Category: art

Nice Hustle, Dia, You Get Right On That.

Red-headed Dia director Philippe Vergne was dressed in optimism–the new armor under Obama–and spoke of his mission this week to save Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty from contamination by oil companies planning to drill into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. “We’re going to win,” he said. I believe him.

– quoted by Linda Yablonsky last week, nearly a year after the oil drilling permit issue arose, and several months after the collapse in oil prices decisively returned the thick, sticky, low-quality crude at Rozel Point to unprofitability. [artforum]

Refreshments

Of the three Mormon-raised artists I’ll be talking about at the Sunstone Symposium on January 31st, painter Wayne Thiebaud is probably the most recognizable and accessible. Thiebaud’s brightly lit paintings of cakes, pies, candy, and other American diner delights were shown along side Pop Art from the earliest days of the movement, particularly seminal Pop exhibitions in 1962 at Sidney Janis Gallery and the Walter Hopps-curated show at the Pasadena Museum, “New Paintings of Common Objects.”
thiebaud_gumballs.jpg
You kind of half-think it’s a joke that Thiebaud’s subject matter–desserts–would have a link to his Mormon upbringing. Surely, I’m not making a serious point that Thiebaud is painting that most culturally Mormon of all foodstuffs–refreshments. Actually, I think he makes the point himself.
Compare the language in these passages from a 2001 interview Thiebaud gave for the Smithsonian Archive of American Art. The first is about growing up and the Church:

WAYNE THIEBAUD: My grandmother had, I think, eleven children. She lived to be 99. And my father, coming from another religion – Baptist, I think, if I remember – joined the Mormon Church, and was eventually an enthusiast, or was a- It’s a lay ministry, Mormonism, and he finally became a bishop. So I was a bishop’s son.
SUSAN LARSEN: Did the-
WAYNE THIEBAUD: But the Mormon community is very, very intersupportive. And- and so it was a very nourishing environment. I was what you’d call today, I think, a spoiled child.
SUSAN LARSEN: Mm-hm. Did you have a lot of people around you and people caring about you?
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Lots of aunts and uncles, that large family, so that it was- it was a wonderful kind of way, I think, to grow up, psychologically. In terms of the intellectual tradition, Mormonism has a very strange association with that, so it’s… That division occurred later on, and I’m no longer involved very much at all with it.
…
SUSAN LARSEN: In your family circle, was there much interest in culture, either music or art or pop- popular culture?
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Yes, on a kind of- a kind of very basic, almost folk level. The Mormon Church sort of encourages all kinds of performances. People get up and talk, and we were often encouraged to do, like, what they call one minute talks or three minute talks.
SUSAN LARSEN: What were they about?
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Mostly- well, mostly kind of hearty and humorous and religious or… little talks.
SUSAN LARSEN: Uh-huh, right.
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Lots of plays, dances. But very family oriented always.
SUSAN LARSEN: And so this was a- a factor in your weekly life, and things to look forward to and take part in? You took part in these?
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Yes, oh yes, very much so.
SUSAN LARSEN: Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. It wasn’t just watching, but participating.
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Yes, pretty much- pretty much centrally involved. Even if I were, for instance, to go in the – which I eventually did – become a scout, the scout troop was in the Mormon church. And if you went to a dance, it was at the Mormon statehouse [i.e., stakehouse. -ed.]– or church house. So it really was a- a community, a rather close knitted, intersupported environment.

Thiebaud then ties his paintings to the past–his past–in a couple of relevant ways:

SUSAN LARSEN:…The- the classic still life paintings that you’ve done often seem to feature comfort food or middle class kind of things that most people can access, that most people have access to, or have tasted or have…
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Right, and they’re available in almost every place in America. Same buffet spread in almost everywhere.
SUSAN LARSEN: Is that something that- that is important in the choosing of things to your, or was there…
WAYNE THIEBAUD: I think maybe part- certainly, part of it. But I start out with these very formalist problems. But certainly, toy counters and restaurants, which I’ve worked in, those experiences always, for me, have to have some footing in them, in that world that I, you know, I’ve lived in. And people will often ask, “Well, you never painted pizza, you never painted spaghetti.” And I’ll say, “Well, it’s not…” Yes, now everybody has pizzas everyplace, but my things have a lot to do, I suppose with nostalgia. I think Allan Kaprow once said that they’re very nostalgic paintings. They go, really, back to the thirties and forties. And the evolution of, let’s say, European influence on the decoration of pastries doesn’t really reach Medicine Bow, Wyoming; it’s just not the same. So there is that part, I think, which is crucial. Gumball machines, gambling machines, automobiles Even American cities and the juxtaposition of strange architectural differences, all the way from gothic to modern, and that the cities sort of grow up without plans, like Paris and so on. And even American agriculture, I think, was seemingly different in terms of its mechanization. But also, it’s sort of artfulness, in terms of how they make fences or design roads or…
…
SUSAN LARSEN: People seem to take enormous immediate pleasure in your paintings. (inaudible)
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Yes, that’s- I think that’s an inherent- can be an inherent danger, I’m supposed. But I’m delighted when people are able to smile at the work, and I- I hope it has a sense of humor and- and joyousness; that would be my- my hope.
SUSAN LARSEN: It seems because those things are in most of our common experience, I think there- there’s almost a kind of endearing welcome that- that the subject matter proposes to a lot of viewers. It’s- it’s as though you were there when they were a kid. You remember those tastes, those things. And there’s- those are moments of inexpensive pleasure that is available to most people. Very democratic, kind of. Better than showing something special and strange that only…
WAYNE THIEBAUD: It’s an interesting question, isn’t it, about how that comes about. I don’t think it can be faked. Like people who, say, try to fake… We were talking earlier about misery or- or inhumanity to man. That’s… I mean, if you’re raised in an atmosphere of continuing support and no troubles, then it’s very hard to make agony a real thing, or to affect primitivism or…Or in the case of even something like joyousness. If your life hasn’t been joyful, I don’t know how you’d ever get it into your paintings.

Joy, pleasure, comfort, nostalgia, continuing support, no troubles, these are the motivating feelings and evocations Thiebaud cites for his work.
The references and resonances between Thiebaud’s work and Edward Hopper’s are commonly recognized, as are his bigger picture interest in exploring consumerism and popular culture generally. But the idyllic past in Thiebaud’s memory is not just American, Western, or Californian; it’s Mormon.

David Hammons On Not Liking To Show In Gallery Spaces That Much

On a visit to Alexandria, Egypt, artist David Hammons asked a curator to ask a local non-profit, Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, if he could do a project with them:

I had to explain that it wasn’t going to be in their gallery. They had hoped it would be–it’s a very nice space, a marvelous, beautiful restoration of an apartment. As beautiful as the space was, that was too easy to do. I don’t particularly care for galleries. I’d rather walk through the city and find my own spaces.
I do that a lot in New York. I’ll find something and call people up with the address and tell people to go look at it. It could be a stack of wood in the subway or something that looks like a Joseph Beuys or something lying around. [emphasis added]

Then there’s this. about works where he predicted rainbows over Paris and rain in Munster:

was watching a video on YouTube in which Ornette Coleman presents a tune called “Spring” in Germany; he tells the audience, “Follow the idea of the song, not the song itself.” He also said, “Follow the idea, not the sound.” I was impressed with that. Follow how my ideas are put together, as opposed to whether the rainbow appears or the rain comes. I use this logic a lot. It moves in the realm of poetry as opposed to the actuality that people are used to or expect.

