June 2003 6.30.2003 MAN's Dia: Beacon viewing tips. (Thanks artnet.) posted by Tyler at 8:02 PM The National Gallery of Art has announced its Winter 2003 through Spring 2005 exhibition schedule. Highlights include: a Jim Dine drawing show in March of 2004 and a show of Diego Rivera's cubist work in April of 2004. As noted previously, this October the NGA's Jeffrey Weiss is opening a Picasso show of the cubist portraits of Fernande Olivier. Fred Tomaselli is coming to the Hirshhorn on July 24 for an artist's talk. Should be fun. Also, longtime MANfave Out of Lascaux has a good note about Larry Summers putting art history back into Harvard's core curriculum. posted by Tyler at 6:34 PM The LA Times obviously considers it important to share goings on in the visual arts with its movie- and boob toob-saturated readership. (Gee, what an idea that is!) Today: * Christopher Knight is not a fan of the traveling Modigliani show at LACMA which has previously touched down in Buffalo and Fort Worth. * Christopher Reynolds discusses Eli Broad and LACMA's relationships with funders. Sidebar interview with Broad here. Must-read for museum types. Admin: Yes, I know the links to the left are all goofy. TypePad is in beta testing. I can't wait. For example, the Cecily Brown essay link is gone. The essay is here. posted by Tyler at 9:36 AM 6.27.2003 Now it can be told: DC's worst-kept secret, the upcoming Hirshhorn Directions show of long-time MANfave Dan Steinhilber, has been posted on the Hirshhorn website. Kudos to Ned Rifkin and Olga Viso for identifying Steinhilber and showing him this early in his career. Tentative opening date is September 24, about two weeks after the Steinhilber/Michael show opens at Kimberly Venardos in NYC. (Other upcoming Directions shows feature Gabriel Orozco and Janet Cardiff.) posted by Tyler at 10:11 AM 6.26.2003 Fun story about how the Boston MFA got its Degas. posted by Tyler at 7:38 PM I don't link to the Tate Magazine often enough. This being summer, me being utterly bored arts-wise, I thought I'd rectify that. Tate Mag has an interesting essay on where documentary photography fits into the art world. posted by Tyler at 9:50 AM Fred Sandback, whose works were a highlight at Dia: Beacon, committed suicide on Monday. He was 59. posted by Tyler at 9:42 AM 6.25.2003 Art writing pet-peeve: This paragraph from Fiachra Gibbons in The Guardian: "Lingering prejudice against all things German has kept Kirchner, who many critics think of as the equal of Matisse, confined to the scholarly fringes of the English art world, according to Jill Lloyd, who has put together the stunning show of his early Bohemian years in Dresden and Berlin." Well, name names. Who are the critics who think Kirchner = Matisse? posted by Tyler at 9:54 AM 6.24.2003 Around the blogosphere... PQ+ visited Dia: Beacon and tells us about it, with photos of Dia, Storm King and The Loft That Judd Built. MAN wonders if PQ+ agrees that children under 15 or so should be disallowed by the Dia-ites. Last night a MANpal reported seeing children kick the dirt of a Smithson. Hey, some art just isn't child-friendly. Tears of Things discusses the 2003 Arizona Biennial, which seems to have pretty much no online presence. In Philly, artblog is happy to give space to anti-Yuskavageites. Dublog has a link to some photos that remind me of the cross-country drives of my college years. And from newspaperdom, if you still haven't read Alan Artner's Chicago Tribune essay about the crisis of self-serving curators, you must. It is the rare piece that is both important and readable. posted by Tyler at 9:57 AM 6.23.2003 Forget "I survived Cremaster" shirts. This year's must-wear in Venice is this shirt. Bloggy goes gallery-crawling in NYC. posted by Tyler at 5:51 PM Sorry -- Blogger's been down since Sunday sometime. (Big frickin' surprise. Go TypePad go.) Especially considering it's summer, some good weekend stuff: * The LA Times' arts reporter Suzanne Muchnic discusses the proliferation of Modigliani shows, one of which is coming to the Phillips. * LA Weekly mentions Amy Hood's Elsewhere show that was discussed in The Neshat Chronicles. * The Guardian had a great idea: see what it's like for six people to live with works by six hot contemporary artists. * Chicago Tribune critic Alan Artner discusses the rise of the celebrity/indy curator. posted by Tyler at 12:46 PM 6.20.2003 Correction o' the day, from the LA Times: "In a review of the Venice Biennale in Wednesday's Calendar, artist Michelangelo Pistoletto was incorrectly referred to as an Arte Opera pioneer. He is an Arte Povera pioneer." posted by Tyler at 12:50 PM MAN's Dia: Beacon Viewing Guide My email box overfloweth with questions about visiting Dia: Beacon. Therefore without further questionable grammar, here are some mostly logistical recommendations for your trip to Dia. * Dia has nearly completely destroyed a Michael Heizer installation by putting a hideous plastic fence around it. (You can't see the fence in the photo.) Why only nearly? Because 10 people a day are allowed inside the plastic fence. Call (845) 440-0100 x 43 or send an email to heizer@diabeacon.org well in advance. Still, it's a stupid policy -- only 10 people a day are allowed to see the work. * Don't take children. Dia: Beacon is a parent's nightmare. When I was there a child cut him/herself on a Smithson broken glass sculpture. Another insisted on touching and pushing a John Chamberlain. Fred Sandbacks + children = moths to a flame. There's just too much trouble here for kids. They really shouldn't let anyone under 15 or so in. * Eat before you get to Beacon. The food available at the museum (which is a good 15-minute walk -- at least -- from the main part of town) is pretty subpar. One exception: the chocolate bundt cake. Yum. Also, the little gourmet market on the Lexington Ave. side of Grand Central has good food to go. * If you take the train, make sure you are one of the first people from your train to get to Dia. They aren't well-equipped to handle 40 people arriving all at the same time, as happens when the MTA North arrives. The wait to pay and get in can be long. (Hint: There's a deal in that thar link. And MTA North also offers deals that get you into both Dia and the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers.) * Make time to sit and read in the store. Dia has thoughtfully provided a large table and a large window where you can sit and read books from the bookstore. Quite delightful. * Try to arrive at Dia as close as possible to 11 AM on weekends. Some parts of Dia are really much more delightful before the crowds arrive at about 1 pm. Among the areas to see first: Flavin, Ryman, Smithson, Sandback. * Don't expect to see the whole thing in under 3 1/2 hours on a rainy day. Four if it's sunny and you can enjoy Robert Irwin's (overrated) gardens. posted by Tyler at 10:44 AM 6.19.2003 I've made some changes to the left-hand side in order to link to my essay on Tooba. As a result of Blogger's idiotic insistence on having no more than 500 characters on that side (HTML coding counts), I've had to lose the Dia: Beacon essay link and the Neshat Chronicles link, so tell a friend with the specific link. (I can't wait for TypePad!!) Also because I seem to be getting a lot of new Google-related hits from the East Coast, here's the CityPaper-related file. Coming later today: The Official MAN Dia: Beacon