Monday, October 29, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Verbatim
Yesterday, on 57th Street, I witnessed an exchange between a gallery director who had never heard of a Barcelona chair and a collector couple from out-of-town who didn’t know the names of the artists whose work they own (“We also have quite a few prints…one’s by a Schwartz maybe? We bought them from that gallery down the street, I can’t remember the name…” “PaceWildenstein?” “Yes, that’s it.”).
The paintings the couple was considering, to be flanked by the aforesaid Barcelona chairs in a 15' x 30' hallway, were priced from $35,000 to $65,000. The gallery director introduced the artist by saying, “He died last January. He’s not exactly famous but pretty well-known.”
She might have said, “This artist, who died last January, was prominent in the sixties and seventies and has been rediscovered after a recent show about that era at the National Academy Museum…” but then why am I quibbling?
“This is a horizontal painting?”
“Yes, but you can hang it vertically if you want.”
The paintings the couple was considering, to be flanked by the aforesaid Barcelona chairs in a 15' x 30' hallway, were priced from $35,000 to $65,000. The gallery director introduced the artist by saying, “He died last January. He’s not exactly famous but pretty well-known.”
She might have said, “This artist, who died last January, was prominent in the sixties and seventies and has been rediscovered after a recent show about that era at the National Academy Museum…” but then why am I quibbling?
“This is a horizontal painting?”
“Yes, but you can hang it vertically if you want.”
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Procrastination
I have a writing deadline, and a bike ride on this warm autumn morning seemed like just the thing. As my ride stretched from one hour into two, I found myself circling the cemetery, where I hadn’t been for awhile, and noticed something I never had before—gravestones decorated for Halloween:
They made for some curious combinations of imagery....
At first I thought it was too weird, but in the end I was quite moved, especially by the graves of babies who may never have seen a Halloween, or too few…
and I thought how fortunate my neighbors are to have this way of expressing their feelings, one that might not be open to those of us who, I often think, are just too schooled in cool.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Less is more
Friday night Scott and I drove through the rain to the opening of the Anselm Kiefer exhibition at Mass MoCA. Of course, in the official remarks, as with the Serras, the talk was about how big and heavy everything is, and how hard the show was to install. Compared to the rest of modern life where dams and skyscrapers are built and we take for granted that most accomplishments require work, any kind of effort in the art world is made out to be a big deal. However among the overweight and oversize pieces is a painting (around 9’ x 24’) in the first gallery that’s truly magnificent—a charred landscape entitled Aperiatur Terra Germinet Salvatorum, it makes good use of Kiefer’s predilection for a crowded rush to the vanishing point at the horizon line—until you turn a corner into the other gallery and see three more that are almost identical. With each iteration, the paintings’ overall power and presence is diminished to the point that they, sadly, nearly cancel each other out.
Kiefer stayed in Germany as a form of political protest, refusing to enter the United States while Iraq War continues as, it was noted in the remarks, his mentor, Joseph Beuys, would not travel here during the Vietnam War.
Then yesterday Roberto took me to see a film at the Chatham (NY) film festival, about Ellsworth Kelly, a nearby resident, who goes about art and life with such ease, sureness, elegance, and restraint that it makes a lot of other art look like so much huffing and puffing. With the exception of the Maysles documentaries about Christo and Jeanne-Claude, I usually find films about artists annoying, as they are often made with an exaggerated sense of awe. But this film, even though conventionally conceived and therefore dotted with commentary by the usual art world talking heads, is quite moving, and conveys enormous insight into Kelly and his work. It shows his process as non-theoretical, purely intuitive, and his intention as—his word, and one Kiefer would no doubt also employ—spiritual. Kelly is where I started as a young artist, the subject of the first art book I ever bought. Later, in one of my little-known side jobs, producing photographs for print ads for Vitra where I got famous people to sit in famous chairs, the photographer, Christian Coigny, and I traveled to Kelly’s airplane hanger-like studio in Spencertown. Kelly was most gracious, taking me on a tour of his studio, showing me the model for his upcoming retrospective at the Guggenheim as well as treasures accumulated over the years—I have a vivid memory of a beautiful, small triangular drawing he bought from Agnes Martin in the early days to help her get by—before taking us to lunch. Seeing the film caused me think about my early ambitions for art, how important it was/is to me for it to be life affirming and enhancing. If I’m going to bring a new image into the world, let it be one that makes it a better place. Kelly did not attend the premiere because he was “in his studio painting” as the presenter put it, and my guess is that at 84, he has no need for any more fuss being made over him.
Kiefer stayed in Germany as a form of political protest, refusing to enter the United States while Iraq War continues as, it was noted in the remarks, his mentor, Joseph Beuys, would not travel here during the Vietnam War.
Then yesterday Roberto took me to see a film at the Chatham (NY) film festival, about Ellsworth Kelly, a nearby resident, who goes about art and life with such ease, sureness, elegance, and restraint that it makes a lot of other art look like so much huffing and puffing. With the exception of the Maysles documentaries about Christo and Jeanne-Claude, I usually find films about artists annoying, as they are often made with an exaggerated sense of awe. But this film, even though conventionally conceived and therefore dotted with commentary by the usual art world talking heads, is quite moving, and conveys enormous insight into Kelly and his work. It shows his process as non-theoretical, purely intuitive, and his intention as—his word, and one Kiefer would no doubt also employ—spiritual. Kelly is where I started as a young artist, the subject of the first art book I ever bought. Later, in one of my little-known side jobs, producing photographs for print ads for Vitra where I got famous people to sit in famous chairs, the photographer, Christian Coigny, and I traveled to Kelly’s airplane hanger-like studio in Spencertown. Kelly was most gracious, taking me on a tour of his studio, showing me the model for his upcoming retrospective at the Guggenheim as well as treasures accumulated over the years—I have a vivid memory of a beautiful, small triangular drawing he bought from Agnes Martin in the early days to help her get by—before taking us to lunch. Seeing the film caused me think about my early ambitions for art, how important it was/is to me for it to be life affirming and enhancing. If I’m going to bring a new image into the world, let it be one that makes it a better place. Kelly did not attend the premiere because he was “in his studio painting” as the presenter put it, and my guess is that at 84, he has no need for any more fuss being made over him.