[via artforum]

W-T-F-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

I’m a fan of Walt Disney. I used to work at Disney. Disney has a place in the history of art. But Paul Richards’ four-page curatorial fantasia in the Washington Post yesterday calling for more Walt Disney in Our Nation’s Museums is the height of obtuseness. Unfortunately, it’s all too of a piece with the facile counter-intuitive stuntwriting that passes for the Post’s coverage of cultural topics. [cf. Blake Gopnik’s review of the National Gallery’s gelato collection; watching Metro riders ignore violinist Josh Bell, insultingly uninformed reviews of fashion and John Cage concerts, &c., &c.]
Richards gives six reasons–unpersuasive, sure, but also so off-the-wall they’re unanswerable–that Disney “deserves more than the video store. He should be in the museums”:

  • Walt Disney made drawing move.
  • Disney put his art deep inside our minds.
  • Disney could hang with the surrealists.
  • Disney could hang with the animal artists.
  • Politeness says admit him.
  • Time is on his side.
    Interestingly, he doesn’t mention what I suspect is the real reason he wants to curate Disney. Here’s the self-aggrandizing kicker of Richards’ 2005 reminiscence of Walter Hopps, the legendary curator and museum director who was as famous in art world circles for his erratic, irreverent behavior as for his prescient, influential exhibitions:

    Hours, sometimes days, would pass before one heard his low, rich voice, often on the telephone in the middle of the night. It was always worth the wait. He was the best art talker I have ever heard. His speech was like a Jackson Pollock drip painting, swooping, swelling, doubling back. He mesmerized. He taught.
    One night, I remember, at the headachy end of a noisy artists’ party, I asked him to conceive a show on the spot. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll call it ‘Seven Enormously Popular American Painters.’ Five supporting actors, and two stars. For the five, Walt Disney, N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Rockwell Kent and Saul Steinberg. And for the two competing stars, Audubon and Warhol.”
    The death of Walter Hopps makes the modern-art museum world feel somehow pale and tame.

    Luckily for Hopps, he died without having to watch a fanboi/critic try to turn some offhand party chatter about the worst show ever into a mouse-eared museum manifesto.

    • Richard Prince Sued For–What Else?–Appropriating Photographs

    Via Cityfile, we learn that Paris photographer Patrick Cariou has filed suit against Richard Prince, Gagosian [the man and the gallery], and Rizzoli for copyright infringement. Prince used photos from Cariou’s 2000 book Yes Rasta in the Canal Zone paintings he just showed at Gagosian NY last month [Rizzoli published a book of Prince’s works, too.]
    prince_canalzone_cariou.jpg
    In the suit [embedded pdf at cityfile], Cariou repeatedly calls Prince an “appropriation artist” [quotes included], who “boasts” of “copying” other peoples’ work. What’s different in this case, Cariou argues, is that instead of copying “anonymous commercial imagery, such as advertisements,” Prince has copied Cariou’s work. Which happens to be hard-won portraits of camera-shy Rastafarians, “approximately 100 strikingly original black-and-white photographs, mostly close-up portraits of stern, mystical-looking men within a distinctive tropical landscape.”
    As fun as it might be to watch the bedlam if Cariou was granted the relief he seeks–namely, monetary damages for copyright infringment and conspiracy; having every painting, scrap, scan, page and byte of the infringing works turned over to him and destroyed; having Gagosian send out notices to the buyers of Prince’s paintings that it is illegal to display or sell their infringing works–I don’t see Prince or his people losing much sleep over this case.
    First off, it’s not like the advertising imagery Prince has used before is either “anonymous” or the product of happenstance. When Prince’s versions of his Marlboro Man photos were shown at the Guggenheim in 2007, the NY Times interviewed well-known photographer Jim Krantz. He clearly had issues with the appropriation–rephotography in this case–and if he hadn’t assigned his copyright to Philip Morris, Krantz would probably be able to get a settlement from Prince, just like the rephotographed Brooke Shields photographer Garry Gross did.
    Reading Cariou’s complaint, you’d almost think Prince was simply re-presenting Cariou’s images as his own. In fact, Prince’s process and his use of Cariou’s images are much more complex, and it will almost certainly be the basis for a judgment in Prince’s favor. As the Canal Zone press release explains, process is central to the works:

    ..[the paintings] are, literally, “put together,” like provisional magazine lay-outs. Some images, scanned from originals, are printed directly onto the base canvas; others are “dragged on,” using a primitive collage technique whereby printed figures are roughly cut out, then the backs of those figures painted and pasted directly onto the base canvas with a squeegee so that the excess paint squirts out on and around the image. On top of this are violently suggestive swipes and drips of livid paint and scribbles of oil-stick crayon which, together with the comic, abstract sign-features that mask each figure’s face, add to the powerful push-pull between degree and effect. This has become a completely new way for Prince to make a painting, where much of what shows up on the surface is incidental to the process.

