Minneapolis, Philly, New York, Chicago, Princeton NJ, Southern Maine, and a few other spots along the way. I've been on a crazy travel schedule. It's been great.
I started writing for DailyServing and started a blog for print nerdery (the Wandering Printmaker). It's been crazy, and tomorrow I'm headed back to NY for Print Week.
Some recent ideas in no particular order:
- NEJAR, and Greg Cook can bite my left ankle. The worst public art thing is redic. It's insulting to the artists and myopic.
- Minneapolis Institute of Art is one of the best museums I've ever been to. With a good olde-fashioned dictator and a few hundred more years, it would be Louvre or Prado good.
- Writing about the arts is hard, but I love it.
- Seeing art is awesome, and I love it.
- Sarah Sze is a good artist.
- College art museums are the entrepreneurs of the art world. Some of their ideas are great, some suck-- all are pushing new ideas though. Their work makes big museums look better than they are.
- Independent curators are the risk takers that drive the college museums entrepreneurial spirit. Thank god the AAMC finally allows them to be members.
- I like this.
- I like Pipilotti Rist a lot.
- I need to go drinking with Natalie Jeremijenko and say smart and funny things to impress her.
- AICA/USA is the secret decoder ring I want. They are the art mafia illuminati that I want to be part of.
I'll be in Chelsea and at the E/AB fair tomorrow, the IFPDA fair, the Met, Prints Gone Wild, NYU, and maybe Brooklyn Museum over the next few days. My show at BCA is right around the corner in March/April 2011. I'm still applying to MIT. I'm absolutely ready for a nap.
03 November 2010
08 September 2010
Curator's Statement for Open Air @ The Nave Gallery
Open Air at The Nave Gallery in Somerville MA.
Artists:
Matthew Best
Nathalie Miebach
Carolyn Muskat
Ted Ollier
Jason Shoemaker
These five artists use the outdoors as inspiration without relying on the timeworn landscape tradition. Each has his/her own way of dealing with the outdoors. A quick description of each project:
Matthew Best's 2+ year suburban foraging project is a visual diary centered around food, life, death, and our insufficient attention to these concerns. Rejecting the clinical delivery of fruit and foods from around the globe, he restores the dependence on our immediate surroundings for nourishment.
Nathalie Miebach's sculptures weave together literal meteorological storms and personal emotional storms. These objects attach the external chaos surrounding us with our internal emotions. These are further developed by collaborating with the accomplished Elaine Rombola to create musical scores out of these storms.
Carolyn Muskat's sculptures revolve around the idea of top soil and ground cover. Buried below the ground we see is our history. Creating granular constructions from her own history she explores geological dimensions, humanizing the process and producing new ways of understanding old tropes.
Ted Ollier's photographs trick us into thinking that he has created a "zen like" calligraphic scroll. Instead, the asphalt patches in the road are brought to our attention in such a quiet and sly way that it is shocking to earnestly find meaning in such a humble object.
Jason Shoemaker's large narrative print of flying objects escaping the manufactured city fits in well with his allegories of roosting birds. These symbolic creatures move out into the wind, finding new roosts. Oddly, at the far end from the large and complicated city we find the impossible-- a man sitting on a horse that is standing in a boat.
Taken together, these works introduce original interpretations of the outdoors. Neither relying on outdated aesthetically motivated images of bucolic scenes nor currently stylish politically motivated "green" readings of our world they form a new modality in the landscape genre.
Each has found a new focal point that guides their work. Miebach, Best, and Ollier's work relies on some form of scientific method; primarily gathering data. Of course, the gathered data is used in divergent ways. Miebach's explosions of color and structured form demand a short book like 1971's Entropy and Art (PDF copy at link) by Arnheim. Her sculptures enthrall the viewer and reward continued study but escape simple explanations.
In contrast with Miebach, Best uses his data as object. Forming a hermeneutic circle, without the individual information from each day, the project is restricted and without understanding the end goal, any individual page is not intelligible. The viewer who possesses both the end goal and the details can project themselves into the project.
Ollier's photographs capture everyday objects from an impossibly impartial perspective. He illustrates his ideas with objective systems, and relies on these systems to provide the images for each piece. Even though he goes through a rigorously concrete process, the final images retreat from what could be entirely too literal and boring.
Shoemaker and Muskat both have overarching themes that strays into the allegorical. In Shoemaker's case, he seems to challenge his own world view with this print. It would be easy to read the work as a indictment of urban sprawl encroaching on the natural world, but his careful and sensitive depiction of both the city and birds who escape it should be read differently. Seen in his wider oeuvre, these birds need a place to rest and the city is where they return to at the end of the day.
Last, Muskat's two sculptures come from her long-standing exploration of the earth under our feet. She sees the top soil as the current chapter in world history. Beneath us, no matter where we stand are buried histories, with boundless narratives and connections. The way our life builds up is similar to how geologic formation are created, for example: from explosions, from wear, or from exposure to hardships. As we excavate the earth, we can do the same for our own self, and unearth hidden pains and triumphs.
In the end, these five artists are creating works that are part of wider dialog about who we are and what our surroundings say about us. From Anne Hamilton's explorations of site specificity, Kader Attia's questioning of location, to Fallen Fruit's various projects centering on fruit-- Open Air's artists may be creating new and previously unseen works, but they are also taking part in a wider conversation currently playing out in art today.
For some pictures see my Flickr.
04 September 2010
19 August 2010
ubu web is awesomer!
In order to see more of her work and get beyond her staring at you, you should watch this Marina Abramovic, 1975-1976 performance video.
1. Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful.
2. Freeing the voice
3. Freeing the memory
4. Freeing the body.
She's one bad ass cat.
And, no, I didn't watch the whole thing while eating popcorn either. It's long and sometimes intense.
1. Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful.
2. Freeing the voice
3. Freeing the memory
4. Freeing the body.
She's one bad ass cat.
And, no, I didn't watch the whole thing while eating popcorn either. It's long and sometimes intense.
16 August 2010
B/R/S 135, the final episode
That's the end of Big Red and Shiny. Issue 135 is the end. Love it or hate it, it was a great place to publish reviews without major pressure. I'll miss it. My review of Rivane Neuenschwander is in 135. I'm smitten with that show weeks after seeing it, which is better than most shows I see. Hope everyone gets to see it.
Saw Anna Hepler and the Wadsworth's traveling show of American moderns on paper (also reviewed in B/R/S 135) up in Portland ME. The Portland Museum of Art is such a badly designed space, but everything they have up is wonderful and important, so you overlook the cramped spaces and narrow hallways-as-gallery. They have a nice Vuillard nude and a hybrid book painting from Anselm Kiefer that should be seen. Unfortunately I went on a day when the commercial galleries were closed, so I missed a few other things I wanted to see.
The print/drawing/paper New Works show is up at the MFA. Man did that department get the short straw in the new MFA redesign. They use to have what's now the Torf Gallery and the space next to the musical instruments. Today, they have 30% of the space in the Brown gallery. Either way, the show has some great work in it. 6 Christiane Baumgartner prints, a 95 Jasper Johns print, Julie Mehretu, and Michael Oatman’s collage Exurbia. A nice group for such a small room.
I think the best part of being in the MFA right now is the random crap you see due to the redesign. Upstairs in what will be the contemporary wing is Kara Walker, plastic wrapped Jonathan Borofsky, and a ton of plywood.
It's quite fetching.
Saw Anna Hepler and the Wadsworth's traveling show of American moderns on paper (also reviewed in B/R/S 135) up in Portland ME. The Portland Museum of Art is such a badly designed space, but everything they have up is wonderful and important, so you overlook the cramped spaces and narrow hallways-as-gallery. They have a nice Vuillard nude and a hybrid book painting from Anselm Kiefer that should be seen. Unfortunately I went on a day when the commercial galleries were closed, so I missed a few other things I wanted to see.
The print/drawing/paper New Works show is up at the MFA. Man did that department get the short straw in the new MFA redesign. They use to have what's now the Torf Gallery and the space next to the musical instruments. Today, they have 30% of the space in the Brown gallery. Either way, the show has some great work in it. 6 Christiane Baumgartner prints, a 95 Jasper Johns print, Julie Mehretu, and Michael Oatman’s collage Exurbia. A nice group for such a small room.
I think the best part of being in the MFA right now is the random crap you see due to the redesign. Upstairs in what will be the contemporary wing is Kara Walker, plastic wrapped Jonathan Borofsky, and a ton of plywood.
It's quite fetching.
27 July 2010
More books
Found a new-to-me book publisher, and they've got some books I'm gunna buy.
JAN VERWOERT- Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want
ROTTERDAM DIALOGUES- The Critics, The Curators, The Artists
E-FLUX JOURNAL- What is Contemporary Art?
MARIA LIND- Selected Writing
HANS ULRICH OBRIST- Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating* But Were Afraid to Ask
JAN VERWOERT- Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want
ROTTERDAM DIALOGUES- The Critics, The Curators, The Artists
E-FLUX JOURNAL- What is Contemporary Art?
MARIA LIND- Selected Writing
HANS ULRICH OBRIST- Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating* But Were Afraid to Ask
19 July 2010
Steffen Schleiermacher
Also, feel free to use the comments section at Big Red and Shiny to tell me that my review was (insert angry internet criticism here). Or that you think Steffen is a crap pianist. Isn't that what the internet is for?
Another 10 hours of my life on Rt. 84
New York. Lots of art spaces to root around in. Visited again this week.