Kelly, by the way, is one artist who's made some great green paintings:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Flies
You know Damien Hirst’s “painting” that has a surface of dead flies? Well obviously he got the idea from sneaking into my studio at night, because it’s fly heaven here. Before I built the studio, when it was a dark uninsulated attic that the previous owners never entered except for the purpose of adding to The Biggest Pile of Stuff No One Would Ever Want, the fly population was dense. I assumed that after the renovation the insects would be so blinded by the bright white of the sheetrocked walls that they'd be unable to procreate. But no-o-o-o, autumn came around again and suddenly they’re everywhere. At first I had a “live and let live” attitude toward them, but lately I’ve gotten aggressive and am putting my orange Philippe Starck fly swatter (probably the only thing you can buy at Moss for $13) to the test. It reminds me of my friend, Coco, from whom I rented a bug-filled cottage for many years, who used to say, “I start out the summer Albert Schweitzer and end it Genghis Khan.”
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Ecuador
Roberto and I were seriously considering visiting our friend, Mike Glier, in Ecuador until I got an email from Mike this morning from his new digs, which he described as “camp…with tarantulas,” and suggested we read his latest blog post before rushing off to buy plane tickets. I wanted to support Mike in the second phase of his venture in plein air painting along the longitude on which he lives (the first was the Arctic) but can say I have sufficiently chickened out and will continue, instead, to commune with the bats on my back porch instead of those in the wild, and paint palm trees from photographs rather than life. To mark my decision (Roberto, who may be more intrepid than I, can make his own) I polished off a good part of a bar of Ecuadorian chocolate. I admire Mike for sticking it out, although I’d also admire him if he just said fuck it, and finished off his project in the Bahamas. But while there’s something to be said for being flexible and knowing one’s limits, no doubt there’s more to be learned from stretching them. It’s probably all my fault for encouraging Mike to start a blog, without which we’d be none the wiser. You can read about his adventures here: http://alongalongline.blogspot.com/
Friday, October 12, 2007
Whoops!
Yesterday I inadvertently went to an art performance. I had plans with a friend for lunch, and he suggested meeting uptown where someone he knew was doing a performance in the lobby of a corporate office building. On the way, I passed another lobby where they were presenting a new car. The car was roped off and next to it, in tight pants and high heels, was a lovely blond woman whose job was to stand there, and by her silent presence, bring attention to the vehicle. I don’t know what kind of bubble I’ve been in, but I didn’t realize these things were still being done in 2007, at least in aware places like New York, and I wondered how she felt being decoration for a car and what she thought about while she stood there. Moving along I found the lobby where the performance was supposed to be, and not seeing anything going on, approached a young, beautiful Asian woman, standing alone behind a counter, who turned out to be the artist. She told me her theme was money laundering, and asked if I wanted her to wipe the bills from my wallet with scented disposable wipes she’d had specially packaged for the occasion. I demurred and instead watched a brief video that featured a bacteriologist talking about the concentration of germs on money. Then my friend arrived and she asked him if he had any money she could clean. He produced a twenty and after wiping it, she waved it in the air to dry. She told us she’d “laundered” over $13,000 so far, and produced a questionnaire, which my friend filled out, about his money habits, if he was afraid of germs, etc. My friend was obviously enjoying himself, which was hardly surprising—her wide smile, dark eyes and flirtatious manner were impossible to resist—and I began to ask myself how different the “performance” would be if the person behind the counter were some grizzled old guy, if anyone would even bother investigating it to see what was going on, and then I wondered, what would it be like if it were some grizzled old guy and he wasn’t set up behind a counter in a pristine office building but behind a cardboard box on the corner of 57th and Sixth. I thought, too, about Kara Walker’s images based on racism and sexism, and how a grizzled old guy—especially a grizzled old white guy—would have a hard time getting away with that as well. Then we raced through the rain to Mangia, where I had roast lamb and beet salad, and realized that, if I’m to continue to increase my understanding of art, I have to spend a lot more time in the city.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Tough love studio day
Have I been whining a lot? I guess so, because today Roberto came over and said he didn’t think my painting was as bad as he'd expected. He said the color was good, that the alizarin yellow turned out to be great as underpainting—but that I’m painting what I want to see rather than what’s really there. His exact words were, “It’s naïve, but not in a good way.” Only a true friend would say that. Of course, I knew he was right; I was just hoping that I could fool him the way I was trying to fool myself into thinking this painting was Gerhard Richter-esque when it’s really more like Maurice Sendak, minus the Wild Things.
I’d hoped for a happy ending—I was committed to the idea that a painting blog should be inspirational—but instead I’m going to take Roberto’s advice, retire this thing for a while and start another. And this time I’ll try not to be so histrionic about it.
Meanwhile there’s Jeanette and Erica’s wedding and an article to write for Art in America on the Marisol show that’s up at Neuhoff Edelman Gallery (41 West 57th) until October 27th. The great thing about having two vocations is that it makes for very productive procrastination: I do some of my best painting when I’m supposed to be writing and, conversely, having a deadline gives me a great excuse not to paint.
My reviews of Myron Stout and Jo Baer are in this month’s (October) Art in America.
I’d hoped for a happy ending—I was committed to the idea that a painting blog should be inspirational—but instead I’m going to take Roberto’s advice, retire this thing for a while and start another. And this time I’ll try not to be so histrionic about it.
Meanwhile there’s Jeanette and Erica’s wedding and an article to write for Art in America on the Marisol show that’s up at Neuhoff Edelman Gallery (41 West 57th) until October 27th. The great thing about having two vocations is that it makes for very productive procrastination: I do some of my best painting when I’m supposed to be writing and, conversely, having a deadline gives me a great excuse not to paint.
My reviews of Myron Stout and Jo Baer are in this month’s (October) Art in America.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Grey studio day
I don’t know if it’s a talent, like perfect pitch, or an acquired skill, but I can easily mix any color I need—except grey, which is the color I’ve wanted this painting to be all along. "That’s because," Ann said this afternoon, "there’s no such thing as grey; there’s only green, blue or violet." Now she tells me! Is this one of those things, like Santa Claus and snipe hunts, that everyone else found out about in second grade, and no one clued me in on? Obviously all those labels on paint are just a joke, and when someone comes into, say, Pearl Paint and actually purchases a tube of Holbein Grey of Grey, the salespeople are cracking up behind the cash registers. Well I’m nothing if not determined, so I looked up “mixing grey oil” on Google, and up came a bunch of sites that are obviously perpetuating the myth. But I fooled them! I took all of the colors mentioned on all of the sites and mixed them together and got...GREEN.
Definitions
It’s clear that one of the reasons for our art malaise is that we have no definitions for art and, in fact, resist any discussion about what our expectations of art are. I wrote about this in a piece called The Wow for Review in 1999, and now, re-reading it find, sadly, that it hasn’t lost currency for being nine years old. In a further effort to define art in our times—for an article or book, I don’t know yet—I’m delving into what others are writing and have written and will collect what I find here.
