March 18, 2004

Sun Set

This is the last weekend to see Olafur Eliasson's installation, The Weather Project in the Tate's turbine hall. The museum's keeping the hall open until 1AM on Friday and Saturday, apparently because they're unsatisfied with only 2 million visitors. For added enjoyment, the Guardian published a diary from the Tate's manager, the one who had to deal with troupes of Santas, didgeridoo players, a man in a canoe, and people hooking up under the mirrored ceiling. [3/20 update: Michael...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2004

Modern Art Notes' Armory Show Guide

Tyler has compiled a convenient checkist for making a complete and utter ass of yourself at The Armory Show this weekend. For [my] entertainment's sake, please follow every piece of advice....
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Posted by greg allen at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2004

Talk-abouts: John Baldessari and Jeremy Blake in Artforum

Editor Tim Griffin introduces In Conversation, a new feature in this month's Artforum, artists talking to artists. To start: Jeremy Blake and John Baldessari, two artists with deep interest in the intersections between painting and ______(cinema, photography, technology, text, conceptual art). Both artists also have deep, abiding interest in film as well, which explains why this turned up on daily.greencine.com. One great thread: Baldessari's contested label as a Conceptual Artist. JOHN BALDESSARI: Well, in the late '60s, I was...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:11 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2004

The Quilts of Gee's Bend of the Corcoran

One of the most rewarding shows last year in New York was The Quilts of Gee's Bend at the Whitney. For generations, the descendants of former slaves in an isolated Alabama town developed quilt designs that stand alongside--and frequently prefigure by decades--some of the best modern art of the 20th century. The reminded me of Stuart Davis, 80's Sol Lewitt, and most of all, Ellsworth Kelly. Anyway, as of yesterday, that show is at the Corcoran in DC. I...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2004

Anne Truitt Week

Since moving Modern Art Notes to Arts Journal, Tyler Green's been demonstrating his critic-as-advocate chops, sometimes with a degree of acid that'd make even professional bee-atch Charlie Finch blush. He makes nice nice this week, though, by publishing brief excerpts daily from Anne Truitt's Daybook. On top of being a pioneer and stalwart of minimalism, Truitt's published journals are an unsurpassed window into the artistic process. Only Daybook is in print, but you can get the other volumes from ABEbooks....
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Posted by greg allen at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2004

On Jon Routson and the future of video art

For an artist who's only shown a couple of times and whose most well-known work --a 22-minute, reconceived-for-network-TV version of Cremaster 4--has only been seen by a handful of people, Jon Routson sure gets a lot of press. Baltimore City Paper's Bret McCabe gives Routson the full feature treatment this week, a 5,000-word cover story, complete with inflammatory comments by [at least one] wannabe playah with a weblog. With pleasant symmetry, another Baltimore artist, the indie filmgod John Waters, opens...
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Posted by greg allen at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2004

The Leonard Riggio Spiral Jetty Visitor's Center, Valet parking to the right

Well, not yet. But after years of drought, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is so visible (and walkable), it's getting so many visitors, the Dia Center is thinking: upgrades. Making the bone-jarring road more accessible; maybe adding some rocks here and there; getting it up out of the water so those pesky salt crystals don't form on it anymore. As Michael Govan, the Dia's director, notes, "The spiral is not as dramatic as when it was first built. The .Jetty is...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2003

Artist Books for the Holidays

If you're still looking for just the right gift for your Jewish (you better hustle) or Christian friend (you have a little more time), try an artist book from Printed Matter. Here are my, ahem, suggestions: David Hammons, The Holy Bible: Old Testament. The complete works of Marcel Duchamp, rebound as a bible. On Kawara's CD, One Million Years (Past), which covers the years 998,031 BC to 997,400 BC. Erin Cosgrove's take on romantic fiction as conceptual art project, The...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2003

Barnes Storm

Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler's on a roll, posting frequently and furiously about the current court proceedings to decide the fate of The Barnes Collection, the greatest assemblage of modern art in the country. Tyler does his gadfly best, providing some very useful context (and a bit of foaming at the mouth) for this big, somewhat under-/mis-reported story. Barnes was a new moneyed crank with a voracious appetite for once-unpopular art (Cezanne, Matisse, Renoir, Soutine, etc.), which he frequently...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2003

