Critics who don’t buy this also don’t buy this [via bloggy]
I guess if the Observer isn’t going to have art critics whose recommendations ever make sense, at least they can have critics whose pans are consistent signals of worthwhile shows.
Category: art
Meanwhile, Leo Steinberg c1960 on WPS1
So now my big complaint about WPS1 is that you can’t link to broadcasts very easily.
I’ve been listening to a series of lectures the art historian Leo Steinberg gave at MoMA in 1960 about contemporary art and the public’s reception/perception of it. There are three hour-long lectures; the first appeared last week (6/15), so work your way back through the ‘previous broadcast’ section to them.
I’m a lazy fan of Steinberg, whose unabashedly erudite tone I find very engaging. He invariably uses it to deliver extremely smart insights, all the while bringing you along his observational and analytical path. His method and criticism still strike me as entirely applicable to art-seeing and -making today.
It’s about as much fun as an audio recording of a slide lecture can be, I imagine. And it’s fascinating to listen back on a time when artist like Jasper Johns or John Chamberlain were seen as controversial provocateurs. Check it out.
Meanwhile, Leo Steinberg c1960 on WPS1
So now my big complaint about WPS1 is that you can’t link to broadcasts very easily.
I’ve been listening to a series of lectures the art historian Leo Steinberg gave at MoMA in 1960 about contemporary art and the public’s reception/perception of it. There are three hour-long lectures; the first appeared last week (6/15), so work your way back through the ‘previous broadcast’ section to them.
I’m a lazy fan of Steinberg, whose unabashedly erudite tone I find very engaging. He invariably uses it to deliver extremely smart insights, all the while bringing you along his observational and analytical path. His method and criticism still strike me as entirely applicable to art-seeing and -making today.
It’s about as much fun as an audio recording of a slide lecture can be, I imagine. And it’s fascinating to listen back on a time when artist like Jasper Johns or John Chamberlain were seen as controversial provocateurs. Check it out.
The Walker Channel
It’s like WPS1, but it’s almost two years old. The Walker Art Center operates The Walker Channel, an online collection of streamable artist interviews and other programming.
This is one prong of the museum’s strategy to maintain and expand their presence while their building is receiving a Herzog & deMeuron makeover.
Most of the recordings are interviews with people I’ve never heard of, and there are no explanations. But there IS a 2002 interview with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, one of the principals in the cool Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow. They published Pet Architecture, which is a very cool book and site.
It’s simultaneously heartening and depressing to note that this interview with an architect I’m very interested in is almost as excruciatingly underproduced as the early WPS1 bits I whined about earlier.
The Walker Channel
It’s like WPS1, but it’s almost two years old. The Walker Art Center operates The Walker Channel, an online collection of streamable artist interviews and other programming.
This is one prong of the museum’s strategy to maintain and expand their presence while their building is receiving a Herzog & deMeuron makeover.
Most of the recordings are interviews with people I’ve never heard of, and there are no explanations. But there IS a 2002 interview with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, one of the principals in the cool Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow. They published Pet Architecture, which is a very cool book and site.
It’s simultaneously heartening and depressing to note that this interview with an architect I’m very interested in is almost as excruciatingly underproduced as the early WPS1 bits I whined about earlier.
She Makes Art for Hard Money
So you better treat her right.
Approximately a hundred friends at Downtown for Democracy are organizing a fundraising party and silent auction of works by 35 established and emerging artists Tuesday, June 29, at Passerby.
Buy a $75 ticket to bid (silent auction runs from 8-10:30) or to see the preview (11-6). [And even though Bush & Co are the world’s problem, federal election regulations don’t permit (non-permanent resident) foreigners to give money or bid. Sorry.]
D4D is a PAC mobilizing the arts and creative community to raise hard money to, among other things, clean up the language on the Senate floor.
She Makes Art for Hard Money
So you better treat her right.
Approximately a hundred friends at Downtown for Democracy are organizing a fundraising party and silent auction of works by 35 established and emerging artists Tuesday, June 29, at Passerby.
