February 2003 2.28.2003 The best gallery show in DC right now is the fission/fusion show at the Mexican Cultural Institute. Curated by indy curators Berta Kolteniuk and Gabriela Molina, the show brings together art from six American and six Mexican artists. In a catalog essay, Molina writes that the representation of nature is the show's theme. And I do see that in this show: Maggie Michael examines reproduction in her poured latex paintings, Andrea Haffner's tiny photos seem to capture specific moments of chromosomal mutation (or as the catalog cleverly calls it, embryonic shadow), Brandon Morse's standing light boxes seem to present projections of what you might see under a color microscope and Antonio Sanchez' lightboxes and plexi panels seem to digitize captured lightwaves. But to approach and view fission/fusion as a mere interpretation of nature and science, misses what makes this a heckuva show: not only do the artists in the show explore contemporary science and systems, they do it in a way that reveals the beauty in science and providential organization. I'll discuss individual artists and works more thoroughly over the weekend when I have more time (hey, the real job beckons!), but I wanted to start by discussing a couple of my favorite pieces: The show-stopper comes in the last gallery of the exhibit, an assemblage made in duck sauce by DC-based stuff artist Dan Steinhilber. ("That'll last forever," I heard one gallery-goer say. "I've had duck sauce in my kitchen cupboard for years and it's still good.") Steinhilber has adhered (invisibly) hundreds upon hundreds of tiny restaurant-sized duck sauce packets to an eightish-foot by fourish-foot rectangle on a wall. The packets are laid on in imperfect rows in such a way that they completely obscure the underlying wall. The way the light falls on the packets reveals a previously who'd-a-thunk-it variety in the orange that is duck sauce. Steinhilber continues to find ways to show the inherent beauty in materials that, when viewed conventionally, are inherently ugly. Many other pieces in the show challenge the way we look at things we've seen before. Mauricio Alejo, who is based in Mexico City (but who matriculated in NYC and who is represented by Throckmorton) exhibits two photos that question space and depth with simple, apparently stacked geometric objects made of glass surrounded by mysterious shadows. The effect challenges the eye and the photo plane. (There is more Alejo here (a magazine article), and here (another magazine article). Alejo has done this before -- his photographs of color (airport-type) x-ray images bring us into contact with the beauty in what has become a wearying part of travel. Like Steinhilber, Alejo looks beyond the daily encounter to find something exceptional. Hector Zamora starts with structure, often man-made, and then reduces and reduces it until he's left with the barest of architectural lines. His installation, apparently made of nylon, fishing-wire-type thread, discovers that highlighting barely visible lines within space can force the imagination to create the absent structures hinted at by the thread. See this show, ideally before March 19, when there will be a panel discussion at the Mexican Cultural Institute. fission/fusion closes on March 31. posted by Tyler at 10:24 AM 2.27.2003 Thanks to Elizabeth Botten for this tip: One of DC's NPR stations, WETA, is premiering a new weekly show on the arts this Sunday. It's called The Program. posted by Tyler at 11:59 AM Gerhard Richter opened at the Hirshhorn last night. This show has already been in NYC, Chicago and San Francisco, so it's not exactly big news, but there are some interesting Hirshhorn-related notes worth passing along. * As hinted at here on MAN, Richter attended the opening. He seemed to go mostly unnoticed by most gallery-goers: several times I saw Richter wandering through the museum, unaccompanied and unbothered. * While the show was hung mostly chronologically in New York, it was hung mostly thematically in Washington. One of the most interesting arrangements is a room with four squeegee abstractions and two of the realist images (the girl reading a paper painting and a two candles). I remember that one of the the odd points in MoMA's handout guide/audio guide/website was a curator explaining why an artist who "can paint realistically" would "bother" with abstraction. Well, that room at the Hirshhorn addresses the mix of Richter's styles much more effectively than MOMA did. posted by Tyler at 11:55 AM 2.26.2003 The National Gallery of Art has put up a