I'm currently purusing the second volume (1815-1900) of Art in Theory: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. This, found on pp. 17-18 is a snippet of Originality and Genius by Arthur Shopenhauer (1788-1860) from The World as Will and Representation:
Whilst science, following the restless and unstable stream of the fourfold forms of reasons or grounds and consequents, is with every end it attains again and again directed farther, and can never find an ultimate goal or complete satisfaction, any more than by running we can reach the place where the clouds touch the horizon; art, on the contrary, is everywhere at its goal. For it plucks the object of its contemplation from the stream of the world’s course, and holds it isolated before it. This particular thing, which in that stream was an infinitesimal part, becomes for art a representative of the whole, and equivalent of the infinitely many in space and time. It therefore pauses at this particular thing; it stops the wheel of time; for it the relations vanish; its object is only the essential, the Idea. We can therefore define it accurately as the way of considering things independently of the principle of sufficient reason….
I'm currently purusing the second volume (1815-1900) of Art in Theory: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. This, found on pp. 17-18 is a snippet of Originality and Genius by Arthur Shopenhauer (1788-1860) from The World as Will and Representation:
Whilst science, following the restless and unstable stream of the fourfold forms of reasons or grounds and consequents, is with every end it attains again and again directed farther, and can never find an ultimate goal or complete satisfaction, any more than by running we can reach the place where the clouds touch the horizon; art, on the contrary, is everywhere at its goal. For it plucks the object of its contemplation from the stream of the world’s course, and holds it isolated before it. This particular thing, which in that stream was an infinitesimal part, becomes for art a representative of the whole, and equivalent of the infinitely many in space and time. It therefore pauses at this particular thing; it stops the wheel of time; for it the relations vanish; its object is only the essential, the Idea. We can therefore define it accurately as the way of considering things independently of the principle of sufficient reason….
Friday, October 5, 2007
The middle of the night
I’m just back from the city, where all artists talk about is how much they hate the art they see. I’m just as guilty as anyone else, and explaining the situation over Indian lunch to a friend who’s a food writer, I asked her to imagine how she’d feel if all of a sudden no one cared about what food tasted like or how it was presented, but only wanted to know about celebrity chefs, who’s eating at what restaurants, and the outrageous prices they’re paying for their meals.
So I went to bed with this art malaise swirling around in my head and by the time I woke up at 4:00 a.m. I’d decided to throw it all over and become a Buddhist nun. I already have short hair, and the idea of wearing sensible shoes and hanging out with Pema Chodron was very appealing. Then I remembered, from my hippie days, a place called Findhorn in Scotland, which is said to have such great spiritual energy that plants there grow to enormous size. The Scots have great accents, a good sense of humor, nationalized medicine and probably less severe weather than I’d find at Pema’s abbey in Nova Scotia, so I thought, perfect, I’ll move there. After deciding to buy a small cottage and spend the rest of my days raising cucumbers the size of kayaks, I roused myself out of bed, went to look up Findhorn on the Web and found—quel surprise!—that Findhorn has been commodified like everything else. “Experience Week—Seven days that can change your life” is required for entry, and costs, on a sliding scale, L365 to L505 (that’s at least $730 to $1010 to you and me) for a program that includes a work component. You can also take guest workshops with the likes of Caroline Myss and James Finley, who are on a New Age circuit where the same ten or fifteen names pop up no matter where on the planet you are—just as you can go to any art fair or museum in the world and see the work of the same ten or fifteen artists. The regimented daily schedule at Findhorn reminded me of when I was ten and at Camp Toowendawee, where the only thing I liked was being away from my parents.
Since I have no parents to bug me here I've decided to stay put for the time being, even if it means I have to finish my painting. If I want McSpirituality I can always drive up the road to Kripalu, where the vegetarian cafeteria meal has recently gone from $10 to $18, and to grow bigger vegetables in this hot, dry October, I’ll buy a sprinkler.
So I went to bed with this art malaise swirling around in my head and by the time I woke up at 4:00 a.m. I’d decided to throw it all over and become a Buddhist nun. I already have short hair, and the idea of wearing sensible shoes and hanging out with Pema Chodron was very appealing. Then I remembered, from my hippie days, a place called Findhorn in Scotland, which is said to have such great spiritual energy that plants there grow to enormous size. The Scots have great accents, a good sense of humor, nationalized medicine and probably less severe weather than I’d find at Pema’s abbey in Nova Scotia, so I thought, perfect, I’ll move there. After deciding to buy a small cottage and spend the rest of my days raising cucumbers the size of kayaks, I roused myself out of bed, went to look up Findhorn on the Web and found—quel surprise!—that Findhorn has been commodified like everything else. “Experience Week—Seven days that can change your life” is required for entry, and costs, on a sliding scale, L365 to L505 (that’s at least $730 to $1010 to you and me) for a program that includes a work component. You can also take guest workshops with the likes of Caroline Myss and James Finley, who are on a New Age circuit where the same ten or fifteen names pop up no matter where on the planet you are—just as you can go to any art fair or museum in the world and see the work of the same ten or fifteen artists. The regimented daily schedule at Findhorn reminded me of when I was ten and at Camp Toowendawee, where the only thing I liked was being away from my parents.
Since I have no parents to bug me here I've decided to stay put for the time being, even if it means I have to finish my painting. If I want McSpirituality I can always drive up the road to Kripalu, where the vegetarian cafeteria meal has recently gone from $10 to $18, and to grow bigger vegetables in this hot, dry October, I’ll buy a sprinkler.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Goodbye to the middlemen
New Yorker music critic Alex Ross reported on his blog this morning that Radiohead, “the monumentally great English rock quintet” is bypassing record labels and on October 10th will offer their long-awaited album, In Rainbows, from a dedicated Web site on a pay-what-you-like basis. Ross billed this as “The death of popular music (as we know it)” but it could be a rebirth, similar to the revolution that happened in the eighties when Soundscan (the technology that records CD sales) was instituted and it was suddenly discovered that the best-selling album wasn’t by the over-hyped Michael Jackson but a little-known band from Georgia named R.E.M.
It’s too bad the unique character of visual art prevents it from being democratically disbursed, but instead is controlled by such a tight web of self-interest that we have no idea what people would find valuable if they had any say—if they could “vote” with the equivalent of a $9.99 download.
On the other hand, if I had to pay Radiohead what I thought their music was worth, I'd be broke.
Meanwhile the September 28th blog post of gallery owner (I refuse to use the term “gallerist”) Edward Winkleman poses the question: “Is there too much art?” (If you asked that about music, the answer would have to be “Yes, so much good music I can’t get to it all.”) The problem, however, isn’t a surfeit of art per se, but of inconsequential art marketed as great art. Is there too much art in Venice?