New museum's Brion Gysin show was excellent and I ran into a friend from undergrad that I haven't seen in years. This show was a disappointment for me in some ways, and completely what I wanted in others. The good news first, much of his important work from his career is shown here. The bad news, it is way too crowded for the amount of work and is a pared down show compared to the retrospective shown in the town he spent his childhood, Edmonton Canada, in 1998. If you want to learn a ton about his life and career, buy the book from Edmonton, and go to this show to see the works in person if you can get to NY at all. It's well worth it.
The reason I have to complain about the way the work was put up is that a lot of his work is very loud and chaotic. If it overlaps, you can not escape the other stuff happening in the other room. His work was mostly composed in solitude, and is very hard to find in private or public collections. This is truly an important show to see if you are interested in the artists who had no interest in Greenberg, minimalism, conceptualism, etc. He was an outsider of sorts. His work presaged a whole other way of working that was related to anything in the mainstream of art history in the 50/60/70's.
The surprise in store for me at the New Museum was Rivane Neuenschwander. She may not be an household name, but I think her work deserves this mid-career retrospective. Her work is massively influential in her native country, Brazil, and is better known in Europe. I appreciate the ephemeral nature of her work and how smart the work shown is. She creates new and accessible objects, or installations, but their immediacy, their lack of large historic critical myths is what makes me love them. It is refreshing after seeing so much conceptually driven work in Boston.
After the Storm (scroll down most the way) is one of the new works on display. The newer works do not show the influence of Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, her metaphorical Brazilian artistic parents. Instead of being an experience, a video of an experimental moment, or an installation, it is a collection of 12 maps of NY's counties that have been left out in the rain to decompose. Then they are drawn and painted on. It's an object, but still requires you to pay attention to the ephemeral and non-restraint involved in the making of the work. The maps have all but been eliminated by the artist losing authority (author-ness) in the beginning stages of the creation process.
I moved on to Chelsea. Saw a pile of galleries with just one piece in it worth talking about, so I'll skip them.
The Graffiti NYC: Artists of the Third Rail was stuck in one generation of graffiti. They were nice enough to let me charge my phone and the DJ was excellent, but it wasn't the historical show about the growth of writing in NY that I hoped it was. It is always worth seeing that era. I hope it doesn't get forgotten in this mass-market driven hip hop light world we live in now. These guys lived it. Well worth seeing the paintings and the photographs of early hip hop pioneers.
Kaleidoscopic Adventures at Blank Space was cool. I was too tired by the time I got to see Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham to appreciate the work, but I'll see his show at Portland Museum next year.
The Hans Op de Beeck show at Marianne Boesky was interesting. I'm not sure what to think about these large watercolors. They might be greeting cards done large, or they might be just fantastic oversized explorations of single themes like absence and presence or the often explored memory. But I like them and they stayed with me for days now.
The real reason I went down was to see the IPCNY summer show. My friend Deborah Chaney (printer at Gowanus) was a juror and wrote the essay for the show. The gallery was a milllllion degrees and louder than anything should be without amplifiers. But, the show is excellent. Heat is such a nebulous idea to jury, but hey, I didn't have to make those calls!
New museum's Brion Gysin show was excellent and I ran into a friend from undergrad that I haven't seen in years. This show was a disappointment for me in some ways, and completely what I wanted in others. The good news first, much of his important work from his career is shown here. The bad news, it is way too crowded for the amount of work and is a pared down show compared to the retrospective shown in the town he spent his childhood, Edmonton Canada, in 1998. If you want to learn a ton about his life and career, buy the book from Edmonton, and go to this show to see the works in person if you can get to NY at all. It's well worth it.
The reason I have to complain about the way the work was put up is that a lot of his work is very loud and chaotic. If it overlaps, you can not escape the other stuff happening in the other room. His work was mostly composed in solitude, and is very hard to find in private or public collections. This is truly an important show to see if you are interested in the artists who had no interest in Greenberg, minimalism, conceptualism, etc. He was an outsider of sorts. His work presaged a whole other way of working that was related to anything in the mainstream of art history in the 50/60/70's.
The surprise in store for me at the New Museum was Rivane Neuenschwander. She may not be an household name, but I think her work deserves this mid-career retrospective. Her work is massively influential in her native country, Brazil, and is better known in Europe. I appreciate the ephemeral nature of her work and how smart the work shown is. She creates new and accessible objects, or installations, but their immediacy, their lack of large historic critical myths is what makes me love them. It is refreshing after seeing so much conceptually driven work in Boston.
After the Storm (scroll down most the way) is one of the new works on display. The newer works do not show the influence of Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, her metaphorical Brazilian artistic parents. Instead of being an experience, a video of an experimental moment, or an installation, it is a collection of 12 maps of NY's counties that have been left out in the rain to decompose. Then they are drawn and painted on. It's an object, but still requires you to pay attention to the ephemeral and non-restraint involved in the making of the work. The maps have all but been eliminated by the artist losing authority (author-ness) in the beginning stages of the creation process.
I moved on to Chelsea. Saw a pile of galleries with just one piece in it worth talking about, so I'll skip them.
The Graffiti NYC: Artists of the Third Rail was stuck in one generation of graffiti. They were nice enough to let me charge my phone and the DJ was excellent, but it wasn't the historical show about the growth of writing in NY that I hoped it was. It is always worth seeing that era. I hope it doesn't get forgotten in this mass-market driven hip hop light world we live in now. These guys lived it. Well worth seeing the paintings and the photographs of early hip hop pioneers.
Kaleidoscopic Adventures at Blank Space was cool. I was too tired by the time I got to see Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham to appreciate the work, but I'll see his show at Portland Museum next year.
The Hans Op de Beeck show at Marianne Boesky was interesting. I'm not sure what to think about these large watercolors. They might be greeting cards done large, or they might be just fantastic oversized explorations of single themes like absence and presence or the often explored memory. But I like them and they stayed with me for days now.
The real reason I went down was to see the IPCNY summer show. My friend Deborah Chaney (printer at Gowanus) was a juror and wrote the essay for the show. The gallery was a milllllion degrees and louder than anything should be without amplifiers. But, the show is excellent. Heat is such a nebulous idea to jury, but hey, I didn't have to make those calls!
09 July 2010
Hartford/New Britain
Ran down to CT in the heat yesterday.
Visited Trinity on Main in New Britain. Gonna be putting up a show this coming spring hopefully. Might be sooner. Going to help with a show at the Mayor's gallery in New Britain this summer too.
Went to NBMAA after that. Great space. They are doing it right. Elana Herzog's works made of paper and fabric stapled to the wall were nice, but many of their paintings were what really got me excited. Tom Yost's Painter Hill Road is an excellent little landscape. Christopher Gallego's Interior with Three Rooms is another excellent realistic painting. It's exactly what it sounds like, a painting of a house's interior. Walton Ford's Fallen Mias (see above) is another stunner.
Headed up to the Wads-Ath to at least see the Matrix 159 show of Justin Lowe.
Can't say enough about this installation. He really used his chance in a museum to its full potential. The image above is from my cell phone, so it's hard to see, but this is the acid room, the 60's acid room if you ask me. The floor is a carpet of pulp horror novels, the walls are reflective, the windows are colored green and pinkish, the tv shows overlain with other acid movies, the paintings are composed from the novels in the floor. It's intense.
Next to that is a hallway that has a slide projector. This room did nothing for me, but that's ok, as it leads to the post acid, punk rock cocaine and beer CBGB's bathroom. It's a dark place and dangerous. Maybe the hallway was the aftermath of the free love era where one moves to northern Cali to grow your own food or Aspen to be free. Either way, the bathroom is what everyone seems to be talking about. It was too clean and smelled too good to be the real CBGB, but that's fine by me.
Next door to that is the 90's rave chill out room. The music Brooklyn hipsterish-- a mellow non-genre slog of noisy chillout. With the symmetrical video projector showing another set of videos mashed together, this felt overpoweringly content. Too content. Melting into the carpet content.
Hiding behind all this drug reference is a great site specificity. He reflected the museum by being era conscious and making period rooms, he brought a Jackson Pollock into CBGB's bathroom for example. He made lots of puns about what he included in each room that reflect on the Atheneum's holdings. Very smart show.
Glad I went. Any museum that has a strong contemporary tradition and a Rembrandt, Zurbaran, and a pair of Glotzious's (or is it Glotziouseses?) paintings is alright by me.
29 June 2010
How one might read modern art.
Everyone who might be slightly interested in Museums and/or art exhibitions has to watch the first 5ish minutes of this talk. Lowry is laying out a seriously important changes that are going on at the MoMA. Ann Temkin spoke at Harvard last month, and echoed these sentiments from her perspective as chief curator.
I've been reading the early history of the MoMA written for the 10th anniversary. I'm going to start writing about these years, but Lowry and Temkin both certainly know their history from what I've read already.
If you make it to 24 minutes in to Lowry's video you hear him talk about a subject I watched butchered at teh Fast Co. Wicked Pissah Bahston crap this morning. A portion of the conversation went as such: How does a Museum reach younger adults?
A: Their kids.
And kids coming off their school buses are the M-F daytime shift of art goers was what else I found out today! Man, I thought it was shifting your programing and understanding what non-AARP visitors need/want. So, if you know anyone at the MFA, let them hear that the MoMA dropped their average age from 55 to 40 years old by working with a younger audience that PS1 understood, not by forcing 30 somethings to bring their kids.
And speaking of twisting mom's arms, I guess I had more info about this than the speakers this morning, as I read this. Moms and kids are a complicated creature to court.
P.S. I just reread my Dürer review. I needed one more edit. I apologize.
I've been reading the early history of the MoMA written for the 10th anniversary. I'm going to start writing about these years, but Lowry and Temkin both certainly know their history from what I've read already.