V(S)IP at Art Basel Miami T

The S is for Self, as in Self-Important. And I wasn't alone. Far from it. The most unnecessary question of the day was the endearing, "Do you know who I am?" It wasn't unnecessary because the Swiss minions running the art fair were so gracious, but because people were always telling you how fabulous they and their taste are anyway. My VIP card didn't score me an early private screening of the only piece I wanted to see in the...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2003

Art Roundup

You should feel horrible for missing Gabriel Orozco's latest show at Marian Goodman. His elegant, biomorphic sculptural shapes are recognizable at first as found objects: bones, husks, driftwood. In the rear gallery, though, less finished "sketches" of polyurethane foam extruding through fine wire mesh point to Orozco's material process. Gradually, it dawns on you that the artist didn't find the previous shapes; he created them by manipulating quick-drying foam on sheets of latex with a hard-to-fathom series of gestures...
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Posted by greg allen at 08:24 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2003

OK, I may have underestimated the ingenuity of British Protesters

If not their effectiveness. One more picture of Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project at the Tate in London....
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Posted by greg allen at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2003

What would buy with £25 Million?

I wonder if it's this amusing from the outside when New York acts as if its concerns are the most important in the whole wide world. The British art crowd's all worked up over a speech by Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate (and "the most powerful man in the museum world" WTF??), where he criticized the country's policy of "saving" art treasures (i.e., buying them so the Getty doesn't get them). Serota, with total disinterested objectivity, I'm sure, suggests...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2003

Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project

As you'll never see it again... As B.Logman's photos and news reports indicate, The Tate Modern has a massive-crowd-pleasing phenomenon on their hands. Now suddenly this photo I took at the preview seems worth posting, if only because who knows if it'll ever happen again....
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Posted by greg allen at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2003

Hiroshi Sugimoto's Accelerated Buddha

Hall of Thirty-Three Bays, 1995, Hiroshi Sugimoto Hiroshi Sugimoto: I came for the Seascapes, I stayed for the Hall of Thirty-Three Bays. I love this series of nearly identical photos of the Sanjusangendo, a Kyoto shrine. They're generally underappreciated, partly because they work best when seen all together. Fortunately, Chicago has started making up for the Cow Parade embrassment by putting the whole set on display in Sea of Buddha at the Smart Gallery at the University of Chicago...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2003

"We can easily believe that Bill Viola is worth ten Scorseses."

Them's fightin' words. In his Cinema Militans Lecture, Greenaway thought he'd rile up his audience at the Netherlands Film Festival with his opening, "Cinema died on the 31st September 1983." (Killed by Mr. Remote Control, in the den, if you must know.) But it's his claim that Viola'd trump Scorsese that's the real "they bought yellowcake in Niger" of this speech. He's just got Britishvision, distracted like a fish by a shiny object passing in front of him [Viola's up...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2003

More Olafur Eliasson Pix

The Weather Project, 2003, Olafur Eliasson, at the Tate Modern The top one's shot in the mirrored ceiling. I'm working on it, but right now, I got nothing that'll top this....
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Posted by greg allen at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2003

tate update: sun worshippers

the british public treats it as the real sun, laying out on their backs as if at the beach. [10/21 update: like I said...]...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2003

Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project at Tate Modern

Just got back from the preview and party for The Weather Project, Olafur Eliasson's absolutely breathtaking installation at the Tate Modern in London. The Turbine Hall is something like 500 feet long, the full length and height of the building. I can tell you that Olafur created a giant sun out of yellow sodium streetlamps, but that doesn't begin to describe the experience of seeing it and being in the space. It is this awareness of one's own perception...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2003

Chia-Church

The artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey and their team of 15 people plastered the walls of a church in South London with clay and grass seed. Read their diary at the Guardian and watch it grow to Graeme Miller's soundtrack. Related: visiting information from the London International Festival of Theatre More info on Ackroyd & Harvey and Miller on Artsadmin...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:34 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2003

On regime change I CAN support

Last week, I stopped by a party to celebrate the first issue of Artforum under its new editor, Tim Griffin, who I've known and admired for years, ever since he was edited the late Artbyte with ICA Philadelphia's Bennett Simpson. (For some of their collaboration that stayed online, check out the great show they curated at Apex Art in 1999, too). Combined with Eric Banks' impending relaunch of Bookforum, I think there's some good art readin' to be had....
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Posted by greg allen at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2003