    Collaging and reworking and changes in format, size, medium and styles, they’re all transformative creative techniques that were directly addressed in the 2005-6 case, Blanch vs. Koons, where the same court [the US Southern District] found that Jeff Koons did not infringe Andrea Blanch’s copyright when he collaged a pair of legs from her photograph–published in a 2000 issue of Allure magazine–in a painting. Blanch lost on appeal, too.
    Prince’s process means his works, like Koons’s, will almost certainly be declared transformative, not derivative works, and as such, they’re fair use, not infringing. But Cariou’s filing also sows the seeds of another fair use argument, that of criticism and commentary. Cariou waxes on about the Rastafarians,

    …a spiritual society, living simply, independently, and in harmony with nature, apart from the industrialized world of environmental pollution and materialism which they reject and refer to as “Babylon.” Naturally, the Rastafarians do not trust outsiders, such as Plaintiff, and it was only after living with them for years that Plaintiff was finally permitted to photograph them.

    Prince’s Canal Zone project is precisely a critique of this sort of European Caribbean romanticism:

    Prince has transformed the former reality of his birthplace [i.e., the Panama Canal Zone] into a fictive space: “Canal Zone” provides an anarchic tropical scenario in which extreme emanations of the (white American male) id – fleshy female pin-ups, Rastafarians with massive dreadlocks, electric guitars, and virile black bodies – run riot.

    And then he takes it further, critiquing utopias wherever they’re found [sic], including Thomas More’s original Utopia, an island “that possessed a seemingly perfect socio-political-legal system.” Sound familiar?
    By roughly juxtaposing distinctly unclassy porn against Cariou’s photos, Prince calls bullshit on the myth of the White Man’s humble, harmonic embrace of and by the “simple,” “stern,” “mystical” Rastas. Cariou might as well sue Andy Samberg and NBC for defamation while he’s at it. He’d probably have a better case.

    Richard Prince and Larry Gagosian slapped with suit [cityfile via afc]
    Canal Zone, Nov 8 – Dec 20, 2008 [gagosian]
    Is it even in print? Could the controversy lead to a new edition? LIMITED AVAILABILITY – Yes Rasta by Patrick Cariou [powerhousebooks.com]
    If the Copy Is an Artwork, Then What’s the Original? [nyt, 2007]

    A Favorite Kippenberger Made From A Favorite Richter

    The Martin Kippenberger retrospective closed yesterday at MoCA, which means it’s just a few weeks away from opening at MoMA, which means I’ll finally be able to see one of my favorite-from-afar Kippenbergers in person.
    The Happy Ending To Franz Kafka’s Amerika is always fun. And I love the Metro-Net subway stairs and vents for the trains that connect the world–the NY-style ventilation grate in the front lawn of LA’s Schindler House on Kings Rd still conflates those two cities for me.
    kippenberger_richter_modell.jpg
    “Haven’t you people ever heard of coasters??”
    But the one I’ve been waiting to see is Modell Interconti. It’s a coffee table that Kippenberger made in 1987, and the top is made from a Gerhard Richter Grau painting. Kippenberger bought the painting as a Richter, then sold it as a Kippenberger, promptly destroying–or at least disappearing–a significant percentage of its market value.
    Though I’m sure he didn’t take too big a hit. Richter’s grey paintings have never been as pricey as his less boring work: the blurred photo-based paintings, the gloppy aerial landscapes, the hard color grids, the squeegees. Which is part of why I like the grey paintings so much; they can be so successful at eliminating the extraneous elements and letting you focus purely on the paint, the surface, the object. And the range is anything but boring. Those giant grey glass paintings at Dia:Beacon create a space as seductive and perceptually disorienting as any Serra.
    Ten years after Kippenberger made Modell Interconti, you could get a slightly smaller Richter grey painting at the Armory Show for around $10,000. Which was probably the price of a major Kippenberger by then, too. So within a decade, Kippenberger had caught up with Richter’s market. And now a major Kippenberger–like, say, Modell Interconti–is surely worth more than a small, demure Richter. At least it was pre-meltdown.
    kippenberger_richter_moca.jpg
    Modell Interconti, 1987, collection Gaby and WIlhelm Schürmann [image: swo.de, link broken (2016)]
    The MoCA photo used by the LA Times is probably better. [latimes]
    2016 update: Chin-Chin Yap’s case study of the moral rights associated with Modell Interconti, from July 2009 [artasiapacific]

