better living through art

Take action: tell the Smithsonian that censorship offends you!

2010-12-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough's willingness to cave in to right-wing extremists and censor the work of David Wojnarowicz should not go unpunished. Email Clough and NPG director Sullivan to let them know that the majority can be just as vocal as the minority! Send your message to SullivanM@si.edu and CloughW@si.edu.

Here is what I wrote:

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to express my grave concern at your recent decision to remove David Wojnarowicz's important work, "A Fire in My Belly" from the National Portrait Gallery's "Hide/Seek" exhibition.

As an arts educator, I am both disturbed and offended by the Smithsonian's haste to acquiesce to the bigoted wishes of a small but vocal group of extremists seeking to once again silence those who would speak out against the Catholic church's ongoing characterization of basic AIDS prevention as sinful. I am even more distressed that this censorship appears to be motivated either by a gross misreading of Wojnarowicz's artistic intent, or the more craven possibility that this move is prompted entirely by budgetary self-preservation. It is widely known that this exhibition was largely funded by private donors; moreover, as a taxpayer, I am less inclined to support government investment in the Smithsonian as a result of your evident willingness to abandon your scholarly responsibilities at the first sign of political fallout. I fear this action sets a precedent that will lead to censorship of other scholarly research at the Smithsonian that runs counter to conservative political interests, such as evolutionary science.

The National Portrait Gallery has in recent years developed a well-deserved reputation for excellence and progressive institutional programming - one which you have compromised in an instant with this regrettable decision. I stand in solidarity with the curators of "Hide/Seek", the formidable scholars of the Portrait Gallery's curatorial staff, the Wojnarowicz estate and the whole of the international contemporary art community in condemning your decision to censor "A Fire in My Belly".

Lastly, I regret that when I visit my family in DC this holiday season, I will be unable to share with them this important work of art. For many Americans, this time of year is about opening our own minds and hearts, and those of the people we love, to have compassion for those who suffer while we celebrate.

I will be showing "A Fire in My Belly" to my students for years to come, and hope that your shameful censorship will likewise prompt my colleagues to reconsider and represent this work.

Yours truly,
Anuradha Vikram
UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice

More info about this controversy can be found at the website of Wojnarowicz's gallery, PPOW.

Add Art Exhibition Feb 12-26

2010-02-12T09:35:00.000-08:00

Merchandise (You Are Not What You Own)

An Online Exhibition Presented by Add Art

February 12-26, 2010 in your Firefox browser

The everyday onslaught of advertising images in our media-saturated world serves one purpose – that is, to destabilize our sense of self just enough that we become convinced that the thing being advertised is just what is needed to restore order. From every angle, our popular culture sells us fairy tales of who we are and who we are supposed to be. These are ideals which few can ever attain without a rare combination of genes, wealth and luck. The market gambles with our personalities, creating a bubble of trendiness and glamour, while the long-term value of identity and memory is compromised.

The artists in this show appropriate and subvert the language of marketing, using its tools of photography, costuming and set dressing, digital manipulation, and data tagging. By copying these strategies, they create transparency where obfuscation is usually found. By bringing the sublimated messages of consumer culture into question, these artists offer the possibility of a more critical engagement with the image. The gap between the self and others’ perception is made clearer by their redirections.

Curator: Anuradha Vikram (www.curativeprojects.net) is a curator, critic and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is Curator at the Worth Ryder Gallery, University of California, Berkeley, Lecturer at College of Marin, Kentfield, and Curator-at-Large at Swarm Gallery, Oakland, CA.

Bayeté Ross-Smith (www.bayeterosssmith.com) is an artist, photographer and arts educator. Included in this exhibition are selections from three series: Our Kind Of People examines how clothing, ethnicity and gender affect our ideas about identity, personality and character. The subjects in this work are dressed in clothing from their own wardrobes. The outfits are worn in a style and fashion similar to how that person would wear them in daily life. Devoid of any context for assessing the personality of the individual in the photograph, the viewer projects her or his own preconceived notions on each photograph. Passing examines how nationality affects the perception of identity. It also examines the power of identity documents and the role they play in giving people access to the various resources of our global society. Taking AIM explores that fine line that exists between acceptable, condoned and recreational violence, and deplorable criminalized violence.

Bayeté Ross-Smith’s work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and in public, both nationally and internationally, including the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the Goethe Institute in Accra, Ghana, the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, in Warsaw, Poland, the Leica Gallery and Rush Arts Gallery in New York City, as well as the San Francisco Arts Commission’s “ Art at City Hall” program, SF, CA and the Oakland Museum of California. He is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

Michele Pred (http://michelepred.com/) creates interventions in real and virtual public space. Barcodes are now embedded into many aspects of our lives. They code and track objects in our life from basic needs like food and clothing, to transportation and travel. They even code and track us. We have become products. To Pred, barcodes epitomize our consumer culture. Consumerism implicitly defines our modes of communication and interaction. It has the ability to engender collective stupor; the daily repetition of images, phrases, and messages lull us into unconscious interaction or dialogue. We have constructed our lives around products and codes without thought. The project is meant to invite a new consciousness and awareness to the encoding of our lives.

To scan and read this piece with your mobile phone you will need to download the software into your phone. You can access the decoding program by going to www.upcode.com in your handsets web browser and following the directions, or by downloading the UpCode App in your iPhone.

Michele Pred is a conceptual artist who works with found/confiscated objects and technology imbued with cultural and political meaning. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries, art fairs and museums in London, Stockholm, New York, Bologna, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. Her work is part of the permanent collection at the 21st Century Museum, The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, the Di Rosa Preserve in Napa, CA and is held in numerous corporate and private collections. Michele is the founder of the San Francisco Bay Area based art collective Quorum. She is represented by the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York and the Robert Berman Gallery in Los Angeles.

Robin Lasser (www.robinlasser.com) & Adrienne Pao (www.adriennepao.com) have collaborated on their ongoing Dress Tents project since 2004. Dress Tents investigate notions of tourism in real and simulated fantasy landscapes, and involve a combination of performative and staged scenarios. Internationally, an exhibition of the Dress Tents has been touring South America beginning with a solo exhibition at the Recoleta Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2006 and traveling through Patagonia and São Paulo, Brazil in 2007. The Dress Tents were featured in the 2007 International Photography Festival in Pingyao, China.

Robin Lasser is a Professor of Art at San Jose State University, and has exhibited nationally and internationally at museums such as: Municipal Museum of Neuquen, Argentina; Recoleta Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Caixa Cultural Center in Rio De Janeiro; Aronson Galleries – Parsons School of Design in New York City; Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery in the Bronx, New York City; L.A. County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California; Osaka World Trade Center Museum in Osaka, Japan; and Academy of Film in Prague, Czech Republic. She also participates in International Biennials such as ZERO1: Global Art on the Edge, San Jose, California and Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Canada.

Adrienne Pao is Visiting Faculty in the Photography Department at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Academy of Art in San Francisco, California. Her work has been featured in the Portfolio issue 77 of Shots (2004), Exposure (2006), Flaunt (2006), Top (Brazil, 2006), Playboy (South America, 2006), Marie Claire (Italy, Greece 2007). It is also featured in writer and art critic Rebecca Solnit’s book Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics (2007). She has shown her work nationally at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka, California and also at Wave Hill Glyndor gallery in the Bronx, New York.