If you make it to 24 minutes in to Lowry's video you hear him talk about a subject I watched butchered at teh Fast Co. Wicked Pissah Bahston crap this morning. A portion of the conversation went as such: How does a Museum reach younger adults?
A: Their kids.
And kids coming off their school buses are the M-F daytime shift of art goers was what else I found out today! Man, I thought it was shifting your programing and understanding what non-AARP visitors need/want. So, if you know anyone at the MFA, let them hear that the MoMA dropped their average age from 55 to 40 years old by working with a younger audience that PS1 understood, not by forcing 30 somethings to bring their kids.
And speaking of twisting mom's arms, I guess I had more info about this than the speakers this morning, as I read this. Moms and kids are a complicated creature to court.
P.S. I just reread my Dürer review. I needed one more edit. I apologize.
26 June 2010
24 June 2010
That Nuevo York place.
Ran down there this week. Had to see the Bespoke show as I know all but one of the bike builders in the show. It's complicated and interesting. I'll be writing up a review and as long as it makes sense on paper/screen/smarty-pants-phone it'll be published in the following weeks.
I also saw the Dead/Alive show. Has numerous good works and icky ones too. I like icky works. The birds turned into synthetic diamonds were awesome, but I wouldn't spend 30 hours trying to explain how the show functions-- as it's pretty straightforward. Ick, death, and odd smells.
The baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman collection is a perfect example of how design often works in museums. It sometimes reduces what probably should be considered a sculpture to design.
I hit up that Frick collection I keep hearing about. Dude had deep pockets. 3 Vermeers is not natural. Having two essential Rembrandts also on the scale of hedonistic. The perfect early power portrait and probably the best self-portrait. And the Holbeins! good lord. I believe fortune smiled down on Mr. Frick in order to have those two portraits facing each other in such a well funded public collection. Everything else he did and collected (including the Franz Hals portraits) were just padding around those two Holbeins.
Around the corner at the Asia Society is Mariko Mori. I won't belabor this either, as Kumano is from 1998, but it's the work from Mori that is who she is to me. If you have the time, go, but read up on the signs and signifiers of Japaneseness. That work is jammed full with how the Japanese understand themselves. From the calligraphic style to the moon, to the temple, to the fox spirit. It's her best work to me as it's solid packed with complicated images.
Throw in a drunken evening in Brooklyn, and it ended up being a good distraction.
Speaking of distractions, I hope people know that the work of art thing on the TV shouldn't be taken seriously or talked anywhere near as much as it has. It's a tv show kids. Like Futurama, the return of which I'm more excited about. It's worse than tv, it's reality tv. Like the housewives, but with corporate art whoring instead of die job ladies selling their bodies and souls for fame.
I also saw the Dead/Alive show. Has numerous good works and icky ones too. I like icky works. The birds turned into synthetic diamonds were awesome, but I wouldn't spend 30 hours trying to explain how the show functions-- as it's pretty straightforward. Ick, death, and odd smells.
The baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman collection is a perfect example of how design often works in museums. It sometimes reduces what probably should be considered a sculpture to design.
I hit up that Frick collection I keep hearing about. Dude had deep pockets. 3 Vermeers is not natural. Having two essential Rembrandts also on the scale of hedonistic. The perfect early power portrait and probably the best self-portrait. And the Holbeins! good lord. I believe fortune smiled down on Mr. Frick in order to have those two portraits facing each other in such a well funded public collection. Everything else he did and collected (including the Franz Hals portraits) were just padding around those two Holbeins.
Around the corner at the Asia Society is Mariko Mori. I won't belabor this either, as Kumano is from 1998, but it's the work from Mori that is who she is to me. If you have the time, go, but read up on the signs and signifiers of Japaneseness. That work is jammed full with how the Japanese understand themselves. From the calligraphic style to the moon, to the temple, to the fox spirit. It's her best work to me as it's solid packed with complicated images.
Throw in a drunken evening in Brooklyn, and it ended up being a good distraction.
Speaking of distractions, I hope people know that the work of art thing on the TV shouldn't be taken seriously or talked anywhere near as much as it has. It's a tv show kids. Like Futurama, the return of which I'm more excited about. It's worse than tv, it's reality tv. Like the housewives, but with corporate art whoring instead of die job ladies selling their bodies and souls for fame.
15 June 2010
Scheduling two years out.
Apparently pictures of AARP Rock and Rollers isn't populist enough in Brooklyn? Who knew?
Even if No sleep till... used a guitar hook, maybe 50's rock photos should be considered outside the normal populist crap for NY. I know that the white hipsters listen to... whatever the hell that is, but if you had put together an early hip hop photography show, I think it would have done better and fewer competing institutions could say that they got there first.
Essentializing the Brooklyn audience aside, museums are always brooding about what to put up 2 years before we get to make fun of them. Look to the successful shows from this article and you'd probably not want to drop your money and schedule a show about religion in contemporary art or the Indian highway system if you are hemorrhaging viewers. You might alienate someone.
But the thing is, that if the NYT numbers are correct, you are reaching 2.4 times the number of viewers over all and 2.3 times the numbers daily with Leibovitz and Mueck (love to see the numbers separately for each artist, but oh well) than you are with RnR photography exhibit. Also, as Robert Storr says, the audience of the unholy combination of Leivovitz and Mueck is more likely to return to see art, than some rock bros or mid-life crisis boomers are to return to see Kiki Smith or the upcoming Warhol.
You have to keep your museum focused on something but there is space for being open to wide programing. I love old fashioned encyclopedic institutions like the MFA Boston or Philadelphia Museum of Art. The MFA can afford to have a popular show of Egyptian artifacts as it doesn't get in the way of them having a Dürer, Harry Callahan, Toulouse-Lautrec, and a show about the women in Firdawsi's Shahnama simultaneously. Philly had up mediocre Picasso show, but was balanced with a Bruce Nauman installation and Jennifer Levonian, Martha Colburn, Joshua Mosley's work.
You have to keep your popular but questionable shows balanced with your quietly worthy shows.
I'd ask Brooklyn to consider their mission statement:
Can you make it less generic? You might do better then.
Even if No sleep till... used a guitar hook, maybe 50's rock photos should be considered outside the normal populist crap for NY. I know that the white hipsters listen to... whatever the hell that is, but if you had put together an early hip hop photography show, I think it would have done better and fewer competing institutions could say that they got there first.
Essentializing the Brooklyn audience aside, museums are always brooding about what to put up 2 years before we get to make fun of them. Look to the successful shows from this article and you'd probably not want to drop your money and schedule a show about religion in contemporary art or the Indian highway system if you are hemorrhaging viewers. You might alienate someone.
But the thing is, that if the NYT numbers are correct, you are reaching 2.4 times the number of viewers over all and 2.3 times the numbers daily with Leibovitz and Mueck (love to see the numbers separately for each artist, but oh well) than you are with RnR photography exhibit. Also, as Robert Storr says, the audience of the unholy combination of Leivovitz and Mueck is more likely to return to see art, than some rock bros or mid-life crisis boomers are to return to see Kiki Smith or the upcoming Warhol.
You have to keep your museum focused on something but there is space for being open to wide programing. I love old fashioned encyclopedic institutions like the MFA Boston or Philadelphia Museum of Art. The MFA can afford to have a popular show of Egyptian artifacts as it doesn't get in the way of them having a Dürer, Harry Callahan, Toulouse-Lautrec, and a show about the women in Firdawsi's Shahnama simultaneously. Philly had up mediocre Picasso show, but was balanced with a Bruce Nauman installation and Jennifer Levonian, Martha Colburn, Joshua Mosley's work.
You have to keep your popular but questionable shows balanced with your quietly worthy shows.
I'd ask Brooklyn to consider their mission statement:
The mission of the Brooklyn Museum is to act as a bridge between the rich artistic heritage of world cultures, as embodied in its collections, and the unique experience of each visitor. Dedicated to the primacy of the visitor experience, committed to excellence in every aspect of its collections and programs, and drawing on both new and traditional tools of communication, interpretation, and presentation, the Museum aims to serve its diverse public as a dynamic, innovative, and welcoming center for learning through the visual arts.
Can you make it less generic? You might do better then.
02 June 2010
Curator's bibliography
No joke, there has been a lot of books published on the subject of curators in the last decade. I've been reading a fair number of them and for a while, have been making a list of ones I need to get. Today I'm going to share them with you.
I don't doubt curators as much as others do. If it weren't for curators, there would only be two type of shows: solo shows in galleries and museum based historical retrospectives of dead artists. I do think that the word is being used way too much and we need to expand our vocab. Personally, I wrestle with how and what I do when I plan a show-- is it merely an illustration of an idea or is there something bigger going on, does the work or theme of the show lead, am I telling artists what to do, is it understandable to a wide audience, could I have found better artists or written about them differently, etc.
And yes, I don't shy away from books about museums.
Here we go:
Brief History of Curating
On Curating: Interviews with Ten International Curators
A Brief History of Curating New Media Art: Interviews with Curators
Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance
Rethinking Curating
What Makes a Great Exhibition
Cautionary Tales
Thinking About Exhibitions
Inside the White Cube
One Place After Another
Collecting the New
Salon to Biennial
Studio and Cube
Exhibiting Cultures
Art and Its Publics
Exhibiting Contradiction
Academies, Museums, and Cannons of Art
The Arts of Democracy
Contemporary Art and the Museum
Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects
Good and Plenty
Curating Consciousness
International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art
The Modern Eye
Money for Art
Museum Basics
Museums and their Communities
Museum Exhibition
Museum Legs
Museum Prejudice
New Media in the White Cube
The Place of Artists' Cinema
Spaces of Experience
Sponsorship
Museum Frictions
This is the Flow
Harald Szeemann: Exhibition Maker
Harald Szeemann--with by through because towards despite
Under Construction
Whose Muse?
