December 2003 12.31.2003 Welcome to those you who found MAN through Slate. Enjoy a browse. Scroll down for all kinds of stuff, including top 10 lists for 2003 from a number of artists, collectors, curators and more. In the spirit of Slate's story, here's my top 10 list for contemporary art stuff in 2003. This is from my most recent trip to LA. Some notes from last week's SF trip are a post or two below this one. Slate's roundup included mention of Village Voice critic Kim Levin doing a change-of-mind on John Currin. I rolled my eyes at the same thing here. And just for fun, here's an essay on Shirin Neshat's most recent film installation, Tooba. Why is this fun? Well, Slate turned down the piece... (Hey Slate, add a visual arts column/writer!) Site tip: If you like MAN and bookmark this site, use this URL: modernartnotes.com. In January, MAN will become an ArtsJournal blog. If your bookmark is to modernartnotes.com, you'll never miss a day! (For people having trouble accessing MAN today, here's why: Blogger.com and Blogspot.com are not addressable for lots of people because of a DNS snafu. (DNS are the computers that tell your computer what number to go to when you put in a name.) The fix has been pushed, but it could take a while to refresh everywhere.) posted by Tyler From the I Wish I'd Thought of That department: Fallon and Rosof's Philly-based artblog looks at Barnes and sees Terra. Back in 2004 (unless John Currin switches galleries again and the NYT puts it on A1). Enjoy the new year. posted by Tyler  12.30.2003 Charlie Finch obscures strong thinking with a cheesy/gimmicky last line, but his thoughts on what the future of MoMA may look like are a must-read. posted by Tyler  As art trips go, San Francisco was a bit of a disappointment. In Ess Eff, as in other locales, galleries see fit to shut down the weekend after Christmas. I find this to be annoying, but no one seems to take that into account. As a result, the primary art viewing for the trip was done at SFMOMA. So some thoughts on what is there: * There is this one particular expression, I might describe it as bored or confused vapidity, that Diane Arbus captured very well. So well, in fact, that nearly everyone in every Arbus photograph shares this same expression. Why I should be particularly interested in viewing this particular expression below dozens of different hair-dos in 120 or so different photographs is quite beyond me. I cannot recall the last time I was so eager to be finished with an exhibit. The Arbus mythology has been carefully tended by the Arbus family. Because there have been no Arbus shows for a great many years this one has been greeted with choruses of, "It's about time!" Perhaps it is – there is a great deal of contemporary photography that descends from Arbus' portraits of transgressive neutrality. Art historically that's all well and good. But I don’t go to museums for a history lesson and I don’t want to look at or think about these photos anymore. I just don’t like them. * Better reasons to pop into SFMOMA these days include a mini-minimalism show and a show of California photography. The show of about 15 minimalist works at SFMOMA server as a palette-teaser for the big minimalism show that will open at LA MOCA in the spring. (Aside: Has anyone ever written a limerick or a haiku poking fun at the alphabet soup that is museum names? Someone should. I’d run it here.) Taken from SF MOMA's permanent collection, the show is rather a delight. A 15,000-pound Richard Serra corner lead piece has been revealed for the first time in a number of years and it's quite a delight to take in. Adjacent to that room is a room that mostly focuses on the four-sided object in minimalism: think Lewitt cubes, Judd boxes and Hesse rectangular forms. I can’t quite explain the presence of a Kusama in the room, but there it was. Best of all was a wonderful room of mostly early Ryman. Great rooms in museums seem to inspire viewers to switch from talking to whispering. SF MOMA's Ryman room has this quality. (Without consulting Emmy Pulitzer, I have decided that her Ando in St. Louis should host a mini-Ryman show.) The show includes a well-installed Fred Sandback yarn piece (fittingly, it was black yarn) and a well-installed example of work by