mini-page in advance of Kirk Varnedoe's upcoming Mellon Lectures. They start on March 30, and run each Sunday through May 11. posted by Tyler at 4:14 PM You can tell that MAN's real job is hectic when I resort to journalism critiques, such as... The SF Chronicle does a fine job of explaining that dot-com era high-flyer SFMOMA is finding itself fiscally kerfuffled. The Washington Post should do a story like this about the finances of DC institutions. posted by Tyler at 2:59 PM Good stuff in the comment boards below about my thoughts on Blake Gopnik's WP Matisse Picasso review. Pile on! posted by Tyler at 2:16 PM Kurt Andersen's Studio 360 does an entire show on collecting. posted by Tyler at 8:55 AM Toronto Globe and Mail critic Russell Smith discusses how elitism and the relentless pursuit of quality can result in work that reaches an audience broader than just us elitists. Meanwhile, a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist comes out in favor of pandering to the masses. posted by Tyler at 8:44 AM 2.25.2003 This morning Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik reviews Matisse Picasso and finds fault with the curatorial thesis of the show: that Matisse and Picasso carried on a dialogue in their art, and that they repeatedly borrowed from each other and prodded each other through nearly five decades of artistic achievement. Two-thirds of the way through his review, Gopnik presents the crux of his argument for why the show fails: "If known contacts between the two artists don't always show up clearly on the surface of the works, how can anybody hope to pair up pictures that there aren't records for?" Why do we need "records" to recognize that artists refer to each other in paintings? Any art historian worth her/his bifocals can discuss how two artists impacted each other by simply looking at their work. (This is a curatorial sub-thesis of this show. MOMA gives us almost no wall texts, in effect telling gallery-goers to simply use their eyes.) Several times in his review, Blake refers to what he calls "superficial similarities" to paintings in the show. His analogy to false friends in language is interesting, but I think he's on the wrong track. The similarities are not superficial, they're directly inspired by the other artist. For example, Matisse used the classic female arm-over-the-head pose (which the Dream-of-Desire pose) as a personal trademark. When Picasso uses the same pose in paintings and pairs it with other Matisse-ian references such as patterned wallpaper/textiles and mirrors, it's not superficial -- it's directly referential. I think the better analogy is how musicians riff off of the favorite licks or innovations of other musicians. (Take a look at the profiles of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry (none of the NYT's stories from 2/23 are in the archive, for some reason) in recent Sunday Timeses and you hear Keith Richards and various Beatles saying things about their contemporaries that are startlingly similar to what Matisse and Picasso say about each other.) I also think that Blake misses the sensuality in Matisse's 1907 Blue Nude and the impact of Africa and African art on Matisse. Blue Nude is among the most erotic, sensual and sexual paintings of the early century. The echoes of the lines in this painting are completely enchanting. Furthermore, Matisse makes the nude's sensuality and come-hitherness all the more apparent by presenting her thigh and hip as a phallus. Eve wants Adam and she's showing him where she wants him. posted by Tyler at 11:43 AM Thanks to ArtKrush for the booster shot today. Here's a quick guide to recent long-format posts, mostly filed after returning from four or five days in NYC: Chelsea galleries, post one Chelsea galleries, post two Chelsea galleries, post three Matisse Picasso, Struth Shirin Neshat posted by Tyler at 8:15 AM 2.24.2003 Reminder: The Phillips Collection's Margaret Bourke-White exhibit is up. The Washington Post's Michael O'Sullivan called it "industry as porn," but I think a lot of the show is so overtly referencing sex that I'd just call it porn. As part of MAN's new focus on doing more critical writing, look for a MAN review later this week! posted by Tyler at 2:44 PM MAN site news: There will be some changes coming to MAN this week. For one, I'm going to move the site over to Blogger Pro. This should solve the never-ending archives problem and bring some new features to the site, including email notification. I'll also be adding a pointer URL later this week too. I think all this should be pretty