Travel & Viewing Guide! posted by Tyler at 2:28 PM The Philly Inquirer reports on signs of a thaw between the Barnes and Lincoln University. Universes in Universe has the best photo-tour of Venice that I've seen so far. Discuss amongst yourselves: Is Wolfgang Tillmans the first photoblogger? (The concept, not Tillmans, is discussed by NYT'er Sarah Boxer.) posted by Tyler at 9:51 AM 6.17.2003 One of the Greg Allens emails in with this tip: Avish Khebrehzadeh, who won the young Italian artist prize, lives in Rome and DC. Also, my take on the Ethiopian Passages show is up at artnet.com. New art 'zine Ten Verses is online. Check it out. posted by Tyler at 6:12 PM 6.16.2003 Shirin Neshat's Tooba: The Garden and The Journey MANote: I'm trying something new with footnotes by trying to get them to pop up in a fresh window so that readers don't have to scroll so much, so often. So far it's not working, but I think it will be easier to make it work if I can work on the posted essay. If I can't make them work in a day or so I'll simply post them the old way. Update: OK, I give up. I can't wait to move to TypePad. I'll put up old-fashioned, difficult-to-read footnotes soon, Blogger-willing. Also, check out the MAN-Amy Hood (curator of Elsewhere at the UCLA Fowler Museum) collaboration: The Neshat Chronicles. Naturally this is Copyright 2003 by Tyler Green. It is one of mankind’s best ideas. No human creation has given rise to more religious legend, more art, more literature. It is the rare idea so universal that nearly every culture between China and England has adopted it. It is the garden, paradise. In the 3,200 years since the Persians came up with the garden, it has been appropriated by invaders from Europe and by traders from the East. Six hundred years after its Persian genesis, Buddha created his belief system while sitting in a garden, at the base of a tree. For Christians and Jews, the Garden of Eden is where their peoples begin. For Persians, it has been central to spiritual and daily life for thousands of years. This is how the Persians created their gardens: Choose a mountaintop, plant a tree, surround it with flowering plants, and build a wall around the plantings. Nursed from parched, gravelly land, pairidaza was a refuge for the body and the soul. The Persian Sufis, who became the primary mystic order within Islam, made pairidaza a fundamental part of their tradition. Shabistari, after Rumi the second-greatest Sufi poet, wrote about pairidaza as the secret garden of promise and paradise, the earthly manifestation of absolute beauty and perfection. To Shabistari, the heart of paradise was the tree, which he described as “the perfect face of the Beloved.”(1) This central tree was unimaginably large, its branches spanned unimaginable lengths, the milk and honey at its base was unimaginably bountiful. Through Shabistari’s poetry, the garden and its tree, the tooba, became the Sufi’s place of hope and promise. For Sufis, Shabistari was their Winthrop, his garden their city on a hill. Enter Iranian exile Shirin Neshat, artist-examiner of the conflicts between Islam and the West. With the mythical Sufi garden as her foundation, Neshat’s most recent narrative film installation, Tooba, looks at emigration from the Islamic world to the West, the dark circle of leaders whose fundamentalism impels the journey and what the journeyers find when the reach the West. I believe that Tooba is a work that specifically addresses the post-9/11 world. Tooba shows us that while middle easterners people may try and try to escape the violence and oppression in their backgrounds, while they may think they have found an Eden to which they can emigrate, they find that the modern journey does not end as simply as the mythical Sufi journey. Film installations pose special challenges to arts essayists. Within a nearly 12-minute installation such as Tooba, there are dozens of gripping images, each as rich as a painting. (Neshat has herself acknowledged this by selling editioned photographs based on images from her films.) It is impossible to discuss every frame, every scene. Instead I will discuss the key symbols of Tooba and argue that Neshat’s narrative is an intensely personal response to 9/11. We must consider Tooba within the context of Neshat’s other work. Through Passage, Rapture and Fervor, Neshat has been most interested in the intersections between the West and the Middle East, in conflicts born out of gender. Tooba is Neshat’s latest exploration of cultural conflicts, but in Tooba Neshat works on a broader canvas. In Tooba Neshat moves away from gender and takes on the bigger themes of national identity and geo-conflict. The symbol Neshat uses to explore these themes, the canvas on which the installation is created, is the garden, an ancient symbol for utopia. We return to the garden. Neshat’s utopia is the simplest of Sufi gardens. It is in virtually every shot of the film. (2) The garden sits at the top of a hill, a single tree, about fifty feet high, surrounded by a brick wall. There are no flowering plants, just the tree in the garden’s center. Surrounding the garden is parched earth, ground that grips clumps of thirsty scrub, neither nourishing it nor letting it blow away. The sky is blue and the few clouds are white and puffy. The land will remain athirst. Only the squared garden provides shade, sanctuary, promise. With this one visual, Neshat demonstrates what makes her an important artist: the insight she brings to the dominant political and cultural theme of our time, the divide between the West and Islam. It is Neshat at her best, both in terms of the beautiful image she creates and the way she explores a concept. The garden comes from a visual vocabulary with traditions in both the West and in Islam. By making the garden the centerpiece of Tooba, Neshat refers to both Judeo-Christian and Sufi utopias. Within Neshat’s symbolic garden utopia are two visual examples of Neshat updating traditional meanings. Witness: Neshat’s garden has its roots in historical symbolism, but I believe it also serves as a contemporary metaphor. The garden is America, the promised land of freedom to which repressed people have journeyed for decades. As a refugee from the Shah’s Iran, later a UC Berkeley student and now a New York City resident, Neshat has lived the journey to a promised land. As a member of the Iranian exile community, she understands why middle easterners have fled their homelands for America. Furthermore, she understands the persecution and suspicion they have faced from the American people and from the Bush Administration. Witness: Embedded in the tree of paradise is a woman, the wrinkles in her skin echoing the bark of the tree. She is in paradise, encased in the tooba tree which provides all the pleasures of paradise. She is mute, existing within paradise without being a participant, a metaphorical reference to the way many middle easterners feel in post-9/11 America. Her eyes are closed, she is alone with her thoughts, her memories. It is as if the tree of paradise protects her from those memories. What are her memories? We don’t know, so we must leave the static visual image to return to the installation’s narrative. As we see the first shots of the Woman-in-Tree at the opening of Tooba on one screen, on the other we see men, scores of men, scurrying through the hills that surround the garden. At first