Gabriel Orozco on PBS

[via Modern Art Notes] Nice, too brief info about Gabriel Orozco on the site for PBS' Art:21 series. Tyler said the program segment was "a little too languid," which sounds just about perfect for Orozco's work. The New Yorker entranceth and the New Yorker pisseth one off. The latter came last July, via critic Peter Schjeldahl's flaccid reading of Orozco's clay pieces at Documenta. Art:21 has images of a beautiful follow-up show at Chantal Crousel's gallery in Paris, and...
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Posted by greg allen at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2003

On Preserving Ephemeral Art

[via ArtForum] An interesting article in the Financial Times on the conservation challenges posed by ephemeral art, especially color photography and video. C-Prints, by far the most popular format for contemporary art photography, have a very uncertain future. Video and film, in the mean time, require a transfer plan, making sure the medium and format stays current (and the work stays true to the artist's intent). The article doesn't quite get it sometimes, though. Advocating for collectors to receive certificates?...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)

David Byrne's PowerPoint Art [and another NYT article]

Slide from David Byrne's DVD/Book of PowerPoint Art Veronique Vienne's got a sweet article in the Times about David Byrne's artistic exploration of PowerPoint. She casts a rather benign look at the way PowerPoint influences forms of discourse and thought. Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome; after all, Arts & Leisure editor Jodi Kantor used to be at Slate. ("But some of my best friends use PowerPoint!") But then, she's got a pretty clear-eyed quote from Byrne: "You have to try...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2003

On Christian Marclay

. Christian Marclay's awesome Video Quartet is on view now at LA's Hammer Museum, as part of a mid-career retrospective of Marclay's art-meets-music work. [In the LA Times, Chris Knight reviews the show--and misses some major points--with nary a mention of the video. the CS Monitor has a better review.] I remember MoMA exhibiting his 1989 piece, Tape Fall, where an audio tape of running water pools onto the floor. It was cool, but Video Quartet blew me away. Marclay...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2003

On Cows. No, Seriously. On Cows

[via WoosterCollective] Banksy, a prominent London street artist, has moved his work into a gallery for the weekend, and some people are pissed (in the American, not British, English sense of the word). Banksy tagged some live barnyard animals, and an animal rights protestor chained herself to the pen, temporarily leaving the foxes of England defenseless. Meanwhile, in the US, when artist Nathan Banks painted words on the sides of cows and transcribed the poems they produced as they wandered...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2003

Well Hung

When our DC neighbors' rather inconsiderately left their wireless networks turned off this morning, I ran over to the Hirshhorn to see their new, temporary installation of the permanent collection. It's pretty fresh, with room to breathe. A lot of wall and floor space is devoted to newer work, which had always gotten short shrift in the Hirshhorn's rather staid, historical hang (like a history teacher in May, having to cover "WWII-to-present" in a week). There are moments of real...
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Posted by greg allen at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2003

On the artist in Taos

Untitled #7, 1999, Agnes Martin image: zwirnerandwirth.com Lillian Ross makes nice as she hangs out with Agnes Martin, master of minimalistic painting, in Taos. It sounds simple, but don't bother trying this at home: "You paint vertically, but the paintings hang horizontally—there are no drips that way.” In April, Zwirner & Wirth had a small show spanning Martins' five decades of work....
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Posted by greg allen at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2003

On PS1

First, thanks to most of you for not coming today. It was kind of nervewracking, but my gallery talk went okay. There was a group of a dozen or so people who stuck through the whole thing, but a small mob would materialize whenever we'd stop to talk. Two things that helped the crowd: Richie Hawtin didn't open the Warm Up Series, he headlined it. That, and many of the galleries were air-conditioned. Anyway, I hung out for the...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2003

A Reminder: Other things to do at 3:30 on Saturday

If you're debating whether to join me at PS1 for my gallery tour among the selected exhibits, remember that many other things are going on at the same time: at PS1: Richie Hawtin cracking open the Warm Up Series at Film Forum: The Band Wagon, "the greatest of movie musicals" (it starts at 3:15) at Anthology: La Commune (Paris, 1871), Part Two, "the Best Film of 2002" (3 hours, starting at 3) Take this time to figure out Richard Linklater's...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2003