transparent from a user's point of view, but if the site is down for a few hours later this week, you'll know why. posted by Tyler at 11:44 AM It's a big week for openings here in DC. You likely know about Gerhard Richter opening at the Hirshhorn (MAN hears that you should expect a surprise at the opening!). You may not know about fission/fusion opening on Thursday @ the Mexical Cultural Institute. Among the 12 artists are MANfaves Maggie Michael and Dan Steinhilber. posted by Tyler at 10:39 AM 2.23.2003 It would be fun if DC had a magazine/webzine such as this one, called Ten by Ten. posted by Tyler at 3:18 PM 2.21.2003 Fun post with a great visual trivia Q at the end @ 2blowhards. It's no surprise when Michael Kimmelman loves Matthew Barney. I would have preferred a Roberta review. posted by Tyler at 11:54 AM MAN's final NYC trip installment: Reading some of the reviews of the Matisse Picasso show at MOMA QNS, I saw that the newspaper critics (that means you Kimmelman, Saltz , Kramer, and others) didn't have much to say. One of them could have recognized this and tried something different with their review, but none I've read has. I thought each of those (male!) critics had nugggets in their reviews that could have been expanded. A few paragraphs from the end of Kimmelman's review, he refers to the MP exhibit having a plot, but it's not an idea he developed in the review. Hilton Kramer devotes a few paragraphs to how the histories of MOMA, Picasso and Matisse are intertwined, but doesn't make that the focus of his review (alas!). Jerry Saltz spent a few sentences on some great works that weren't included that might have been. There too would have been an interesting review. Given that this is a blog and not a newspaper, I want to try to give MANreaders an idea of some of the dialogues between paintings that the curators have tried to set up. Thanks to the post-industrial space that the old Swingline factory, MOMA's curators have set up cross-room relationships between paintings. Contrary to what you may have heard (I mean you Michael Kimmelman!) the exhibit hasn't been over-crowded by MOMA's timed-ticket policy. On to some quick notes: * In the first and second rooms of the exhibit, Matisse's Marguerite and Picasso's Les Demoiselles are set up facing each other. Picasso was fascinated by the way Matisse simplified (even primitive-ized) the face of his daughter in Marguerite. Picasso was also somewhat outraged that Matisse would show a frontal image that would omit one of Marguerite's ears and make her nose look like it was being viewed in profile. Picasso responds to this in Les Demoiselles, in which Picasso 'shows Matisse' how he can get both (over-sized) ears on a female head while keeping the nose in profile. * Bathers with a Turtle is the painting next to Les Demoiselles. Right around the corner from these two paintings, and visible while you're looking at them, is 1907's Blue Nude. * In various places in the second room are a number of portraits that Matisse and Picasso did in the early years of the century. I'd love to see an essay by John Klein comparing and contrasting M's and P's portraits. (MANnews: Klein is at work editing a book that will pull together essay's about Matisse's Bonheur de Vivre.) * One of my favorite parings in the show is Matisse's (December) 1940 Still Life With Oysters and Picasso's 1941 Still Life With Blood Sausage. The two painters are not only responding to each other, but to the war. Matisse rarely dated his paintings on the canvas, but next to his signature in this painting is the date "12/40," the month that the British invaded Northern Africa, that Hitler declared his intent to invade the USSR. Struth @ the Met I find each trip to the Met more and more difficult. Crowd control is atrocious, the Met's inability to get with a timed-ticket program on big exhibits (Leonardo!) is ridiculous and the sheer rudeness of many of the guards/staff is disconcerting and off-putting. It takes more work to go to the Met than to any other museum in the US. No one should ever have to wade through a 20 minute line just to pay a suggested admission charge. By the time I get to the admission booth-let, I don't even want to pony up $12, which by law, cannot be mandatory. The exhibit of the moment at the Met is the Thomas Struth mid-career retro presented with a mini-exhibit of Struth's street photography. I found the show uneven. Struth's museum photos are completely engaging, especially after hearing MANbabe talk about them. The lines of sight created between the gallerygoers and the