we cannot tell that they are moving toward paradise. Seconds later we understand: The first time we see that the tree is inside a garden is the first time that we see people moving through the landscape. This is also the first moment that the viewer understands that the two screens are telling one story. People are journeying; they are journeying to the garden. Having made clear the unity of the two visuals, Neshat tears us away from the travelers by panning the camera up into the clouds and introduces us to the third element of the installation. While utopia remains on one screen, on the other screen Neshat is about to take us into a different world. And what a world! While our eyes are still accustomed to the bright, open spaces of the mountains and the garden, one screen pitches into blackness. In the darkness sit men in a circle, uniformly clad, chanting as one. As Neshat’s camera slowly moves from man to man, the lighting and camera angle show us only the shapes of the mens’ heads and their attire. Neshat does not allow us to see features that distinguish one from the other; we see them as a cadre. In previous installations Neshat has used the circle as a symbol for closed cultures or subcultures. Here I believe that Neshat’s circle of men symbolizes fundamentalist, dictatorial religious cliques that reign over many Muslim societies. More specifically, I believe Neshat’s reference in Tooba is to her own homeland, Iran, a society that is as closed as the circle is. Neshat loves ambiguity and rarely gives more than hints as to her intended meaning, but I believe that Neshat’s clue about this intimidating circle is clear: Iran’s ruling Shi’a clerics wear brown robes . In Neshat’s circle, all the men wear brown robes. Meanwhile, on the screen opposing dystopia, the tree and the wall are more fully revealed as a Sufi garden. As the viewer becomes aware of the garden and the screen-to-screen confrontation between utopia and dystopia, the screen showing the dystopic circle jump cuts back to the journeying men. As I watch Tooba, I feel another dramatic disconnect, the second visual disruption in just a few seconds. This is the first uncomfortable moment in Tooba. So many things come together at once: journey, woman, tree, garden, the circle. So much begins to fall into place. The circle of men, in their uniform garb, their pseudo-religious collars, the way they are indistinguishable from each other because it doesn’t matter who is who. They are why there is a journey. They are why the journey is to paradise. They are who the woman in the tree remembers having left. The middle of Tooba continues the narrative of the journey, the circle and the garden. I want to move forward to two other critical scenes later in the installation. At the end of the journey, the scores of travelers reach the garden. Neshat presents their arrival in a way that underscores the tension between the travelers from the middle east and the paradise to which they have traveled. On one screen, Neshat shows us views of the travelers encircling the garden, their hands on the top of the brick wall. Each of the shots is taken from a different vantage point outside the garden. All of the shots, shots of the paradise to which these people have journeyed, are grand, panoramic and beautiful. I believe that Neshat is reminding us how the travelers view the land to which they have journeyed. It is paradise, it is the promised land. After a journey filled with hope, dreams and idealized visions of a new place, the immigrants have arrived. Counterpoint: On the other screen, Neshat shows us the travelers ringing the garden, filmed from inside the garden. The garden wall, which looks like an inconsequential barrier in the panoramic shots, suddenly looms as a barrier to be overcome. With their uniform dress, their piercing stares, the travelers now look threatening. I believe Neshat is showing us how the inhabitants of the promised land feel about the coming immigrants. The immigrants are threatening, they dress differently, the intensity of their gaze is jarring. The promised land is afraid of them. The psychological charge of these two images, one on each side of the viewer who stands in the middle of Neshat’s installation, is discomforting. The travelers are not to be deterred. Having arrived at paradise, the journeying mass jumps over the wall and enters the garden. They walk up to the tooba tree and stare at it, a scene Neshat shows us for a full ten seconds. Each of the travelers wanders a few steps away from the tree and appears to be lost, confused within the garden. I believe that here Neshat contemporizes millennia of Muslim history. For thousands of years, Muslims have searched for an Islamic utopia, a place where they can live in a society that allows Muslims to prosper both spiritually and materially. For the immigrants who choose to travel away from Arab or Persian lands, the garden, the promise of America, seems to offer much of that possibility. But the men who wander through the garden look lost, unsure, as if what they expected to find in paradise isn’t there. They don’t leave the garden, but they don’t look at home, either. I believe this is Neshat’s commentary on the Muslim experience, even the immigrant experience, in America. The United States presents itself to the world as The Melting Pot, the place where all peoples can come to live free. In Tooba there is no happiness – just disjointed discombobulation. They travelers stay; They are, perhaps, safer within the garden, but they’re uncomfortable, out of place, and not altogether welcome. *** While I believe that Tooba was created specifically with the events of effects 9/11 on middle eastern immigrants in mind, its beauty and the breadth of the themes it addresses take it beyond above the temporality of a single event (no matter how momentous). Tooba is an exceptionally good work of art that deserves a place alongside great art about traumatic events. Why? Consider: How big a theme does Neshat take on in Tooba? In a 12-minute installation, Neshat addresses the conflict between the West and Islam, the psychology of the immigrant experience, and the promise and disappointment of the promised land. No other contemporary artist has even attempted to address these issues surrounding 9/11 and its aftermath in the comprehensive way Neshat addresses them. Art that does not strive to be great is never great. Neshat strives. Ambition does not automatically create success. Ambition is nothing without execution. Execution is nothing if the resulting work of art is not visually engaging. Tooba is beautiful. Tooba’s beauty is not a facile construct. Neshat and her collaborators (the installation’s credits read more like a feature film credit roll than wall text in an art gallery, complete with a nod to the Iranian novelist who inspired the work, Shahrnoush Parsipour) built the garden. They costumed the characters. Their attention to detail results in a work that demands repeated examination. The robes of the men in the circle, the way the camera speeds up as it examines the individuals in the circle, the way the travelers surround the garden before entering it, each of these scenes rewards multiple viewings. Detail in point: There are three shots taken from inside the garden, looking out at the people ringing the wall. In one shot there are nine people looking into the garden, in