the making of, by greg allen
This:
[philosophistry.com via mathowie]
reminds me of this:
in a good way.
Much like the 24-hour interview-a-thon itself, Claire Bishop’s report from the Serpentine Pavilion starts out hilariously–my original title for this post was to be “LOLOLOL”–and ends with unexpected substance and insight. Whether her declaration is the first, I don’t care, but Bishop nails it when she tags “the incessant production of talks and symposia” as “the new performance art. Authenticity, presence, consciousness raising—all of the attributes of ’70s performance—now attach themselves to discussion. In this environment, it would seem that Obrist and Koolhaas are the new Ulay and Abramovic.”
This had me laughing out loud:
Like trying to watch all five Cremaster films in one go, there eventually came a breakthrough when the experience was no longer painful. Mine arrived when I realized that our interviewers were suffering, too. Koolhaas’s opening gambit to laidback design legend Ron Arad couldn’t conceal his resignation: “I have always felt sympathy and respect for you, but never the inclination to talk to you. Now I have to ask you questions.”
Speech Bubble [artforum.com]
Previously: On watching Cremaster 1-5. In order.
Serpentine Eats Its Tail
Unrealized Projects, an agency, a book, a NYT article
Here’s the schedule for this Friday’s 24-hour interviewathon at the Serpentine Gallery pavilion. Mega-interviewer Hans Ulrich Obrist and perennial interviewee Rem Koolhaas will be tag-teaming on a whole slate of “culture industry” types.
If you can’t imagine ending your night–or starting your morning–at 4AM with a Damien Hirst interview, then your best bet is probably the opening session–Friday at 6pm: Ken Adam / David Adjaye / Brian Eno / Zaha Hadid / Charles Jenks / Hanif Kureishi / Ken Loach / Tim O’Toole / Yinka Shonibare–and a nice supper.
Serpentine Gallery 24-hour Marathon Interviews [timeout.com via kultureflash]
Previously: HUO interviews, vol. 1
I went to Iceland a couple of weeks ago, and I just put some photos up on flickr from the trip.
This one is of Afangar, a sculpture/installation by Richard Serra. The tops of these squared off basalt columns are level, but one column is 4m high, while the other is 3m. The distance between them, then, is determined by the slope of the land.
Serra placed nine pairs of colums around the periphery of one half of Videy, this island in the Reykjavik harbor, and some of them are quite close together; others, like these, are far apart.
The main feature as you walk, though, is bird droppings. When I first visited Videy in 1994, it was November, and except for a couple of Icelandic horses, I was alone on the island. This time, though, the place was teeming with sea birds, and the faint trail through the grass was chock full of tern turd. When you’d inadvertently get too close to an invisible nest, the birds would get really agitated. One nest was right next to the trail, and we didn’t see it until the mother flew out from underfoot and startled us. A lot of the Serra columns on the leeward side of the island are topped with a crown of guano, but the windward side is pretty clear.
It surprised us to see Olafur Eliasson’s Blind Pavilion from the 2004 Venice Biennale perched on top of the hill above the ferry dock, though. Apparently, they installed it there in early 2005 as part of his show at the National Museum. It looks like a gun turret up on there, though.
especially when I read something like this–and to be honest, I haven’t even finished it yet:
Design. Architecture. Football. [cityofsound.com via bldgblog]
William Egglestone
This is just a snapshot. I would not even have considered showing this. If you ware going to post pictures you need to make sure it is of something unusual or with a personal vision. Otherwise you are going to loose the interest of your audience. George Spelvin [Nikon D200, Nikon D70s backup, 17-35 f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8, 4GB Microdrive (2), Photoshop CS, Epson 2200]
Great Photographers on the Internet [theonlinephotographer via kottke]
Drawing Restraint, the exhibition of Matthew Barney’s complete series of works of the same name, opened this week at SFMOMA. It originated last summer at 21C Museum for Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, which was the occasion for the production of Drawing Restraint 9, Barney’s latest film, a collaboration with Bjork.
SFMOMA is the only North American venue for the exhibit, which runs through Sept. 17th. Many of the DR9-related sculptures were presented this spring at Barbara Gladstone in New York, but most of the series hasn’t been seen for quite a while, and definitely not all together.
As if that weren’t enough, the show features a “Matthew Barney Learning Lounge” for deciphering the artist’s work. There’s also an audio tour, of course. But along with Acoustiguides and podcast/mp3 versions, SFMOMA has also made the Drawing Restraint audio tour available to visitors via cell phone.
So if you dial 408-794-2844…whaddya know, it works. Here’s a little directory to the ten audio segments. To heighten the effect, immerse yourself in a vat of petroleum jelly while you listen.
20# Drawing Restraint intro, 4th fl landing, looking at DR14, created by scaling the walls of the museum, then worked his way under the bridge to draw, suspended.