Buy a $75 ticket to bid (silent auction runs from 8-10:30) or to see the preview (11-6). [And even though Bush & Co are the world’s problem, federal election regulations don’t permit (non-permanent resident) foreigners to give money or bid. Sorry.]
D4D is a PAC mobilizing the arts and creative community to raise hard money to, among other things, clean up the language on the Senate floor.
Now MoMA has a weblog
In anticipation of the reopening of the midtown museum building, MoMA’s design department created a new website–including a weblog–for the Junior Associates, a group of 400 or so people who do all kinds of art world-related activities. As far as I know, it’s the first museum weblog. (I know, Eyebeam eats weblogs for breakfast, but they’re not a museum. They ARE quite cool, though, and hosted a swell party and exhibition walkthrough for the JA’s, which, although it has passed, remains enshrined in a gif on the JA welcome page.)
When Picasso painted a portrait of Gertrude Stein (which she gave, alas, to the Met), someone said it didn’t look like her. “It will,” he replied. Such is the long horizon on which art’s influence operates. Remember this when you look for the weblog on the JA site, because the Museum has called it a ‘notebook’. A Typepad-powered notebook. We may not call weblogs notebooks now, the Museum seems to say, but we will.
I, of course, trendchaser that I am, suggested that the site be called JA Rule. After all, it/they does/do. For a young person in the city, it’s probably the greatest opportunity to get involved with a truly amazing institution. And as the calendar of events attests, JA’s get to do some really cool stuff. (For the reopening shindig this fall, being a JA is like having the golden ticket.)
In the end, the Museum’s rejection of my JA Rule idea was correct. The main requirements for becoming a JA, you see, are 1) an interest in seeing and learning about art, 2) a desire to support the Museum, and 3) $500 a year, or as it’s known in the haut monde of museum committees and high-priced benefit galas, 50 Cent.
Now MoMA has a weblog
In anticipation of the reopening of the midtown museum building, MoMA’s design department created a new website–including a weblog–for the Junior Associates, a group of 400 or so people who do all kinds of art world-related activities. As far as I know, it’s the first museum weblog. (I know, Eyebeam eats weblogs for breakfast, but they’re not a museum. They ARE quite cool, though, and hosted a swell party and exhibition walkthrough for the JA’s, which, although it has passed, remains enshrined in a gif on the JA welcome page.)
When Picasso painted a portrait of Gertrude Stein (which she gave, alas, to the Met), someone said it didn’t look like her. “It will,” he replied. Such is the long horizon on which art’s influence operates. Remember this when you look for the weblog on the JA site, because the Museum has called it a ‘notebook’. A Typepad-powered notebook. We may not call weblogs notebooks now, the Museum seems to say, but we will.
I, of course, trendchaser that I am, suggested that the site be called JA Rule. After all, it/they does/do. For a young person in the city, it’s probably the greatest opportunity to get involved with a truly amazing institution. And as the calendar of events attests, JA’s get to do some really cool stuff. (For the reopening shindig this fall, being a JA is like having the golden ticket.)
In the end, the Museum’s rejection of my JA Rule idea was correct. The main requirements for becoming a JA, you see, are 1) an interest in seeing and learning about art, 2) a desire to support the Museum, and 3) $500 a year, or as it’s known in the haut monde of museum committees and high-priced benefit galas, 50 Cent.
Just say you’re going to an architecture film series.
If you’re in London this Father’s Day: The artists Elmgreen & Dragset have put together a short program (49′) of film and video works which “examine architecture’s complicit role in defining our enactment of psychological states.” It will be shown at the Tate Modern, this Sunday at 15.00 (3:00 pm for the yanks). [via kultureflash]
Half of that time will be taken up by Jean Genet’s long-banned silent film, Un Chant d’Amour. It’s from 1950, the Eisenhower Era, when prison sex and erotic power-tripping guards was still considered an import, not an export, in the US.
It’s one of the landmarks of gay cinema [the DVD Times UK translates: “it contains possibly the earliest images of erect penises seen on a cinema screen.”]. The film influenced Derek Jarman, inspired Todd Haynes’ Poison, and lives on in every Calvin Klein perfume commercial you can think of.