another shot there are 11. Coincidence? It is nearly impossible for a work of art to be great if it exists clumsily within its medium. Cinematographically, Tooba is impeccable. There are no wasted shots or scenes. More importantly, Tooba represents Neshat’s finest use of her two-facing-projections technique. Tooba demonstrates that the physical space Neshat creates between her projected images is not just ‘the space between the screens,’ but an actual part of the installation. To see a Neshat, the viewer must make decisions about how and why to look at a particular screen at a particular time. By involving the viewer in the work in this way, Neshat demands physical and psychological involvement. This fits perfectly within the story Neshat tells in this work: In Tooba, Neshat presents the story of characters torn between two countries, two traditions, two cultures. The viewer is also torn: between the two screens, between the tranquility of the garden and the conflicts playing out on the opposite screen. Neshat’s characters make choices, so too must the viewer. For centuries Sufi women have perpetuated the mythology of the garden. Tapestries featuring the Sufi garden, one of Islam’s most lasting artistic images, have traditionally been woven by women and hung on the walls of their homes. In many ways Tooba is an updating of that tradition: Neshat’s garden is projected onto a wall, displayed in the same manner as an ancient Sufi tapestry. The circle is complete. (1) Florence Lederer, foreword to The Secret Rose Garden, Mahmoud Shabistari, Grand Rpids, Michigan, Phanes Press, 2002, p, 15. (2) As Tooba is an installation on two screens, it would be more accurate -- and more tedious -- to say that the garden is in virtually every shot on one of the two screens onto which the installation is projected. For the sake of brevity and clarity I've shortened that phrase here and elsewhere. posted by Tyler at 11:38 AM Your Monday morning laugh, courtesy/at the expense of John Chamberlain and Dia: Beacon. Also, ArtForum translates and summarizes some of the early Euro reviews on Venice. Also also, new St. Louis Post-Dispatch art critic David Bonetti leaves no doubt about what he thinks of the St. Louis University Museum of Art. When a critic makes clear his/her opinion, the resulting writing makes for a heckuva read. Also, also, also greg.org has a little fun with the early reports from Venice. posted by Tyler at 9:42 AM 6.13.2003 A (sad, sad) tale of two cities: In today's New York Times visual arts notebook, we hear about work from 16th-century (Italian Baroque), Japanese prints and modern masterworks on tour. In yesterday's Washington Post's visual arts notebook we hear about stuff hanging in the hallway of a gym. It's not like there aren't arts notebooks that the Post could be doing given the museum presence here (and yesterday's MAN posts!!). The Post should be flat out embarassed. (Complain to pancakej@washpost.com.) Also, someone (Peter Plagens) takes on Kimmelman over his hyperbole regarding Barney and the minimalists. (And Plagens takes on others, too) Note: More on the Smithsonian & Clear Channel soon, but maybe not today. Work beckons. posted by Tyler at 11:38 AM 6.12.2003 Genome Update: The Smithsonian Public Affairs office says that the Smithsonian paid nothing for the show. Pfizer paid for the show and related travel. So can any corporation in America team up with Clear Channel and place an exhibit in our national museum? That's wrong. National museums are not places for industry to hawk their science -- that's what the lobbies of corporate HQs are for. posted by Tyler at 4:11 PM Why is the Smithsonian hosting an exhibit on the National Mall that was developed by a private, for-profit company (Clear Channel Exhibitions)? Is the Smithsonian paying for this? The exhibit in question is Genome: The Secret of How Life Works and it's presently on view at the Arts & Industries Building. The for-profit company that organized the exhibit is Clear Channel Exhibitions, a unit of Clear Channel Communications. (A division of NIH participated too, but Clear Channel gets top billing.) This Smithsonian had nothing to do with this show -- apparently they just bought it. (Update: Clear Channel and Pfizer gave it to the Smithsonian for free, probably to help market the show down the line.) Furthermore, while sponsorship of museum shows by private companies is the norm, I've never seen sponsorship this aggressive at a national museum that is mostly funded by the American people. Exhibit sponsor Pfizer gets so much billing that they're in big, color print on the ads publicizing the exhibit (if you're in DC you can't avoid the ads in Metro) and the exhibit website is at genome.pfizer.com. Private companies aren't known for giving away their work product. Even if the Smithsonian is not paying for the show (which I can't imagine), they are basically giving Clear Channel Exhibitions (and to a lesser degree exhibit sponsor Pfizer) scads of free exposure and publicity. Update: See the post just above this one. These questions beget more: Should our national museum be paying for-profit companies for museum exhibits and why is a research institution putting up a show that is a for-profit enterprise? Is this just one more example of Larry Small allowing private companies and private interests to gain a major foothold in a public institution? What do curators and scholars at the Smithsonian think of this? (Email me!) Next round of questions: Why hasn't the Washington Post written about this? Paging Jacqueline Trescott. (The Chicago Tribune wrote about Clear Channel Exhibitions back in February, but the piece has been $-for-view archived.) I know why the CityPaper hasn't: at least one of their writers is a Smithsonian staffer. Update: The Post has been busy watching a plane land. Second update. posted by Tyler at 10:15 AM Eli Broad to LACMA: "Here's $60M for a new building, and here's a lot of art." Also, a phine op-ed from the Philly Inquirer on the Barnes. posted by Tyler at 9:19 AM 6.11.2003 Artnet's Charlie Finch has a Whitney favorite. Hal Foster visits Dia: Beacon. posted by Tyler at 3:53 PM MANpal Faith Flanagan writes in support of summer group shows. She says: I personally like to check out summer group shows at art galleries for several reasons. 1.) They are, generally, edgier. 2.) The viewer can get a good idea of the gallery's "holdings," since the shows, generally, are from what the gallery already "owns." 3.) The viewer can, perhaps, catch up with artists s/he may have missed during the season proper. See above. 