It’s too bad the unique character of visual art prevents it from being democratically disbursed, but instead is controlled by such a tight web of self-interest that we have no idea what people would find valuable if they had any say—if they could “vote” with the equivalent of a $9.99 download.
On the other hand, if I had to pay Radiohead what I thought their music was worth, I'd be broke.
Meanwhile the September 28th blog post of gallery owner (I refuse to use the term “gallerist”) Edward Winkleman poses the question: “Is there too much art?” (If you asked that about music, the answer would have to be “Yes, so much good music I can’t get to it all.”) The problem, however, isn’t a surfeit of art per se, but of inconsequential art marketed as great art. Is there too much art in Venice?
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Ridiculous studio day
I couldn’t stand the green, so I stained everything alizarin yellow . Now there’s a color you really can’t get rid of. I must be out of my mind. And what am I doing with a giant tube of alizarin yellow anyway? Did I buy this thing? It’s like having a bomb in the bottom of my paint drawer.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
Not so bad studio day
The painting is slowly, painfully, improving, but it’s still GREEN—even though I’ve spent all day adding lots of other colors to it. That’s because green swallows every color that touches it. Painters, take a look at your once-white bristle brushes. Have you ever noticed that they’re all GREEN? If they aren’t, it’s only because you were smart enough never to use green in the first place.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Better studio day
I got up this morning and the painting didn’t look so bad, although it was still green.
A friend, a personal trainer by profession, wanted to know what it meant to have a “bad studio day” and I found it hard to explain, which got me wondering if there’s any other field where you can so often feel as if you’ve never done this thing before. I asked Scott, who's both an artist and chef, if he’s ever experienced it in the kitchen, and he said, “No.” Do trial lawyers ever suddenly feel as if they’ve never been in a courtroom? I doubt it. Roberto describes it as one of those moments when he begins to wonder, “How did I get this job, anyway?”
So there you are and you know nothing. And even though other artists are aware of how profoundly depressing it is, they’ll gleefully tell you—and you’ll tell everyone else as long as you’re not going through it—that it’s an exciting place to be and means your art isn’t stagnant, but growing and developing. Thanks a bunch.
So Richard came over and declared the painting “a good beginning” and pointed out where it “needs work”—i.e. most of it—although, of course, he couldn’t be specific as to what that work would look like. He described painting as “an accumulation of accidents,” and suggested that whether they turn out to be happy ones or not is sometimes just a matter of luck. I still think it's all about degree of interest, of how invested I am in seeing the final image, but now that it's become a challenge, I'm getting more interested.
A friend, a personal trainer by profession, wanted to know what it meant to have a “bad studio day” and I found it hard to explain, which got me wondering if there’s any other field where you can so often feel as if you’ve never done this thing before. I asked Scott, who's both an artist and chef, if he’s ever experienced it in the kitchen, and he said, “No.” Do trial lawyers ever suddenly feel as if they’ve never been in a courtroom? I doubt it. Roberto describes it as one of those moments when he begins to wonder, “How did I get this job, anyway?”
So there you are and you know nothing. And even though other artists are aware of how profoundly depressing it is, they’ll gleefully tell you—and you’ll tell everyone else as long as you’re not going through it—that it’s an exciting place to be and means your art isn’t stagnant, but growing and developing. Thanks a bunch.
So Richard came over and declared the painting “a good beginning” and pointed out where it “needs work”—i.e. most of it—although, of course, he couldn’t be specific as to what that work would look like. He described painting as “an accumulation of accidents,” and suggested that whether they turn out to be happy ones or not is sometimes just a matter of luck. I still think it's all about degree of interest, of how invested I am in seeing the final image, but now that it's become a challenge, I'm getting more interested.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Bad studio day
This latest painting is just bad, a mishmash. I was on such a roll, now sent to the depths. I think it’s because I started it before the last one was finished. There was just picky stuff to do, with lots of drying time in-between, so I thought, start another one, why not? Except that for me, good paintings come from wanting to see something realized so badly that I’ll do whatever it takes. To start one too soon is like starting a new love affair before the old one is finished.
Richard, who I went to see to console myself, said—without having seen it—that the problem with this painting is that it’s green. He’s right. How often do you see a good green painting?
Richard, who I went to see to console myself, said—without having seen it—that the problem with this painting is that it’s green. He’s right. How often do you see a good green painting?
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Sometimes the right things happen to the right people
Joan Snyder has always gone against the grain, refusing to modify her expression to suit anyone but herself. Therefore she has given us some of the most emotionally direct paintings ever, some of the darkest as well as some of the most exuberant, some of the ugliest and some of the most lyrically beautiful. She scrawled words into the thick paint of her canvases long before text in paintings was in vogue, and has unabashedly expressed a decidedly feminine perspective in all of its anger, grief, joy and wrenching vulnerability. I was shown her work by an instructor at the beginning of my life as a painter and it has acted as a constant reminder that personal authenticity in art is everything. We met about twenty years later when Betty Cuningham was considering me for a show at Hirschl & Adler and brought Joan to my studio. Since then I’ve written about her work for Art in America, and later wrote a catalog essay. She’s one of the most sure, energetic, intelligent and dedicated of artists, always searching and changing, and with each exhibition pushes the envelope even further. Joan says it all, does it all, and deserves to be recognized by the MacArthur Foundation for her courage.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Not rocket science
The best and worst aspect of art is that it isn’t quantifiable. Spending time with astronautical engineers as I did a few weeks ago at M.I.T., I found myself envious of the fact that they work within a meritocracy. No doubt politics and ego show up wherever there are people, but when you get right down to it, a rocket either flies or it doesn’t—unlike the art world where things fly because someone says it does and gets enough people to agree, where things fly one day and not the next, and where hedge fund managers and advertising executives, in bed with the institutions, are often in charge of determining what flies and what doesn’t.
This has got to be one of the least interesting epochs in the history of art—not just because of the money-grubbers, but because the art world has become infused with people who are not really interested in art. They’re interested instead in novelty, in the idea of being creative and expressive in a way that’s not too taxing, and leading a cool life where they can sleep late and go to a lot of parties. Add that to a seemingly insatiable art market, and you’ve got a situation where almost anything can fly, at least for a minute.