Whether you take your father with you is none of my affair.
And they look so innocent…Elmgreen (l) and Dragset (r)
Related: Press coverage and reviews of Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibit at the Tate Modern through July 4th. They created a tiny animatronic sparrow which appears to be stunned and dying after flying into the window. Favorite stupid quote: “It took two artists to design the sparrow.”
Just say you’re going to an architecture film series.
If you’re in London this Father’s Day: The artists Elmgreen & Dragset have put together a short program (49′) of film and video works which “examine architecture’s complicit role in defining our enactment of psychological states.” It will be shown at the Tate Modern, this Sunday at 15.00 (3:00 pm for the yanks). [via kultureflash]
Half of that time will be taken up by Jean Genet’s long-banned silent film, Un Chant d’Amour. It’s from 1950, the Eisenhower Era, when prison sex and erotic power-tripping guards was still considered an import, not an export, in the US.
It’s one of the landmarks of gay cinema [the DVD Times UK translates: “it contains possibly the earliest images of erect penises seen on a cinema screen.”]. The film influenced Derek Jarman, inspired Todd Haynes’ Poison, and lives on in every Calvin Klein perfume commercial you can think of.
Whether you take your father with you is none of my affair.
And they look so innocent…Elmgreen (l) and Dragset (r)
Related: Press coverage and reviews of Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibit at the Tate Modern through July 4th. They created a tiny animatronic sparrow which appears to be stunned and dying after flying into the window. Favorite stupid quote: “It took two artists to design the sparrow.”
On Gabriel Orozco’s Photographs
Gabriel Orozco usually installs his photos interspersed with other works–drawings, collages, and sculpture. The Hirshhorn show which opened last week is the first time they’ve been shown alone. The show felt instantly familiar, and not because I’ve been a follower, fan, and collector of Orozco’s work for almost ten years. In that time, the artist has published several text-free collections of his photography. The exhibition feels like one of these artist books.
Each image on its own is almost incidental. This is purely intentional. From one of the earliest, most literal works in the show, My hands are my heart, Orozco takes the gesture of the artist as his theme. The gesture, no matter how slight, is at least one degree more concrete than that holy Duchampian standard of Artistic creation, the idea. But that doesn’t mean a gesture is any more substantial, just the opposite.
Traces of the artist’s breath on a grand piano. Condensation inside a recently removed wristwatch. Ripples from a stone thrown into a rooftop pool. Damp, cyclical bicycle tracks on an empty street. Orozco relentlessly experiments to discover the outcome and significance of even the most fleeting, insignificant gesture. That these gestures won’t last even a few minutes is just fine with him.
In some of his work, it’s hard to even tell what, if anything, Orozco’s done; it’s as if he’s playing a game of Where’s Waldo with us, challenging us to find his intervention. And just as often, especially in the photographs, the gesture is in the snapping of the shutter, the framing of the image. Through the camera’s lens, Orozco invites us to see the world differently, to see it through his eyes.
Given the art world’s current penchant for photography–especially for giant Gursky- and Gaskell-sized c-prints–Orozco’s small format photos seem almost quaint. [Only recently has the artist given in to market pressure and printed his photos in larger sizes. Fortunately, none of these super-sized prints are included in the Hirshhorn show.] Their effect on the viewer doesn’t come from easy, overwhelming spectacle, but through the accumulation of small elements over time. As the Japanese saying goes, Chiri mo tsumoreba, yama to naru (dust, too, piled up, can become a mountain).
And this is where the great power of Orozco’s work lies, and where the Hirshhorn show doesn’t quite deliver. Orozco’s evanescent gestures gain cumulative power when they’re manifested across various mediums, an effect which is muted by the photographs’ formal homogeneity. But put the concentric ripples in a pool next to a boarding pass with compass-drawn circles on it next to a video of a soap bubble floating down the street next to–no kidding–a sculpture consisting of a clear yogurt lid pinned to the wall, and, to the viewer’s surprise and amusement, the specific and banal becomes universal and profound. And I guarantee, you’ll never see a bubble or a cue ball the same way again. You’ll be playing Where’s Gabriel wherever you go.
