings, and paid its price. The prices were all different, of course.

Klein's Monochrome Propositions were intended as a spiritually enlightening alternative to the polychrome world, a gateway to the mystical energies of the universe. And the pricing, Sotheby's argued, was "an audacious ploy that demonstrates Klein's ingenious handling and overcoming of the disjuncture between art and commerce."

I have never been able to reconcile these two aspects of Klein's early monochrome shows. Until now.

While searching through thousands of eBay test listings, I found an eBay test store that followed Klein's strategy. The same monochrome image was used for two dozen separate items--which all had different prices. The only problem was that there could be no buyers with no items for sale. I have solved this by making prints of nine images available at eight different prices.

And now I understand the Monochrome's Retail Proposition. The visual cacophony of a typical eBay search result is replaced by soothing uniformity. In this Kleinian spiritual paradise, I am left free to focus on the differences, both those I imagine, like shading variations in the jpgs, and those of price. My decisions fall away, all I need to think about is the essence of the transaction: to decide how much I want to spend.

Untitled (Test Test Test Item 16 --DO NOT BUY, NO ITEM FOR SALE), 2015
5x7 in. digital inkjet print
signed and numbered from an edition of 15 plus 2 aps
with price and shipping terms set in the original test listing:
$30+20 freight

Sound familiar? You can try it at home: Why spend $50 when there's an identical one for $25? But the "freight shipping" is more than the photo itself. Oh, I might buy a photo, if they weren't so cheap. It really is whichever one pleases you most.

See all nine Test Test Test prints, plus others [ebay/nycgreg]
Previously: Untitled (Do Not Bid Or Buy)

Arthur Dove moon drawings, from Helen Torr Dove & Arthur Dove's diary, 1936, image: aaa.si.edu

In 1936 Arthur Dove and his wife Helen "Reds" Torr were living upstate, in Geneva. That fall Reds went to Hartford to take care of her injured mother, and was gone for what turned out to be more than two months. Alone and pining for his wife, Dove eventually began making sketches of the moon each night in the diary they kept together.

From Jennifer Stettler Parsons' 2012 essay on Dove and the moon:

In addition to recording the temperature and weather conditions, Dove began making drawings in his diary (1936 diary, p. 137). These sketches, with their shadings and mysterious markings, appear to be evidence of the artist tracking the moon. The moon drawings continue each day with notations of temperature and barometric pressure, until Reds returned home on 8 November 1936.13 (1936 diary, p.155, 160). They mysteriously cease for two days on 15 and 16 November, but recommence on 17 November. (1936 diary, p.164-165) Dove continues to draw the moon every day until the end of the year. The new 1937 diary contains no moon drawings.(1937 diary, p.2) The drawings do not directly correspond to any established system of astronomical recording. The lunar notations, with their symbolic shadows and arrows (which change and move in each drawing), might be said to represent an individual system that Dove invented to document his observations in a personal and meaningful way.

Absence and Presence: Arthur Dove's Paintings "From the Radio" by Jennifer Parsons [aaa.si.edu]
Helen Torr Dove and Arthur Dove diary, 1936 [aaa.si.edu]

Untitled (ANDR Test Auction - DO NOT BID OR BUY - Ship DSCT 2),
2015, 5x7 in. digital inkjet print, ed. 15+2AP, of which
10 are available, $3+6 s/h

3/16 UPDATE: New images are listed at the bottom of the post, check them out.

Yesterday @yunginstitution turned me on to the Test Auction section of eBay, which is amazing. Test listings are for eBay developers to debug different features and settings, or for Power Users to preview and QA their regular listings. These auction listings have esoteric acronyms and abbreviations for titles, and images that range from stock to baffling to perfect. And they are full of warnings like TEST ITEM DO NOT BUY OR BID, and NO ITEM EXISTS NO FEEDBACK GIVEN

Well, these items exist now. And you can bid, and you can buy, and feedback will be given.

I have taken a selection of eBay test listings and recreated them to sell digital inkjet prints. The availability and pricing is determined entirely by the original listing. These 5 x 7 inch prints will be signed, stamped and numbered, and would obviously look best in groups.

Because they have "test" in the lot title, eBay won't allow the prints to be listed in the regular, searchable categories. But the customer service person I spoke with said they'll function just fine in the Testing category. They only look unbuyable.

Untitled (Andr test auction do not bid do not buy carrier 2)
2015, 5x7 in digital inkjet print, ed. 15+2ap, of which
one is available in this listing, $1 + 5.32 s/h, $15.32 intl [note: updated link to current relisted item

After I created the first several print listings, which are all quite cheap for what they aspire to be, I realized I could sort the thousands of test listings by price. And oh hey, it turns out some were quite expensive for what they are. So I added a few of those to the mix, too. To hit all the price points.

Untitled (ANDR TEST - JERBEAR - DO NOT BID OR BUY - MBIN COMMIT),
2015, 5x7 in. digital inkjet print, ed. 50+6 aps,
34 of which are available in this listing, $3+5s/h, $15 intl

Right now there are 18 19 images in the series, including a monochrome, one suite of eight prints, one pair, and two that could really work as a pair. Plus a picture of an actual pear.

Shop the entire series on my eBay seller page, or after the jump.

Teachers: stop preparing artists for the real world; help them to make a better one.

— Nayland Blake (@naylandblake) March 3, 2015

This tweet from artist Nayland Blake, who heads ICP-Bard's advanced photography MFA program, has been sticking with me all day. Blake's participating in a symposium Friday at Pratt with some other folks I know and respect a lot, on the nature and challenges of art school.

At first Blake's panel topic, "What is the role of art school in a market driven art world?" sounds like appropriate self-flagellation, and since William Powhida's also participating, I could imagine who's wielding the whip. But Bill's not just an iconoclast, and Blake's tweet gives hope for a constructive panel, if not quite yet hope for a better world.

Davdi Ross is in the morning, and BHQFU is in the afternoon, so it sounds like a full day. I hope it's streaming.

Situation: Art School symposium at Pratt, March 6, 2015 [pratt.edu]