Worth quoting from here is Raphael Rubenstein’s in-depth review in Art in America of the traveling exhibition, “High Times, Hard Times, New York Painting 1967-1975” (curated by Katie Siegel with David Reed, shown at the National Academy Museum in New York last winter, now touring Europe):
That victory is fleeting and artistic canons subject to drastic revision seem such obvious facts as to hardly need stating, but for some time the deciders of the art world have appeared to feel that their authority is both eternal and infallible. There’s been an assumption on their part, usually unspoken but detectable in the total assurance with which art institutions and markets function, that no deserving artist, living or dead, is now being overlooked. (The correlative is that every currently celebrated artist is one for the ages.)….Another factor that reinforces the long-term confidence of today’s tastemakers is the enormous level of investment—financial, social, and intellectual—in the work of most successful artists. When so many people and institutions have so much at stake, when capital and contemporary art are so deeply intertwined, it seems that nothing short of some unimaginable total artistic revolution, or a catastrophic global recession, could upset the status quo.
Rubenstein concludes:
I’ll leave it to readers to decide what is the legacy of this work, and whether to “possibility and openness” of that heady era expired circa 1975. Instead, I’ll close with a few comments on the issue of who is in “Hard Times, High Times” and who isn’t. Reviewing the show in The New York Times, Roberta Smith took Siegel and Reed to task for passing over the artists who, in her view, dominated the period—Frank Stella, Brice Marden, Robert Mangold and Robert Ryman. Without them, Smith wrote, the show was like a “time capsule from a time that didn’t quite exist.” This seems to me to be a complete misunderstanding of Siegel and Reed’s project. The aim of “Hard Times, High Times” is not to reflect the standard version of New York painting 1967-75 but rather to recover a lost history, to bring back into public view works long unseen, often painted by artists who have been long overlooked…
Serious historians long ago ditched the “great men” and “great events” approach to their discipline…[and] we have learned that there is just as much historical truth to be learned at the margins of power, in the facts of everyday life, in slow, nearly invisible long-term movements, as in palaces and parliaments. “Hard Times, High Times” significantly alters how we view painting during a nine-year period; as an instance of historical revision, it offers a powerful model for anyone who isn’t satisfied with the versions of our recent culture as offered, with clockwork regularity, by Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and MoMA.
This has got to be one of the least interesting epochs in the history of art—not just because of the money-grubbers, but because the art world has become infused with people who are not really interested in art. They’re interested instead in novelty, in the idea of being creative and expressive in a way that’s not too taxing, and leading a cool life where they can sleep late and go to a lot of parties. Add that to a seemingly insatiable art market, and you’ve got a situation where almost anything can fly, at least for a minute.
Worth quoting from here is Raphael Rubenstein’s in-depth review in Art in America of the traveling exhibition, “High Times, Hard Times, New York Painting 1967-1975” (curated by Katie Siegel with David Reed, shown at the National Academy Museum in New York last winter, now touring Europe):
That victory is fleeting and artistic canons subject to drastic revision seem such obvious facts as to hardly need stating, but for some time the deciders of the art world have appeared to feel that their authority is both eternal and infallible. There’s been an assumption on their part, usually unspoken but detectable in the total assurance with which art institutions and markets function, that no deserving artist, living or dead, is now being overlooked. (The correlative is that every currently celebrated artist is one for the ages.)….Another factor that reinforces the long-term confidence of today’s tastemakers is the enormous level of investment—financial, social, and intellectual—in the work of most successful artists. When so many people and institutions have so much at stake, when capital and contemporary art are so deeply intertwined, it seems that nothing short of some unimaginable total artistic revolution, or a catastrophic global recession, could upset the status quo.
Rubenstein concludes:
I’ll leave it to readers to decide what is the legacy of this work, and whether to “possibility and openness” of that heady era expired circa 1975. Instead, I’ll close with a few comments on the issue of who is in “Hard Times, High Times” and who isn’t. Reviewing the show in The New York Times, Roberta Smith took Siegel and Reed to task for passing over the artists who, in her view, dominated the period—Frank Stella, Brice Marden, Robert Mangold and Robert Ryman. Without them, Smith wrote, the show was like a “time capsule from a time that didn’t quite exist.” This seems to me to be a complete misunderstanding of Siegel and Reed’s project. The aim of “Hard Times, High Times” is not to reflect the standard version of New York painting 1967-75 but rather to recover a lost history, to bring back into public view works long unseen, often painted by artists who have been long overlooked…
Serious historians long ago ditched the “great men” and “great events” approach to their discipline…[and] we have learned that there is just as much historical truth to be learned at the margins of power, in the facts of everyday life, in slow, nearly invisible long-term movements, as in palaces and parliaments. “Hard Times, High Times” significantly alters how we view painting during a nine-year period; as an instance of historical revision, it offers a powerful model for anyone who isn’t satisfied with the versions of our recent culture as offered, with clockwork regularity, by Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and MoMA.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
The war on us
Last night I didn’t have dinner before leaving the city, and with my blood sugar plummeting and gas tank nearly empty, I stopped at a Cumberland Farms in Millerton, NY. Shuttling as I do between New York and the Berkshires, I live in a bubble that excludes malls, box stores, and most of the trappings of modern America including obesity. Nearly blinded by the fluorescent lights and unaccustomed to the glitter of row upon row of processed foods, it took me at least 15 minutes to find something in the store that I would eat—an orange, finally, and some over-salted cashews. The person behind the counter was literally a mound of flesh with a face—a teenage girl who must have weighed 300 pounds. As she lumbered away I heard her say, “I’m tired,” to no one in particular. When I went outside to pump gas, a pickup pulled up and another human mountain, a teenage boy this time, extracted himself from the truck and waddled toward the store to buy poison marketed as food. The march against the war is on Tuesday in New York. The next one should be against Doritos.
San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 2007
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, July 10, 2007
San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 2007
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, July 10, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Olafur Eliasson
September 5th was the opening of Olafur Eliasson’s mid-career survey at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and I wasn’t there, mostly because I couldn’t bear to leave my little corner of Berkshire heaven. I’m not ready for the art world season to start, not just yet. God was, and is, rewarding us with the most fabulous weather and I’m convinced no art or art-related event could match the perfection of an early evening dip in the cool and tranquil Green River. Besides, Einar and Manuela came here on their way back to Iceland and then Berlin, with a full report.
Olafur, I predict, is on his way to establishing himself as a household name, and when the show travels to the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 in April, and later the Dallas Museum of Art, I’ll be curious to see how he handles the media blitz that’s sure to follow. Up until now, he’s managed to remain aloof and keep the emphasis focused on the art—with the exception of Cynthia Zarin’s profile in The New Yorker (November 13, 2006--not yet available online).