An Eye for Collecting: Museum Tours @ P.S.1

I'd say "Come to my museum tour this Saturday," but I just realized they booked my talk against Detroit Techno-god Richie Hawtin (aka Plakstikman), who's performing in the Warm Up Series. I have no illusions.On the occasion of the exhibition Site and Insight: an Assemblage of Artists, P.S.1 offers a series of museum tours, each led by an emerging collector or a curator for a private collection. Site and Insight is curated by Agnes Gund, one of New York's most...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2003

Frieze Mag's SMS Reports from Venice

The Venice Biennale is opening right now, and the artworld (minus 1 or 2) is trying to crash each other's parties. Far from regretting not being there, I am getting a full Biennale experience, thanks to Frieze Magazine's, SMS reports. For the second morning in a row, we were repeatedly startled awake by my cell phone vibrating across the room. Here's one from yesterday: FriezeSMS Venice 03: Text message codes: Pav=Pavilion. Gia=Giardini. Ar=Arsenale. IO=Invite Only. Pa=Party. And this morning, a...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2003

Meteorite Mashes Marfa Minimalist Masterpiece, Maybe?

Mmmm? In Art Papers, the artist Evan Levy tells the story of visiting The Chinati Foundation, Donald Judd's minimalist mecca in Marfa, Texas. He found "a flaw, a missing corner, in one of the concrete sculptures," which Judd placed in the field beyond his converted army warehouses. Later, Levy discovered a meteorite nearby, and wondered if it's "the only intergalactic rock to have struck a work of modern art?" He built a show around it, apparently. It sounds implausible...
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Posted by greg allen at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2003

Cremaster Roundup

The Cremaster Cycle is now playing in LA, Berkeley, SF, and Chicago. Wider exposure goes hand in hand with wider discussion, as these two very interesting links show: Wayne Bremser's article, "Matthew Barney versus Donkey Kong", for the video game magazine GameGirl Advance takes a look at video game character, mythological, spatial and narrative elements in Cremaster 3. That's the one where Barney's character scales the levels of the Guggenheim, passing various obstacles along the way. The hermetic logic of...
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Posted by greg allen at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2003

Photos--new & old--from off the Japanese Grid

Unless I missed the evite, the world didn't end Thursday. (And even if it did, Armageddon's no reason to stop weblogging.) The Pana Wavers above are using mirrors to deflect scalar waves, not just to create wonderful photos. There are more in Mainichi Daily News's Pana Wave photo special. [It reminds me that our inaugural Netflix movie was, fittingly, Agnes Varda's wonderful obsessed-with-death-in-long-lost-Paris film Cleo de 5 a 7, the Criterion edition. Varda uses mirrors beautifully through most of...
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Posted by greg allen at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2003

I [Heart] New York T-Shirt, by Maurizio Cattelan

I probably shouldn't post this until I get mine, but the artist Maurizio Cattelan created this shirt in a limited edition of 48. It's for sale at Printed Matter, the cool-since-a-long-time-ago artists' bookstore in Chelsea. Update: Jeff Jarvis wondered, rightly, if the shirt actually said "I" and "New York" (the heart, I can read). An interesting question, and not. It wouldn't be beyond Maurizio to use illegible/nonsensical script. As it turns out, at Social Design Notes, John recreated a...
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Posted by greg allen at 07:53 AM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2003

Aum2: Electromagnetic Boogaloo -- A Look at Pana Wave

I'm busy with some offline writing (just wait and see), but in the mean time, I felt the gaijin's obligation to provide some context for the recent one-eyebrow-raising >> reach-for-the-doorlocks reports of that road-trippin' Japanese cult, Pana Wave Laboratory. Their site is only in Japanese First the bad news: despite the promising name, the cult makes its money from herbal supplements and water purifiers. So no trip-hop CD is in the works. Now that that's out of the way, the...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2003

Things you should see, if only it weren't too late

See Landscape Escape a group show at the Crosby street SlingShotProject. Of special note: John Powers' headscratchingly beautiful sculpture, Daisy Cutter (above); Raphael Renaud's paintings of Marseilles, Cairo, Sao Paulo (which reminded me a bit of RIchter's late 60's Townscapes); and John Cliett's memorable (literally) photos of deMaria's Lightning Field. Read an incredible interview at Cabinet about taking them. Unfortunately, the show closed Sunday. See artist Robert Melee's incredible performance, This is for you, starring a diverse troupe of...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2003