4.) Sometimes a gallery will sponsor "student" shows, giving the viewer an opportunity to see who's new and upcoming. (Ed: Amen.) 5.) Generally, galleries are less busy with fewer distractions and it can be a good time to build relationships with gallery owners if the viewer is looking to become a collector. posted by Tyler at 9:40 AM 6.10.2003 Last night was the last game of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, and for many of us the symbolic beginning of summer. With the beginning of summer comes the end of the visual arts season -- it's time for inventory-clearing gallery shows, boys and girls. (Of course, hockey comes back in the fall about when the visual arts season picks up again. Go Caps!) There are a few summer shows I'm looking forward to seeing: Venice, Sheeler @ the Met, Beckmann @ MOMA, but that's about it. I looked over last summer's posts and I had a tendency to write about what I was reading as opposed to what I was seeing. Right now it's Thomas Crow's Modern Art in the Common Culture. So what's an art slut to do during the summer but read, travel to Earth Art (not me this summer), go to Europe and complain about Cremaster? Ideas? posted by Tyler at 11:40 AM I defy anyone to tell me whether or not Adrian Searle likes the Wolfgang Tillmans show at the Tate Britain. Speaking of self-obsessed artists, NPR/WNYC's All Things Considered report on the fatuous Barney show (to which I'm not linking -- yeah, that'll show someone something!) ultimately has no idea what to make of the exhibit. Aside: Any exhibition handout that tries to pass this off as coherent deserves ridicule: "The Candidate reaches land and begins to burrow his way through a curving underground channel to reach the finish line, where the two Hacks will converge. This conduit leads him to a bluff, where the fairies are frolicking in a game that mirrors the conflict enacted by the principal characters, but with none of the tension. Still in his underground tunnel, the Candidate finally reaches his destination. The Loughton Ram stands at this junction—a symbol for the integration of opposites, the urge for unity that fuels this triple race. But before the Candidate and Hacks meet, the screen goes white. The Candidate's dream of transcending his biology to dwell in the space of pure symmetry is shattered." posted by Tyler at 12:12 AM 6.9.2003 With The Neshat Chronicles complete (see below), I've been persuaded to post my essay in Shirin Neshat's Tooba here on MAN. I'll do that sometime this week. From around the art world... * PBS is about to run a documentary film about Hans Hofmann. For DC viewing: Ack! None of DC's three PBS stations has scheduled it for viewing. * Look for a new webzine to come online on Sunday: Ten Verses. posted by Tyler at 8:06 AM 6.8.2003 Apologies. I wanted to post this yesterday but you know Blogger. This is the sixth and final installment of MAN's Neshat Chronicles. Thanks for reading and thanks to Amy Hood for agreeing to do this! Check out my essay on Neshat's Tooba here. The Neshat Chronicles, Part VI (Previously: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V) Hi Tyler. Mona Hatoum recently spoke at UCLA in conjunction with the exhibition. It was a wonderful talk and she, like Neshat, said that she encourages the viewer to attach different specific meanings to her work. One of the examples she gave is the work Present Tense, 1996. This work is a map made from a traditional Palestinian soap made from pure olive oil. When she showed the work in Jerusalem, Palestinian viewers recognized the smell of the soap and saw the work as a symbol of resistance, as the artist had intended. When Israeli viewers saw the work they associated it with soap made in concentration camps. While these drastically different readings are in opposition and represent drastically different cultural influences and historical backgrounds, one might recognize an underlying commonality. I disagree that few contemporary artists reward repeated viewing and re-examining. On the contrary, I think it is few contemporary institutions that reward repeated viewing. I'm often frustrated by shows that cram together a bunch of work, especially time-based work. Showing hundreds of hours of video in one show is the equivalent of hanging a hundred paintings on one wall salon-style. You have to give the work the room it needs to do what it is meant to do. By extension, you have to give the viewer the same space. This is why only included a few works in Elsewhere. I wanted the viewer to linger on the works and spend a considerable amount of time on each piece that they chose to look at. So, to answer your questions, yes people have been standing or sitting on the floor to watch Rapture in its entirety. As you know, Rapture, is two projections on opposing screens. When installing the show it was our intention that people stand in the middle of the screens, completely immersed in the film. However, I’ve noticed that most viewers stand on the outer edges of the room, trying to take it all in as much as possible. I haven’t overheard any conversations about the piece, though I do go to the exhibition and "spy" as often as possible. Walking through the show today, I realized that people are uncomfortable talking in that part of the gallery. The piece is so cinematic and seductive, it really captures the visitors undivided attention. Also, I haven’t once seen a viewer walk out of the gallery without watching the whole thing; its narrative is so compelling. You said of Neshat’s work that it is "about commanding cultures and the response of individuals to those cultures." I very much agree. When I watch her work and think of it in relation to Michal Rovner’s Border I think of exactly that, social dynamics and the individual's relationship to culture and politics. When I think of Rapture in relation to Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance, I think also of things more personal - womanhood, family, loss and the groundlessness of life in exile. I’m very glad that I had an opportunity to work with Rapture and spend so much time re-viewing and re-examining it! I’m also very glad that I got a chance to have this cross-continental chat with you. It’s been a great experience and I hope we can do something similar in the future. All the best. -- Amy Hood posted by Tyler at 3:07 PM 6.6.2003 The Neshat Chronicles, Part V (Previously: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV) Hi Amy. I probably overstated the artistic exile argument. But I think something Neshat said at her February NYC lecture is interesting: "I feel both grief and pride in the life that I've taken." It was one of only two or three direct quotes from her lecture that I wrote down. I think that quote supports some of what we've talked about in terms of anxiety in her work. I agree with you about the ambiguity in Neshat and in NYC she talked a lot about how she encourages multiple interpretations of her work. In many ways Neshat's work is all about pairs of things: two screens, male/female, local culture/global culture, submissive/rebellious, surface/deeper meanings, symbolism/literalism, etc. Neshat herself pointed to a couple of these in her NYC lecture but the list could be much longer. I think that few contemporary artists make work that rewards repeated viewing and examination as much as Neshat. Not only does her work stand up after dozens of viewings but it reveals new details each time -- a strong indicator of how good a work is. As I've studied Neshat over the last couple months I've read about a dozen books on Iran and Sufism. I can't tell you how much more I see and understand having done that reading. Neshat rewards the viewer who puts in the time to see and understand her work and I love that. For example in Tooba the circle of clerics all wear brown robes. In reading about Iran I learned that the ruling religious class wears brown robes and the choice of costuming suddenly meant so much more to me. I'm not sure if American viewers of Neshat are short-sighted so much as they are not accustomed to looking at work with a broad world view. Americans focus on America and we have a tendency not to be curious about that which is beyond