Zarin is a New Yorker staff writer, and it seemed as if she didn’t have a sufficient art background and did little research, depending almost entirely on her interviews for information. A friend’s comment was “When you’re an expert, you always find something wrong” but I disagree. I mean, this is The New Yorker, which I expect to query the experts or, at the very least, read what’s been written about the subject. Because I thought of The New Yorker as a standard, discovering that it was fallible was a crisis of faith, like that moment in childhood when you first discover your parents could be wrong. The worst part was that this jumble of mis-emphasis and misinformation was held together with a gloss of the sharp and engaging writing for which The New Yorker is justly renowned, but which I now see as simply style. For instance Zarin absolutely nailed it when she described Olafur as having, “the slightly crumpled look of a shop teacher at a progressive school” but treated the work itself as nothing more than a by-product of his personality.
This was the gist of my letter to the magazine, which was not published:
To the editor:
Because I feel the magazine and its readers are capable of looking at issues in depth, I was sorry that the profile by Cynthia Zarin about the artist Olafur Eliasson concentrated on his personality and process rather than the art and the philosophy behind it—and without sufficient description of the art, you have no idea why such attention is being given to it. It is especially necessary in the case of Eliasson’s work because, since most of his work is temporary and not reproducible, the number of people who have actually seen it is small.
Zarin mentions Eliasson’s relationship to the artists “Robert Irwin and James Turrell and the idea of ‘seeing yourself seeing’” but does not explain this concept or describe how it plays out in the actual work. Later she notes that Eliasson was “deeply affected by the work of the phenomenologist philosophers, especially Edmund Husserl—with their emphasis on the individual experience of reality—and by Lawrence Wechsler’s biography of Robert Irwin, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees—without going into any greater detail or telling us what it was about the Wechsler book that so affected Eliasson. The questions Eliasson is seen asking himself are presented more as musings than essential to an overarching philosophical inquiry.
In discussing Eliasson’s Weather Project at the Tate Modern, Zarin does not mention how, in the wake of its extraordinary success, the Tate wanted to extend its run and Eliasson refused—an act that, given the artist’s consuming interest in the context of art, including that which comes before and after its installation—can be considered as much a part of the piece as its mist, mirrors, and light.
Zarin makes a case for differentiating Eliasson from his predecessors Irwin and Turrell by stating that, “Like them, he is interested in light, to which he adds a preoccupation with what he calls ‘the intersection of nature, science, and human perception.’” She goes on to say that “unlike those artists, who tend to draw the viewer’s attention to natural phenomena—Turrell’s ‘sky spaces, for example, showcase the open sky—Eliasson consistently uses mechanical artifice to create his effects….” This is absolutely not true. The work of Irwin and Turrell pioneered this “intersection of nature, science, and human perception,” making it possible for Eliasson to expand upon it, which Eliasson fully acknowledges. Further, Irwin and Turrell have done plenty of work using only mechanical means (the effect of light on scrim, to name just one example), just as Eliasson is equally involved in working with natural phenomena—as seen in a later paragraph where he says, “I want to plant flowering trees around the pool. For one week in May the petals will drop and cover the water.”
In an art world short on meaningful dialogue, where personality and process often masquerade as art, the subject of Olafur Eliasson and his work offers a unique opportunity to marry the personal with the profound and present a significant discussion on the nature of art. Since I’m sure it will be a long while before Eliasson’s work is again discussed so thoroughly in these pages, I regret that the opportunity was missed.
Sincerely,
Carol Diehl
How can you write about Robert Irwin and not be aware of his scrim pieces? Or, for that matter, about Eliasson and not know he'd turned rivers green? I could have gone on, to comment on how Zarin says, “Eliasson invites comparison to Buckminster Fuller, with whom he shares an interest in the aesthetics and the utility of mathematic forms,” without saying where this influence comes from: his collaboration with Einar Thorsteinn, who was Fuller’s protégé. Although the stamp of Einar’s geometry is visible throughout Olafur’s work and they frequently share exhibition credit, Einar was not available for an interview when Zarin visited the studio...so he goes unmentioned? Not that Einar minded; he often says he likes “being famous for not being famous.” But it skews the picture to leave him out of an article that’s almost entirely about Olafur’s collaborative process.
There’s more but I’ll stop. If the article had been written by Calvin Tomkins (author of Duchamp, one of the best art biographies ever) or Peter Schjeldahl (who doesn’t write profiles, but if he did…) I’d be jealous. But that’s how I want to feel when I read The New Yorker.
There. At least I’ve gotten this one off my chest, where it’s been sitting since November. Too bad I didn’t have a blog then, so I could have responded in the moment. And to read a spot-on critique of another New Yorker article (on Paul McCartney, who seems to be showing up in all of my posts, and I haven’t even heard his new album), along with a riveting exchange with its author, go to http://restrictedview.blogspot.com/2007/06/you-wont-see-me.html.
Olafur, I predict, is on his way to establishing himself as a household name, and when the show travels to the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 in April, and later the Dallas Museum of Art, I’ll be curious to see how he handles the media blitz that’s sure to follow. Up until now, he’s managed to remain aloof and keep the emphasis focused on the art—with the exception of Cynthia Zarin’s profile in The New Yorker (November 13, 2006--not yet available online).
Zarin is a New Yorker staff writer, and it seemed as if she didn’t have a sufficient art background and did little research, depending almost entirely on her interviews for information. A friend’s comment was “When you’re an expert, you always find something wrong” but I disagree. I mean, this is The New Yorker, which I expect to query the experts or, at the very least, read what’s been written about the subject. Because I thought of The New Yorker as a standard, discovering that it was fallible was a crisis of faith, like that moment in childhood when you first discover your parents could be wrong. The worst part was that this jumble of mis-emphasis and misinformation was held together with a gloss of the sharp and engaging writing for which The New Yorker is justly renowned, but which I now see as simply style. For instance Zarin absolutely nailed it when she described Olafur as having, “the slightly crumpled look of a shop teacher at a progressive school” but treated the work itself as nothing more than a by-product of his personality.
This was the gist of my letter to the magazine, which was not published:
To the editor:
Because I feel the magazine and its readers are capable of looking at issues in depth, I was sorry that the profile by Cynthia Zarin about the artist Olafur Eliasson concentrated on his personality and process rather than the art and the philosophy behind it—and without sufficient description of the art, you have no idea why such attention is being given to it. It is especially necessary in the case of Eliasson’s work because, since most of his work is temporary and not reproducible, the number of people who have actually seen it is small.