relationship between the gallerygoers and the works are captivating. Also top-notch was Struth's series of jungle/forest photographs, which are almost a meditation on the possibilities of the color green. Most of these photos present greenery as completely flat against the photo plane , yet the depth of the forest/jungle is still evident, at least cereberally. I know that Struth's street photos are beloved, but they strike me as inert and lacking any visual interest whatsoever. In a wall text the Met tries to draw an art historical line between Sol Lewitt's geometry and Struth's street photos, but that doesn't work for me. posted by Tyler at 11:37 AM 5Ters James Huckenpahler and Colby Caldwell are among the DC artists opening in this show @ the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland today. posted by Tyler at 10:11 AM 2.20.2003 MAN Museum Preview MANbabe tells me that a Matthew Ritchie show is coming to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in December. MANfave James Casebere has a show up at the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum. Julie Mehretu has a show in April @ the Walker. The St. Louis Art Museum is one of my favorites and it has a heckuva roster of upcoming shows, including: Diebenkorn & Thiebaud: Works on Paper in May, a survey of contemporary German art in the fall and a Neo Rauch show in December. Also in StL, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis features a fall survey show of work by 12 African contemporary artists. Opening in July will be a Marc Chagall retro @ SFMOMA. Anyone got any other faves to point out? posted by Tyler at 2:07 PM Housekeeping note: I fixed the links in yesterday's galleries post. On Wednesday night, MANbabe and I heard Shirin Neshat give a talk and saw the US premiere of Tooba, the short that she premiered at Documenta last year. I've heard lots of artist lectures and talks and Neshat's was one of the most focused, self-understanding talks I've heard. Some quickie highlights that make sense out of context: * "Art reflects the soul of a nation," -- Neshat, on the place of art in the midst of an exceptional political situation. For more on Neshat's political views on war and more, read this fantastic Guardian piece. Neshat added that "we are all evil" but that art insists on the goodness of people and the focuses on the positive aspects of the human spirit. I think this concept is quite visible in Tooba. * Neshat repeatedly, repeatedly referred to herself as an Iranian "living in exile." Later: "I feel both grief and pride in the life that I've taken," she said, adding that many of her locations are picked because they look like Iran. * After 9/11, Documenta invited her to make a film to be featured @ Documenta. Neshat said that she wanted to make a film that was philosphical rather than literal or political. * Neshat on her themes: biculturalism, nomadism, poetry and metaphor, duality, ambiguity. I would add the mental effect of trauma/violence, the threat and memory of which is a strong subtext in Tooba. * Neshat considers herself a "minimalist," which is one of those things that art students would probably have a good time discussing. * She said that she struggles with the way people see her work. At museums they can walk in the middle, watch only 47 seconds and then leave. At one level this bothers her because people aren't seeing the complete work. On another level she thinks that each frame stands on its own pretty well. (Not that this is anything unique to Neshat -- I'm sure every video artist spends a lot of time thinking that through.) Neshat said that she limits her works to under 10 minutes because she wants the pieces to be pro-contemplation and anti-entertainment. * I'm not describing Tooba much and I know most MANreaders haven't seen it. Maybe I'll do a short Tooba essay over the weekend. posted by Tyler at 12:47 PM 2.19.2003 Artists (often) don't like criticism from critics. The art critic at the Globe and Mail rightly says hooey to that. posted by Tyler at 5:13 PM The final (and quicker/shorter) post from the weekend gallery crawl: Marianne Boesky: The best thing that I saw during the weekend (and MANbabe agrees) was the Donald Moffett show, which opened last Friday. Moffett has joined two media, video and painting, into unified works (see Ray, Christina and you may have an emergent trend). Moffett has painted canvases with reflective paint, usually silver (though a flat deep blue is visible under the silver on some canvases), and hung then canvases on the wall. Onto each canvas – and not