Stephan Vladimir Bugaj (www.lhooqtius.com) uses found photography from the mid-20th century as the basis for exploring the construction of identity. Images from the “Good War” (World War II), a conflict that sent the artist’s family into permanent exile, are manipulated to emphasize the deterioration of cultural memory in an age of superficial access to information. The more data we have, the less we know or remember. Reduced to symbols, the people in these images have lost their voice to the forward march of history.

Stephan Vladimir Bugaj is a writer, filmmaker, feature animation technical director, artificial intelligence researcher, visual artist, noiseician, philosopher, futurist, Web pioneer, and all around curmudgeonly polymath. By day, he is a Technical Director at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, CA. As a screenwriter, he has been a Finalist at the Austin Film Festival, a Quarterfinalist for the Nicholl Fellowship of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a Participant in the 2010 CineStory Writer’s Retreat. Recent exhibitions include Ersatz at SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA.

Joseph Smolinski: Ground Control at Swarm Gallery

2009-06-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

Swarm Gallery's recent show of drawings, animation and sculpture by Joseph Smolinski was an impassioned comment on the state of our environment. In Smolinski's surrealist drawings, animals strike back against the human technologies that have infiltrated their landscape. The works are funny, yet politically charged. The care with which they are rendered lends added weight to the artist's commentary.

Joseph Smolinski. Spinning Tree for Spent Oil, 2008.

Courtesy of Swarm Gallery, Oakland.

In a utopian series of images, wind turbines generate power on land and in the open sea. To better adapt them to their surroundings, Smolinski proposes that the turbines be camouflaged as rudimentary trees. There are several color pencil drawings of the tree turbines, as well as a motorized prototype with sharp outlines. Perched atop oil derricks, the trees smoothly capture ocean winds. Meanwhile, in another group of drawings in graphite, creatures such as a sloth and a lion are actively reclaiming their terrain from a tangled throng of wires. Tombstones in a graveyard mark the passing of outdated clean technologies such as electric cars and wind turbines, replaced in Smolinski's vision with the more advanced tree turbine.

Joseph Smolinski. Disconnected - Three-Toed Sloth, 2009.
Courtesy of Swarm Gallery, Oakland.

In a side gallery, Smolinski presents sculptural installation, drawing and video works about Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, a major land art work on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Basing his project on a report about the efforts to preserve this artwork and prevent oil drilling near its site, Smolinski visualizes the worst-case effects. The animation shows an oil derrick exploding and flooding the Jetty. The drawing depicts an oil tanker, sunk off the Jetty's edge. The installation of salt-encrusted rocks from the lake, soaking in oil, operates as a Smithson-esque non-site, a marker of place superimposed upon the white cube of the gallery.

Joseph Smolinski. RIP Jetty, 2009.
Courtesy of Swarm Gallery, Oakland.

Smolinski's visualizations of the Jetty are artfully rendered, and his concerns about the work's preservation are legitimate. However, there have long been large-scale industrial mining operations to recover oil, salt, and various chemicals from the Great Salt Lake, which is rich in minerals and fossil fuels. These operations, and a disused oil jetty from an earlier excavation period, predate Smithson's 1970 artwork. The lake itself is in constant flux, having first risen so that the Jetty was underwater for more than a decade, and more recently shrunk so that the work is entirely landlocked.

This is not to disagree with Smolinski's (and the Dia Foundation's) belief that the Jetty site should be preserved as a cultural landmark rather than subjected to fallout from drilling. I would simply like to have seen what Smolinski's commentary would look like if his argument were to take a more nuanced view of the discussion about the Jetty, its location and its future. The Spiral Jetty itself is a marker of the multiple uses and histories of the Great Salt Lake, one which references geology and human activity alike. Perhaps by allowing more space for humans within his vision, Smolinski might also push his work further toward visualizing an attainable balance rather than a comforting, but fundamentally inaccessible, utopia.

Bay Area Gallerists in San Francisco Magazine

2009-04-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

This month's San Francisco Magazine has a gorgeous cover story on young SF gallerists including some good friends and former classmates of mine. I am delighted to see these talented entrepreneurs get some press (and confess to a twinge of jealousy at the super-glam photo spreads featuring Jessica Silverman and Joyce Grimm).

Despite its deserving and photogenic subjects, I thought the story lacked depth or insight. The lead asks, "Can a handful of renegade gallerists get the art world to notice SF?" I would argue that 1) this question gets asked every 5 years, 2) each time a group of young entrepreneurs is trotted out as evidence that SF is finally getting its act together and supporting local talent financially, and 3) by the next time the question gets asked, 5 years later, half or more of the spaces covered on the last go-round have had to close or move away to stay afloat. For every Ratio3, there is a Lisa Dent Gallery (closed despite having broken national talents including Hank Willis Thomas and Ala Ebtekar) and a Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery (moved to greener pastures in Los Angeles).

That's not to begrudge anyone his or her success. Ratio3's Chris Perez has worked very hard to promote his artists nationally and to maintain his relationships beyond the Bay Area. All of the gallerists profiled are unquestionably talented, and all have the drive to make it. So do a lot of gallerists not profiled here: Eleanor Harwood, Kimberly Johansson, Kent Baer and Eli Ridgway, and Svea Lin Vezzone, to name just a few.

The article does discuss Bay Area collectors' notorious lack of awareness of the great art being made and shown in their own backyard. This has historically been the thorn in the side of all great galleries here, including longer-established spaces like Catharine Clark Gallery and Frey Norris, who show the same level of innovative, international talent as the galleries profiled by SF Magazine. Rather than propose solutions, the article glosses over this reality, essentially claiming that until the new crop of gallerists turned up, there was really nothing interesting happening here.

Lots of us would beg to differ, even as we celebrate this latest crop of art entrepreneurs.

Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University to Close

2009-01-29T14:06:00.000-08:00

Arts advocates are stunned and saddened by the recent decision taken by Brandeis University's Board of Trustees to close its renowned Rose Art Museum and deaccession the collection of important modern and contemporary artworks. The university argues that, with both tuition revenues and its endowment hard hit by the current economic downturn, the museum is being sacrificed in order to preserve more important programs. They claim that "the museum decision will not alter the university’s commitment to the arts and the teaching of the arts." It is difficult to see how this could possibly be the case.

In Brandeis' own words, "The Rose Art Museum [...] houses what is widely recognized as the finest collection of modern and contemporary art in New England." A raft of contradictory statements have been made in the press by Brandeis President Yehuda Reinharz, so that it's not clear whether Brandeis plans to deaccession and auction the entirety of the Rose's collection or only some works. Either way, the institution will be closed and what might remain of its collection will no longer be made available to the public in whose trust the university is held.

Deaccessioning museum collections is a controversial practice in the best of times. Works held for public benefit, at institutions mandated to serve that interest, are subject to specific conditions of their care and ownership. This is especially the case for artworks that have been donated to a museum, because the donor has expressly given his or her gift in the interest of supporting public access to the works. Deaccessions are always problematic for these reasons - but for a university to turn to its museum collection for ready cash in an economic crisis is reaching a new low. The precedent this action sets is abysmal, and indicates just how little regard Brandeis' trustees have for the university's arts program.

It is an unfortunate reminder of how little value the curators, collectors and patrons, who have supported and nurtured the Rose Art Museum and so many others, are afforded in our society. When arts are among the hardest hit sectors of our economy in these troubled times, curators among the first cut when arts institutions fall on difficult circumstances, and venerable arts institutions closed to address short-term budget gaps, we art lovers should be ashamed and angered by this course of events.