Cremaster Alert: Matthew Barney

If I just heard right, Matthew Barney will be interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC at 12pm. [1pm update: hmm.] The entire Cremaster Cycle is showing at Film Forum, starting Friday. Seeing it all will involve multiple tickets and rearranging your life....
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Posted by greg allen at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2003

Movie and Art Roundup

I'm in the last minute throes of editing the AM screenplay before dropping it off for a serious reading. Here are some movie and artsite suggestions to occupy you. A little "Look over there!" handwaving, so you won't notice a slight drop in posting in front of you. A Mighty Wind is pretty damn good. But just as the line is very fine between driving an 80's Volvo and driving an 80's Volvo ironically, the distinction between a folk music...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2003

On The Best Way To See The daVinci Show

Go right now, before it closes. You've got three minutes. Just after 8:00, there wasn't any line at all. Galleries were crowded at first. Seeing the drawings required surrendering your personal space in this strange, silent, dance, like having to get out of a hundred elevators. But the throngs fell away, and when we left at 9:30, artist friends were sauntering back for a leisurely second lap....
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Posted by greg allen at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2003

On Art On My Mind

Generally avoiding television "coverage" of the war, but some images inevitably bleed in. Here is some art that's been on my mind as a result. [Also, gmtPlus9 went black in Japan and posted some war-related art. Thanks, Travelers Diagram.] Blast, from a series of photographs by Naoya Hatakeyama, image: LA Galerie Nacht 1, II by Thomas Ruff, who began using nightvision after the technology was popularized in Gulf War I (GWI), image: ZKM.de Olivier Silva, Foreign Legion 2000-2002, ongoing, by...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2003

Forget Cremaster 3, I Survived Cremaster 1-5

OK, before I talk about how seeing The Cremaster Cycle straight through changed my understanding of Matthew Barney's work, let me get a couple of things out of the way: 1) FLW didn't design those theater chairs to be sat in at all, much less for eight hours in one day Aggressive, non-user-centered architecture should be taken out and shot. 2) Best overheard comment after Cremaster 1, when a guy at a suddenly partially visible urinal complained that the mens...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)

It's Cremaster Friday, Demonlover Saturday

I'm watching the entire Cremaster Cycle today, a Friday feature of the Guggenheim show. In the mean time, Matthew Barney's site, Cremaster.net, is up and running. Check out the trailer; it's beautiful. And it doesn't take all day (unless you're on a dialup). In the mean time, brace yourself and go see Olivier Assayas' Demonlover tomorrow at Lincoln Center's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series (or, if you insist, Rendez-vous with Freedom Cinema series. Assayas will be at the screeningNow who's...
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Posted by greg allen at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2003

On Bar Codes And Profiling

A NYT article about Cockeyed's great barcode hack, written by David F. Gallagher (the Lightning Field one, not the shirtless one. "F." must stand for "fully clothed." David, you have my sympathies. At least you're going up against a real person. I'm still being out-Googled by an ad-agency caricature, an off-the-air bunny puppet, and a friend of Dharma, two if you count Greg Louganis.) Rob Cockerham is distributing clones of his Safeway card online, thereby commenting on/thwarting the supermarket's tracking...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2003

On Collecting Art, On Collecting Taxes

US Attorney/curator with posters of Rothko, Bacon, deKooning and either Twombly or Clemente, purchased by Sam Waksal with an 8.25% discount, at least. In the grand tradition of deposed CEO's, but with downtown sensibility (and far better taste), Sam Waksal pleaded guilty to evading sales tax on $15 million in paintings he purchased through a major New York dealer. It was the old, "send it to my factory in NJ, nah, just fax the invoice there" ploy, which has...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2003

Chelsea Gallery Shortlist

Untitled (Republican Years), Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1992 currently in "Stacked" at D'Amelio Terras If you are boycotting the French right now, you're a loser. They're putting on some of the best shows in town. Additions to an incomplete list: "Back Grounds," at Andrew Kreps [Dude, get a website!] a show of intricately made B&W photographs by Liz Deschenes, James Welling, and Adolphe Humbert de Molard. Curated by Olivier Renaud-Clement. "Stacked," a group show of, well, stacked works at D'Amelio Terras....
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Posted by greg allen at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2003

