I leave tomorrow for New York to attend the contemporary art auctions, meet with clients, and attend the preview for Bruce Nauman's exhibition at the new Sperone Westwater space. In my excitement, I have been re-reading Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman's Words. Although Nauman has granted relatively few interviews over the course of his career, he allowed Janet Karynak and the MIT press almost complete autonomy and access in preparing this collection. It provides fantastic insight into his thought process, his opinion of the art world and his place in it, and his transformation from emerging artist to absolute between 1965 - 2001. The following is the first paragraph of a paper I wrote on Nauman a few years ago. One of the most influential and innovative artists of the century, Bruce Nauman (born in 1941), remains a distinct and critical voice in contemporary art dialog. Nauman explores the intersection of art and life through installation, photography, performance, object making, and video. Nauman’s work is a provocation, a call to attention, an intentional shifting of perspective. As art critic and curator Robert Storr describes Nauman’s effect on his audience, "If they're not puzzled, they're not getting it" (Moorehead). CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE ESSAY
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I awoke to the tremendously sad news that San Antonio-based Photographer Chuck Ramirez had a biking accident last night sustaining severe head trauma. He was taken off life support this morning and passed away at 47. Ramirez processed and deconstructed everyday objects in large-scale photography, isolating and re-contextualizing otherwise discarded, dying, and overlooked materials such as filled garbage bags (pictured above), dying flowers, and battered, empty piñatas. As described by artist Franco Mondini-Ruiz, biennialist and Rome Prize winner, “he had a profound and tender sensitivity for special things that were overlooked in San Antonio by others, like his mother's kitchen,” he said. “He turned Tex-Mex grandmother's kitchen into international exhibits, and he did appreciate the vulnerability of life and the ephemeral nature of it” (quoted from mysanantonionews.com). Bill FitzGibbons of the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center described Chuck as "one of the most innovative artists that I've ever known. His medium was photography and he brought a creativeness to photography that I've never really seen before, and feel that he was just in the midst of his career. He had great things ahead, and obviously (his life) was cut too short.” Chuck's work was included in LAUNCHPROJECTS' debut exhibition, VIVID, in May of 2009 and was scheduled for a two-person exhibition this August with close friend and fellow photographer Rodolfo Choperena. His work abstracted the mundane and overlooked in celebration and homage to the fleeting nature of human existence - and to the exquisite fragility of every moment. Chuck will be remembered by the joy and beauty he found in the broken, abandoned, and neglected and the unique lens though which he gave our world a bit more beauty, a bit more compassion. I just read Calvin Tomkin's Lives of the Artists. This collection of artists profiles, originally published in the New Yorker over the span of a decade, is basically the the E! True Hollywood Story of some of the most famous (and incidentally rich) artists living and working today. It describes the quirks and fixations of Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Richard Serra, James Turrell, Matthew Barney, Maurizio Cattelan, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, and John Currin. This book was panned in a 2008 Bookforum review by Martha Schwender. After she accurately points out that Cindy Sherman is the sole female profiled amidst a "depressingly narrow, predictable bunch...many are the spiritual heirs of Tenth Street—heroic white males—remade for the market/ media age" she goes on to assert that "it’s hard to imagine that an average working artist will actually feel good after reading Tomkins’s volume. I kept thinking of the psychologist I know who won’t put People magazine in her waiting room for fear of discouraging her clients, since its celebrity-obsessed message is that you’re a loser simply because you’re not famous". Lives of the Artists is unquestionably the People Magazine of art books and is not a collection of art criticism. What the book does provide, however, is a uniquely intimate and honest look at some of the most iconic stars of today's art world. Yes, it details what they wore, how much they drank, and which stars have been seen at their openings and in their bedrooms. But the artists profiled have each in their own way fundamentally changed the way we view and discuss art. Tomkins provides an intimacy that is exciting, juicy, and occasionally insightful. In the preface Tomkins remarks that "biography has informed our understanding of art. In my experience, the lives of contemporary artists are so integral to what they make that the two cannot be considered in isolation. If the work is interesting, the