our borders. Lacking a real understanding of the Muslim world, most Americans see Neshat's work and respond to the most obvious symbols and features of her installations: women, chadors, etc. and then fit those symbols into what they think they know about the Muslim world. (Women + chadors = oppression, therefore Neshat's work is all about oppression.) I think that you're right -- Neshat has been pigeonholed as a "woman" artist who makes art about "women." I think that's completely simplistic and unfortunate. To me Neshat's work is about commanding cultures and the response of individuals to those cultures. I think that may be why in Tooba gender is so downplayed -- Neshat is trying to shake off that "women" tag a little bit. In that same line of thought, I'm surprised at how shaky much American writing about Neshat is. In Art in America Eleanor Heartney wrote that Tooba was about Mexican mysticism. C'mon, has Neshat ever shown the tiniest interest in Mexican mysticism?! It takes work to understand Neshat's work. This is good. I'm interested in how people have looked at and responded to Neshat in your show. Do they sit/stand and watch the entire installation? Do you overhear conversations about the work that people don't expect you to hear? How do people see and think about the work? Ed. note: MAN will post the final segment on Saturday. posted by Tyler at 9:28 AM 6.5.2003 New-to-me art blog from Denver: Artrift. posted by Tyler at 12:15 PM The Neshat Chronicles, Part IV (Previously: Part I, Part II, Part III) Hello Tyler. I'm not sure that its correct to characterize Neshat as "someone who stays away for the sake of artistic expression." The way I see it, she originally "stayed away" from Iran because she had to, for the sake of being alive. Since then she has, of course, built a life here that includes her art practice. But I don't think its as lofty as a decision not to live in Iran because of a lack of artistic freedom. I think its more fundamental than that. Her home has essentially been taken away from her. War violently left her from being able to return home and when she did return it was a radically different place - a country from which she considers herself foreign. This is why I think she talks about exile so much. I'm harping on this point because I feel that this anxiety is an important factor in her work. In answer to your question, yes I was interested in Neshat's work very early on, before I really formulated this exhibition. I began the exhibition by looking at Mona Hatoum's "Measures of Distance." That work had me thinking about place and about video. I started thinking then about Neshat in relation to Hatoum. It was only after seeing Michal Rovner at the Whitney that I realized something resonated through all these artist's work and began to circle around "exile" as a theme. In answer to your other, question, yes I do like Neshat's work. I like it on aesthetic level but when I begin to step back and take a critical distance I have a little more trouble. That's actually what I like the most about her work. It's so ambiguous at times, so easy to enjoy and difficult to pin down. People write her off too easily, they either say she's too romantic and cinematic to be critical or they just love the visual experience without digging any deeper. And then there's the constant and totally irritating assertion that her work is just about gender. That really gets me because I think that there is a lot more going on. Digging deeper into Neshat's work can be very rewarding and that's what I like about all the artists that I like, they promise me more. They reward me for taking a second, a third, a fiftieth look, etc... Do you agree that many of the response's to Neshat's work are too short-sighted? Because there are the burkas and the separation of men and woman, people really harp on that aspect of her pieces. However, there is so much more going on. For example, people often read the burka, or "chador" as signifying the oppression of women. Of course, we know, that in Iran and many of her Muslim countries, this garment is an important part of culture and not always regarded as negative by the women who wear them. I have to agree with Hal Foster, there is an important distinction between pictorialism and painting. Pictorialism is exactly it with Neshat's work. Painting is a word that calls to mind form and a complex physical relationship to the human body. We could definitely get there in Neshat's work but we would have to stop at picture-making along the way and come to an earlier moment in painting. Really both Isles and Foster are right, Foster's just being much more specific. It's interesting to think of something that consists of sound, and space, as well as images, as pictorial. -- Amy Hood posted by Tyler at 10:03 AM 6.4.2003 Bloomberg chronicles the impact Eli Broad has on the art market. (Wouldn't he be an asset to the Hirshhorn's board!) Update: Apparently that link keeps breaking. I'm trying to find another link to the story on a different site, but so far no luck. Check back later.) Shamelessly pilfed from ArtKrush: Art webzine Lab 71. posted by Tyler at 6:08 PM The Neshat Chronicles, Part III (Previously: Part I, Part II) Hi Amy. Yes, I also thought it was interesting how much she talked about herself as an exile. While as we write about her we're not sure it's the right word, she sure seems to be. Exile has such strong political connotations -- I guess we don't have a parallel vocabulary to use when someone stays away for the sake of artistic expression. Were you attracted to Neshat's work before you started thinking about it in the context of the Middle East or was it only in that context that it interested you? My first reactions to Neshat's work were because her images are so gripping. Once gripped, I started thinking about them more. Odd question: Do you like Neshat's work? I understand how it fits into what you wanted to do curatorially, but that's a different thing from liking the work or loving the work. I think the work is fantastic. I think it says somethings, I think it says somethings in beautiful ways and I think that she advances what a video installation can be. I'm certainly on weakest ground on that last one, but I think she's brought her museum/gallery-centric art closer to film than anyone but Barney. (She even rolls credits at the end of her installations.) And just as I say she brings art closer to film, I'd also say that she's as painterly as anyone who works in video, save perhaps Rist. In the current October magazine Hal Foster has a back-and-forth with Chrissie Iles in which he says, "When you say that film now is related to painting, I wouldn't say painting so much as 'pictorialism.'" I think that Foster is splitting hairs. Neshat seems very close to painting to me. Think so? I'll defend my position next time. posted by Tyler at 9:59 AM 6.3.2003 Fine academic take on Dia: Beacon from Suzaan Boettger on artnet.com. Must-read. (Memo to self: buy her book.) posted by Tyler at 4:46 PM The Neshat Chronicles, Part II (Previously: Part I) Hi Tyler. Thank you for inviting me to do this. I look forward to a provocative discussion. Since you mentioned my exhibition, I feel that I ought to tell you how came to theme of the show and the works included it. For me, the most provocative thing about discussions on globalization is my own personal response to the