spilling over onto the wall – is projected an image from The Rambles in Central Park. Most of the works feature very slight, subtle movement in the projection, say leaves moving in a gentle, gentle breeze. Up close the works appear to be abstract, but as you move back from them they evolve and detail becomes visible. On my favorite piece, Gold/Green, a Giverny-esque blue and green abstraction is occasionally and surprisingly broken up by ducks swimming across the canvas. It’s beautiful, new (it builds on work Moffett created for his MOCA Chicago show) and never seems gimmicky. Unfortunately Boesky didn’t create a catalog for the show. D’Amelio Terras: Rei Naito’s sculpture made of mostly transparent white curtains and beads, into which one person can walk at a time, is transcendent and comparable to the experience of walking into Kusama’s Fireflies. Both artworks make the viewer/entrant aware of space and depth in an intimate way: Kusama by extending it, Naito by changing how you see what’s around you. Jack Shainman Gallery: Zwelethu Mthethwa’s photos of impoverished South Africa are worth seeing in the same way that National Geographic is worth reading. David Zwirner: The show of paintings by Michael Borremans is in places fascinating and in spots completely dull. Borremans images of people on what look like model railroad sets (such as here or here) are eerie and invite the viewer into working through the painting to understand the situation in the painting. But many of his small, Flemish portraits are technically accomplished but ultimately uninteresting. The drawings in the front gallery are also worth a look. Sean Kelly Gallery: This theme show, about reflection, was the other I enjoyed. James Casebere’s photographs of a model of flooded underground arches is not a new image to me, but I always enjoy Casebere’s created micro-worlds. Ann Hamilton’s Reflection (12:00-12:55) series of 12 iris prints and Christine Borland’s Spirit Collection were also strong pieces. posted by Tyler at 5:11 PM 2.18.2003 Update: Artnet reports that the Kusama Fireflies on the Water piece mentioned in Monday's post is on its way to SITE Santa Fe, presumably Robert Storr's show and that the $$ is $200K. posted by Tyler at 11:03 PM More from the NYC gallery scene: * Pace: Agnes Martin. Transcendant, beautiful, enveloping. The tension created between her horizontals in some canvases and the colors in the neutral washes in others were gripping. * lyonswier: Having seen the Homeland show at the Corcoran, I found that Mary Mattingly's photos have much in common with some of the work in that show. The eerie, misty light and color of Todd Hido meets the eye-encouraging focus of some of Jason Falchook's pieces (see Mattingly's Invented Airspace). Mattingly's work questions whether we see some of the space around us and points out some of the subtle attractiveness of familiar space-scapes. One of my favorite finds of the weekend. * Andrea Rosen Gallery: The show I saw is entitled something like Eight British Artists Do Landscapes (the link on the website is broken so I'm not getting it quite right), and most of it had an immature, tentative chest-thumping quality to it. Two artists stood out: First, the wavy, computer-influenced landscapes of Dan Hays. The landscapes of Colorado mountain scenerylooked like color bitmap images that had been through a late-eighties After Dark screensaver. They straddle the line between gimmicky and formally interesting, but are just far enough over toward formally interesting to succeed. (Hays is also in the Cranbrook show referenced in the post immediately below this one.) Also interesting @ Andrea Rosen was the work of Nigel Cook, whose apparent urbanscapes of dilapidated walls and the minuscule detritus injected into the scene was oddly captivating. * DCKT Contemporary: Christina Ray's mixed-media wall installations (they sit on a mini-shelf and recline against the wall) mix painting, photography and strips of clear glass to reveal a post-cubist depiction of outdated neighborhoody objects. Each installation provides a mixture of ways of looking at a familiar object: a car, a playground, etc. in different media within the single work. In the complete visualization, each work holds up as an accumulated image. Check back for the final few galleries tomorrow. Later in the week MAN will discuss Matisse Picasso @ MOMA QNS, Struth @ the Met and Shirin Neshat's American Federation of Arts lecture/US-premiere of Tooba. posted by Tyler at 1:29 PM The Cranbrook's art museum has an interesting show up right now: Post-Digital Painting. Among the featured artists is Dan Hays who is part of a group show up at Andrea Rosen Gallery. (BTW, if anyone at Cranbrook would, oh, like to send me that catalog, just email me for my mailing address.) posted by Tyler at 10:23 AM 2.17.2003 MANnewsFlash: DC sculptor Dan Steinhilber has signed with Numark Gallery. First solo show likely in the fall of 2004. posted by Tyler at 2:28 PM Snow update: DC is immobilized. This means that I'm house-bound. You probably are too, so perhaps the comment boards will be full of brilliance today. Other art sites are bored too -- ArtKrush is strong today, for example. Expect a ton of posts today, including this one to about five days worth of art journalism: * The Chicago Tribune reviews the Corcoran's Homeland show, viewing it as a commentary on surveillance. (Note: The Trib reviewed the show on Jan. 23 and the link is to a free version of the story.) * Michael Kimmelman on Matisse Picasso, complete with a web-only audio-visual feature. I'm intrigued by his idea about the show having a plot, but why did he wait until the last eight paragraphs of the story to introduce it? Also, the crowds on the opening day weren't bad at all. We were still able to gaze across galleries to enjoy how paintings talked with each other. (For example, the second figure in Les Demoiselles with Matisse's Marguerite.) * Roberta Smith on Degas and the Dance in Philly. * The LA Times' David Pagel features a mini-review of Cecily Brown's Gagosian (LA) show. Neither the WP Gopnik review of Brown nor this short review focus on how Brown brings a woman's take on sex and hedonism to contemporary painting. I think that these paintings are made by a woman are intrinsically important to considering the work. * Also in the LAT, arts reporter Suzanne Muchnic discusses the dialog between art and science. * MANfave Christopher Knight ties the UN's covering of Picasso's Guernica tapestry to Ashcroft's covering of statutory breasts. * The Chicago Tribune on how blockbuster museum shows are becoming a corporate business opportunity instead of academic/curated explorations. * I hope someone saves Mies' Farnsworth House because the state of Illinois doesn't think it's important enough. * It's not clear to me why the New York Review of Books allowed John Updike to review the current Marsden Hartley retro. What a boring piece. posted by Tyler at 1:01 PM Thanks to Amtrak, MAN was able to return from NYC last night. It's probably going to take me a while to blog four-and-a-half days of art (plus to link to some of the fabulous art stuff that went up on the web this weekend -- I'll do that this afternoon), so I'll just start with the Chelsea galleries, move on to Pace/MOMA QNS/Met and then on to Shirin Neshat's lecture at the AFA (which featured the first American screening of Tooba, here discussed in the Guardian). BTW, MAN saw over 20 shows in Chelsea. DC would have to freeze over for me to be bored enough to write about all of them. These comments will focus on the shows I really enjoyed and the ones that prompted some other form of thought worth noting. * Robert Miller: Two items of note here. Yayoi Kusama's Fireflies on the Water is a small 10X10ish room lines with reflective mylar. The floor is covered with a thin sheet of water, and a pier extends about five feet into the room so that you can enter the space. A door closes behind you after you enter. Hanging from the ceiling are 150 red, yellow and blue lights, each the size of the tip of your pinky. Viewed around you and through the mylar and water that surrounds you, they extend forever. Also at Robert Miller: a whimsically corseted blue Nancy Davidson balloon. * James Cohan: We saw two excellent theme shows in Chelsea, including Air @ Cohan. Favorite pieces in the show included: an abstracted photo of a desert sunset (from the Desert Cantos series) by Richard Misrach (10.14.97, 6:49 pm). Misrach's image, which starts in a deep navy blue at the top of the image and melds into a burnt orange by the bottom, is as trusting a photographic abstraction as you'll see. Misrach trusts color in a way that reveals it as completely as a color field painting. When I saw Hans Haacke's Blue Sail I thought of MANfave Dan Steinhilber. Earth-ish artist Dennis Oppenheim's Whirlpool -- Eye of the Storm is a montage of the dissolution of smoke over desert. Oppenheim's images are straightforward but I felt like the smoke was dancing on the wall in front of me. (Oppenheim fans: John Spiak informs us that Oppenheim will be giving a lecture at Arizona State University