life probably is too." When I teach Art History, I incorporate some of the juiciness and scandal of artists' lives (of any era) to help the work come alive to students. Even the most famous works of art were not made in a vacuum, and the drama of every day life informs each and every work of art - whether it be Cindy Sherman or Leonardo da Vinci. This book provides exactly that context - the texture and shape of the lives of some of the most iconic artists of our times. Peregrine Honig's exhibition LOSER opened at Dwight Hackett Projects this past Saturday. The show was called LOSER because on August 10, with nearly 1.5 million people tuned in to watch, Peregrine ended up the runner up in the final episode of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist -- the reality TV show aired on Bravo. Beyond the standard and ongoing debate of whether the reality TV show (now entering its second season) is intrinsically good or evil, I am most intrigued by Peregrine's reaction to the experience (overall very positive) and the experience as described by one of the show's judges, art critic Jerry Saltz. Saltz, frequently labeled a LOSER in his own right for participating in this reality pageantry,commented in New York Magazine that "Bravo had me at hello. The show appealed to my belief that art only got better once the boundaries between high and low culture were relaxed, most famously by Andy Warhol, then by countless others. It also satisfied my hunger to try new things; my demons that demand I dance naked in public; and my desire to see if art criticism is supple and porous enough to be practiced on a wider stage-even if this stage distorted that practice." Saltz found that people wanted to talk to him about the show - by the thousands - following its airing. Blogs were created, as were fan and hate clubs. It got people talking about what makes "real" art, how art functions as a commodity, and how art can and should be approached, marketed, sold, and promoted. "Work of Artreminded me that there are many ways to become an artist and many communities to be an artist in. The show also changed the way I think about my job. Over the ten weeks it aired, hundreds of strangers stopped me on the street to talk about it. In the middle of nowhere, I’d be having passionate discussions about art with laypeople. It happened in the hundreds, then thousands of comments that appeared below the recaps I wrote for nymag.com. Many of these came from people who said they’d never written about art before. Most were as articulate as any critic. I responded frequently, admitted when I was wrong, and asked others to expand on ideas. By the show’s end, over a quarter-million words had been generated. In my last recap I wrote, “An accidental art criticism sprang up … Together we were crumbs and butter of a mysterious madeleine. The delivery mechanism had turned itself inside out.” Instead of one voice speaking to the many, there were many voices speaking to me—and one another. Coherently. I now understand that, like us, criticism contains multitudes." Maybe it is through pushing beyond the bounds of our complex and highly ritualized current art structure that we can find a new function for art in every day life. Or maybe Work of Art really is a bastardization of the art world and its meaning for art lovers and artists. Either way, it became an interesting social experiment. And it clearly got us all talking. I just watched Exit Through the Gift Shop at the Center for Contemporary Arts - the Banksy film I believed to be about street art and the arguably most famous street artist of all time, Banksy. Banksy, whose identity is a mystery, rose to international celebrity and acclaim with major exhibitions, movie star collectors (Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Christina Aguilera to name a few) and works being auctioned at Sotheby's in the mid six-figures. In classic "Banksy" irony, during the second day of the first Sotheby's sale that included his work (which was selling far beyond its six-figure estimates), Banksy updated his website to show an image of people bidding on his work the first day of the auctions with a caption stating "I Can't Believe You Morons Actually Buy this Shit" (pictured above). Perhaps a continuum of a commentary to expose the commodification of street art in the extreme, the film Exit through the Gift Shop is startlingly not really about Banksy at all. It features the amateur film maker Thierry Guetta, who innocently and passionately takes to the streets to create THE seminal street art film from the "inside." He gets so "inside," however, that he becomes enchanted with the street art life and decides, with Banksy's encouragement, to abandon filmmaking to become a street artist in his own rite. The resulting project is a monumental-scale solo exhibition. Entitled “Life Is Beautiful," the production - it can hardly be called an exhibition - is a grotesque demonstration of what a man with a team of talented artists (for Guetta made none of the work himself) can accomplish. As aptly described by Jeanette Catsoulis of The New York Times "garnering a cover story in LA Weekly, (the show) appears