Women Gallerists
Curating Now(PDF Yup, it's a free book! Goes for over 100 on amazon.)
Curating Subjects
If you know of a book that isn't on this list, let me know!
I don't doubt curators as much as others do. If it weren't for curators, there would only be two type of shows: solo shows in galleries and museum based historical retrospectives of dead artists. I do think that the word is being used way too much and we need to expand our vocab. Personally, I wrestle with how and what I do when I plan a show-- is it merely an illustration of an idea or is there something bigger going on, does the work or theme of the show lead, am I telling artists what to do, is it understandable to a wide audience, could I have found better artists or written about them differently, etc.
And yes, I don't shy away from books about museums.
Here we go:
Brief History of Curating
On Curating: Interviews with Ten International Curators
A Brief History of Curating New Media Art: Interviews with Curators
Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance
Rethinking Curating
What Makes a Great Exhibition
Cautionary Tales
Thinking About Exhibitions
Inside the White Cube
One Place After Another
Collecting the New
Salon to Biennial
Studio and Cube
Exhibiting Cultures
Art and Its Publics
Exhibiting Contradiction
Academies, Museums, and Cannons of Art
The Arts of Democracy
Contemporary Art and the Museum
Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects
Good and Plenty
Curating Consciousness
International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art
The Modern Eye
Money for Art
Museum Basics
Museums and their Communities
Museum Exhibition
Museum Legs
Museum Prejudice
New Media in the White Cube
The Place of Artists' Cinema
Spaces of Experience
Sponsorship
Museum Frictions
This is the Flow
Harald Szeemann: Exhibition Maker
Harald Szeemann--with by through because towards despite
Under Construction
Whose Muse?
Women Gallerists
Curating Now(PDF Yup, it's a free book! Goes for over 100 on amazon.)
Curating Subjects
If you know of a book that isn't on this list, let me know!
24 May 2010
The museum is supporting
Marina Abramović. Up till this year, I knew of her, but after the MoMA started hosting her show The Artist is Present, I think I know her. No, I haven't been taking part in the performance, crying in front of the artist. I've been getting to know her work and her career in a way that I think many people have and I hold the MoMA responsible for it.
It's a good thing. So much of her work and the work that the MoMA did not choose to support at this time has been in discussion, that I think that a dent is being made in the historicization of her era has begun in earnest. From today's opinion piece by Danto, to Laurie Anderson sitting down to interview Ambamović we have been treated to numerous resources that we should not take for granted.
But, as I've not experienced the work, I'd like to explore what it means that this is going on inside one of the NY'iest of NY institutions. Instead of being merely a review of other work, allowing a window into an era this is a show of surviving documents and new experiences for both the artist and the museum. The revival of Imponderabilia is not just a redo, a rehash, but brings up new problems that are unavoidable in a 3 month show that wasn't an issue in a one evening performance. This work has no heuristic issues when simulated on the interweb, but when actually planned for by an institution there are numerous legal, ethical, and ridiculous issues that will "arise."
Dick jokes aside, the twitterverse was a tweeting about a catheter, astronaut's diapers, and holding it. However this is dealt with, it's just the tip of the iceberg. She needed an army of performers to be able to pull of a fresh large scale attempt at these works. They cost money, and the MoMA supported her and her process. There is a bevy of naked people in the galleries that the audience is asked to touch in a polite manner. Imagine the lawyers at the MoMA when they were told about this performance?
By lending their venue to this type of work, the MoMA is saying that this work is equal to their physically present works like sculptures and paintings. This allows for their curators and historians to explore an area that they are often not, expanding the institutional knowledge and allowing for people like Danto to engage with the work on a historical level. The hybridity inherent in these performances (other people standing in for Abramović, the non-physical location of the work, the shift changes for the performers) increases the chances that newer artists will be allowed a space in the MoMA in the future, and the institution will be a comfortable with these questions.
It also cements her career in a way that probably everyone from her generation is jealous of. From the photographs, to her and Ulay breaking up during the Great Wall Walk I've seen people talking about her work like no other performance artist. For now, this show is the biggest thing going on. Explore her work. Find out what you do and don't like. There is more here than an empty chair.
It's a good thing. So much of her work and the work that the MoMA did not choose to support at this time has been in discussion, that I think that a dent is being made in the historicization of her era has begun in earnest. From today's opinion piece by Danto, to Laurie Anderson sitting down to interview Ambamović we have been treated to numerous resources that we should not take for granted.
But, as I've not experienced the work, I'd like to explore what it means that this is going on inside one of the NY'iest of NY institutions. Instead of being merely a review of other work, allowing a window into an era this is a show of surviving documents and new experiences for both the artist and the museum. The revival of Imponderabilia is not just a redo, a rehash, but brings up new problems that are unavoidable in a 3 month show that wasn't an issue in a one evening performance. This work has no heuristic issues when simulated on the interweb, but when actually planned for by an institution there are numerous legal, ethical, and ridiculous issues that will "arise."
Dick jokes aside, the twitterverse was a tweeting about a catheter, astronaut's diapers, and holding it. However this is dealt with, it's just the tip of the iceberg. She needed an army of performers to be able to pull of a fresh large scale attempt at these works. They cost money, and the MoMA supported her and her process. There is a bevy of naked people in the galleries that the audience is asked to touch in a polite manner. Imagine the lawyers at the MoMA when they were told about this performance?
By lending their venue to this type of work, the MoMA is saying that this work is equal to their physically present works like sculptures and paintings. This allows for their curators and historians to explore an area that they are often not, expanding the institutional knowledge and allowing for people like Danto to engage with the work on a historical level. The hybridity inherent in these performances (other people standing in for Abramović, the non-physical location of the work, the shift changes for the performers) increases the chances that newer artists will be allowed a space in the MoMA in the future, and the institution will be a comfortable with these questions.
It also cements her career in a way that probably everyone from her generation is jealous of. From the photographs, to her and Ulay breaking up during the Great Wall Walk I've seen people talking about her work like no other performance artist. For now, this show is the biggest thing going on. Explore her work. Find out what you do and don't like. There is more here than an empty chair.
17 May 2010
May has been friggin busy...
Some good news. As soon as B/R/S #131 is published, you'll see a review I wrote for Carlin Wing at Anthony Greaney. It's effectively what I wanted to say. It took less than a week to write, so it could be better, and will be when I send it Frieze for their young critics contest.
I also expect a review of Dürer at the MFA Boston to be published by the SGC newsletter. I'll put that review up after it's finalized.
September at the Nave is Open Air. The show brings the work of Matthew Best, Nathalie Miebach, Carolyn Muskat, Ted Ollier, and Jason Shoemaker together for the first time. Each are exploring the outdoors in different ways. I'm a fan of each, but together I think they augment each other's work.
Last, and certainly not least, The Mills at Boston Center for the Arts has accepted my proposal for Contact with Density. This show will be scheduled soon, and currently has 12 artists in it. Each of the artists are dealing with part of the urban landscape or just the experience of living in the city.
So I'm tired. Oh, and I'm hoping to get mean angry comments in the comments section of B/R/S... It's just what happens.
I also expect a review of Dürer at the MFA Boston to be published by the SGC newsletter. I'll put that review up after it's finalized.
September at the Nave is Open Air. The show brings the work of Matthew Best, Nathalie Miebach, Carolyn Muskat, Ted Ollier, and Jason Shoemaker together for the first time. Each are exploring the outdoors in different ways. I'm a fan of each, but together I think they augment each other's work.
Last, and certainly not least, The Mills at Boston Center for the Arts has accepted my proposal for Contact with Density. This show will be scheduled soon, and currently has 12 artists in it. Each of the artists are dealing with part of the urban landscape or just the experience of living in the city.
So I'm tired. Oh, and I'm hoping to get mean angry comments in the comments section of B/R/S... It's just what happens.
03 May 2010
Giuseppe Panza
Collector Giuseppe Panza died just over a week ago. I didn't really know anything about him prior to the numerous great articles on him after his death. Particularly good are Christopher Knight's writings on him. I'm half way through reading his 9 hour interview with Panza, and one of the more telling proposals that the Panza puts forth is about Oldenburg and the German Expressionists.
Probably a third of the way down is this...
If you look at Oldenburg's 60's work that Panza collected, I can see this connection. Here are the MoMA Oldenburgs. And, to be exact in which ones we are looking at, the ones Panza actually collected which live at the LA Moca.
It's not an issue of historically attributing the Oldenburgs to the influence of the German Expressionists. This may be true, but like Panza, I'm not willing to state it definitively. The two have similar formal concerns and techniques though. They act the same way. They preform the same formal methods. It's interesting to consider and is a relationship I probably wouldn't have ever considered without this interview. Thank you to both Knight and Panza. RIP dear collector. Your collection lives on.
Probably a third of the way down is this...
MR. KNIGHT: In the interview that you did with Bruce Kurts in 1972, you said, almost in passing, that when you met Oldenburg and saw his work, you felt a relation with European experience, especially German expressionists.
DR. PANZA: Yes.
MR. KNIGHT: And that's a very intriguing notion, and I wonder if you could discuss that?
DR. PANZA: Yes, I felt this relationship because of this opposition of so different colors. And also, the German expressionists used the same technique to put very strong colors one aside of the other. They don't use difference of tone of colors, just pure color against another one, but without a transition. And this was a technique used by the German expressionists in order to give more violent force to the expression. And I found the same thing in Oldenburg.