semi-Ess Eff'er turned Angeleno John McCracken (gotta be good to those CCAC grads!). The joy of making art is in these rooms. Still, I was surprised to see no Richard Tuttle included. SF MOMA is originating a Tuttle retro in 2006 or so, and this mini-show seemed like a fine opportunity to trumpet that. * SF MOMA has also opened its new education center, which really shouldn't be called thought because it makes me think of tweed, bowties, detention and other nasties. On view via computer in the Ed Center is a video of Serra’s creation of the corner piece. Don’t miss it. One more SF MOMA post coming tomorrow... posted by Tyler  12.29.2003 The NYT crue did their museum-heavy list of top tens for the year. (Kimmelman here, Roberta here, Cotter here.) While we're on bad art writing today, Roberta gave us this: "...they may be putting the modernity back into postmodern." Still, you gotta love her not-so-subtle slap at John Currin (and by extension Kimmelman, who praised the show so absurdly that Peter Schjeldahl had a field day with it). posted by Tyler  Exciting-to-me MANews: Sometime in January, MAN will move to become an ArtsJournal blog. I think MAN will be their second visual arts blog, after James R. Russell's architecture blog. MAN will be accessible at some to-be-determined URL and also at modernartnotes.com. In fact, if you change your bookmarks and links to modernartnotes.com now, you'll never miss a thing. posted by Tyler  In my visits to SFMOMA over the years, I've always noticed that occasionally they give great wall text (the Mel Bochner on Sol Lewitt in the minimalism mini-exhib), but they just as often provide us with the silliest text imaginable. Here's a doozy from SFMOMA and a head-scratcher from the Asian Art Museum. In a Robert Ryman room: "Viewers are encouraged to look closely at these paintings for they pleasure and reward a patient eye and an open mind." In an installtion of U. Sunok at AAM: "Sunok here reminds us what art is supposed to do: offer us something." posted by Tyler  12.26.2003 I wasn't going to post until Monday, but I couldn't resist presenting... The official MAN summary of this morning's NYT story on the new curatorial team at MoMA: Here are their resumes and they plan to work together. Wow! Who'd a thunk it! They're going to work together! We know why the NYT buried this stinker on the day after Christmas: there isn't a single tidbit of news in it. You know you're an insider if you get this reference without the links: Given his last two pieces, is Holland Cotter searching for his spiritual center or what? posted by Tyler  12.24.2003 Ron Athey, artist and the guy who puts together the (really good) gallery listings in LA Weekly. 1.) Live Culture at the Tate Modern: Franko B. walking a catwalk with bleeding lines, under Anish Kapoor's giant red sculpture, and Oleg Kulik as a mirrored disco ball in "I'll be your Armadillo." 2.) c-level's 3-D multiplayer computer game, Waco Resurrection, at The Kitchen. 3.) UK artist Marissa Carnesky in Jewess Tattoess at UCLA Live: nude, she cloaked herself in a ultra-orthadox chic 40s coat and hat, and stepped into a pair of pumps pre-loaded with blood capsules. 4.) The Kyoto-based collective Dumb Type at Redcat: an interactive video/sound/live movement piece that hijacked the senses. 5.) The great German actor, Udo Kier, at Visions of Excess in Birmingham, UK. Kier was live, and closed circuit camera, and had an assistant taking polaroids of the subject as he integrated narratives of his own biography and Georges Bataille concepts into an obsessive one-on-one 14 hour installation. 6.) The Spanish choreographer turned British live artist, Maria La Ribot at Highways Performance Space, simulated chair f*cking and dancing with grease pencils. 7.) Mariel Carranza in a nine-day endurance art/fasting/knitting fest at Crazy Space. 8.) Toxic Titties at Outfest's Platinum event, in Wet Lesbian U-Haul. The collective that cites all things 70s feminism as influence, conducted fashion interventions and makeovers on queer academia. 