Zarin mentions Eliasson’s relationship to the artists “Robert Irwin and James Turrell and the idea of ‘seeing yourself seeing’” but does not explain this concept or describe how it plays out in the actual work. Later she notes that Eliasson was “deeply affected by the work of the phenomenologist philosophers, especially Edmund Husserl—with their emphasis on the individual experience of reality—and by Lawrence Wechsler’s biography of Robert Irwin, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees—without going into any greater detail or telling us what it was about the Wechsler book that so affected Eliasson. The questions Eliasson is seen asking himself are presented more as musings than essential to an overarching philosophical inquiry.
In discussing Eliasson’s Weather Project at the Tate Modern, Zarin does not mention how, in the wake of its extraordinary success, the Tate wanted to extend its run and Eliasson refused—an act that, given the artist’s consuming interest in the context of art, including that which comes before and after its installation—can be considered as much a part of the piece as its mist, mirrors, and light.
Zarin makes a case for differentiating Eliasson from his predecessors Irwin and Turrell by stating that, “Like them, he is interested in light, to which he adds a preoccupation with what he calls ‘the intersection of nature, science, and human perception.’” She goes on to say that “unlike those artists, who tend to draw the viewer’s attention to natural phenomena—Turrell’s ‘sky spaces, for example, showcase the open sky—Eliasson consistently uses mechanical artifice to create his effects….” This is absolutely not true. The work of Irwin and Turrell pioneered this “intersection of nature, science, and human perception,” making it possible for Eliasson to expand upon it, which Eliasson fully acknowledges. Further, Irwin and Turrell have done plenty of work using only mechanical means (the effect of light on scrim, to name just one example), just as Eliasson is equally involved in working with natural phenomena—as seen in a later paragraph where he says, “I want to plant flowering trees around the pool. For one week in May the petals will drop and cover the water.”
In an art world short on meaningful dialogue, where personality and process often masquerade as art, the subject of Olafur Eliasson and his work offers a unique opportunity to marry the personal with the profound and present a significant discussion on the nature of art. Since I’m sure it will be a long while before Eliasson’s work is again discussed so thoroughly in these pages, I regret that the opportunity was missed.
Sincerely,
Carol Diehl
How can you write about Robert Irwin and not be aware of his scrim pieces? Or, for that matter, about Eliasson and not know he'd turned rivers green? I could have gone on, to comment on how Zarin says, “Eliasson invites comparison to Buckminster Fuller, with whom he shares an interest in the aesthetics and the utility of mathematic forms,” without saying where this influence comes from: his collaboration with Einar Thorsteinn, who was Fuller’s protégé. Although the stamp of Einar’s geometry is visible throughout Olafur’s work and they frequently share exhibition credit, Einar was not available for an interview when Zarin visited the studio...so he goes unmentioned? Not that Einar minded; he often says he likes “being famous for not being famous.” But it skews the picture to leave him out of an article that’s almost entirely about Olafur’s collaborative process.
There’s more but I’ll stop. If the article had been written by Calvin Tomkins (author of Duchamp, one of the best art biographies ever) or Peter Schjeldahl (who doesn’t write profiles, but if he did…) I’d be jealous. But that’s how I want to feel when I read The New Yorker.
There. At least I’ve gotten this one off my chest, where it’s been sitting since November. Too bad I didn’t have a blog then, so I could have responded in the moment. And to read a spot-on critique of another New Yorker article (on Paul McCartney, who seems to be showing up in all of my posts, and I haven’t even heard his new album), along with a riveting exchange with its author, go to http://restrictedview.blogspot.com/2007/06/you-wont-see-me.html.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Free art for all!
I received this in the mail, handwritten on a postcard. Included with it was a blank 5 x 7 card, a photograph of two adorable little girls, and a self-addressed stamped envelope:
Dear Carol,
Last year our oldest daughter, Ellora (then 4) asked “if she and her sister (Twyla 1 yrs. old) could have some art for their bedroom." So for their birthdays (5 & 2) I wrote to 7 artist [sic] and asked them to send them a card (these now framed and hanging in their room). As Ellora’s 6th birthday is approaching, she asked “if they could get some more art for their birthdays.” If at all possible will you do something on the enclosed blank card and mail it back for them.
Thank you,
Cheers,
Mark Daley
I do not know Mark Daley unless, perhaps, he was once a graduate student of mine. The envelope was sent to me c/o the School of Visual Arts.
Then a friend received this letter out of the blue from the New York Studio School:
Dear Mr. X,
The New York Studio School is pleased to announce its Annual Fall Benefit. On October 25th, 2007, we will host this event at the beautifully restored Prince George Ballroom in New York City. This is the most important fundraiser for the School and is regularly attended by important collectors, artists, and other prominent figures in the New York City art world.
Enclosed please find a blank canvas on which we invite you to create a work of art that we hope you will donate to the Benefit. If you prefer, please contribute a piece of work of equivalent size (11” x 14”). Ideally we’re looking for drawings, paintings, or sculpture. Donated work will be sold for the benefit of NYSS and all proceeds from the sale of work will go directly to support the School.
Donated works must be postmarked or hand-delivered to the School by August 31st, 2007 and will be featured on the School’s web site at www.nyss.org. Please note that submission of your work indicates that you give NYSS permission to reproduce it on the website and in any promotional materials related to the sale of the work.
…By way of thanks, we would like to invite all contributing artists to join us on October 25th to enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and see the work at the event….
Artists are always being asked to contribute to this or that, but this is something new. A blank canvas? What do people think? That artists have a special conduit to God, and art just spews out of us without any effort? Would they ask their dentist to clean their teeth for nothing? Or have I been missing out on free dental hygiene all these years because I simply didn't know to ask? Well I have a wedding coming up, of very dear friends, and some beautiful fabric I’ve been saving—I think I’ll send it to Marc Jacobs and ask if he’ll run me up a little something. And Paul McCartney—he was so cooperative about the yoga eye exercise video below—I’ll ask him to write a song just for Jeanette and Erica, and if he agrees to come and perform it at the reception, we’ll give him dinner. It’s the least I can do to help make the wedding really special.
Dear Carol,
Last year our oldest daughter, Ellora (then 4) asked “if she and her sister (Twyla 1 yrs. old) could have some art for their bedroom." So for their birthdays (5 & 2) I wrote to 7 artist [sic] and asked them to send them a card (these now framed and hanging in their room). As Ellora’s 6th birthday is approaching, she asked “if they could get some more art for their birthdays.” If at all possible will you do something on the enclosed blank card and mail it back for them.
Thank you,
Cheers,
Mark Daley
I do not know Mark Daley unless, perhaps, he was once a graduate student of mine. The envelope was sent to me c/o the School of Visual Arts.