MR. KNIGHT: It's interesting, because Pop is usually thought of as such an American sensibility.
DR. PANZA: Yes.
MR. KNIGHT: But in a case such as this, you seem to connect it with the European tradition.
DR. PANZA: Yes. In some ways, yes. Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps is not real. But I had this feeling, and it was interesting for me to make this confrontation; because it was helpful for understanding the work of Oldenburg.
If you look at Oldenburg's 60's work that Panza collected, I can see this connection. Here are the MoMA Oldenburgs. And, to be exact in which ones we are looking at, the ones Panza actually collected which live at the LA Moca.
It's not an issue of historically attributing the Oldenburgs to the influence of the German Expressionists. This may be true, but like Panza, I'm not willing to state it definitively. The two have similar formal concerns and techniques though. They act the same way. They preform the same formal methods. It's interesting to consider and is a relationship I probably wouldn't have ever considered without this interview. Thank you to both Knight and Panza. RIP dear collector. Your collection lives on.
26 April 2010
A new low?
This one is a no-brainer. You don't fire someone and hire them back at 60% of their old salary unless you are desperate to the nth degree. Good luck Euphrat Museum. You're going to need it.
Extra-Visual art
Robert Morris. He may be the poster child for (capital C) Conceptual Art. His output transitioned the from the 50's Greenberg/Abstract Expressionism era to the John Cage/anti-commodification era of high concept driven art. From Sorting Cows in an art magazine to Bodyspacemotionthings. He seemed for years, to be able to upturn the art world on a single publication or new work. Now it seems that no one wants to see his recent work or ask him to make anything else. Try to find new work online. Good luck.
My interest in him is, like others, his work from 1960 through the mid 70's. There is a promising (haven't seen it in person yet) collection of his writings, but I can't seem to find a single website, catalogue raisonné, or other new media collecting the works (is there a raisonné? I found one for prints by Christophe Cherix, but not anything else). There was a meeting of scholars in France in 08. But that's not nearly the amount of research I assumed I'd find on him.
It's a symptom of conceptual art as a historical subject. We've heard from the people who lived it, but it's about time to start digging in deep and sorting some things out. What is conceptual art and when did it happen was explored by a few books published after about 1999, but those mostly laid the groundwork for our new task, which is to explore the after effects of this era and to explain what is being made now as a reaction to that era. Although through the lens of Morris, maybe we need to do some basic work first.
The late condition of conceptual art. We don't even have a vocabulary for the separation between conceptual and contemporary. People still think that the YBA were conceptualists. They're wrong, but we don't have a developed lexicon to explain why yet. They didn't even have non-objective art. Their intentions were often (mostly I'd say) based on emotive ends rather than concept or infinitesimal thought.
That's a career right there. Being that guy that explains how and why concept gave way to intention. How we will never go back to solid Greenbergian objective art.
Edited to add this from the stuff I should have finished reading before writing this:
My interest in him is, like others, his work from 1960 through the mid 70's. There is a promising (haven't seen it in person yet) collection of his writings, but I can't seem to find a single website, catalogue raisonné, or other new media collecting the works (is there a raisonné? I found one for prints by Christophe Cherix, but not anything else). There was a meeting of scholars in France in 08. But that's not nearly the amount of research I assumed I'd find on him.
It's a symptom of conceptual art as a historical subject. We've heard from the people who lived it, but it's about time to start digging in deep and sorting some things out. What is conceptual art and when did it happen was explored by a few books published after about 1999, but those mostly laid the groundwork for our new task, which is to explore the after effects of this era and to explain what is being made now as a reaction to that era. Although through the lens of Morris, maybe we need to do some basic work first.
The late condition of conceptual art. We don't even have a vocabulary for the separation between conceptual and contemporary. People still think that the YBA were conceptualists. They're wrong, but we don't have a developed lexicon to explain why yet. They didn't even have non-objective art. Their intentions were often (mostly I'd say) based on emotive ends rather than concept or infinitesimal thought.
That's a career right there. Being that guy that explains how and why concept gave way to intention. How we will never go back to solid Greenbergian objective art.
Edited to add this from the stuff I should have finished reading before writing this:
Has abstract and conceptual art had its day? Does figurative and representational art have a better future?
What happened in the late Sixties was equivalent to what happened with cubism. It was a new way of describing the world that looked dry and impenetrable to many people for many years, but underpinned a great deal of the art we now admire in the 20th century. The same is true of conceptual art. People describe as "conceptual" almost any work of art that has deep thought embodied in it, rather than simply the representation of an object on a canvas. By those standards, almost all the great art of the last 10 or 15 years has been conceptual because it has dealt with ideas as well as images.
20 April 2010
More hybridity
Printresting's take on this video exhibits the printerly laws. It can't be printing, it has to be sculpture. If it were printing, we could control it. If 3-d printing were not printing, we'd be sculptors. Oh no! What to do!
Relax and let it be. Maybe it's an installation. Or a 3-d painting... oh my!
Printers can't be painters!
cultural baggage.
More examples of hybrid forms. Haven't seen these shows, but they sound and talk about not needing to follow the rules of genre. Musik für Barbaren und Klassiker breaks the traditional boundaries between concerts, sound installations, sculpture and music. Did you say:
Cuz I like the sound of that. I don't think I know how I'd react to that exhibit, and how I'd shoehorn the work into a single definitive genre.
Also Paola Pivi's work in Rotterdam. A free animals concert? With a democratic recording studio for anyone to record in? Did I mention the animals will be in the studio too. They will make noise while you record.
Neither of these have issues with being too familiar. Instead, they are new forms. I think of them through the lens of Sculpture in the Expanded Field (link is PDF). I can't help it, but the klein group that Krauss talks about has been hanging over my head informing how I look at art since I read that article circa 2003. It was probably the moment where art went from something that we react at to something that I considered in a historical and conceptual construct. I was already familiar with most of the works mentioned in the article, but no one had presented such a clear and useful argument to me about the meta-data involved or enumerated the complicated relationship between the work and genre. Art work was either good or bad. I didn't even consider if it fit into sculpture comfortably.
That article is my cultural baggage.
The Ultrasound of Therapy from Staalplaat Soundsystem is an installation-as-a-whole, built up as an infirmary. In each of the beds the visitor undergoes an individualised sensory processing. Highlights are the meditation videos, the beds connected to bass amplifiers (which intensify the physical experience of sound), or the treatment with sine waves, based on the Indo-Tibetan vadacakra theory.
Cuz I like the sound of that. I don't think I know how I'd react to that exhibit, and how I'd shoehorn the work into a single definitive genre.
Also Paola Pivi's work in Rotterdam. A free animals concert? With a democratic recording studio for anyone to record in? Did I mention the animals will be in the studio too. They will make noise while you record.
Neither of these have issues with being too familiar. Instead, they are new forms. I think of them through the lens of Sculpture in the Expanded Field (link is PDF). I can't help it, but the klein group that Krauss talks about has been hanging over my head informing how I look at art since I read that article circa 2003. It was probably the moment where art went from something that we react at to something that I considered in a historical and conceptual construct. I was already familiar with most of the works mentioned in the article, but no one had presented such a clear and useful argument to me about the meta-data involved or enumerated the complicated relationship between the work and genre. Art work was either good or bad. I didn't even consider if it fit into sculpture comfortably.
That article is my cultural baggage.
17 April 2010
Student work/reality show
What the christ is this? I'm not sure what the Whitney should do, but I know that this isn't going to endear anyone to the idea that 600K is going to a good cause by putting up ugly disjointed vinyl graphics on things. This I expect from the students who design work for (insert town here) window project. I hope the other three artists will have more success.
Edward Winkleman seems to have a similar problems processing the details behind the proposed new Whitney space as I do. I think the trap he talks about is the same advice given to contestants on the game show, wait, I mean important cultural launching pad that is Project Runway. Make it more, and push yourself. You have to have a unique Identity™ and be able to surprise the judges.
They are bored with you and know everything about you before you have your first line finished. One piece of clothing is a whole season to them. The next week you have to have another "new line" as one piece. The new gallery space needs to served the function of presenting art as much as satisfy the vocal minority of critics who will pan whatever is put up.
To continue my exploration of the ethics, for the museum, the space has to serve two masters. You can't win. Something is compromised. If the space is a white cube, you get panned for falling back on old presentation memes. If you go Bibao with your new space, you will get panned for the failure that is inherent to starchitecture. So a compromise is always staring at you. Choose the red or blue pill and you are sacrificing something. The museum's ethics demand you find a third road and keep the professionals who need to work in this space happy and the critical public happy.
Consider this: the original Breuer building was born of Starchitecture. It created this situation.
Edward Winkleman seems to have a similar problems processing the details behind the proposed new Whitney space as I do. I think the trap he talks about is the same advice given to contestants on the game show, wait, I mean important cultural launching pad that is Project Runway. Make it more, and push yourself. You have to have a unique Identity™ and be able to surprise the judges.
They are bored with you and know everything about you before you have your first line finished. One piece of clothing is a whole season to them. The next week you have to have another "new line" as one piece. The new gallery space needs to served the function of presenting art as much as satisfy the vocal minority of critics who will pan whatever is put up.
To continue my exploration of the ethics, for the museum, the space has to serve two masters. You can't win. Something is compromised. If the space is a white cube, you get panned for falling back on old presentation memes. If you go Bibao with your new space, you will get panned for the failure that is inherent to starchitecture. So a compromise is always staring at you. Choose the red or blue pill and you are sacrificing something. The museum's ethics demand you find a third road and keep the professionals who need to work in this space happy and the critical public happy.