Excellent coverage of the Rose Art Museum decision can be found here:
Art Fag City
Modern Art Notes
Artworld Salon

Coosje van Bruggen (June 6, 1942 - January 10, 2009)

2009-01-14T18:55:00.000-08:00

It is with great sadness that I report the passing of my mentor and onetime employer Coosje van Bruggen. A tremendous artist, writer, curator and thinker, Coosje taught me valuable lessons about the realities of the art world. Her toughness and integrity were unmatched. She will be greatly missed.

Bob Carey/Los Angeles Times

Coosje was already a powerful force when she met Claes Oldenburg, her husband and collaborator for 31 years. She was an assistant curator at the Stedelijk Museum during a fascinating period when the boundaries between art and life were being shattered in every imaginable way. Her partnership with Claes changed the work from monument to something else - not anti-monumental, as she abhorred mediocrity and was always sure of her place in the pantheon of history - but a softer kind of monument, commemorating the wonders of reality in a living place.

Coosje taught me many lessons, some gentle and some painful. She helped me understand what it means to be a professional artist, and ultimately through her guidance I came to realize I would not be one. She showed me the way to my own creative voice, which I found to be a collaborative and scholarly one rather than that of an individual struggling to create in an oversaturated world. Sometimes her insights stung, as when she told me I would be a great teacher "but don't teach art." (I've since come to disagree with that assessment, but I understand why she said it when she did.)

Coosje also showed me what feminism was all about. She came from a generation that had been made to fight for everything they had, challenged in their professional and personal aspirations alike. As a mother and wife, she found her unmistakable intellect uncharitably dismissed by the chattering classes who surrounded well-known figures like her husband. She demanded respect on her own terms, writing monographs on Frank Gehry, Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari and Hanne Darboven - an artist whose meticulous, logical practice always seemed to me a kind of visualization of Coosje's thought processes. Claes had his own such visualization:

Cross Section of a Toothbrush with Paste, in a Cup, on a Sink:
Portrait of Coosje's Thinking, 1983
Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany
Photo by Attilio Maranzano

"I am a lioness when it comes to my children," she once told me. Always impatient with the ignorant and small-minded, I only ever saw her rage when something was troubling one of her two kids. As I contemplate my own future as a curator and a mother, I always think back to Coosje and how she somehow navigated the work/life minefield, first as a divorced mother of two young children, and later as an equal partner in a work and family relationship that outsiders could simply not understand.

Coosje was always a little bit frail. She said it was because she'd been born during the war, and her physician father had inoculated her with makeshift vaccinations that left her immune system weakened. Perhaps that's a metaphor for how her physical delicacy complemented her mental toughness. I always pictured a tiny baby with eyes of cast iron, stoically bearing the bomb blasts and the needle alike.

Certainly she was a study in oppositions - tiny, with dark hair and intense eyes, but with an infectious laugh that Claes loved to provoke with incessant teasing. Another thing she taught me was what true love looks like (as did my parents) - two older people, together for many years, who find something extraordinary and compelling to talk about every day.

I only wish I could have seen her one more time before she left this world.

"Coosje van Bruggen, Sculptor, Dies at 66." New York Times, February 13, 2009.

Slumdog Millionaire - A Film by Danny Boyle

2008-12-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

This weekend, Stephan and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire, the latest film from the director of Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Millions, 28 Days Later and several other, less successful films (the last of which I reviewed on this site about a year ago). Slumdog Millionaire is a wonderfully crafted film, telling a story of everlasting love and triumph over adversity without glossing over its depictions of some of the worst things human beings do to one another. It has my vote for best film of 2008, and may be the best of Boyle's pretty substantial career.

Dev Patel and Anil Kapoor in Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight)

Slumdog Millionaire is the story of Jamal Malik (British actor Dev Patel), an 18-year-old Muslim from the Juhu slum in Mumbai who inexplicably makes it to the final round of the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Barely educated and working as a chaiwallah at a call center, Jamal is an unlikely trivia champion. So unlikely, that the Mumbai police have hauled him in for questioning on the eve of his chance to win 20 million rupees (about US $400K). The investigator, played by the great Indian actor Irrfan Khan, has no sympathy for this young man at first, but comes to realize that Jamal has remained honest and kind despite a life spent as an orphan on the harsh city streets.

Dev Patel and Irrfan Khan in Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight)

Despite his chronic optimism, Jamal is not a Candide, foolishly faithful in the innate goodness of others. Estranged from his only family, brother Salim (Madhur Mittal), he is in single-minded pursuit of his childhood love, Latika, played by newcomer and Mumbai native Freida Pinto. Jamal will stop at nothing to rescue her from the gangsters and thugs who are keeping them apart. Salim and Latika represent the two possible options for poor, orphaned city kids, which Jamal rejects to make his own way. Salim is driven by power, at the expense of his own family. Latika is a fatalist, resigned to a life as the plaything of others. Only Jamal has the vision to exceed society's low expectations of him.

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight)

I won't give away the story, because you should really go out and see this remarkable film. It's not yet in wide release, but has hit the biggest markets already and will be opening in smaller cities throughout December. Distributor Fox Searchlight has made a puzzling decision to limit the release of this film despite its wide appeal and substantial buzz -- one which I hope they rethink considering Slumdog Millionaire's strong per-screen box office performance.

The film is particularly poignant in light of last week's horrific attacks in Mumbai, which the perpetrators have disingenuously tried to cast as a righteous response by Indian Muslims to poor treatment within India. Slumdog Millionaire does not shy away from depicting sectarian violence, but it shows convincingly why that argument is bunk. The sequence that deals with the massacre of Muslims during the 1993 Bombay Riots is absolutely gut-wrenching. However, poverty affects Indians of all faiths. Jamal's true love Latika is a Hindu, though this is immaterial to the story. What the film really shows is how the poor are abused and can be manipulated by unscrupulous and greedy gangsters. It makes no difference whether those criminals are motivated by money or by religion -- the quest for power makes monsters.

For those who would ask, India's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was a real phenomenon. Known in Hindi as Kaun Banega Crorepati (कौन बनेगा क्रोरेपति), the show rekindled India's love affair with Amitabh Bachchan in the early 2000s, and fueled a rivalry between the lauded actor and today's top Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan. One of the best things about Slumdog Millionaire is how the film shows India today, in all its contradictory glory. TV is everywhere, while ancient traditions still persist. Rampant development is unhampered by planning or organization.

More on this tomorrow, when I will finally share some details of my trip to India in October. Stay tuned.

Thanks

2008-11-27T01:26:00.000-08:00

As we gather for the annual day of thanks, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about some things I'm thankful for. 2008's been a challenging year for all of us, and I've certainly felt a share of the pain. Still, I am grateful to be alive, and healthy, to have a wonderful husband and a loving family, and five adorable cats. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to travel to New Delhi earlier this fall to work with Nature Morte, where I learned an enormous amount about the Delhi art scene and spent some quality time with family and friends. I am thankful that I can continue to work in the field I'm most passionate about despite the economic downturn. But most of all, this year I am thankful for Todd.

As I've posted here before, Todd Blair is a dear friend and former colleague who suffered a traumatic brain injury in September of 2007. His injuries were very serious and his prognosis was at best cautiously optimistic. I am happy to report after seeing Todd today that he is recovering incredibly well, and has come much farther than anyone could have hoped since beginning in-home care early this summer. There is still a long way to go. Still, Todd and his tenacious goddess of a wife, Alex, will make it there, and this makes me believe that we will all get through these trying times in one piece.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, because its spirit is universal. Though it may have been taught to us in school as a dirty trick played by the Pilgrims on the Indians, I prefer to think of it as our least jingoistic, Christerrific national holiday. I look forward to a day of friends and food (after a morning of cooking and cleaning).