21# DR1-6 videos, objects, and drawings. discussed by Nancy Spector, also videos of DR10-13
22# Path, Notes on Hypertrophy,, etc., drawings that followed the early studio DR works.
23# DR7, 1993, discussed by Nancy Spector
24# Ambergris, explained by Barney: “the idea that the diet of a whale contains things it can’t digest.”
25# Holographic Entrypoint, based on a flensing deck of a whaling ship, discussed along with the Ise shrine by Benjamin Weil
26# Occidental Guest cast from a room used in DR9, with film spoilers by Barney.
27# Occidental Restraint, 1,600 gallons of molded-then-collapsed petroleum jelly, discussed by Nancy Spector, then Barney talking about the connections between whale oil, petroleum, and the cast plastic.
28# Cetacea [left], part of the Field Emblem, discussed by Benjamin Weil.
29# DR8, glass tables containing delicate drawings: “Look closely at those drawings. Quite a few are erotic in nature.”
See exhibition details and download options for Drawing Restraint, which runs through Sept. 17 at SFMOMA [sfmoma.org, thanks to jason]
Ping Magazine covered the 21C Museum and has pictures of the Barney exhibition there. [pingmag]
Q. The Times could set a much needed precedent by creating a culture-news blog that profits from the eyes of an editor, rather than the current norm in blogdom, which is for semi-informed scribblers to post unedited ramblings, and often to claim bragging rights for scooping the dailies. An online column devoted to culture would bring the authority of the Times newsroom to the increasingly fast pace of the Internet. Such a feature could– [&c. &c. and I relish the opportunity &c. &c. demonstrate my expertise &c. &c.make a meaningful contribution to your firm. &c. &c. Some examples of my work are can be found here. &c. &c. ]
-Jason Edward Kaufman
If you’d like to pitch a job or story idea to NY Times culture editor Sam Sifton, send him an email at Talk to the Newsroom.
And you can ask him any questions you have about culture coverage in the paper [hey, self-informed scribbler Theresa Duncan got one!], too. The answer will be, “Um, we’re already doing that like a junebug on a frying pan,” but still, it’s fun to ask.
I’m skipping Art Basel this year–got a trip to Iceland and all–with the result that I hear my foreigner neighbors watching TV all day across the courtyard. They may not be able to comply with a “reserved parking” sign, but they can sure cheer the hell out of a soccer game.
Anyway, I’m sad to be missing this art critic match-up tomorrow, which should be exciting, even if it ends 0-0. I know the concept of seeking out poor people–or critics, same thing–at Basel seems counter-intuitive, but take a chance on this one:
“Artworld Evolution, or Future Babylon?” A freeform conversation with art journalist Marc Spiegler and critic Jerry Saltz of the Village Voice.
Between a booming market, rapid internationalization and radical expansion, the artworld’s border lines have become ever more ambiguous. But with collectors and artists curating shows, fairs functioning like biennials, gallery spaces playing kunsthalle, critics not criticizing, and auction houses hyping young stars, all the old roles and assumptions have gone wobbly. So, who will shape the future of art-making and who will shape the future of the art-market? And is there a difference between the two? Q&A follows.
Hmm, is the NYT liveblogging this?
June 14: Art Lobby, near the cafeteria in the Art Unlimited Hall, 17.30-19.00
Nickyskye on Metafilter:
Joseph wrote me love letters in which he couched his sexual interest in metaphors. I was told he used the image of a bird for penis and nest for vagina. His letters were full of birds and nests.
Just when you think there are no stones left to unturn in one woman’s firsthand account of being used–as a child, by her mother–to procure art from the pedophilic Joseph Cornell, there’s one more eye-popping anecdote. She took her only remaining Cornell to the art dealer, Richard Feigen, to sell, in order to finance a trip to India:
Mr. Feigen said that he too had been in India, to meet with the Maharaja of Indore who owned several sculptures by Brancusi, including the elegantly simple, bronze one called Bird in Space. The Indian government would not allow the Maharaja to export this valuable piece of art, so Mr. Feigen took a risk and decided to package the sculpture as a brass lampstand so it could exit India, which it did. He said that it was his first major art deal and that the sculpture sold for one million dollars.
The perfectly symmetrical irony, of course, is that Brancusi’s Bird In Space was the subject of a famous court case when it was first exhibited in the US in 1926. Customs agents, not believing the work was art, had attempted to charge import duty on the machined metal object.
In 2004, The Art Newspaper wrote about the Maharajah’s Bird In Space:
What happened to the Maharajah of Indore’s Brancusi birds?
In 1973 the Tate wanted to buy Brancusi’s black marble “Bird in space” through dealer Richard Feigen. The sale fell through because the trustees believed the work had been “smuggled” out of India.
Seems like the trustees were right. The National Gallery of Australia had no such qualms, because it bought two of the Maharajah’s three versions of Bird In Space, even though “the original limestone bases had been destroyed in India.” Brancusi, of course, considered the bases as integral to the works themselves.