On A Big Art Thursday

Last night at a friend's house, Jeremy Blake showed us some recent work and talked about it. and by "house," I mean a sprawling, gorgeous Fifth Avenue apartment filled with pictures of supermodels (not kissing ones, but just hanging out ones) and by "some," I mean two of his DVD-based pieces, including Blossoms and Blood, a beautiful, expressive short film he made with Paul Thomas Anderson and Jon Brion for the Punch-Drunk Love cast and friends. It's a closely interwoven...
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Posted by greg allen at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2003

On Museums On eBay

This AP story [via the cool Scrubbles.net] from Indianapolis sounds like the tip of the iceberg: museum curators using ebay to add to their collections. My conversations about eBay with various curator friends all follow a predictable a trajectory: surprise that we're both eBay whores; polite envy over what the other scored; caginess over what we're looking for now; relief when we find out we're looking for different stuff; quick detente and an exchange of usernames when we find...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

On Wooster Collective

As I arrived at Gawker's launch party last week, I ran into some friends from my old consulting days. (I guess it's Nick's job to know everybody, and he does.) Anyway, their shoutout just before the elevator door closed, "we have a weblog, Wooster Collective" should be nominated for Undersell Of The Year. Wooster Collective is a hoppin' arena of grafitti, stickers, stencil art and other street art, with updates coming more frequently than the 4-5-6 train at rush hour....
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Posted by greg allen at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

As If greg.org Needed Another Matthew Barney Reference...

Yeah, I want a Cremaster belt buckle, but not if it means getting executed in a salt arena... image: guggenheim.org 'cuz it's gonna be all we talk and hear about for months (at least until Matrix Reloaded comes out). We're just suckers for an entirely fabricated, all-encompassing, and disturbing worldview. (What, the imagined world of Wolfowitz ain't scary enough?) Anyway, in the Times, Michael Kimmelman gets all sticky for the Cremaster show, which opens today at the Guggenheim. Note...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2003

On Thomas Struth On Art

Alte Pinakothek, Selbstporträt, München, 2000, Thomas Struth image: museum-kunst-palast.de The other night, I heard the photographer Thomas Struth talk about his work. A friend (who has a far more serious art habit than even I do) hosted a reception for the artist in his office. Extra Struths, brought out of storage for the evening, rested on stacks of printer paper, an installation technique you don't see at the artist's current one-man show at the Met. Struth spoke very quietly,...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2003

See Christian Marclay's Video Quartet at Paula Cooper By Saturday

Last night I heard the artist Christian Marclay talk about Video Quartet, his enchanting, mind-boggling music/film work at Paula Cooper Gallery. It's a 13-minute musical composition of nearly 600 separate film clips, on four simultaneous channels, projected onto a 40'-long screen. It was commissioned by a friend, Benjamin Weil, a curator at SFMOMA, where it was shown last summer to wide acclaim. [Naturally, Jason Kottke wrote about it then; so did Wired.com.] Rather than parrot or try to outdo...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2003

Art Worth Crossing The Street For

Installation view, Anne Truitt, Danese Gallery (image:artnet.com) Two shows of evocative new work by unrepentant minimalists are on 57th street at the moment, a moment when a pair of artists over 80 demonstrate the power and relevance of the minimalist mode, as well as the potential benefits of being in it for the long haul. Agnes Martin is showing luminous new paintings at PaceWildenstein, (who doesn't have a freakin' website, hello, 2003). Anne Truitt is showing several square column...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

Yeah, Capitalism, or In Defense Of A Collector

Also at Slate Joshua Clover writes a clever essay (very or too, depending on if those are exhibition posters or actual paintings on your wall) about Richter 858, a luxuriantly produced ode-- in book form, with specially commissioned poems and a CD (of Richtermusik, I guess) -- to a suite of Gerhard Richter squeegee paintings. Retailing at $125 and co-published by SFMOMA (who have been promised the paintings from an anonymous donor), Richter 858 is a "classic fetish item,...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2003