Then a friend received this letter out of the blue from the New York Studio School:
Dear Mr. X,
The New York Studio School is pleased to announce its Annual Fall Benefit. On October 25th, 2007, we will host this event at the beautifully restored Prince George Ballroom in New York City. This is the most important fundraiser for the School and is regularly attended by important collectors, artists, and other prominent figures in the New York City art world.
Enclosed please find a blank canvas on which we invite you to create a work of art that we hope you will donate to the Benefit. If you prefer, please contribute a piece of work of equivalent size (11” x 14”). Ideally we’re looking for drawings, paintings, or sculpture. Donated work will be sold for the benefit of NYSS and all proceeds from the sale of work will go directly to support the School.
Donated works must be postmarked or hand-delivered to the School by August 31st, 2007 and will be featured on the School’s web site at www.nyss.org. Please note that submission of your work indicates that you give NYSS permission to reproduce it on the website and in any promotional materials related to the sale of the work.
…By way of thanks, we would like to invite all contributing artists to join us on October 25th to enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and see the work at the event….
Artists are always being asked to contribute to this or that, but this is something new. A blank canvas? What do people think? That artists have a special conduit to God, and art just spews out of us without any effort? Would they ask their dentist to clean their teeth for nothing? Or have I been missing out on free dental hygiene all these years because I simply didn't know to ask? Well I have a wedding coming up, of very dear friends, and some beautiful fabric I’ve been saving—I think I’ll send it to Marc Jacobs and ask if he’ll run me up a little something. And Paul McCartney—he was so cooperative about the yoga eye exercise video below—I’ll ask him to write a song just for Jeanette and Erica, and if he agrees to come and perform it at the reception, we’ll give him dinner. It’s the least I can do to help make the wedding really special.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Really seeing
Okay, so I don’t wear glasses. Although my whole family has worn them, I never have, except intermittently, when doctors tried to pressure me into it because of an astigmatism, or told me I was at that age. I can already hear my friends groaning, because they’ve heard this from me so many times before, but I believe that glasses are much more widely prescribed than necessary—yet another stupid industry that uses too much plastic—and if you’d just look up from your computer or book and focus afar every few minutes and do yoga eye exercises every day, you won't need reading glasses (I do the exercises before getting out of bed in the morning or, as readers know, when I inadvertently find myself in the same room with performance art). I’ve discovered, however, that this is waaay too much trouble for most people, the ones who are groaning right this minute, but I’m going to plunge ahead regardless. Sometimes, when tired or under a lot of stress, I might not see so well, maybe even for a week or two, but then it normalizes. Sometimes, early in the morning or late at night, things are fuzzy, so I just don’t bother to read, or I use a magnifying glass. But most of the time—with plenty of light—I can read the names in a phonebook or the ingredients on a vitamin bottle. And I’m doing very exacting work with painting right now (unless of course, I put on a pair of glasses and discover that I’ve been an expressionist all along). So because my friends won’t take it from me, I’ve asked Paul McCartney to do a little yoga eye exercise demo and put it on YouTube. Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdh39WtDXss
To read: Jacob Lieberman, Take Off Your Glasses and See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdh39WtDXss
To read: Jacob Lieberman, Take Off Your Glasses and See
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Looking...and not seeing,
This is part of an email yesterday from Graham White, who did such a great job of revamping my Web site, http://caroldiehl.com/:
Hi Carol!
...I made a second visit to the Serra show and this time is was not as crowded, which was nice. I couldn't believe the Plexiglas fence they put around his work on the top gallery. My experience of Minimalist sculpture has always been that it works in large part by interacting with and empathizing the planes and volume of the containing space, so what could demonstrate a less sensitive appreciation to the art than to cage it in like an animal at the zoo? I guess the inverse is more likely accurate, the animals behind the cage are the viewers.
I've also noticed that for a striking number of museum goers, photographing the art has entirely replaced looking at the art. I have been spending some time in the museums this summer, and constantly see people walk up to a painting, camera in hand, snap the image and then the wall text, and move right along, all not more than 5 seconds duration, if that. Or first check the label to see if it is an artist worth capturing. One painting I gave up on seeing one day had two rows of photographers, about 12 or 15 people, with cameras going, and the second row with one hand raised above the heads of the first for the grab. I can't imagine most will ever be bothered to look at the photos if they wouldn't look at the painting. Like counting coup.
Well, that's my art vent for today,
Graham
I've noticed the same phenom at rock concerts: people talking, texting, holding their cell phones up for others to listen, walking in and out to get drinks or whatever, as if the music were incidental, just an excuse to get together--surprisingly better in Philadelphia, Northampton, and Boston, where people actually dance, worst in New York. When I saw the last Sigur Ros tour in Philadelphia there was, as part of the piece, a 10-second moment of silence, which was duly observed and experienced by the audience--a powerful moment. When I saw them in New York it was "Whoo-hoo!"
Is there a way to configure the context for art so that it's more conducive to contemplation? Or are we just fogeys complaining that the world is going to hell?
Hi Carol!
...I made a second visit to the Serra show and this time is was not as crowded, which was nice. I couldn't believe the Plexiglas fence they put around his work on the top gallery. My experience of Minimalist sculpture has always been that it works in large part by interacting with and empathizing the planes and volume of the containing space, so what could demonstrate a less sensitive appreciation to the art than to cage it in like an animal at the zoo? I guess the inverse is more likely accurate, the animals behind the cage are the viewers.
I've also noticed that for a striking number of museum goers, photographing the art has entirely replaced looking at the art. I have been spending some time in the museums this summer, and constantly see people walk up to a painting, camera in hand, snap the image and then the wall text, and move right along, all not more than 5 seconds duration, if that. Or first check the label to see if it is an artist worth capturing. One painting I gave up on seeing one day had two rows of photographers, about 12 or 15 people, with cameras going, and the second row with one hand raised above the heads of the first for the grab. I can't imagine most will ever be bothered to look at the photos if they wouldn't look at the painting. Like counting coup.
Well, that's my art vent for today,
Graham
I've noticed the same phenom at rock concerts: people talking, texting, holding their cell phones up for others to listen, walking in and out to get drinks or whatever, as if the music were incidental, just an excuse to get together--surprisingly better in Philadelphia, Northampton, and Boston, where people actually dance, worst in New York. When I saw the last Sigur Ros tour in Philadelphia there was, as part of the piece, a 10-second moment of silence, which was duly observed and experienced by the audience--a powerful moment. When I saw them in New York it was "Whoo-hoo!"
Is there a way to configure the context for art so that it's more conducive to contemplation? Or are we just fogeys complaining that the world is going to hell?
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