prospect. In imagining a New World order I have very visceral, defensive reaction. I first began to think about this critically while reading Giorgio Agamben’s Means Without Ends: Notes on Politics. Agamben paints a picture of a society where individuals think of themselves as citizens of the world, as opposed to citizens of the state. This picture of the way that the world is changing seems to leave out questions of cultural difference and privileges the exile as the key figure in re-shaping a global society. It was in thinking about why I found this reading so provocative that I began to think about the function of cultural and national boundaries in the individual’s construction of self. If a person’s sense of place and state are major factors in shaping personal identity, then any change in politics that affects these notions would necessarily affect a sense of self. It occurred to me that imagining a world so drastically different was uncomfortable for me simply because I can’t imagine how I negotiate myself and come to think of my position in that new world. This how I came to think of exile and its relationship to cultural and political construction as inextricably caught up in individual psychology. I focused on artists from the Middle East because this is a region of the world that currently is experiencing real life in terms of the ever-present possibility of drastically changing political circumstances. As you mention about Shirin Neshat, the artists in the show aren’t political exiles. However, political circumstances often keep them from being able to go home or sometimes, to even contact their families. Neshat was attending college in California when the Iranian revolution occurred, for years she was unable to return to Iran and when she did, she found it a radically different place than the Iran of upbringing. In a sense, she is living in a permanent state of exile because the country in which she grew up no longer exists. Your comment that "the cultural and political divide between the West and Islam is the most important global dialogue of our time" rings true to me. However, I feel that it is a global dialogue that signals the end of an epoch and the beginning of a different global system. I also think that the divide itself is where all of the interesting work is being done. Neshat is important to me because she constantly and concretely deals with borders and difference and relates social and political issues to more fundamental questions about individual psychology and human nature. The distance in her work is not just a sense of a physical or spiritual separation from a place, it is also a critical. In answer to your question about the "underlying threat of violence" that you detect and the confrontational aspect of the artist’s work, I agree. I’ve often been caught up in that aspect of the narrative of her work. In both Passages (2001) and Rapture (1999), there is a sense of building up to something potentially violent or threatening, or conversely something transformative and liberating. Personally, I articulate this as a strong sense of anxiety. The building music, the faster-paced imagery, all lead up to something ambiguous and unnamable. That anxiety is, to me, the crux of the work and it relates not only to "an exile’s look back at her homeland," but also to her look at a larger global system and an internalization of social issues. It’s fascinating that Neshat used the word "exile" so much in the lecture that you spoke. She must be aware of the important critical cache that this position gives her work. Do you know if she has always referred to herself as "an exile" or if this is new rhetoric for her? I think that exile is a very important idea in contemporary criticism. Although, there are different words that different voices use. For example, Agamben talks about the "refugee" as a political outsider that gives us a critical distance. In my own work, I went to the term "ex-national" to try get at this outside-the-state figure because both "refugee" and "exile" have connotations that I’m not sure work. What do you think about that? -- Amy Hood posted by Tyler at 2:54 PM New Phoenix-based art blog: The Tears of Things. posted by Tyler at 12:50 PM Gone for three days, Dia & Neshat yesterday... I'm behind on cool links. Here are a couple: * Blake Gopnik and Ned Rifkin discuss the difficulty of displaying delicate art. Fun read. (And anyone who knows Blake can practically hear everything he says.) * The Denver Post's coterie of critics discuss criticdom. * 2blowhards has the perfect continuation of the (so-so) essay on beauty and contemporary criticism in October 104. * Lisa Yuskavage, meet Peter Schjeldahl, circa 1998. Look for new Schjeldahl on Yuskavage's Boesky show soon. Do critics have favorites? Yes. Should they? Yes. Everyone has favorite artists and works -- why should critics be any different? (See Kimmelman, Michael re: Beacon, Dia:) * artblog has a ton of good stuff and news about Philly right now, including news on next season's Philly ICA sked. * There is so much good stuff at The Guardian's site right now I don't know where to start. Don't miss the review of the Tate Modern's new photo exhibit, a story on the value of cultural upgrades in rundown areas and the discovery of painting by Venice types. posted by Tyler at 12:19 PM 6.2.2003 Last week I promised that I'd kick off a conversation with Amy Hood, the curator of Elsewhere: Difference and Distance in Time-Based Art, a show at UCLA's Fowler Museum. Peek at the link and have a read. This is my first email to Amy and over the next week or so I'll post our back-and-forth dialogue. The Neshat Chronicles, Part I Hi Amy. Thanks for agreeing to do this. I think it’ll be a lot of fun. Let me explain a little bit of why I wanted to do this. I think that Shirin Neshat is more than just an important contemporary artist. The cultural and political divide between the West and Islam is the most important global dialogue of our time. Neshat explores this divide in the most beautiful ways imaginable. Starting with a theme and addressing it in a beautiful way is what more art should be about. I thought we might start out by talking about your show and its jumping-off point. For those who haven’t read MAN in the last week or so, you’ve curated a show that just opened at UCLA’s Fowler Museum titled “Elsewhere: Negotiating Difference and Distance in Time-Based Art.” It features Mona Hatoum, Michel Rovner and Neshat. Your take-off point for the show is exile and the sense of distance in the work of several contemporary artists. I think you’re right, Neshat’s work is very much imbued with her experience of being in exile from Iran. Closely related to that concept is another major Neshatian theme: conflict. From Neshat’s Women of Allah series through her most recent film installation, Tooba, Neshat has portrayed conflict and has often hinted at how conflict can escalate into violence. In the Women of Allah series there is an oddly neutral gun barrel pointed at the viewer. In Turbulent, there is a moment of tension when the men are confronted with a female singer. In Tooba, Neshat presents a circle of clerics away from which her uniformed journeyers is running. It seems to me that there is often an underlying threat of violence in Neshat’s works, often reinforced by the screen-confronting/facing-screen nature of many of Neshat’s