One thing I am not thankful for is the horrible news coming from Mumbai today. Even as we count our blessings, we ought as well to take a moment to remember those who are suffering today and every day, to think about how we can help others who have less to be thankful for.

The Lost Years and Last Days of David Foster Wallace

2008-11-15T00:29:00.000-08:00

This article about the celebrated writer David Foster Wallace, who died tragically this fall at age 46, was published in last month's Rolling Stone. I think it is one of the best pieces I've read about the mind of an artist. In particular, the description of how a highly intelligent and talented person fluctuates between high self-expectation and fear of failure is very accurate. Here are a few of the best quotes, which I think all artists should read because they can probably relate:

"Basically it was the same symptoms all along: this incredible sense of inadequacy, panic. He once said to me that he wanted to write to shut up the babble in his head. He said when you're writing well, you establish a voice in your head, and it shuts up the other voices. The ones that are saying, 'You're not good enough, you're a fraud.'"

"I think one of the true ways I've gotten smarter is that I've realized that there are ways other people are a lot smarter than me. My biggest asset as a writer is that I'm pretty much like everybody else. The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever almost made me die."

"There is, in writing, a certain blend of sincerity and manipulation, of trying always to gauge what the particular effect of something is gonna be [...] It's a very precious asset that really needs to be turned off sometimes. My guess is that writers probably make fun, skilled, satisfactory, and seemingly considerate partners for other people. But that the experience for them is often rather lonely."

This story made me so sad that it's taken me almost two weeks to finish reading it. It is such a tragedy when a person takes his or her own life, even more so when he or she has a great deal to offer the world, and especially when the reason is pharmaceutical as it so often is.

I hope that by reading about what Wallace went through, the rest of us who share a lot of his fears and anxieties about our own art and lives might be spared a little bit of pain. In return, we might push ourselves a little bit harder, like Wallace did, to make something truly original.

Lehman Brothers to Auction Art Assets

2008-11-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

In a recent conversation with a group of artists, the question came up of what will happen to all the art that bankrupt corporations such as Lehman Brothers and AIG have collected? Would the companies keep it among their last remaining assets, would the government have the sense to take it as collateral on bailout funds, or would it go on the auction block? Today we have an answer.

The Guardian is reporting that Lehman Brothers is planning to sell off about $8 million worth of art, including a lot of modern and contemporary work.

"According to Bloomberg, the Lehman collection has more than 3,500 pieces. The Neuberger Berman collection has another 900 works, including pieces by Marlene Dumas, Andreas Gursky, Takashi Murakami, Neo Rauch and Sam Taylor-Wood."

The story also states that companies that bought up parts of Lehman Brothers, such as Barclays and Bain Capital, will be allowed to keep the artworks located on the premises of Lehman Brothers divisions they now own for a full year. After that time, they will be permitted to cherry-pick which artworks to keep, and the rest will go on auction.

Finally, the Guardian reports that Lehman Brothers is seeking court permission to pay its art storage facilities and art handlers, so that the work these companies have on site can be released for sale. Right now, those warehouses are (wisely) hanging onto the LB assets in their possession in case they don't get paid.

It will be interesting to watch how this plays out, particularly since auction sales this fall have already dropped dramatically. Will Lehman be able to successfully unload the collection? Will a few moneyed people who kept cash under their mattresses be able to buy it up for a song? One thing's clear, which is that the flood of art on the auction market is going to further undercut gallery business. Will it be good for the museums, who often find they can't afford the best examples of work for their collections? We'll have to wait and see.

High Desert Test Sites

2008-11-10T12:03:00.001-08:00

I spent the weekend in the Mojave Desert attending High Desert Test Sites. This year's event was co-sponsored by the California Biennial, which I'm hoping to get to later this month.

The experience of walking and driving through the desert landscape was incredible. The weather was marvelously varied, and the clouds and sandy mountains were constantly changing. I felt, much as I did when visiting the Spiral Jetty, that the real artistry was done by nature and the artist's gesture was little more than a marker pointing out a site for engagement. That said, I thought most of the artists could have tried harder to make their markers more meaningful.

Ann Magnuson's "Time Traveling Hooker" installation in room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn was the best of the weekend's installations. It was powerful in that it evoked a real event, the death of musician Gram Parsons, in the place where it happened. Audio, video and installation elements combined to make an abstract historical footnote into something tangible, and charged the space with life and memory.

The Noah Purifoy Foundation was another highlight. Purifoy has created a permanently installed sculpture garden using recycled and waste materials, that has a wonderful junkyard sensibility. The sculptures are largely quasi-architectural environments, built into the landscape in an echo of some of the eroded structures found scattered around the Joshua Tree area. They are naive in a thoughtful way, and succeed as anti-monumentalist art in a way that most of the works in last year's Unmonumental at the New Museum failed to do.

Otherwise, the projects ranged from mildly unsuccessful to nonexistent. Yoshua Okon's "White Russians" gathering at a local home had a strangely unfriendly vibe considering they were handing out drinks in a private household. The locals were welcoming but the Angelenos seemed to have brought their bad attitudes with them. The whole project felt condescending to the rural types who were the hosts, as if we city folk were being invited into their homes to laugh at their unsophistication. The dogs were sweet though.

Marnie Weber and the Spirit Girls' performance was pleasingly odd and theatrical, and the band's musicianship was tight. Weber has an unfortunate voice and limited lyrical skills, but she looks good in costumes. I imagine it was a bit like watching the Velvet Underground perform with Nico.

The installation by Julia Scher, which consisted of a perimeter of signs announcing contamination in the landscape, and the nearby one by Joel Kyack involving an illuminated mineshaft and a bifurcated miner, were entertaining. Projects by Alice Konitz and Thom Merrick were not there when we went to check them out on Sunday. We got to explore some amazing spots while looking for them. In truth, we didn't miss the art much.

Photos from the weekend can be viewed here.

ICA Live and Media Arts Department Cancelled

2008-11-07T17:01:00.000-08:00

This news has been going around in media art circles for a few weeks, but enough people have asked about it that it seems worth posting. In October, the director of the ICA in London announced the dismantling of that institution's Live and Media Arts department. It's not so much what Ekow Eshun did as how he said it, essentially disparaging the entire area of artistic output using the medium of interactive technology as sub-par.

From the now-notorious internal memo that's been making the rounds:

"New media based arts practice continues to have its place within the arts sector. However it's my consideration that, in the main, the art form lacks the depth and cultural urgency to justify the ICA's continued and significant investment in a Live & Media Arts department."

Perhaps the ICA's decision could be seen as reflective of a broader shift in focus, from delineated New Media programming toward a new emphasis on integrating intermedia and cinema, that is happening throughout the contemporary art sphere. However, Eshun's confrontational and dismissive language suggests that this decision may have more to do with current art-world fashions than with any real concerns about this medium. Considering that the department's current exhibition features Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, whose contribution to the Mexican Pavilion at last year's Venice Biennale made a huge splash, even this argument is perplexing.

The saddest part of the whole sorry affair is that the ICA has historically been a home for some of the most innovative, least tech-nerdy media art installation projects. The department has consistently challenged assumptions about how an exhibition space might be used. For example, in the current project Dream Director, artist Luke Jerram is inviting the public to spend the night in the gallery, participating in a dream-state feedback loop that allows visitors to experience art in the subconscious. How a project this creative, communal and simply romantic "lacks depth and cultural urgency" completely escapes me.