That brass lampstand, by the way, ended up at the Norton Simon Museum, a 1972 purchase.
Flights of Fancy: Joseph Cornell and his muses [metafilter via tmn]
It’s funny, I’ve never really found the worlds of art and flickr to have that much overlap. Just look at the number of photos posted after the Maker Faire 2006 [4,055] compared to those posted after, say, Art Basel [295].
But it turns out some artists have a fairly deep presence on flickr–and by some artists, I mean Olafur Eliasson. There are over 600 photos referencing Olafur in either the tags or the text. [At Tropolism, Olafur posse member Chad posted about a particularly sweet photoset [above] from republish.org, which was taken at an opening last week in Berlin at Galery Aedes.]
[An aside on the one-name thing: people drop single last names all the time in the art world, “Oh, I have some Gursky, some Richter, Demand…” But there are a few artists who get the first-name treatment–Maurizio, Olafur, and Felix come to mind–and it’s funny how different the implications of intimacy make it sound. Whether it’s actually there or not, there’s a hint of friendship/confidance, like saying ‘Marty’ instead of ‘Scorsese’ or babbling about Bob at Sundance. This can obviously be both good and embarassingly tacky.]
Anyway, it makes a certain sense that Olafur’s work turns up as frequently as it does. First, it’s pretty sexy, and it looks hard to take a bad picture of it. Second, the elements of spectacle he explores make people want to take pictures of it. But most importantly, I think, is the self-conscious experiential nature of the work itself: it is art about the experience of perceiving and seeing, not just art, but everything. And that’s the sweet confluence with flickr, a site where people who pay attention to seeing–and photographing–the world as they experience it meet and mingle.
Taken even further, you could look at how Eliasson’s own taxonomy/typology/experiential photography resonates with the tag-friendly world of flickr, as if flickr-ites’ collective efforts are generating their own Eliasson-style photogrids of Icelandic landscapes, or waterfalls or geodesic domes. I love this one, for example, “F— Off, Olafur Eliasson,” [left] with the caption, “I was taking snaps of Icelandic Lighthouses long before that twat,” which both hits and totally misses the point. [There are tools now for creating photogrids from flickr images, pal, so have at it.]
Olafur himself seems to be adapting his work to account for this collective/collaborative element, and not just by making less photographic work [although that does seem to be the case, which bugs, because I still want me some, and it’s getting harder and more expensive to come by]. At least three times, including in the 2004 The cubic structural evolution project , [on flickr here, of course] and his work in the 2005 Tirana Biennial, the artist put hundreds of pounds of white Lego blocks into the hands of the audience, who built utopian fantasy cityscapes with them.
With flickr, then, it’s Olafur Eliasson’s world; we just live in it. And vice versa.
Olafur Eliasson: Mediating Space – A Laboratory runs through July 20 at Aedes am Pfefferberg, Christinenstr.18/19, 10119 Berlin.
Yeah, I’ve got a post about the MoMA gig with Jim Mangold on Tuesday, which was a lot of fun. Great guy.
But first, this picture from Curbed, which was taken on 21st Street between 10th and 11th Avenues:
Now compare it to this 2003 shot from the same block:
In the end, we’re all just food for worms, boys, warming the bench until Miuccia comes.
Art is in the Eye of the Property Holder [curbed]
Elmgreen & Dragset, Opening Soon / Powerless Structures Fig. 242, 2003 [tanyabonakdargallery.com]
You may know Brian Sholis from such venues as Artforum and his as-time-permits blog, In Search of the Miraculous.
Brian just posted some behind-the-scenes shots of the first of twelve installations Olafur Eliasson’s doing at Portikus, the Frankfurt art space. As anyone familiar with Olafur’s work knows, the behind is usually as important as the front.
A sneak peek at Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Light Lab’ [insearch]
After conducting the biggest contemporary auction in Sotheby’s history, Tobias Meyer told Artforum’s Sarah Thornton, “The best art is the most expensive, because the market is so smart.”
Uh-huh. This is the market that paid a million-one for a generic Yoshitomo Nara painting just because it’s big. Meanwhile, one of the last Robert Smithson non-sites in private hands–and artist hands at that, the piece was being sold by its original owner, Keith Sonnier–sold for just its high estimate, $374,400 [or $300K+ plus the 20% or so premium].
The market may be smart at the top, but there’s definitely a soft-headed center, too.
Yoshitomo Nara, “Missing in Action,” 1999, est. $200-300,000. Sold for $1.08 million at Christie’s [5/10/06].
Robert Smithson, “Shells and Mirror,” 1969, est. $200-300,000. Sold for $374,400 at Christie’s [5/10/06].
1) Truckload of Missing Art Found in Trailer Park, by Alan Feuer, NY Times.
2) A–
Actually, we have winner right there.