    Donate To ArtFagCity’s Year-End Pledge Drive

    Paddy Johnson does great work at AFC. By contributing today–right now, in fact–you can help support the expansion online of art, its creation, exhibition, and its thoughtful interpretation. And thanks to her collaboration with Momenta Art to manage AFC’s fundraising and the appropriate, non-profit use of the proceeds, your contribution is tax-deductible.
    details, discussion, and donation: The Art Fag City Year-End Fundraiser: the final stretch [artfagcity.com]

    On Mormon [sic] Art, 31 Jan 2009

    The greg.org Unannounced Holiday Break [UHB? Oh wait, that’s already taken] is over.
    cremaster_nauvoo.jpgA month from now, on Jan. 31, I’ll be part of a panel discussing Mormon art and artists at the Sunstone Symposium in Washington, DC. It’s sponsored by Sunstone, a journal of Mormon religious, historical, and cultural thought. [Details and registration info are here.] The panel also includes Lisa Fraser [singer/songwriter], Erin Thomas [writer], and Jonathan Linton [artist/illustrator], and the moderator is Menachem Wecker, a DC-based journalist specializing in religious art.
    Since all my fellow panelists are professional artists, I think the organizers wanted me to talk about my film stuff, or the 19th century Mormonism-related screenplay adaptation I’ve been working on, but I didn’t feel I could do that well in a panel. So I suggested–and instead will be talking about–Mormon artists and Mormonism in the contemporary art world. I’m thinking it might be a pretty short talk.
    The most prominent references to Mormonism in contemporary art are obviously in Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, particularly in Cremaster 2, where cowboys two-step around the temple in Nauvoo, Illinois, and Gary Gilmore’s parents visit the spiritualist whose table is supported by Golden Plates. As one of the [presumably] few Mormons to actually see Barney’s work, I figure his interest is in symbology and self-contained systems, and that Mormonism is just another source, like football and Freemasonry, from which he constructs his own hermetic world. If I see Matthew before I speak, I guess I’ll finally ask him if he was actually raised in the church, or if being from Boise is enough to make anyone an honorary Latter Day Saint.
    thiebaud_gumballs.jpg
    But my main focus is on the three major artists whose Mormon connection is uncontested–and for the most part, unconsidered: Wayne Thiebaud, Paul McCarthy, and La Monte Young.

    [above: a trailer (?!) for a 2007-8 McCarthy exhibition in Ghent, maybe nsfw]
    Typing those three names next to each other, I can’t think of a more dissimilar-seeming bunch. It seems the only thing they have in common is that they grew up Mormon in the West–Thiebaud in Los Angeles and Southern Utah, McCarthy in Salt Lake City, and Young in rural Idaho–and they all left the Church.
    Also, they’re all old. Thiebaud and Young were both born in the Depression [I guess I should get used to saying “the last Depression”], and McCarthy was born in 1945. I tried and couldn’t come up with another prominent artist in the contemporary art world with Mormon connections or roots born since WWII. Though there are a few artists showing in New York these days with LDS connections–Lane Twitchell, my brother-in-law Benjamin Cottam–it does seem that there’s at least one missing generation.
    I’ll be researching and posting a bit about this [dis]connection between Mormons & contemporary art over the next few weeks. If anyone has any thoughts, particularly if you want to out your favorite Baby Boomer artist as a Mormon, I hope you’ll drop me a line.