Having been on the receiving end of curatorial downsizing myself, I regret the short-sightedness of this action and wish outgoing curator Emma Quinn the very best. May this turn out to be a blessing for her as she moves on to some greater challenge and much stronger support for her terrific programs.

Obama's Plan for the Arts

2008-11-05T15:37:00.000-08:00

Ok, last political post for a while, I promise. One of the things that's appealed to me throughout Obama's campaign has been his very thoughtful position on the arts. Unlike almost everyone in our federal government, Obama seems to recognize that artists and arts professionals contribute to our society and further our supposed core values of understanding and tolerance.

Aside from the predictable, though admirable, emphasis on arts education for children, Obama's platform recognizes artists as adults and professionals in need of investment. Here are some highlights of Obama's plans to support artists:

"Promote Cultural Diplomacy: American artists, performers and thinkers – representing our values and ideals – can inspire people both at home and all over the world. Through efforts like that of the United States Information Agency, America’s cultural leaders were deployed around the world during the Cold War as artistic ambassadors and helped win the war of ideas by demonstrating to the world the promise of America. Artists can be utilized again to help us win the war of ideas against Islamic extremism. Unfortunately, our resources for cultural diplomacy are at their lowest level in a decade. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will work to reverse this trend and improve and expand public-private partnerships to expand cultural and arts exchanges throughout the world."

Include artists in the "war of ideas" rather than wage a culture war against us? It's so crazy it just might work.

"Ensure Tax Fairness for Artists: Barack Obama supports the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The Act amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow artists to deduct the fair market value of their work, rather than just the costs of the materials, when they make charitable contributions."

The Artist-Museum Partnership Act is long-overdue legislation. If passed, it would bring artists back into the power structure of public collections, which are presently hamstrung by a complicated relationship with private collectors. The situation is complex, but suffice it to say that this law would give museum curators a reason to talk to artists again, and for living artists to play a role in shaping institutions. With a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, it just might happen.

Read the complete position statement here.

Have We Overcome?

2008-11-04T23:51:00.000-08:00

This is a day I always hoped would come, but never dared believe in. The euphoria that struck around 5 pm PST, when NPR called Pennsylvania and Ohio for Obama, has begun to fade. I realized when I watched Obama's acceptance speech, and kept looking for the bulletproof glass around him, that I still can't quite accept that he's really going to lead this country.

I agreed with Michelle Obama when she said Obama's candidacy was the first time she'd really felt proud of her country. In my lifetime, I've seen Jimmy Carter fail despite the best of intentions, Ronald Reagan set the clock back to the 1960s, Bush 41 let the oil oligarchs take over our foreign policy, and Bill Clinton let his penis invalidate his entire administration. The damage caused by Bush 43 has been too great even to list. As a liberal, an immigrant, a social progressive and a fiscal conservative, I have seen my candidates try and fail to serve those who need their help the most, while the other side never even tries to conceal their corrupt agenda.

I want to believe that today is different, that in America we can finally put our twisted racial history behind us, that we can stop looking at the world and at people in black and white and start finding nuanced and effective solutions to our problems. I genuinely hope for this to happen. But I keep thinking it's impossible, that something will go wrong--Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton being examples of the best worst case, while JFK, RFK and MLK Jr. exemplify the worst worst case.

But then, this whole campaign has been run on the platform of refusing to let fear run our lives or our country. And so, I am happy, and look forward to a new Camelot in 76 days.

Vote.

2008-11-04T00:34:00.001-08:00

I'm back from India and will have reports in the next few days, but today's post is about something that's actually even more important to me than art--exercising the right to vote.

One of the great virtues of our democracy is that we may choose who we wish to support for higher office. That choice is personal and it's no one's place to tell you how to use it. I would not presume to do so, but I am writing about this today because I know that this may be the most important US election of my lifetime.

Too many consequences of the last 8 years are coming to bear on all of us now, with more fallout yet to come. I firmly believe that the only way to correct our national course is to elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They are not perfect candidates, nor perfect people, but they are the best options we have been offered in a long time.

Polls are showing Obama ahead, but polls can lie. The consequences of not electing Obama are too severe for us not to act. The America that John McCain and Sarah Palin want does not include people like me--we of the funny names, immigrant ties and acceptance of non-Christian religions. McCain and Palin don't believe that we are part of America, but Obama and Biden do. They understand that the world is an interconnected place, that the balance of global power is shifting toward the East, and that immigrants make this country great. We, especially we immigrants who have come here and done well for ourselves, should understand in turn that the social safety net also makes this country great (even if it requires paying some taxes). Having recently been in India, where it does not exist, I can see the difference.

If you are a citizen, I am asking you to please exercise your right to vote tomorrow, and help elect Obama and Biden. If you're not, I'm asking you to please make a donation if you can afford it and your residency status permits it, and to talk to your friends and colleagues about these important issues.

Please forward this message to your networks, and especially to people in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Also, please support candidates for other offices who can help bring about the enormous changes we so badly need, like Ashwin Madia in Minnesota, and Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire.

Finally, if you're in California, please take the time to consider all the (tedious and confusing) propositions on the ballot. If you do nothing else, please vote NO on Proposition 8, and prevent discrimination from being constitutionalized in this state. Marriage is a contract that governs property-sharing and guardianship rights in case of medical emergency, and it is none of the state's business which two people choose to enter into this exclusive agreement. The gender of the two people should be of no concern whatsoever under the law.

I also encourage NO votes on Proposition 4, although I recognize that the issue of parental notification for minors seeking abortions is a more complicated one. Although I understand parents' concerns about the availability of a medical procedure to their minor children without their consent, I also have observed that the teen girls who are most likely to need abortions are the ones who are least able to turn to their parents in times of crisis. The sad fact is that girls who can talk to their parents about serious issues are far less likely to get pregnant in the first place, while the ones who can't are much more likely to do something stupid and potentially dangerous like pursue an illegal abortion.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this appeal. Here's to waking up on Wednesday in a country that appreciates us.

International Adventures

2008-09-19T23:39:00.000-07:00

I'm headed East - first to Pittsburgh, where I'll visit the Carnegie International, then to Minneapolis, where I'll catch up with my dear friend Steve Dietz at his new venture, Northern Lights. All that's a run-up for my trip to India, where I'm spending four weeks working with New Delhi-based gallery Nature Morte and some of their artists.

I'm hopeful that the internet in Delhi has become as ubiquitous as some say, but really have no idea what connectivity is like over there as I haven't been back since 2001. I'm planning to check out the brand-new Devi Art Foundation and catch up with the brilliant folks at Sarai, and otherwise go with the flow. Hope to post from there, and at the very least I'll be posting tons of pictures when I get back in late October. Thanks for your patience.

Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection at Berkeley Art Museum

2008-09-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

The collection of Uli Sigg is considered to be one of the most comprehensive in the world with respect to contemporary Chinese art. Sigg is the founder of the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards, and has been following the Chinese scene since its early days. If the exhibition currently on view at the Berkeley Art Museum reflects Sigg's interests, it can be said that he is more deeply concerned with the Chinese context for contemporary art than he is interested in work that implicates the global community (or the viewer) in its critique. Perhaps this is reflective of his observations about China, a nation whose focus remains profoundly introspective despite its substantial presence on the world stage. The prevailing concerns here seem to be the infiltration of American marketing into all corners of life, and the stifling presence of the Party within the home.