on April 4. MAN wants an audio tape!) The funniest piece in Air is Hiraki Sawa's animated video, Dwelling. The video starts with mundane shots of a boring little apartment... an apartment which is soon brought to life as tiny 747s take off and fly around in it. More later. posted by Tyler at 10:33 AM 2.12.2003 MAN is on holiday. Posting will resume on Monday. posted by Tyler at 9:58 AM 2.11.2003 Ever wondered what Peter Schjeldahl looks like? posted by Tyler at 3:58 PM With the arrival of Matisse Picasso, MAN has started thinking about what might be the great 'duo shows' of the future. Some possibilities: * Ryman (Agnes) Martin * Truitt McCracken * Warhol Lichtenstein * Demuth Sheeler * Bischoff Park Add more on the comment boards... posted by Tyler at 11:49 AM ARCO '03 opens tomorrow and DC's Fusebox is there. If anyone in Spain would like to share more info, my email is always open. posted by Tyler at 11:34 AM Denver Post "arts columnist" Kyle McMillan reminds us why painting isn't dead. posted by Tyler at 11:18 AM Slate, which inexplicably seems to ignore the visual arts, is featuring an Eggleston story. posted by Tyler at 10:30 AM 2.10.2003 The avalanche of Matisse Picasso stories has begun! * This NYT Sunday piece tells us what MOMA had to do to get some of those loans. Who says there's no politics in the art world? * New York magazine, which usually has lousy arts coverage, has this rambling, scattershot story that insists on burying some well-reported tidbits in an avalanche of sports metaphors. Among them this quote from ex-MOMA curator Kirk Varnedoe: "In five years of working on the show, none of the six curators ever tried to figure out who was the better painter. It is one of the great and finally unresolved issues in twentieth-century art." Does anyone actually believe that? The story also features these odd bits: an NYU professor telling us that Matisse isn't a household name and news that potholes in QNS have been filled especially for this exhibit. * For some reason the Financial Times sees the show this way: it pitts Matisse's auction results and other sales up against Picasso's. posted by Tyler at 12:39 PM 2.8.2003 On Wednesday MAN and MANbabe will be attending a lecture given by Shirin Neshat at the American Federation of Arts in NYC. So with Neshat on the brain, MAN provides the following Neshat guide: * Time Europe put together a Neshat photo essay and a 2001 interview. * The Thessaloniki Film Festival provides descriptions and thematic overviews of many Neshat works. * Knot Magazine's Amanda Veil discusses the way a Neshat film was installed @ the Walker. * Finally, ArtKrush features an interview of Neshat with art critic David Shapiro. posted by Tyler at 12:49 PM 2.7.2003 Drawing. After a decade of installation work and bigger-than-goop spectacle (oh wait, you can't get bigger than the goop that the Guggenheim will be featuring in their Matthew Barney show... according to this morning's NYT, the GuggEnron will be semi-freezing a ton of goop at Barney's request, link and jump hed later), drawing continues to be huge in U.S. museums and in other shows. Here's a roll call of what's been going on and I hope MAN readers might add others on the comment boards. MAN noted back in December that many dealers were giving over scant and pricey wall space at Art Basel Miami Beach to drawing instead of to more expensive canvases. Concurrently, MOMA held their Drawings Now show and just after that show closed, a Thomas Nozkowski drawings show went up at the NY Studio School. The Corcoran Biennial features two galleries of drawings, one by Jacob El-Hanani and another by Marcel Dzama. Just open at UCLA's Hammer Museum is a survey of drawing from Asia, complete with a fantastic website (universities still have money!). MANfave (but apparently not an LA Times editorial fave!) Christopher Knight mostly praises the show here. posted by Tyler at 12:21 PM Pilfed from ArtFORUM, a new-to-me art blog. posted by Tyler at 11:54 AM One way you can tell that many museums are cutting back in some budget areas is the money they're not spending on exhibit websites. Yesterday MAN pointed out the lousy SFMOMA August Sander site, today we give you this lousy Met/Thomas Struth site. Hartford's Hartley exhib site is better but not by much. posted by Tyler at 11:37 AM 2.6.2003 Even though MAN's day job is to work as a policy/political consultant, MAN doesn't spend much web time on arts policy. However, a confluence of arts policy stories on ArtsJournal this morning caught our eye. AJ features stories on how state governments, including