Consider this: the original Breuer building was born of Starchitecture. It created this situation.
16 April 2010
Thursday April 15
On Tax Day, I saw a pile of kick ass art. Most of what I saw were further examples of hybrid multiples.
I started at the Louise Bourgeois at Barbara Krakow. There are approx 8 double spreads of Twinrocker paper printed with intaglio plates and letterpress. These were printed by Peter Pettengill of Wingate and are then hand painted over by Louise. The images weren't very evocative to me, but these were not prints, or more importantly should not be tied to printerly rules. Who cares if there is a layer of intaglio under the drawings? They're work better if you consider them unique works of art rather than some type of multiple. Yet they are editioned. The other complication is that they suggest a book in their presentation. Yet their individual voices are what Louise was pursuing. I'm not sure why this wasn't a book, but whose going to tell her that she could push her work further?
Second was Anthony Greaney's gallery. Currently up is a quick show of some of the greatest hits from his galleries short existence. Daniel Ellis has an object on exhibit that I thought was a painting the first time I saw it, but turns out to be an ink jet print for lack of better word. Does it make it a print? Printers would hate you if you said so. What's the difference between it and a digital photograph? Just because it doesn't use a lens to make the image? They both are built up of 1's and 0's and are filtered through some kind of adobe product probably. It's just a bit squishy how this will be received. He could clearly make multiples of this, but chose not to. An ink jet doesn't sound sexy and raises the archival issue for collectors.
Later I watched Joan Jonas perform at MIT, where they gave her an award for being one the awesomest peoples ever, and right they should. Her work last night was about glaciers and pulled text from an Hilda Doolittle epic poem, the title of which I didn't write down. It was performed at a desk with a video monitor over her hands, involved many of the same sounds, methods, and themes found here. The drawings are not on paper. They are not for sketches. The video is not for posterity. They are not the finished work. The performance is not to be looked at, but viewed through the monitor. Where is the work located in this? Which part of this is the thing?
Her work is performance for video, but has to be live. How does one document this ethically? Should there be a recording of the various people working on the performance and on the video screen? Should you be able to produce copies of the screen image as the work? Are the various flat images on paper/transparency/actual objects important to the object, or are they incidental? Meaning, would the institute purchase the pictures used under the camera if they bought the work? She raises more questions than I have answers.
Either way, along with some great people to hang with, it was a wonderful day.
I started at the Louise Bourgeois at Barbara Krakow. There are approx 8 double spreads of Twinrocker paper printed with intaglio plates and letterpress. These were printed by Peter Pettengill of Wingate and are then hand painted over by Louise. The images weren't very evocative to me, but these were not prints, or more importantly should not be tied to printerly rules. Who cares if there is a layer of intaglio under the drawings? They're work better if you consider them unique works of art rather than some type of multiple. Yet they are editioned. The other complication is that they suggest a book in their presentation. Yet their individual voices are what Louise was pursuing. I'm not sure why this wasn't a book, but whose going to tell her that she could push her work further?
Second was Anthony Greaney's gallery. Currently up is a quick show of some of the greatest hits from his galleries short existence. Daniel Ellis has an object on exhibit that I thought was a painting the first time I saw it, but turns out to be an ink jet print for lack of better word. Does it make it a print? Printers would hate you if you said so. What's the difference between it and a digital photograph? Just because it doesn't use a lens to make the image? They both are built up of 1's and 0's and are filtered through some kind of adobe product probably. It's just a bit squishy how this will be received. He could clearly make multiples of this, but chose not to. An ink jet doesn't sound sexy and raises the archival issue for collectors.
Later I watched Joan Jonas perform at MIT, where they gave her an award for being one the awesomest peoples ever, and right they should. Her work last night was about glaciers and pulled text from an Hilda Doolittle epic poem, the title of which I didn't write down. It was performed at a desk with a video monitor over her hands, involved many of the same sounds, methods, and themes found here. The drawings are not on paper. They are not for sketches. The video is not for posterity. They are not the finished work. The performance is not to be looked at, but viewed through the monitor. Where is the work located in this? Which part of this is the thing?
Her work is performance for video, but has to be live. How does one document this ethically? Should there be a recording of the various people working on the performance and on the video screen? Should you be able to produce copies of the screen image as the work? Are the various flat images on paper/transparency/actual objects important to the object, or are they incidental? Meaning, would the institute purchase the pictures used under the camera if they bought the work? She raises more questions than I have answers.
Either way, along with some great people to hang with, it was a wonderful day.
12 April 2010
Ethics of teh moneys
Yup. Now we will barely look at the deep end. I have no idea what really goes on at such large institutions, but the reality is that if you want to run something larger than local, something where you can present art that is bigger than some cats you've met or the 2 galleries that your grad school friends founded-- you need to have a budget. This budget gets out of hand quickly. One minute you found a tiny gallery with friends the next you have a massive budget that is dependent on private and public funding, run a few non-profit spin offs, and 26 years later are "a contemporary art powerhouse."
In the case of the Whitney... we have some giant budgets, egos, and well, everything. Imagine. When you consider the ethics involved with the decision making process, it would be staggering. Lauder's $131 million ties the hands of the institution and proves the point that money talks in the art world. Yet it also gives the institution the flexibility to use the money to make choices. It seems that they've made choices already though.
They're making payments on a space in case they want it. It's only 600K a year, but still. Imagine the wrestling match behind the scenes.
Obviously, there are disadvantages of starchitecture and few if any of the rewards. But the Whitney finds itself at a cross roads. I hope that the numerous egos involved put the institution first when deciding how they will proceed. I have no opinion about rebuild/move/etc, but it's clear that they do not want to keep things status quo.
In the case of the Whitney... we have some giant budgets, egos, and well, everything. Imagine. When you consider the ethics involved with the decision making process, it would be staggering. Lauder's $131 million ties the hands of the institution and proves the point that money talks in the art world. Yet it also gives the institution the flexibility to use the money to make choices. It seems that they've made choices already though.
They're making payments on a space in case they want it. It's only 600K a year, but still. Imagine the wrestling match behind the scenes.
Obviously, there are disadvantages of starchitecture and few if any of the rewards. But the Whitney finds itself at a cross roads. I hope that the numerous egos involved put the institution first when deciding how they will proceed. I have no opinion about rebuild/move/etc, but it's clear that they do not want to keep things status quo.
07 April 2010
Art Power
Been reading Art Power from Groys. His On the New section brings another example of ethics v. morals. The collecting museum needs to protect, present, and keep the object alive for an unnaturally long period of time. From a handbag made of an emu shell to an egg tempera painting, all objects are ethically cared for. This, again, does not mean that the collections manager or the conservation specialist uses holy water or prays for the soul of the object. The conservation of objects, their upkeep has to fit within the objectives and responsibilities of the museum, the conservation staff, and the public. As conservators have worked with contemporary and ancient works longer than the average curator/other art professionals, and should have a deeper understanding into the issues of how an object should be preserved, one should listen to the conservator and trust in their abilities to pursue the correct actions.
As every Pollock is supposedly about to fall off their supports, and keep the conservation staff busy, we can look to them as an example. Each "new" Pollock that enters the world is quickly given a few tests on a physical level. These tests are non-intrusive and are compared to the texts that increase daily. Sometimes it becomes obvious that the former conservation needs to be removed in order for the work to be revealed to the viewer. The earlier conservation is not morally questionable, but rather indicates that the conservators professional ethics and material sciences are growing closer.
This gap is real, and you can see this in most conversations with conservators. They are often using jargon like "pre-established methodology" which means "I like using certain toys in the lab" or asking "Whose responsibility is it to authenticate artwork?" which means "Don't blame the conservator if the curator presents this as a real Pollock, we're pretty sure it's not real". But, again, this is not a question of their moral fortitude. It's a question of their professional methods and goals. Their participation in the museum's ethics is to keep the work on view as much as possible and as close to how the artist intended, however they interpret that goal.
As every Pollock is supposedly about to fall off their supports, and keep the conservation staff busy, we can look to them as an example. Each "new" Pollock that enters the world is quickly given a few tests on a physical level. These tests are non-intrusive and are compared to the texts that increase daily. Sometimes it becomes obvious that the former conservation needs to be removed in order for the work to be revealed to the viewer. The earlier conservation is not morally questionable, but rather indicates that the conservators professional ethics and material sciences are growing closer.
This gap is real, and you can see this in most conversations with conservators. They are often using jargon like "pre-established methodology" which means "I like using certain toys in the lab" or asking "Whose responsibility is it to authenticate artwork?" which means "Don't blame the conservator if the curator presents this as a real Pollock, we're pretty sure it's not real". But, again, this is not a question of their moral fortitude. It's a question of their professional methods and goals. Their participation in the museum's ethics is to keep the work on view as much as possible and as close to how the artist intended, however they interpret that goal.
06 April 2010
Ethics v. Morals
As this is de rigueur to recent posts and I'm trying to put together a writing sample for grad school soon, I figure that I should try to get some basics down on screen so you could laugh at me and tell me that I'm wrong.
I'm going to be focusing mostly on ethics, but let's describe the difference first between ethics and morals. It's unethical to put your self into an exhibit that you curate. It's not immoral though. Morality is a question of right and wrong. A state of being and if it's right or wrong for your soul-- usually tied to a religion or creed. The religious stuff, don't kill, sleep with your neighbor's wife et cetera has nothing to do with the professional ethics of a curator. Usually there is not much of an overlap, so this question doesn't come up often.