Overview: Powerpoint as Creative Medium

Bright Glow Tube (all images, powerpointart.com) Slide 1 - Background: Powerpoint invention and evolution (ref. Ian Parker's May 28, 2001 New Yorker article) Powerpoint taking over human thought. 30 million presentations made daily. (ref. Julia Keller's Chicago Tribune article today) [via Romenesko's ObscureStore.com] Career spent making/giving Powerpoint presentations (ref. "where I worked) Hay Theme Slide 2 - What this will be used for: As-Yet Unannounced Animated Musical (AYAUM) Wrest Human Creativity From Jaws of Monopolist Technology (TBD) Obligatory 3rd...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

January 03, 2003

Yinka Shonibare, Norton Christmas Project 2003

Dollhouse, Interior views, Yinka Shonibare for the Norton Christmas Project 2002 images:greg.org In lieu of Christmas cards, the art collector Peter Norton and his family began sending out specially commissioned works. In 2002, the British/Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare created a toy Victorian rowhouse, outfitted with his trademark Dutch batik fabrics, a photo of his own, and, for good measure, a Fragonard in the bedroom. Shonibare exhibited a sculptural installation based on Fragonard in 2001 and was in Documenta 11...
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Posted by greg allen at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2002

Aspen: The Magazine in a Box (on the Web)

Serial Project #1, 1966, Sol Lewitt, from Aspen 5+6 Unbelieveable. The entire collection of Aspen: The Magazine in a Box, is now online. It's the magazine equivalent of Kieslowski's Dekalog: almost completely unknown, yet highly respected and influential within it's narrow audience. In a fit of John Cage admiration, I tracked down and bought Aspen 5+6 several years ago. In addition to some floppy little records with Cage and Morton Feldman on it, there's a reel of 8mm film...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)

On Illegal Art

Superstar, 1987, Todd Haynes Last night we (finally) saw Todd Haynes' Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story last night. After years of being snubbed by the clerks at Kim's Video when I'd ask for it, and half-hearted attempts to get a bootleg copy from someone or other, we just walked over to Anthology and there it was, showing as part of Illegal Art!. (The first time I went to Kim's, a Suit workin' for the Mouse but livin' in Chinatown...
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Posted by greg allen at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2002

Gallery and Museum Picks So Far

Untitled (Two Windows), 2002, Toba Khedoori Drawing Now: 8 Propositions at MoMAQNS, for Toba Khedoori, Chris Ofili, Russell Crotty, Paul Noble, Kai Althoff [Roberta Smith's NYTimes review; Walter Robinson's artnet review] [There's a Toba Khedoori show at David Zwirner right now, too.] Lazlo Moholy Nagy Color Photographs at Andrea Rosen Gallery: They look like they were made yesterday, not in the '30's/'40's. (Actually they were. Moholy Nagy's estate had them printed for the first time ever. Liz Deschenes did...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:21 AM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2002

Liz Deschenes, artist/photographer

Beppu, 1997, Liz Deschenes I can't believe it's been five years since I saw photographer Liz Deschenes' first solo exhibition, Beppu, at Bronwyn Keenan Gallery. It's a show that has stuck with me ever since, and not just because I go to sleep and wake up looking at photos from it (the first one I got is visible in this installation shot. It's in the middle of the far wall, to the left of the monochromes.) Listening to Deschenes...
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Posted by greg allen at 05:26 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2002

On the influence of contemporary art on film, or Gurskyspotting

99 Cent, Andreas Gursky, 1999 Watching Paul Thomas Anderson and Adam Sandler discuss Punch-Drunk Love on Charlie Rose. The overly bright 99-cent store in the clip looked familiar, eerily familiar, and, sure enough, it is the same as Andreas Gursky's photo99 Cent, down to the giant "99-cents" banners on the back wall. Anderson also tapped Jeremy Blake to create abtracted hallucinations experienced by Adam Sandler's character. Although Blake has become best known for his digitally animated abstractions, he is...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2002

Placeholder: Spiral Jetty

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty.avi [1.3Mb], c. 2002 This will be the entry where I write about our trip to the Spiral Jetty and post some amusing pictures thereof. It will be enlightening and insightful, yet not without wry humor. As it reverences the work itself, it will impress you and amaze you (in a quiet way) with our vision, dedication, and lack of condescension, and it will make you want to make the pilgrimage yourself. Ideally, it will ease...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)