9.) Kembra Pfahler's conceptual fashion show, "salo vs. jaws" at American Fine Arts. 10.) The "hip hypnotist" Marcos Lutyens at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. posted by Tyler  12.23.2003 This morning I opened my New York Times and discovered that my world, the comfortable little cocoon in which I was living, had been brutally ripped apart. John Currin, the artist who launched the transfers of millions of dollars out of private equity portfolios and into cash, has left Andrea Rosen for Larry Gagosian. No longer am I comforted by knowing that when I want to see a Currin, when I need to see a Currin, I can walk into Andrea Rosen, saunter toward the back room, and gaze to my little heart's content. It is times like these that try both men's souls and the intersection of aesthetics and commerce. Will any of us forget where we were on the day that John Currin left Andrea Rosen? At this difficult time, I am clinging to one little bit of hope: that Larry will throw a great party to celebrate this Event, and that Thelma Golden will be able to go. [Ed.: Isn't that enough on Thelma Golden? Yeah, probably.] Top tens: A couple other arts bloggers have posted top tens on their sites. Caryn Coleman in LA and Sally Mckay in Toronto. Travel note: I'll be in SF, CA over the weekend. If you know of a show you think I shouldn't miss, email me. posted by Tyler  12.22.2003 New websites in the museum world: Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston and the Corcoran. The Poynter Institute is a journo-think-tank and they just posted some "ways to defy sterotypes about arts journalism." Question: How can people have "stereotypes" (their word, not mine) about arts coverage when so few newspapers cover culture? Heck, the Washington Post doesn't even have a full-time arts reporter. posted by Tyler  What a weekend here @ MAN HQ. People love lists. The hit counter has been going into overdrive since Friday. This coincides with my deadlines for a big story on Catherine Opie, so I'm scrambling here. I've got a couple of top tens to post momentarily and I know that several other folks have lists on the way, so keep checking back. Meanwhile, check out ArtsJournal which has finally added a visual arts blog, James S. Russell on architecture. Kelly Vrana, collector and artist. 1.) Kirk Varnedoe's Mellon Lectures @ the National Gallery of Art. 2.) Dia:Beacon. 3.) Richard Serra @ Gagosian. (The Pulitzer Foundation show, with Serra's nestled in that beautiful little Ando, was pretty fabulous too.) 4.) The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth's installation of their permanent collection. Again, an extraordinary Ando coupled with great art that was immaculately installed. The Kiefers and Puryear were unforgetable. 5.) James Turrell @ PaceWildenstein. 6.) Max Beckmann @ the Tate Modern. 7.) Shirin Neshat @ Houston's Contemporary Art Museum. (Tooba at the Asia Society was a really strong work as well.) 8.) Matisse/Picasso @ MoMA. 9.) art:21 on PBS. 10.) Andy Goldsworthy's film River and Tides. Eve Wood, poet and artnet.com L.A. correspondent (who exercised the artnet-pal perogative on rule-bending!) 1.) Sally Ross at Karyn Lovegrove -- beautiful, luminous and quirky paintings of horses and other majestical beings, truly a delight to see work that wants for nothing but honesty, elegance and simplicity of form. 2.) Tom Allen at Richard Telles -- forget your crucifix in your lunchpail? Don’t worry -- nothing can save you from Allen’s all-knowing, piercing eye. Content, ah content at last, and stunningly rendered depictions of famous religious figures. It’s nice to see an artist who is not afraid to speak his own mind rather than regurgitating predictable (and sometimes money-making) crap. Go Allen go! 3.) Emmylou Harris’ new album "Stumble Into Grace" -- Gosh, darn it, gotta love her, and everything she does. 20 years of innovative music-making from Gram Parsons to her current incarnations as unstoppable chanteuse, the stuff of dreams and hardcore letdowns, enough to send you soaring andr rip your heart as you go. “Stumble Into Grace” achieves itself magically, with with, unerring style and of course, grace. 4.) Maile Meloy’s “Half In Love: Stories” Painfully heroic, yet very real and often wrenching and always mature, these stories have so much going for them -- a great energy and quiet attention to detail. Reading these strories you can almost feel Sam Shepard’s breath of your cheek! 