Related: It’s almost two years since I took New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl to the woodshed over his negative review of Orozco’s work. So Tyler, you’re in good company.
Buy Extension of Reflection, the excellent exhibition catalogue, or From Green Glass to Airplane, the even better collection of stills from Orozco’s video works.
On Politics and Art
Rob Storr interviewed Felix Gonzalez-Torres in 1995. Felix identified Helen Frankenthaler as the most successful political artist alive, and then told about the invitation he received in 1989 to participate in the State Department’s Art for Embassies Program:
It has this wonderful quote from George Bernard Shaw, which says, “Besides torture, art is the most persuasive weapon.” And I said I didn’t know that the State Department had given up on torture – they’re probably not giving up on torture – but they’re using both. Anyway, look at this letter, because in case you missed the point they reproduce a Franz Kline which explains very well what they want in this program.
4/06 update: Creative Time has since removed this interview, and only one other place, the Queer Cultural Center, is hosting it. To make sure it stays out there, I’m reproducing it in whole on greg.org, just because. [note: I formatted it for easier reading.]
WTC Site Cultural Anchor: The Drawing Center??
Wow. There’s opaque and then there’s opaque. The Drawing Center was selected to join The Freedom Center in one of two cultural buildings planned for the WTC Site. Their building will adjoin the WTC Memorial, while the other two cultural organizations–The Joyce and Signature Theaters–will share a performance center across the street.
I’m a huge fan of The Drawing Center, as much as the aggressively unassuming, rather esoteric, old-school SoHo gallery can engender huge fandom. But how in the world did the LMDC come to the decision to put them next to the sure-to-be-corporate-slick American Freedom Experience? Is there some backchannel connection?
If only the artist Mark Lombardi were still alive, he could explain it to us. Lombardi’s intricate drawings traced the webs of corruption, power, and influence that spun out of major scandals like the BCCI bank collapse, Iran-Contra, and, ahem, “George W. Bush, Harken Energy, and jackson Stephens ca 1979-90.” That’s the title of the 1999 work above, which was included in the first major retrospective of the late artist’s career–held at The Drawing Center last fall.
On an Unrealized Art Project
In 1999, I conceived and contrived to make a piece of art. It began as an idea for a commission for the artist Olafur Eliasson, but my idea was so embarassingly specific and complete, there’s no way I could bring myself to ask him to do it. Even though I cannot imagine myself as an artist, or a maker of art, I had to admit that this was not an Eliasson, it was Eliasson-esque, at best.
The piece is a sort of reverse sundial.*
Our apartment in NYC faces north, and so receives no direct sunlight. At various times in the day, the sun would reflect off of windows across the street, creating sharply angled patches of bright light, which would move across the wall or floor, marking a specific moment in the day.
I devised to place a mirror on the roof of the recluse’s townhouse across the street, which would reflect sunlight directly into our apartment. It would have a motor which would track the movement of the sun, thereby maintaining the reflecting angle throughout the day. [Constructing this motorized mirror was a great obstacle. Last year, when I finally told Olafur about this piece, he said a German company made such a mirror, called a heliostat, which was exhibited at the Hanover 2000 Expo.]
Rather than the naturally changing light of a normal day, the apartment would receive constant, consistent, direct light. The light wouldn’t shift, the shadows wouldn’t lengthen, then contract. At first, the brt lt praised by realtors and sought after by apartment hunters would be welcome, but I expected that, after a while, it would become unnerving, even maddening.
[2007 update: soon after posting this, I told this story to a couple of Olafur’s dealers, who, instead of laughing with/at me, said I really should have proposed it to Olafur, because he would have loved doing it. Which is a huge bummer, because then I could have paid 1999 Olafur prices for the piece. Oh well, it’s mine now.]
* Olafur actually made a sundial-like piece in 1997 by cutting a round hole in the roof of the Marc Foxx gallery in Los Angeles. The circle of light tracked beautifully across the empty gallery space. The piece was titled, Your Sun Machine. I never dreamed to call my piece My Sun Machine, though.