For some it's both immoral and unethical to have sex with a museum professional in order to get your show on the schedule. Christianity says you shouldn't do that for moral reasons and the ethic of your profession says your show should be scheduled because it's a good show, not because you are good in bed.
There is nothing immoral to showing a work from a member of your board. It is usually considered outside the norms of museum ethics though to show a collection from a board member though. Even if the show is outside the norms of museum ethics, we can still view and critique the show as a show.
When the MoMA was founded, they expected to deaccession work regularly. Needless to say that they changed that as soon as they had some work worth a significant amount of money. There is no argument to the morality of collecting work but there is one for the ethic. A collecting museum has a different relationship to work than a non-collecting one but no one asks if they are breaking rules that will keep them from heaven.
What would the MoMA be today if they sold off all of their mid-century work and purchased work produced from 1990- 2010? Imagine if they couldn't own anything from before 1960. This is not a question of right/wrong, but rather questions how a professional would and should engage in their job. Is it ethical to show art work from 1945 in 2010 at a museum that wants to define and explore modernism? The founders thought it was unethical and put it into the rules of the MoMA. Should the public complain about the work that they hold from the 40's? No. But should they consider selling some old stuff that may be looking less modern by the day? Sure.
In the coming months I would like to explore some of the details I just glossed over. From the non/collecting issue, the deaccessioning of works, the sourcing of curators and collecting of collectors, to the gray ethical ares for specific museums. There are unending examples to talk about.
I'm going to be focusing mostly on ethics, but let's describe the difference first between ethics and morals. It's unethical to put your self into an exhibit that you curate. It's not immoral though. Morality is a question of right and wrong. A state of being and if it's right or wrong for your soul-- usually tied to a religion or creed. The religious stuff, don't kill, sleep with your neighbor's wife et cetera has nothing to do with the professional ethics of a curator. Usually there is not much of an overlap, so this question doesn't come up often.
For some it's both immoral and unethical to have sex with a museum professional in order to get your show on the schedule. Christianity says you shouldn't do that for moral reasons and the ethic of your profession says your show should be scheduled because it's a good show, not because you are good in bed.
There is nothing immoral to showing a work from a member of your board. It is usually considered outside the norms of museum ethics though to show a collection from a board member though. Even if the show is outside the norms of museum ethics, we can still view and critique the show as a show.
When the MoMA was founded, they expected to deaccession work regularly. Needless to say that they changed that as soon as they had some work worth a significant amount of money. There is no argument to the morality of collecting work but there is one for the ethic. A collecting museum has a different relationship to work than a non-collecting one but no one asks if they are breaking rules that will keep them from heaven.
What would the MoMA be today if they sold off all of their mid-century work and purchased work produced from 1990- 2010? Imagine if they couldn't own anything from before 1960. This is not a question of right/wrong, but rather questions how a professional would and should engage in their job. Is it ethical to show art work from 1945 in 2010 at a museum that wants to define and explore modernism? The founders thought it was unethical and put it into the rules of the MoMA. Should the public complain about the work that they hold from the 40's? No. But should they consider selling some old stuff that may be looking less modern by the day? Sure.
In the coming months I would like to explore some of the details I just glossed over. From the non/collecting issue, the deaccessioning of works, the sourcing of curators and collecting of collectors, to the gray ethical ares for specific museums. There are unending examples to talk about.
01 April 2010
PBS hip hop
Finally watched Byron Hurt's Beyond Beats and Rhymes.
If 50 cent and Jadakiss and all those people I'd like to vote off hip hop's island are stacking bank so that they can become indie label producers, than I'll forgive them for ruining one of the liveliest sectors of contemporary music. If they are secretly planning on systematically taking down the crap that they produce, than I think they are more hip hop than the stuff I listen to.
I hope. But it's not going to happen.
If 50 cent and Jadakiss and all those people I'd like to vote off hip hop's island are stacking bank so that they can become indie label producers, than I'll forgive them for ruining one of the liveliest sectors of contemporary music. If they are secretly planning on systematically taking down the crap that they produce, than I think they are more hip hop than the stuff I listen to.
I hope. But it's not going to happen.
23 March 2010
When Attitude Becomes Form
Harald Szeeman's exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern, May 1969.
Daniel Birnbaum on Szeemann
Complete list of artists
Carol Thea interview with Szeeman
David Levi Strauss about Szeemann and Hopps.
Brief obit for Szeemann.
22 March 2010
Museums serve the public right?
The Guggenheim has auctioned off stuff practically directly from their gallery.
Powhida talks ethics and morals.
Hashtag class has just finished its run.
We seem to be fighting with what art is and should function in terms of ethic or morals. Sure. But I believe that these three have a subtext about the non-profit and its assumption of non-profitness.
Let's review. The non-profit art space is granted that legal status why? It serves the public by being a location of reference. It becomes a location where we store our physical goods that are deemed to be influential and of note. Like the news paper of yesteryear being the paper-of-record, the museum serves a similar function. We ask that the non-profit museum acts in our interests, or at least pretends to act in our interest.
The question of how the museum is or isn't a public institution is the question at hand. It has to be profitable and raise insane amounts of money yearly. One part of the Museum's job is collecting the work, the collectors, the scholars, the curators, the staff into one place to make the museum function as a public institution. But the museum's morals and ethics are often stretched by this basic job.
Gathering the coffee sales people is not usually a decision fraught with ethics, but an artist acting as curator, who has been collected by a board member who is a major benefactor to the institution is. Selling art from a show should bring up red flags. The questions raised by Brandeis with the Rose is a similar situation. Does the non-profit status of the art museum allow for gathering of property that will be sold off at an opportune time? Not at all by most people's estimation. One cannot start a collection, say it's in the public's interest and then just change your mind that it was actually a liquid collection that will be up for sale to the highest bidder.
So, instead of going all Andrea Fraser and critiquing the museum through our art, we seem to be talking about this in public via words?! Amazing. We might be growing up yet. One thing I hope is that as people like Powhida are smart competent thinkers, I hope that the opportunity to self-publish constantly, and without much editorial challenge won't keep them from working these ideas out completely and writing what would be a fascinating book about this subject. 140 characters, no matter how often, does not allow for full thoughts.
Powhida talks ethics and morals.
Hashtag class has just finished its run.
We seem to be fighting with what art is and should function in terms of ethic or morals. Sure. But I believe that these three have a subtext about the non-profit and its assumption of non-profitness.
Let's review. The non-profit art space is granted that legal status why? It serves the public by being a location of reference. It becomes a location where we store our physical goods that are deemed to be influential and of note. Like the news paper of yesteryear being the paper-of-record, the museum serves a similar function. We ask that the non-profit museum acts in our interests, or at least pretends to act in our interest.
The question of how the museum is or isn't a public institution is the question at hand. It has to be profitable and raise insane amounts of money yearly. One part of the Museum's job is collecting the work, the collectors, the scholars, the curators, the staff into one place to make the museum function as a public institution. But the museum's morals and ethics are often stretched by this basic job.
Gathering the coffee sales people is not usually a decision fraught with ethics, but an artist acting as curator, who has been collected by a board member who is a major benefactor to the institution is. Selling art from a show should bring up red flags. The questions raised by Brandeis with the Rose is a similar situation. Does the non-profit status of the art museum allow for gathering of property that will be sold off at an opportune time? Not at all by most people's estimation. One cannot start a collection, say it's in the public's interest and then just change your mind that it was actually a liquid collection that will be up for sale to the highest bidder.
So, instead of going all Andrea Fraser and critiquing the museum through our art, we seem to be talking about this in public via words?! Amazing. We might be growing up yet. One thing I hope is that as people like Powhida are smart competent thinkers, I hope that the opportunity to self-publish constantly, and without much editorial challenge won't keep them from working these ideas out completely and writing what would be a fascinating book about this subject. 140 characters, no matter how often, does not allow for full thoughts.
15 March 2010
art revolution
Most of this article from Boston.com I agree with.
If the local institutions were to ante up, the artist community would be better off. True. My one critique is that they obviously don't want to.
Which leaves us at:
1. how do we do this without them?
2. how do we convince them it's in their best interest?
Harvard is too conservative and way behind the times to start an art degree. They're still not sure if humanism was a good idea. Good luck convincing them that contemporary art could be a field of studies.
It sounds like a well conceived non-profit with a comfortable budget would fill some of these roles. Something like apex art should be in Boston. No question. We should be the space in the US for curatorial studies. But Bard (of all places) has become that. We have the academics and institutions, but have a blind spot for anything visual.
As for having tons of students, only in undergrad. Add up all the grad students coming out of Boston, and we don't even match up to one gradating year from Art Institute of Chicago. We just don't have that many who are working on an MFA here. AIB, SMFA, MassArt, and BU have fewer than 10 per year each.
And last, good luck convincing them to give moneys to MFA students. This is something I've been arguing should happen for years, but is a bit idealistic. There would have to be a push for professionals to set up funds for endowed chairs and other common academic roles inside the university. Until art departments are able to be good programs from the university's point of view (bringing in status members to staff, revenue positive, etc), we will always be considered a second class program. Bring in money, and guess what! The university will take care the students in the program. You can't expect the sciences/medical/literature dept/etc to let the money they bring into the university to pay for art students, which is what you are asking for.
If the local institutions were to ante up, the artist community would be better off. True. My one critique is that they obviously don't want to.
Which leaves us at:
1. how do we do this without them?
2. how do we convince them it's in their best interest?
Harvard is too conservative and way behind the times to start an art degree. They're still not sure if humanism was a good idea. Good luck convincing them that contemporary art could be a field of studies.