to be a display of blatant knockoffs and cut-and-paste pop trash that’s nevertheless fawned over by gullible collectors." Easily comparable to the film Untitled, Exit through the Gift Shop is a testament to the lemming-like behavior of many art collectors and critics. If the show is big enough, if it garners enough attention in the press, if it is perceived to be the next big thing, people will come and pay ridiculous prices simply to be considered in the loop. In one scene, before the show opens, the hype has drawn such attention that collectors are calling Guetta to pre-order works to the tune of $35,000 and beyond. Madonna commissioned Guetta to design the cover of her album of greatest hits. Again quoting The New York Times, "Banksy, who seems both gratified and embarrassed by his Frankensteinian role...mischievously exfoliates the next-big-thing hunger and the posers who pursue it". Untitled (the movie) is a brutal satire of the contemporary art world. The first time I watched it, as the former curator of the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) and as a current curator of LAUNCHPROJECTS, it hit me to the core of my contemporary art conundrums. It was almost too painful to watch, and I seriously contemplated hating this film. To add to my pain, previous to watching it I had accepted the dubious honor of introducing it for audiences at the CCA. I nearly called CCA's Film Director to back out of the deal. But then I thought about it. And this is the introduction that I gave (omitting the welcoming preamble). This movie is too true, to painful to ignore. The protagonist of this film creates brooding new music that brings to mind “art bands” such as internationally celebrated artist Mike Kelley’s band “Destroy All Monsters,” and John Cage’s 1952 composition 4 minutes 33 seconds of which three minutes are performed without a single note being played. Installations in Untitled’s fictitious gallery include Maurizio Cattelan style taxidermy sculptures (pictured above, right) and contemporary ready-mades a la Marcel Duchamp such as post-it notes, blank walls, and push pins. A light bulb installation immediately calls to mind Martin Creed, the artist who won London’s prestigious Turner Prize in 2001 for an installation of an empty gallery with a pair of flashing lights. These are all real art objects, real art starts. The pressing question became HOW do these artist become famous, important, and valued? Matthew Barney covers the walls of the Guggenheim in vasoline and scales the museum, Tracey Emin presents her slept-in (and horrifically dirty) bed, Felix Gonzalez Torres places a pile of candy and a string of lightbulbs in an exhibition space, Marcel Duchamp obtains a urinal, signs and titles it Fountain. All of the above are celebrated as paradigm-shifting moments in art. How did this happen? It is admittedly hard to accept challenging art. I remember a few years back, standing in front of a Richard Tuttle installation at the Museum of Modern Art asking myself, HONESTLY, as a curator, if Tuttle had submitted a proposal to me as an unknown artist, would I have given him a show? The contemporary art curator often translates into exhibitions objects that have yet to be defined, much less understood. As Betty Parsons, the first dealer to promote abstract expressionism, described “You can’t put something that’s just been done into history; you’ve got to talk about its creative impact for the moment. A new work by a new artist is not history. It is the present”. In this movie we see Madeline, the sexy adventuresome art dealer, convincing collectors to purchase seemingly farcical and ridiculous objects of art. While laughing at the absurdity, however, my mind strayed to Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings—drawings he never himself executed. The collector buys instructions, sometimes detailed, sometimes not, and the drawings are carried out by other artists or art students. Talk about a tough sale, but LeWitt is one of the most prestigious and sought-after artists in the world. The fact is, as an art collector, museum curator, or dealer, it is tough to distinguish innovators from charlatans. Innovators challenge what we believe art to be in such a way they can easily look like pretenders. Charlatans with the right backing and publicity can make it to fast notoriety—smashing and popular success. Marcia Tucker was the first female curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art and was fired for her innovative approach to the arts and for her solo exhibition of Richard Tuttle. Audiences complained bitterly that it was not art. Tucker went on to found the New Museum, one of the most important contemporary art museums in the world. She forged a career of challenging audiences, and receiving excruciatingly bad press all the while. Tucker once made an observation that I will leave with you as we turn to the film. “If cutting edge works of art were truly devoid of significance, why should the world of artists, critics, writers, argue, swear, and fight over them? The question answers itself; the trouble is the works do possess significance. They are significant of the