New Jersey, Arizona and Massachusetts, are considering eliminating state-level arts funding as a response to massive state budget defecits. Americans for the Arts has a funding primer on these issues. posted by Tyler at 11:45 AM This week The New Yorker discusses the August Sander exhibit @ SFMOMA. Sign of the dot-done times is the lousy website that SFMOMA gives us. posted by Tyler at 10:41 AM MAN is looking forward to a lecture being given by Shirin Neshat at the American Federation of Arts on Wed., Feb. 12 @ 6 pm. posted by Tyler at 9:12 AM 2.5.2003 Artnet.com checks in with one of Walter Robinson's ever-helpful NYC gallery crawls. posted by Tyler at 5:21 PM A MANfan points out this gem about Kirk Varnedoe and the 2003 Mellon lectures here in DC. Can't wait! posted by Tyler at 3:48 PM Architect Rafael Viñoly is the man of late: WTC site finalist, Kennedy Center choice and now he'll be the architect for an expansion of the Cleveland Museum of Art. posted by Tyler at 3:47 PM 2.4.2003 Fun story about a pioneering pop art collector. posted by Tyler at 5:25 PM Yesterday MAN pointed out some of the (free!) events at the Hirshhorn in conjunction with Richtermania. Today we'll share a few of the Joe Mills events that will be at the Corcoran. (Reminder: you have to wait until next week to see Joe Mills @ the Corcoran, he's already up @ Hemphill. Thanks to Paul & George for the 411.) Feb. 13: Mills and curator Paul Roth will conduct an exhibition tour @ 7 pm. Feb. 15: Panel discussion @ Hemphill featuring Roth, Mills and George Hemphill. RSVP may be a good idea @ 202-342-5610. (If I'm wrong I bet some Hemphillian will catch it and post it on the comment board?) March 6: Paul will do a gallery talk @ 630 pm March 27: Mills & Roth will again tag-team on a walk-thru @ 630 pm. posted by Tyler at 5:16 PM WPer Blake Gopnik gave us his DC spring art preview in last Sunday's paper. (Memo to the WP: Spring begins in about seven weeks.) Apparently it was the spring museums-only preview because nowhere did the paper preview what's going on in DC's galleries this spring. The preview included: * One great line: "Some of his female sitters can look as though they're part of his pastoral landscape's fauna: Gainsborough had a curious habit of making his female sitters look rather like sheep." * One dubious line: "Richter has done everything he could to question all the things that paint can do while proving that the ancient medium still has things to say." The medium has things to say rather than the artist? No one talks this way about video, drawing or sculpture. Why about painting? posted by Tyler at 2:10 PM If there's one thing more fun than reading about art heists, it's reading about the trial of alleged art heisters. Here's a great one. Includes this paragraph: "On the first day of his trial on Tuesday, Mr Breitwieser [the accused] interrupted court proceedings several times to correct the description of a painting." posted by Tyler at 1:58 PM 2.3.2003 MANfave ArtKrush joins the Christopher Knight discussion and comes down on the side of critics. posted by Tyler at 12:23 PM MAN noticed that the Post’s Howard Kurtz has noted the Christopher Knight/LA Times absurdity several days after MAN and DCAT first highlighted the story. * MAN received the Hirshhorn’s Winter Calendar and Tourist Photolog, so we’re now able to share with you the don’t-miss events of the Richter season: Former MOMA curator Robert Storr will speak at the Hirshhorn’s Ring Aud on Sunday, March 2 @ 3 pm. Then Corcoran curator Philip Brookman will discuss Richter’s photography on Sunday, March 23, also @ 3 pm. The final must-see lecture will be on Sunday, May 18, when five young art scholars (also known as “students”) will discuss Richter at the exhibition entrance. Heckling and lively debate may not be encouraged but it would be fun. Also, MAN hears rumors of a Richter appearance/talk. Check in at the end of the week, by when we may know more… * MAN and the MANbabe did a first walkthrough of the Vuillard exhibit on Saturday. It’s beautifully installed, and there are some masterful pieces on display, but… Kimmelman is right – the show needs an editor that could have thinned out about 40-50 of the show’s 230 pieces. (The $65 catalog is the size of two laptop computers stacked on top of each other.) And the last two rooms which feature Vuillard’s late works are atrocious. There is no more prominent showing of syrupy work in DC right now than those last two rooms. posted by Tyler at 12:12 PM posted by mclennan @ Monday, February 3, 2003 | Permanent link