Luo Brothers, Untitled, 1999

This is a different approach from that of previous shows like Inside Out: New Chinese Art, Asia Society's seminal 1999 survey of the contemporary Chinese art scene. Despite some overlap, the focus of the previous exhibition included more performative works and documents that presented a body-conscious and confrontational methodology. The current show at BAM moves away from that precedent, perhaps because Chinese contemporary art has become so strongly identified with performance, photography and video that it seemed necessary to provide a different perspective.

The curatorial premise centers on the politics of the image under Communism, tied to propaganda that governed the appearance of everyone from Chairman Mao to the average peasant. The artists in this show have largely remained in China, and they experience subtle forms of expression management on a daily basis which they spotlight and lampoon here. The one-child family, the forced smile of the meager proletarian, and the faux-casual demeanor of the Party leadership are all on view. As an investigation of image as propaganda, the show is quite fascinating, the wall texts run through with intriguing facts about Communist thought-policing tactics.

A single viewing of this massive exhibition was not enough to generate a thorough assessment. I hope to return before it closes on January 4 and post a more in-depth account.

Stuff to See Tonight

2008-09-04T16:36:00.001-07:00

The first Thursday after Labor Day marks the beginning of the fall art season. Why do we all still live by the semester cycle? Anyway, some good stuff is happening tonight in the Bay Area. Here's where I'll be:

Bayete Ross Smith

Bayete Ross-Smith and Jonathan Burstein
Patricia Sweetow Gallery
77 Geary Street, Mezzanine, San Francisco
5:30-7:30 pm

David Maisel

David Maisel: Library of Dust
Cheryl Haines Gallery
49 Geary Street, 5th floor, San Francisco
5:30-7:30 pm

Jillian McDonald

Jillian McDonald: Movie Stars and Monsters
Headlands Center for the Arts
944 Fort Barry, Sausalito
7:30-9 pm

The Wizard of Oz at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art

2008-09-03T21:30:00.001-07:00

Last night was the opening of The Wizard of Oz at my alma mater, California College of the Arts. Like always at the start of the semester, it was a full house, and the subject matter was well-suited to Wattis Director Jens Hoffmann's theatrical approach. The path of exhibition, which juxtaposed works by several notable international artists with ephemera from the titular novel and 1939 film, followed a narrative arc loosely based on that of the source material.

Walker Evans, Part of the Bedroom of an Alabama Cotton Sharecropper,
Hale County, Alabama, 1935

The show opens with multiple beginnings. The American Midwest, where the story begins, is represented here by Walker Evans' powerful photographs of threadbare farm houses, which date to roughly the same time as the MGM film starring the teenaged Judy Garland. A large wall installation by Donald Urquhart chronicles thehistory and the dark side of the film's creation in a style derived from cheery children's book illustrations. Between these is a first edition of L. Frank Baum's novel, accompanied by reprints of early reviews, representing the start of a long cultural engagement with the book.

Clare Rojas, Woman in Yellow Dress in Poppy Field, 2008

Works such as Clare Rojas' drawings of women playing in a field of poppies, Evan Holloway's ax poised to chop, or Felix Gonzalez-Torres' images of birds flying through cloudy skies, can be read literally within the context of the story. Other works such as Bruce Conner's film Valse Triste have more subtle connections to the theme. Rivane Neuenschwander's installation Eu desejo o su desejo (I wish your wish) casts gallery visitors as Dorothy and her entourage, wishing for respite from the difficult journey ahead. Film originals include a first-run print, a Gramophone playing a recording of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and a pair of genuine Ruby Slippers.

The culminating work in the show is Steve McQueen's Once Upon a Time, in which images collected by NASA as indicators of human society and sent into space for alien consumption have been strung together and accompanied by a soundtrack of people speaking in tongues. The effect is wonderfully evocative of the Great and Terrible Oz - both ridiculous and full of hubris. Though traces of those characteristics can be found throughout the show, the negatives are outweighed by the strong use of space to describe a narrative, the visual interest of art mixed with cultural artifacts, and the iconoclastic takes of several artists on the literary source material.

The show runs through December 13.

Women's Equality Day at the Democratic National Convention

2008-08-27T00:50:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, August 26, was Women's Equality Day, commemorating the 88th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment which granted women the right to vote in the United States. At the Democratic National Convention, women were all over a program which included near-miss presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, Arizona governor Janet Napolitano (whom I can't help but confuse with Concrete Blonde singer Johnette Napolitano), and equal pay activist Lilly Ledbetter. Despite the preponderance of powerful, successful women and their heartfelt speechifying, there was plenty of evidence that equal rights for women aren't yet a reality.

Lilly Ledbetter at DNC

Ledbetter's case is particularly discouraging. Over 20 years of solid, hard work at Goodyear Tire, she was consistently paid less than male peers for the same work. Upon discovering the discrepancy, she filed a suit which she won at the District Court level, but lost on Supreme Court appeal. The Supreme Court decision that equal pay lawsuits must be filed within 6 months of the offense, not the discovery of the offense, essentially protects all employers from liability for discriminatory practices. Employees are prohibited from knowing what their peers are paid, so how can they know about discrepancies in time to file a lawsuit? This case was one of the very worst examples of how the Bush presidency has destroyed the Judicial branch. A House bill to rectify this egregious pandering to corporate interests was killed in the Senate. Congratulations ladies (and men - anyone can suffer discrimination), you officially have no recourse.

Kathleen Sebelius at DNC

Another disgusting example of entrenched sexism was provided by the commentary surrounding Sebelius' speech. A few weeks back, Kathleen Sebelius was the subject of much speculation as a possible Vice Presidential candidate on the Obama ticket. On broadcasts today, it was accepted as given that she could not have been selected because the choice of another woman would offend Hillary Clinton and her supporters. This is probably true, and if so it is genuinely appalling and reactionary behavior by so-called feminists. To promote the stereotype that women won't support other women in the professional realm, and that there can only be one token woman in a leadership position in any organization, is entirely counterproductive. Between this and the P.U.M.A. morons, die-hard Clinton supporters are poised to set women's rights back by decades. News flash - equal rights sometimes means an equal right to come in second, not preferential treatment when it suits you and equality the rest of the time. These self-righteous and spiteful characters definitely fall into the "won't you just die already?" category.

Hillary Rodham Clinton at the DNC

Finally, it bears noting that Bill Clinton - with his peevish, over-macho posturing with respect to Barack Obama - continues not to do his wife any favors politically. She spent decades grooming and nurturing him into the highest office in the land, stood by him when his megalomaniacal sexual deviancy got him in heaps of trouble, and this is how she is repaid. Why she and her class act of a daughter haven't kicked him to the curb is beyond me.

At least one ongoing thorn in my side seems to have resolved. It never ceased to bug me throughout the primaries when commentators would refer to Candidate Clinton as "Hillary" while referring to Candidate Obama as "Obama." It's not as though we were going to suddenly confuse her with Bill - and using her first name was a means for her opponents to undermine her seriousness as a viable candidate. She fell prey to that one herself, emphasizing "Hillary" in a strange attempt to disassociate herself from her churlish husband. It didn't help her cause.

Anyway, it appears that Obama supporters have belatedly leveled that playing field, as throughout the day I heard him referred to quite casually as "Barack." Oh, for a glimmer of post-gendered hope!