spirit of change that within and about us, the spirit of unrest, the spirit of striving". This film, I would argue, is a silly yet shrewd continuum of that debate. Watch the trailer here. Andy Warhol once joked about buying 2,000 bottles of Dom Pérignon and popping them all at the turn of the millennium. If only he could have attended the closing festivities of New York Fashion Week at Villa Pacri and its nightclub, Tzigan, in the Meatpacking district. Tzigan was transformed into a temporary mini-Warhol exhibit, and Dom Pérignon released its limited edition Champagne, A Tribute to Andy Warhol by Dom Pérignon. “Inspired by Warhol’s unconventional representation of icons, and the playful use of codes and colour in his work, Dom Pérignon commissioned the Design Laboratory at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art & Design to reinterpret its timeless bottle. The result is a unique collection of three bottles, each with its distinct label in red, blue or yellow, paying homage to Warhol’s iconic colour games.” Eric Tillinghast received a fantastic review in this month's Art in America, written by Jan Adlmann. In the review he discussed Tillinghast's solo exhibition Water at LAUNCHPROJECTS and his site-specific installation Rain Machine at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe (pictured right). Adlmann references David Hockney's L.A. pool paintings when describing Tillinghast's works on paper, a flattering reference that we heard frequently in addition to comparisons of the work to Ed Ruscha's swimming pools. Connections to past artists places Tillinghast within a significant art historical trajectory, while his explorations and works remain innovative and unique. When discussing Eric's Rain Machine installation Adlmann recalls an installation by the same title that neither Eric nor I had known, Andy Warhol's Rain Machine (pictured left) created in 1969 for a LACMA exhibition Art and Technology. "Reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s 1971 installation Rain Machine (Daisy Waterfall), the concept here might well be seen as a present day rethinking of the impluvia (court- yard rainwater catchments) in the villas of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Crucial to the viewer’s apprehension of the work was the faintly audible plashing of the piece, which lulled us to the verge of reverie" (Adlmann). This parallel represents a remarkable confluence of art ideas and eras. Without prior awareness of Warhol's installation, Eric Tillinghast draws a close parallel between the past and the present - a fusion of art and technology in the form of making rain. To read the full review, click here: TILLINGHAST REVIEW - ART IN AMERICA I was at the post office buying stamps and found out that in March the USPS hired Jonathan Fineberg, professor and author of Art Since 1940, to select 10 seminal Modernist paintings to be reproduced as the "Abstract Expressionist" stamp collection. The stamps included in the collection are: The Golden Wall by Hans Hofmann, Romanesque Façade by Adolph Gottlieb, Orange and Yellow by Mark Rothko, The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb by Arshile Gorky, 1948-C by Clyfford Still, Asheville by Willem de Kooning, Achilles by Barnett Newman, Convergence by Jackson Pollock, La Grande Vallée 0 by Joan Mitchell and Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34 by Robert Motherwell. They are "curated" onto the page in a format to represent a museum exhibition. And I thought it couldn't get better than the Simpsons collection. We spent 10 days traveling through Northern California - Sea Ranch, Napa Valley, and San Francisco. Throughout the trip I was consumed with Michael Peppiatt's biography of Francis Bacon, Anatomy of an Enigma. Fully aware of Bacon's penchant for drink and intense periods of masochistic debauchery, this biography gave me new insight into why he painted the subjects he did and how his painting style paralleled his own carefully-guarded personal life. Peppiatt was a close friend of Bacon's and traveled with him for decades as both biographer and confidante. This book is not only a page-turning and well written tale, it also offers and tremendous details of one of the most guarded, enigmatic, and powerful artists of the 20th century. While in San Francisco we toured the Fischer collection at SFMOMA. Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of the The Gap, built a stunning collection of over 1,000 works of art by the most iconic artists of the 20th Century including Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Anselm Kiefer, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and many more. Many of these works had never been previously exhibited and it is truly inspiring to see them all housed in such a lovely museum setting. On loan to the SFMOMA for the next 99 years, it is a mini-course in the history of modern and contemporary art and absolutely worth a visit. |
art in lifeThe world as I experience it - through people, exhibitions, books, talks, + random happenings that lead back to art. One way or another. Archives
April 2011
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