It sounds like a well conceived non-profit with a comfortable budget would fill some of these roles. Something like apex art should be in Boston. No question. We should be the space in the US for curatorial studies. But Bard (of all places) has become that. We have the academics and institutions, but have a blind spot for anything visual.
As for having tons of students, only in undergrad. Add up all the grad students coming out of Boston, and we don't even match up to one gradating year from Art Institute of Chicago. We just don't have that many who are working on an MFA here. AIB, SMFA, MassArt, and BU have fewer than 10 per year each.
And last, good luck convincing them to give moneys to MFA students. This is something I've been arguing should happen for years, but is a bit idealistic. There would have to be a push for professionals to set up funds for endowed chairs and other common academic roles inside the university. Until art departments are able to be good programs from the university's point of view (bringing in status members to staff, revenue positive, etc), we will always be considered a second class program. Bring in money, and guess what! The university will take care the students in the program. You can't expect the sciences/medical/literature dept/etc to let the money they bring into the university to pay for art students, which is what you are asking for.
03 March 2010
Mira Schor: The Art of Nonconformist Criticality
Mira Schor: The Art of Nonconformist Criticality
Spend two hours thinking.
From 2006. Wonderful talk about-
the delay between initial thought and implementation
repetition from artists
what makes something feminist art
More than just that. Go on then! Download it and have a drink while you listen.
Spend two hours thinking.
From 2006. Wonderful talk about-
the delay between initial thought and implementation
repetition from artists
what makes something feminist art
More than just that. Go on then! Download it and have a drink while you listen.
Sleng Teng 25th anniversary
Feb 23, 1985. Reggae became digital.
Except preforming it as an acoustic version makes it even more awesomer.
Thank you to Wayne Smith.
Except preforming it as an acoustic version makes it even more awesomer.
Thank you to Wayne Smith.
01 March 2010
astro boy.
It seems we need to update the Astro Boy myth every 20 years. Each time we focus on another section of the story and change the presentation significantly. So we must be 10 years or so from the next iteration.
The quick observations: it becomes less silly symphony with each version. The relationship between scientist and son becomes psychoanalytical in the 80's and secondary in the 00's. Why the professor's hair was black in the two early videos I don't know. In the books he has white hair. Last, the message of robots and people living together in equality morphs significantly between the three.
The quick observations: it becomes less silly symphony with each version. The relationship between scientist and son becomes psychoanalytical in the 80's and secondary in the 00's. Why the professor's hair was black in the two early videos I don't know. In the books he has white hair. Last, the message of robots and people living together in equality morphs significantly between the three.
18 February 2010
Feb
I usually hate this month, but the weather is not that bad and there are lots of interesting things happening.
-Puppy wars- This is where I stand on the religious war between the protestants vs. Papist Saltz. I don't think either side is right or wrong. They are both. Koons is not the ultimate 000 artist. Yau is not dickish, yet his article is badly written for him and trite. And Koons does stand as the American version of Murakami and Hirst.
-Boston is rotating curators- Clean cup move down! to quote the Mad Hatter. I wish Jen Mergel the best of luck at getting what no one else has been able to do done at the MFA. Helen Molesworth may be the best choice for the ICA. That's yet to be seen. Both of these women are wonderful curators. Mergel apparently was looking for more curatorial and less paper work and Molesworth may have been annoyed by the delays in Allston.
-Editing as composition- I've noticed this popping up recently in people's work. Mostly photographers, but not always. Currently, Kayafas and Yezerski have up shows that support this notion. First, Pelle Cass edits together images from a multiple photographs of the same scene. Second Gary Schneider takes hand illuminated close up photographs of naked people. Yezerski also has shown Curtis Mann in the past who works in a similar manner of editing to compose his photographs.
-Puppy wars- This is where I stand on the religious war between the protestants vs. Papist Saltz. I don't think either side is right or wrong. They are both. Koons is not the ultimate 000 artist. Yau is not dickish, yet his article is badly written for him and trite. And Koons does stand as the American version of Murakami and Hirst.
-Boston is rotating curators- Clean cup move down! to quote the Mad Hatter. I wish Jen Mergel the best of luck at getting what no one else has been able to do done at the MFA. Helen Molesworth may be the best choice for the ICA. That's yet to be seen. Both of these women are wonderful curators. Mergel apparently was looking for more curatorial and less paper work and Molesworth may have been annoyed by the delays in Allston.
-Editing as composition- I've noticed this popping up recently in people's work. Mostly photographers, but not always. Currently, Kayafas and Yezerski have up shows that support this notion. First, Pelle Cass edits together images from a multiple photographs of the same scene. Second Gary Schneider takes hand illuminated close up photographs of naked people. Yezerski also has shown Curtis Mann in the past who works in a similar manner of editing to compose his photographs.
13 February 2010
Thought experiment.
NYTxAPEXART collabo-
Take one suggestion for diversity from Roberta Smith and add Alanna Heiss's idea that there should be a balanced matrix of shows at any given time in a single venue. Mix. What does this equal?
I'd work that museum/gallery/alt/venue/platform. What curator wouldn't? A model where the space shows a multitude of shows simultaneously would be the only way to make Heiss's idea that no show should cost more than 10K possible. A scheduling nightmare with the added bonus of increased advertising costs. It would cost more and return less for the investors.
And let's be honest, the average show at a MOMA/MFA/LAMOCA is 10-20% cost on art and the rest goes into keeping the doors open, the show guarded, the coffee free trade, and the advertisements on buses, NPR, and in Art Forum.
If you did an ambitious schedule of 10K show 20 times a year, it would cost 200K. The MFA spends more than that on staples.
Besides the reduction on return, what is keeping this from happening now? The fashion of traveling uber-shows? Partially. The institution would have to be fast, agile, dynamic-- whatever you call it, it would have to be less conservative. And when art is involved, for some reason, people get uptight.
You'd need a pile of historians to double check facts for the 50th time before it was released to the public so XXX didn't embarrass themselves. The schedule would have to be go through 28 changes before approval. Et cetra.
We need a better art machine to sponsor a venue this awesome.
Take one suggestion for diversity from Roberta Smith and add Alanna Heiss's idea that there should be a balanced matrix of shows at any given time in a single venue. Mix. What does this equal?
I'd work that museum/gallery/alt/venue/platform. What curator wouldn't? A model where the space shows a multitude of shows simultaneously would be the only way to make Heiss's idea that no show should cost more than 10K possible. A scheduling nightmare with the added bonus of increased advertising costs. It would cost more and return less for the investors.
And let's be honest, the average show at a MOMA/MFA/LAMOCA is 10-20% cost on art and the rest goes into keeping the doors open, the show guarded, the coffee free trade, and the advertisements on buses, NPR, and in Art Forum.
If you did an ambitious schedule of 10K show 20 times a year, it would cost 200K. The MFA spends more than that on staples.
Besides the reduction on return, what is keeping this from happening now? The fashion of traveling uber-shows? Partially. The institution would have to be fast, agile, dynamic-- whatever you call it, it would have to be less conservative. And when art is involved, for some reason, people get uptight.
You'd need a pile of historians to double check facts for the 50th time before it was released to the public so XXX didn't embarrass themselves. The schedule would have to be go through 28 changes before approval. Et cetra.
We need a better art machine to sponsor a venue this awesome.
10 February 2010
Mastery is no longer having the distraction of learning
Thank you to Matana Roberts for this article.
Hopefully, without sounding completely politically tone def, one could take black avant-garde and insert contemporary visual artist, and you have a 99% similarity. It takes so long to develop mastery. Academia is always staring at you-- come for the tenure, stay for the ego fluffing. The long days alone. The missing road map. The newness of what we do. The constant reinvention of the wheel.
It's tiring.
Without a supportive and active community to help guide you through the complications of art, you are sunk. If visual artists were to create more opportunities, (like x-initiative, IPCNY, Dieu Donne, Apex Art, and others) outside of just NY, we could come together more often and support each other.
We need each other.
This is the same distance between those of us who make work, or try to put work up in public and those who teach. There has been cries of curator art, but I'd argue that those are misdirected. This trend may be university trained curator art.
Without just bashing the ivory tower, our chance to make our own world is now. Let's get working.
Hopefully, without sounding completely politically tone def, one could take black avant-garde and insert contemporary visual artist, and you have a 99% similarity. It takes so long to develop mastery. Academia is always staring at you-- come for the tenure, stay for the ego fluffing. The long days alone. The missing road map. The newness of what we do. The constant reinvention of the wheel.
It's tiring.
Without a supportive and active community to help guide you through the complications of art, you are sunk. If visual artists were to create more opportunities, (like x-initiative, IPCNY, Dieu Donne, Apex Art, and others) outside of just NY, we could come together more often and support each other.
We need each other.
You couldn't go down to 52nd St., NYC anymore to find and try to sit in with the greats. There were no more epic after-hour jam sessions. There were no more lofts where you had the time and the space to work out your ideas. Those of us on the ground who missed that era and didn't believe that the university could give us the keys to the new music were forced to solve the arcane equations on our own, without the proper information and guidance from our elders. For me, it became about following a faint trail of breadcrumbs through the rare magazine article, and obscure record stores and bookshops, then piecing the findings together as best I could to form a cogent history.
This is the same distance between those of us who make work, or try to put work up in public and those who teach. There has been cries of curator art, but I'd argue that those are misdirected. This trend may be university trained curator art.
Without just bashing the ivory tower, our chance to make our own world is now. Let's get working.
29 January 2010
21 January 2010
10 January 2010
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