Part 2 - Art Since the 1960s: California Experiments

2008-08-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Documentation from Chris Burden's 1972 TV Hijack is presented adjacent to Wegman in the Video gallery. The politics and ethics of this piece have always fascinated me, as they point out thorny issues within contemporary art and media practice.

Burden was invited to be a guest on a public-access interview show hosted by Phyllis Lutjeans, one-time Curator of Education and Performance Art at Newport Harbor Art Museum (aka OCMA). He arrived with his own videographer, and requested that the interview be broadcast live, which it was. During the course of the interview, Lutjeans asked him what some of his ideas for future projects might be. Burden responded by pulling out a small knife and holding it to her throat. He demanded that the station continue transmitting while he held his host hostage, abusing her verbally with sexual threats. The performance culminated with Burden's destroying the only studio tape of the broadcast, an act which he recorded as the coda to his own document of the event.

Chris Burden, TV Hijack, 1972 (click for attribution)

Burden had employed violence in his works before, most famously with Shoot, 1971, in which he had an assistant shoot him in the arm with a .22 rifle inside a Santa Ana gallery. The earlier action was billed as a performance, the spectators and participants relatively clear as to their roles in what would take place. The difference with TV Hijack was that Lutjeans was not a willing participant, and at the time, she genuinely believed that her life was at risk. Burden's use of another person's genuine terror as the means for his art, coupled with the nasty introduction of gender-specific power dynamics through his use of obscene threats, make this his most vicious and hostile project - more so even than Trans-fixed, 1974, in which he was nailed to a Volkswagen Beetle by the hands and feet.

Chris Burden, Trans-fixed, 1974 (click for attribution)

TV Hijack is generally less well-known than Shoot or Trans-fixed. Perhaps this is because documentation of the piece is more difficult to come by, but I think it also has to do with an unwillingness among the contemporary art illuminati to call a sexist, violent action what it is, and the fact that many art historians and critics would prefer to gloss over this ugly reality in favor of a detached, over-critiqued analysis of Burden's oeuvre that treats fear and abuse as an inside joke.

The question posed by any act of mimicry as critique is, does the action cross over into becoming what it is intended to criticize? In the case of TV Hijack, it does. The criticism of media as a site of detachment from the consequences of violent action, as played out in countless summer blockbusters, war movies and the like, is negated by the artist's willful act of violence. This callousness toward human dignity has other manifestations in contemporary art practice, most notably in the work of Santiago Sierra, the Spanish artist whose works have included hiring migrant workers to stand for hours in a gallery and paying destitute individuals to tattoo a line across their backs.

Santiago Sierra, 250 cm Line Tattooed on 6 Paid People, 1999

Sierra argues, as does Burden, that these actions draw our attention to the violence we take for granted every day, fueled by divisions of class, race and gender. I disagree with the inherent assumption that we all take such violence for granted, regardless of where we stand in life, and argue instead that this is work directed at an affluent art world elite and justified by the same insularity it proposes to attack. I also question the validity of the artists' argument that because they mean to call attention, their exploitative acts are somehow less exploitative. Instead, it seems that the artists benefit and even profit from said exploitation, while those they take advantage of are left exactly as they were found. How is this different from the exploitation conducted by corporate interests for their own gain?

In summation, the art world is just another market economy fueled by the unremunerated contributions of nameless masses, while a very few (mostly white, mostly male) get the benefits. Artists like Burden and Sierra are important because they remind us of this reality in which they each play a complicit part.

Art Since the 1960s: California Experiments at Orange County Museum of Art

2008-08-19T22:46:00.000-07:00

The Orange County Museum of Art has a thoughtfully didactic exhibition on view through September 14. Art Since the 1960s: California Experiments is divided into subject areas such as Conceptual Art, Performance, Pop Art, Assemblage and Installation. Each section features prominent California artists as well as documentation of national-profile art actions that took place in Southern California. The work is drawn from OCMA's collection, much of which was acquired through purchases from the old Newport Harbor Biennial under the museum's original moniker, Newport Harbor Museum of Art. It's enlightening to see Orange County positioned at the center of key movements in late 20th century American art, having served as a launching pad for the likes of Chris Burden, Eleanor Antin, Robert Irwin, William Wegman and James Turrell. Some of what's on view is familiar, some surprising.

William Wegman, Selected Works, William Wegman, 1973-74

William Wegman is one of the surprises here. Long known for portraits of his Weimaraners that often cross the line from ironic to kitschy, his early video works demonstrate that at one time he was fully engaged in a critique of 1970s video/performance art. He intelligently skewers Vito Acconci, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman et al through funny videos that work seamlessly as conceptual art. Naturally, the dogs make an appearance. In one film, he impersonates a canine in a parody of Acconci's hyper-aggressive 1971 performance Claim, growling and snarling in the dark. In the next, he lectures his dog Man Ray about spelling errors, as if attempting to trade social roles with the animal.

Tomorrow: Some thoughts on Chris Burden's TV Hijack.

Help The Prids

2008-08-18T22:54:00.000-07:00

Our good friends The Prids were in a terrible accident last month that cut short their west coast tour. This happened when I was in New York, so I only recently heard the details. The Portland, OR-based band were driving from a gig in San Francisco to one in Los Angeles when their cargo van blew a tire, causing the vehicle to fishtail and ultimately to roll over several times. Everyone is alive, thank (insert deity here), but like most independent artists, very few of the band members have health insurance. You can help by donating to their PayPal account here.

The Prids retrieve their gear from their smashed van, Firebaugh, CA, July 23, 2008

The Prids are known for their ethereal sound, which invokes early postpunk/New Wave. Unlike their contemporaries Interpol or The Faint, The Prids haven't yet developed a national profile, but they are every bit as deserving and this is soon to change. Touring is how they make their living, driving from town to town selling self-published CDs and hand-silkscreened merchandise. The Prids are lifers, in this business for real and not just to be cool or be famous (although they are the former and should be the latter).

The Prids performing in San Francisco

On top of their enormous talent and dedication, The Prids are also incredibly sweet, intelligent and all around nice people. As happens too often in this life, a terrible thing has happened to the people who least deserve or can afford it. Please help them get back on their feet so they can get back on the road to uncompromising musical success.

Arctic Hysteria: New Art from Finland at P.S. 1

2008-08-06T19:09:00.001-07:00

Also at P.S.1 through September 15 is Artic Hysteria: New Art from Finland, which introduces sixteen contemporary Finnish artists to an American audience. Art from Finland, it turns out, is dark, honest, dryly humorous, and executed with sophistication. All media from drawing to sculpture to video to installation are included, along with some creative uses of P.S. 1's more unconventional spaces.

Pekka Jylhä, I Would Like to Understand, 2000-01

A spooky rabbit by Pekka Jylhä lurks in a corner inside the galleries. Another sits at the edge of a massive saucer, pondering or perhaps commanding it. Though tiny, they are menacing, and their intentions are never clear. Jylhä has used stuffed rabbits, goats and birds in several works. Each seems burdened with terrible knowledge.

Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Complaints Choirs, 2005-08

Complaints Choirs, organized by Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen, invites people in cities around the world to come together and sing about how much the world sucks. Participants in Birmingham, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Hamburg, Chicago and Singapore have created their own lyrics, submitting their complaints ahead of time. Accepted without audition, their laments are robust nonetheless.

Stiina Saaristo, The Celebration-Festen, 2006

Stiina Saaristo's large graphite on paper drawings depict festively clad, glum-faced figures in ostentatious surroundings. Clad in gowns, these stern characters are matronly yet ambiguously gendered. The drawings are hyper-realistic and detailed, the silk of the dresses soft and luxurious. In its grotesque decadence, Saaristo's work evokes Velazquez, referencing the doll-like princess of Meninas in one image.

