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That fall the curious flocked to Gladstone’s gallery to watch a film depicting him scaling the gallery walls with the help of ice screws. It ended with Barney inserting the last screw into his anus. Stardom came instantaneously.

Unfortunately, the rest of “Barney’s Voyage,” Julie Belcove’s profile of Matthew Barney and Drawing Restraint 9 for W Magazine, is not available online.
But Randy Kennedy’s profile for the Times is, and he clears up the whole “Bjork and Matthew Barney live in New Jersey!” mystery that had the Noel Coward people so up in arms.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: “All art and all cultural production is political.”
The NY Times report on the inclusion of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ works in US Pavilion next year in Venice gives more information on what was included in the Guggenheim’s proposal. Here is what the pieces soud like to me, starting with the “never before realized” work, which will be installed in the entrance courtyard of the pavilion:

“two adjoining reflecting pools forming a figure eight, the sign of infinity” sounds like a pool version of, Untitled (March 5th), 1991, which is two round mirrors, side by side. The LA Times has more specifics, saying the 12′-diameter pools will be “based on 1992 drawings and notes submitted by the artist for the piece, originally intended for the campus of Western Washington University.” Curator Nancy Spector is probably one of only a handful of people who can pull off saying “As someone who is familiar with his sensibility, I like to think I would able to approximate what he wanted to do,” but still.

” his largest light string,” refers to Untitled (North), 1993, a 12-string piece on permanent loan at Bard Untitled (America), a 12-string piece in the Whitney’s collection.

“a suite of 12 framed black-and-white photographs, an inventory of idealized men,” is probably Untitled (Natural History), a work which refers, not to twelve men, but to twelve descriptions of Theodore Roosevelt inscribed on the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History.

“a large paper stack from 1992” is the most intriguing. There are only four stacks dated from 1992. At first, I thought it was a tossup between Untitled, 1992/1993, which features a bird in the sky, a classic Felix image, but really, it’s only slightly larger than the other two. And besides, the date’s unique enough it would have been mentioned. Which means the other piece is the black-bordered one above, which is significantly larger than the rest.
Like that “figure eight = infinity” bit, Carol Vogel provided cleanly didactic interpretations of Felix’s symbolism: “stacks of replenishable paper to represent the inevitability of death, strings of lights to represent dreams of a better world.” So it’s odd that a presumably easy-to-read “symbol” like a black border–which, on stationery and signage, has long signified a house in mourning–didn’t get a mention. Nor did the title: Untitled (Republican Years).

Like death and taxes, the State Department will catch up with you. One day.
From an interview Felix Gonzalez-Torres once did with Rob Storr

For example, here is something the State Department sent to me in 1989, asking me to submit work to the Art and Embassy 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. It’s a very interesting letter, because it’s so transparent.
Another example: when you have a show with white male straight painters, you don’t call it that, that would be absurd, right? That’s just not “natural”. But if you have four Black lesbian sculptors from Brooklyn, that’s exactly what you call it, “Four African-American Lesbians from Brooklyn.”

Now, ten years and a couple of months after his death, the State Department announced that Gonzalez-Torres’ work has been selected for the US Pavilion at next year’s Venice Biennale. Nancy Spector, who wrote the book on Felix–no, the other one; the one that Andrea Rosen didn’t write–will curate.
According to the State Department press release, “For the exhibition, Ms. Spector will include a new work, made from a drawing by Mr. Gonzalez-Torres but unrealized in his lifetime.”
As Felix’s Cuban–I mean, Cuban-American–countryman was famous for saying, somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Cuban-American Artist To Be Featured at International Exhibit [state.gov via artforum]
previously: On Politics and Art

I want to love the Walker Center’s Walker Channel video streams even more than I do.
There was a chat between Rirkrit Tiravanija and writer Bruce Sterling, for example [here’s the Walker’s blog post about it]
And Philippe Vergne talking with Dan Graham and his collaborators on his punk puppet opera Don’t trust anyone over 30.
And of course, Tyler was on the edge of his seat, waiting to watch the knives fly in realtime during the Whitney Biennial recap with Philippe and Chrissie Iles.
But unfortunately, the videos just aren’t doing it for me. They’re polite and non-confrontational to the extreme; they capture all of the tedium of a public event–including too-long intros and fawning, populist comments [Philippe actually asked Dan Graham, in his French accent, “Wat de heck am I looking at ‘ere?”]–with none of the excitement of being in the room.
And while the Rirkrit/Bruce dialogue mashup probably seemed great on paper, it didn’t work out. It was obvious that, by personality or arrangement, Bruce was “supposed” to be the “host,” asking questions, but he couldn’t help but launch into his own set pieces about how many laptops he has and how he powers them. Rirkrit, bless his heart, managed to come off as deeply incurious, even though he was presumably there to be asked about his work.
Finally, I don’t know if it’s my NYC-impaired hearing or some self-effacing Minnesota Nice thing about forcing people to listen harder by talking really quietly, but it’s nigh-impossible to hear what these kids are saying. Turn up the volume, people!
So I’ll just wait politely here until these bumps get ironed out. Which might happen sooner if even one other museum in the country had as ambitious an online program…
Walker Channel [channel.walkerart.org]

Joel, an eagle-eyed greg.org reader sends in this tip:

Maybe nobody in the history of advertising had thought to do this, but it would appear that an artist had. Lucy Pullen, a Canadian artist living in Victoria, BC, dumped thousands of superballs onto the streets of Halifax in 1997.

Pullen has shown in London and extensively in Canada, too; not that there’s any monopoly on the idea of a mass ball bounce–we once rolled a dozen thrift shop bowling balls down a very long staircase in college in the middle of the night, a wildly ignorant, dangerous thing to do–but still, it’s interesting to see where and how an idea is manifest.
“2500 Superballs,” 1997, Lucy Pullen in collaboration with Sandy Plotnikoff [iamvariable.com]
Previously: the making of Sony Bravia’s bouncing superball ad