installations. I was wondering if you agree and if you think that is a part of an exile’s look back at her homeland? Also, we often associate exile with politics. During the Cold War and then in post-Cold War era, individuals have often been exiled because their politics are at odds with the ruling regime. Neshat clearly considers herself an exile: at a lecture in New York City in February she referred to herself as an exile or as being in exile almost a dozen times. However Neshat is not a political exile. She is an artistic exile who has exiled herself from Iran because she believes that in Iran she cannot create what she wants to create (which is different from not being able to organize or to challenge leaders). I don’t think that Neshat responds to exile by bringing political messages into her work. Instead of being political or about a single issue, I think Neshat’s work is broadly about cultural conflict and the human experience of living in opposition or subjugation to the dominant culture. Neshat’s work is about cultural situations that have existed for millennia and by so being avoids being political and temporal. posted by Tyler at 3:52 PM Back from NYC. Best Chelsea show: Lisa Yuskavage. But because everyone’s been to Chelsea and not everyone has been to Dia: Beacon, we’re going to start up the Hudson River…If you're looking for MAN's Dia: Beacon Viewing/Travel Tips, try here. Dia: Beacon: The Killer App for Minimalist Art The Met is a 19th-century accumulation of greatness. MOMA has a 20th-century collection of innovation. Dia: Beacon is a 21st-century experience. It is an amazing space. The story of Dia: Beacon has been oft-told. Apologies to Michael Kimmelman, but the story of the place just doesn’t matter. All that matters is this: no art experience is more transporting than the experience of Dia: Beacon. If you are not in awe of not only the work but the experience of seeing the work, then you are comatose. I’m not going to write about individual works of art because that’s not what Dia: Beacon is about. Dia: Beacon is about the totality of its presentations. (Exception: Dia has destroyed a Michael Heizer. More on that later this week.) It would be silly to talk about one Robert Ryman piece because the completeness of a multi-thousand-square-foot Ryman experience at Dia: Beacon is what makes the place special. There’s no point in talking about one of the Richard Serra sculptures because going from Serra to Serra is a cumulative terror. And so on. This is one of those rare art spaces – it’s not a museum but I’ll come back to that later – that is more about how the viewer looks at the art rather than about each individual artwork being displayed. The best way to explain this is to think about Dia: Beacon within the context of the two museums I mentioned earlier. At the Met, the museum gives us rooms filled with individual themes or artists. There’s the Very Finest of Van Gogh room, filled with a couple of Van Goghs per wall, all in a square room that is probably painted in a color that complements the paintings. After the Van Gogh room might be the Masterpieces of Monet room or the Impressive-and-Masterful-But-Not-Quite-Monet Room of Impressionists. The physical spaces are uniform, unremarkable, pleasant, crowded, and thoroughly institutional. By the time you’ve walked from 1880 to 1910, you feel like you’ve seen enough Van Gogh and Monet to tell the folks back in Fort Wayne that you’ve seen some really great Van Gogh and some really great Monet. Next is the canonical hike through Gallic modernism that is the MOMA permanent collection. The viewer is discouraged from thinking and is shown “all” of modern art as a linear experience. (Let’s hope John Elderfield puts that walk to rest.) Now Dia: Beacon. Witness: At Dia: Beacon are two wonderful, naturally-lit spaces devoted to Agnes Martin. They aren’t really rooms – mere rooms do not have 100-foot ceilings and rooms usually have artificial light. But they are spaces, big ones, full of room for each Martin canvas to float off of the wall. I alternated walking from Martin to Martin, admiring each painting to just standing in the middle of the space, soaking in the Zen emanating from the walls. I wanted to order green tea or write a check to some deserving charity or get a kelp facial or something. Relaxed by Aunt Aggie, I strolled out into a big, really big open space, lined with windows. This is the John Chamberlain area. It is a really big area, at least 15,000 square feet. Every couple dozen feet sits a multi-thousand pound accumulation of scrunched-up scrap metal, each piece delicately balanced on the hardwood floor. After all that blissy Aunt Aggie, the suddenness of massive, twisted metal chunks sent me from Valium-blissy to Megadeth-headache in about a sculpture and a half. The headache was so immediate and pointed that I can even tell you that it was centered behind my left eyebrow, just to the left of where my eyebrow meets the top of my nose. I shook my head a few times and recovered. But just a few minutes later, as I was walking through the Chamberlain metal chunks, a thundering noise flew through the windows causing me to jump back from a chunk of Chamberlain. It was an MTA North train clunking and clanking by about 30 feet from where I was standing. I knew that the tracks were there, but the suddenness with which the train arrived and the sheer volume was stunning. Once I realized that the Chamberlains weren’t going to fall on me, I resumed ambling betwixt them. A couple dozen steps later, I stepped into a small depression in the floor. My eyes probably dropped no more than half an inch or so. Still, standing between two fifteen-foot towers of steel, it was about as jarring as a very slight loss of balance can be. Then I went to the Richard Serra area. The Serras are in an echo chamber. This means that when I walked through one of them, I heard adults and children running and yelling at each other and I wasn’t sure if the other people are inside the big spiral or coming toward me or outside the spirals altogether, I just knew that there was this massive amount of noise and people coming toward me and I’m stuck in this section of ellipse and if someone comes around the curve and runs into me that I’d fall into the ellipse and knock it over and it would fall on me and I’d die. (I didn’t.) That is what Dia: Beacon is about: an experience with mostly great work by mostly great artists. It is not just about seeing art, it is about feeling art. This is not destination art-viewing in the sense that you go to see a specific Robert Ryman painting or to see a specific Sol Lewitt installation (and certainly not to see a bunch of potato eaters or haystacks). Once upon a time a bunch of art theory people told us that the museum was dead, it was too central, too driven by a bunch of Big Brother Curators who wanted us to look at Certain Art. Those art revolutionaries wanted art to be more democratic, to be outside of museums, in lakes, in canyons, in a space that was anything so long as it wasn’t a museum. In Dia: Beacon they got their wish. This is not a museum. This is not a place of culture. This is Six Flags meets Spiral Jetty. This is the laser show at the planetarium meets Flavin. This is the way I want to look at art for the next 10 years. posted by Tyler at 11:52 AM posted by mclennan @ Tuesday, June 3, 2003 | Permanent link