Veli Grano, installation view at P.S. 1

P.S. 1's converted city school building provides some wonderfully strange gallery spaces. Veli Grano's film installations are situated in the basement boiler room, beside the 100+ year old wood-fired central heating oven. The history of the building is complex, spanning a political machine-driven scandal over its construction, the consolidation of the City of New York from independent municipalities, 70 years of elementary school students and 32 years as a contemporary art mecca. The boiler room is cavernous, filled with dusty pipes and canisters, and Grano's atmospheric black-and-white films haunt the space.

Veli Grano, Meet You in Finland Angel, 2000-03

Grano's work is based in documentary methods. The centerpiece, Meet You in Finland Angel, introduces a tireless cart collector at a popular ferry terminal, and his house-bound wife. His seven-day-a-week schedule leaves her alone with her sorrow, which eventually reaches a peak. Smaller video portraits of these subjects peek out from within the room's vast heating machine.

The Futuro Lounge, an homage to Finnish architect Matti Suuronen's futuristic design of the Futuro House from 1968, 2008

A more utopian architecture also plays a part. One gallery is given over to the Futuro Lounge, a reimagining of architect Matti Suuronen's 1968 Futuro House. A pocket-house designed to function as a ski lodge, it has been adapted into a video lounge. Its tranquility is inviting, but the sleek white surfaces can be intimidating. The atmosphere is oppressive enough that it becomes apparent why the original houses were discontinued after 10 years. Still, the project is significant for its inventive approach to exhibition design.

Still many more artists are to be discovered in the exhibition, which spans 1 1/2 floors of the enormous building. Though the show ascribes a neurotic nature to the Finns, much of the show feels contemplative. The cold and dark seem to enable a certain emotional directness to emerge from the Finnish landscape, resulting in a clear-eyed look at the human condition.

More images of the exhibition can be seen here.

NYC Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson

2008-08-04T23:13:00.001-07:00

The New York City Waterfalls, on view along New York's East River through October 13, are four installations on the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Governor's Island waterfronts. They can be seen from any of several riverside parks or by boat. Circle Line is offering some free tickets to see the project, though they are hard to come by. I managed to take advantage of the free boat ride by getting up absurdly early in the morning, which resulted in the following video:

NYC Waterfalls: Brooklyn Bridge, 2008

The Waterfalls cost roughly $15.5 million to construct and install, mostly supported by private donations via the Public Art Fund but also by $2 million from the city's Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Like most public art installations, they are controversial. The scale of the four installations is quite small in relation to the famous Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. 90-120 feet tall, they seem insignificant not only against the architecture, but also the majestic East River waterfront. At the same time, they have been paid for in part by public money, which begs the question of whether supporting a famous European import like Eliasson is an appropriate use of lower Manhattan's development monies. Considering the fact that New York's artists are rapidly being priced out of Manhattan altogether, many people feel it is not.

NYC Waterfalls: Pier 35, Manhattan, 2008

In a way, the Waterfalls are similar to other Public Art Fund projects, in which monumentalism is generally eschewed in favor of subtle gestures like Lawrence Weiner's permanently installed manhole covers, or performances like this past spring's Rodney Graham Band featuring the amazing Rotary Psycho-Opticon. Their structures are exposed scaffolds just like those surrounding large-scale construction in the city. The mechanism of the Waterfalls is presented matter-of-fact, with no effort to hide either the filtration pools from which the water is drawn nor the pipes which carry it up the scaffolds.

How the Waterfall Works (click for link)

Personally, I appreciated the understated scale of the Waterfalls, though I understand how many might feel that they are unworthy of their budget or hype. My experience as a viewer focused on the river itself, the newly built parks along both shores and the rare treat of a boat trip which most New Yorkers never take. It's debatable whether the river requires Eliasson's help to be a summer destination - most NYC residents' lack of air conditioning seems to accomplish that - but as a gesture to highlight significant reclamation work done on the city's waterfront, this seems adequate.

It is necessary to ask, can a public art project - especially a costly one - get away with simple sufficiency? Is Eliasson's claim that the work is about exhaustion good enough? Or is this project another example of an artist building a worse mousetrap and calling it Conceptualism? With Eliasson, the answers to such questions are never clear, and the museum establishment's embrace of him only serves to further confuse the issue.

Reversed Waterfall, 1998, installation at P.S. 1

Other examples of Eliasson's work with water and undisguised mechanisms are on view at P.S. 1 through September 15. More video of the Waterfalls and related projects can be seen here.

better living through art

Take action: tell the Smithsonian that censorship offends you!

Add Art Exhibition Feb 12-26

Joseph Smolinski: Ground Control at Swarm Gallery

Bay Area Gallerists in San Francisco Magazine

Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University to Close

Coosje van Bruggen (June 6, 1942 - January 10, 2009)

Slumdog Millionaire - A Film by Danny Boyle

Thanks

The Lost Years and Last Days of David Foster Wallace

Lehman Brothers to Auction Art Assets

High Desert Test Sites

ICA Live and Media Arts Department Cancelled

Obama's Plan for the Arts

Have We Overcome?

Vote.

International Adventures

Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection at Berkeley Art Museum

Stuff to See Tonight

The Wizard of Oz at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art

Women's Equality Day at the Democratic National Convention

Part 2 - Art Since the 1960s: California Experiments

Art Since the 1960s: California Experiments at Orange County Museum of Art

Help The Prids

Arctic Hysteria: New Art from Finland at P.S. 1

NYC Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson

The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu

Louise Bourgeois at Guggenheim Museum

Studio Visit with Christian Nguyen

Part 2 - She's So Articulate: Black Women Artists Reclaim the Narrative at Arlington Arts Center

She's So Articulate: Black Women Artists Reclaim the Narrative at Arlington Arts Center

Recognize: Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery

Radialvedic at Johansson Projects

2007 Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant Recipients at CUE Art Foundation

The Stranger at Yvon Lambert

Victory Garden 2008: The Ark

A few friends of note

Joseph DeLappe: The Salt Satyagraha Online—Gandhi’s Salt March in Second Life

Seher Shah

The Wackness: a film by Jonathan Levine

Neti Neti at Bose Pacia, New York

Studio Visit with Jon Rappleye

Sarah Wagner: Nuclear Family at Patricia Sweetow Gallery

David Stein: Improbable/Unlikely at Eleanor Harwood Gallery

Koh Myung Keun: Windows on Nature at Frey Norris

East of the West at SomArts

Gogol Bordello at the Warfield

Whitney Biennial

We Interrupt Your Program at Mills College Art Museum

Jenifer Wofford, Chris Bell, Bruce Tomb and Elaine Buckholtz at Southern Exposure

Takashi Murakami at MOCA

Frederick Loomis: The Third Covenant at Steven Wolf Fine Arts

2007 Venice Biennale photos online

The Present Group

Sunshine - a film by Danny Boyle

Ala Ebtekar at Gallery Paule Anglim

Taraneh Hemami: Most Wanted

Conversation 4: Jillian McDonald/Mark Lee Morris

Vivienne Westwood recap

Skinny Puppy at the Fillmore 6/21/07

New space: Johansson Projects in Oakland

Patricia Sweetow's new show at 77 Geary

More ISEA / ZeroOne Artists to Watch

Los Angeles

Useful Thought for the Day

ISEA2006 and ZeroOne San Jose