August 07, 2002

On the amusing cluelessness of The New York Oberver in re art

A remarkably obtuse article in the NY Observer about an art world lawsuit in which the famous "'white' painter" "debunks" the prices and value of his (and, by extension, all contemporary) art. Who is the artist, you ask? Surely you've heard of "David Ryman?" You think so? Yeah, in fact, he's one of your favorite artists (or so you tell people at cocktail parties)? Well, read on. You're clearly the target audience. Recap: Ryman was sued for one of two...
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Posted by greg allen at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2002

Praise for Artforum.com and blurbs re Richard Serra

Let me offer unqualified praise for the editorial acuity of Artforum's links recommendations. Two quotes from Calvin Tomkins' good Richard Serra article in the New Yorker: According to Richard Serra: Abstraction gives you something different (from figuration). It puts the spectator in a different relationship to his emotions. I think abstraction has been able to deliver an aspect of human experience that figuration has not--and it's still in its infancy. Abstract art has been going on for a century, which...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2002

Gabriel Orozco at Documenta 11

Contrary to one writer's opinion, Gabriel Orozco is a Mexican who can make pottery. After seeing Peter Schjeldahl's misguided critique of Orozco's work at Documenta 11 cited on ArtKrush to support an even broad(er)side on the state of contemporary art, I have to call bulls*** [Sorry, Mom.] on the whole thing. Orozco's Documenta 11 installation, Cazuelas (Beginnings), is comprised of "thrown" clay bowls. While the clay was still wet, Orozco threw smaller balls of clay into the bowls, where they...
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Posted by greg allen at 01:43 AM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2002

At the Hirshhorn Museum yesterday

At the Hirshhorn Museum yesterday (originally to see the Ernesto Neto installaion before it closed), I kind of fixated on the work of Anne Truitt, which is in the "Minimalism and its Legacy" installation on the lower floor. I wasn't familiar with Truitt's work, but a quick Google search shows an embarrassingly long and distinguished career (embarrassing for me not to know about it, that is). Go ahead, try it. Truitt was a central figure (along with Judd and Andre,...
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Posted by greg allen at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2002

Stopped off in Philadelphia for

Stopped off in Philadelphia for a couple of hours to see the big Barnett Newman exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum. One thing I hadn't known before was Newman's (and his other artist friends') battle with the relevance of painting in the wake of WWII. In a 1966 WNET documentary interview, Newman said how there was no sense painting in the early 40's, since the world was coming to an end. And in the late 40's, with global-scale destruction and atom...
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Posted by greg allen at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2002

Director's Headshot

One of the reasons I'd delayed submitting to some festivals was (of all things) my lack of a "director's photo (B/W)," which some festivals require. Last week, Roe Ethridge, a friend and artist whose work I've collected for three-plus years, took some photos of me. In the pinch, I scanned in a Polaroid and printed it out for the submission packets, but there are real prints on the way. Roe works as a photographer for a huge pile of magazines....
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Posted by greg allen at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2002

I was on a panel

I was on a panel today at -scope, an art fair held here in NYC this weekend. Hoping to follow in the tradition of the Gramercy International Art Fair, which began in the mid 90's by filling the rooms of the seedy-but-cool Gramercy Hotel with young galleries from here and there, -scope put galleries into three floors of the Gershwin Hotel and scheduled a bunch of ancillary events: a benefit, a concert or something, and "Collector's Day," (aka Mothers' Day)....
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Posted by greg allen at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2002

Ricci Albenda, an artist friend

Ricci Albenda, an artist friend had a party to memorialize his installation at PS1, which will be taken down tomorrow (the installation, not PS1). I went early to see "The Short Century," Okwui Enwezor's extremely far-reaching show of contemporary African art. The most engrossing piece was actually a film Ousmane Sembéne, the first and greatest of African filmmakers. One of his first films was a 20-minute short titled, Borom Sarret, a realistically shot portrayal of a day in the life...
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Posted by greg allen at 12:34 AM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2002

Janet Cardiff at P.S. 1

Janet Cardiff at P.S. 1 MoMA: It's rare when a work of art has the power to transform, transport so completely. Forty-part motet is such a work. 40 speakers are arranged in an ellipse in the gallery, each playing an individually recorded member of a choir. The unaccompanied choir sings a work in Latin by Thomas Tallis, a 16th century English composer. [see this National Gallery of Canada link for a more detailed description.] You move among the speakers, pausing...
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Posted by greg allen at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)