    Astute And Observant Viewers Get Fischli & Weiss

    It just keeps going and going! From Steven Kaplan emailed with a reply from MoMA curator Christian Rattemeyer about the consciousness of edits in Fischli & Weiss’s Der Lauf der Dinge: “It is his contention that many astute and observant viewers (himself included) have ‘always thought of it as an edited work, never as a continuous chain reaction.'”
    D’oh! If you need me, I’ll be over here in the unastute and unobservant section, reading People. But to Kaplan’s–and by extension, Rattemeyer’s, and the entire observant art world’s–point, I didn’t mean to imply that Fischli & Weiss have duped anyone, or that they or any institutions are mis-presenting the piece.
    Editing is basic to the language of film, so basic, in fact, that it often disappears from our consciousness. That’s just the way things go. Just as Fischli & Weiss’s meticulously fabricated re-creations of a custodian’s closet, Der Lauf der Dinge‘s impact derives from its seemingly artless [sic] matter-of-fact-ness. It looks and feels like a documentary, just a guy with a camera capturing the way things go. But it turns out to be a film that–like any other film–is the careful culmination of a whole host of aesthetic decisions, both on the set and on the editing table. Maybe the editing point is so obvious, it doesn’t need to be made, but I guess I’m simpleminded like that.
    [update after thinking about it: Though F&W’s edits are not cuts, the kind of jumps of time, place, or vantage point we’ve come to read unconsciously as film; they’re almost all illusionistic, dissolves and fades, that attempt to approximate continuity.]
    Rattemeyer also brought a show at Susan Inglett Gallery to Kaplan’s attention, titled “The Way Things Go,” in obvious homage. It closes tomorrow, so I’ll have to content myself with the press release and images.
    The Way Things Go, through Dec. 20 [inglettgallery.com via thing.net]

    Miguel Barcelo, 100 Tons Of Paint And $25 Million Walk Into The UN…

    barcelo_un_ceiling.jpgSpanish artist I’ve never heard of #48 Miguel Barcelo got the commission to paint the domed ceiling of the UN Palace of Nations’ Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations chamber in Geneva.
    Eyeteeth has some photos; Designboom has some background on the making of, which involved pigments from around the world and paint ball guns.
    Apparently, the minority right in Spain has raised a stink about the government’s share of the $25 million cost. In retrospect, they probably could’ve saved a bundle if they’d let Sony shoot a Bravia ad during production. A 4,600 sf paintball target of peace presents an attractive marketing hook.
    Room XX by Miguel Barcelo [designboom]
    The UN’s Stalactite Ceiling [eyeteeth]

    Vik Muniz Gets Fischli & Weiss

    fischli_weiss_things_room.jpg
    I’ve been searching for more critical acknowledgment of Fischli & Weiss’s Der Lauf der Dinge as an edited construct instead of the miraculous documentation it’s normally perceived/presented to be.
    Though he’s talking about another Fischli & Weiss piece [above], artist Vik Muniz, who just curated Der Lauf der Dinge into “Creating a Rebus,” his show at MoMA, nails some very relevant aspects of the duo’s work:

    It’s about this connection between mind and matter — how something is conceptual and formal at the same time. Fischli and Weiss are artists that I admire for this: They manage to put an enormous amount of craft into their illusions. I remember when I first saw this piece at Sonnabend Gallery, people didn’t think these objects were constructed, but they are all cast pieces. It takes a lot of labor to make something look accidental.”

    Vik Muniz on Creating a Rebus [artinfo.com, image: matthew marks gallery]
    update: In a short podcast with Mexican artist Pablo Helguera, Hirshhorn curator/researcher Ryan Hill mentions F&W’s dissolves a couple of times, and how exhibiting the film on a loop can trap visitors who keep watching the procession go round and round. I don’t know why there’s no way to search, sort of link directly to the many, many podcasts on Hirshhorn’s site, but here’s the mp3 file [hirshhorn.si.edu]