5.) Jo Jackson at Roberts & Tilton -- many, many birds, crows to be exact, so many birds but never “too many,” Jo Jackson leads us on a journey through her most descriminating psyche where crows take to the skies as if to tear them down even as skulls pile up under the noonday sun. 6.) "ArtDog" sweaters -- chihuahuas are particularly susceptible to the cold, and in my quest for the perfect winter wear for Flan, my exuberant chihuahua, I cam across “ArtDog” sweaters (only to be worn of course by dogs who find themselves firmly ensconced in the LA Artscene, whether by choice or by incident, these sweaters are made of the highest quality Marino wool and come embroidered with such Artworld sayings as "Art Saves Lives," and "Oh, Darling, I Simply Must Invest!" 7.) Dan Bayles at Jan Baum Gallery -- a find I say. These paintings are fractals of wonder, scrapings of paint and fragments of photos, alligned and disalligned. Causeways are created out of nothing. These paintings don’t ask direct questions, but pose suggestions through form and color. Bayles is on to something. 8.) Peter Weir’s Master & Commander -- Portrait of a great man without sentimentality, though with great sentiment. Masterful, and magical -- a true portrait of the time, with big waves and big guns, but not one false note. 9.) Mark Strand’s piece on poet Pablo Neruda in The New Yorker. Concise and finely written, Strand is right on in focusing on Neruda not as a political poet, but a man whose private observations kept him alive. 10.) The banana cream tart at Mani’s Bakery in Los Angeles-- a work of supreme artistry again and again! Anne McGovern, artist 1.) Book/CD Rom - Joseph Cornell Shadowplay...Eterniday. 2.) The opening of Dia: Beacon. 3.) Village Voice article by Jerry Saltz: Apotheosis Now - Experiencing Dia:Beacon's Ashram of the Abstract. 4.) Helen Frankenthaler at Knoedler & Co. 5.) Sarah Sze at the Whitney Museum. 6.) Gerhard Richter - Works on Paper - Barbara Mathes Gallery. 7.) Tara Donovan at Ace Gallery. 8.) James Siena at Gorney Bravin & Lee. 9.) Wolf Kahn at Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art. 10.) The architecture of Zaha Hadid. posted by Tyler  12.20.2003 (MANote: I've got several more to post after these, but I'm 24 hours from a magazine deadline and I'm swamped. They may not be online until Monday.) Lorelei Stewart, Director of Gallery 400 @ the University of Illinois, Chicago. 1.) Manet/Velasquez at the Met; the entire Armory Show was only one smidgen as good as this show and its paintings. it brought me to tears. 2.) Rebecca Warren at Donald Young Gallery; The London sculptor's first US show. The ever elegant Donald Young Gallery showed a range of sculpture that are committed investigations of the sexuality, body and objectness. They kick ass with their understated knowledge of sculpture tradition. 3.) Lucky Pierre performance of "How to Manage Fear" at Performing Arts Chicago; fun, emotional, analytical, intelligent, riveting and meaningful. The best artwork by any Chicago artist right now. 4.) Deborah Stratman at UCLA Hammer Museum; there was a time when surveillance seemed a tired subject, how sadly ironic that it could ever seem outdated. Stratman's piece is a slow, beautiful, terrifying work that if you give it the time to watch is an overwhelming experience. Too bad I had to go to LA to see this Chicago artist's work. 5.) Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project at the Tate Modern; the best thing about it is the crowd. the work itself is satisfactory but its effects and the way that visitors use it, for lunch, for relaxation, as a place to draw is much more interesting; moreover, the catalog is even better than the piece. 6.) Collier Schorr's collages at the Modern Art booth at Art Basel Miami Beach; this woman knows photography. 7.) POSTChicago, a small project that's smart, inventive and interesting. POST is Lisa Williamson and Keri Butler. Working out of their own pockets they commission Chicago area artists each month to make a poster for public space and then they staple them up around town. The website is handsome and substantial. 8.) Individual artworks by Chicago artists Deva Maitland, Rebecca Carter, Dianna Frid, Judy Ledgerwood, Kerry James Marshall, Julia Fish, Will Staples, Siebren Versteeg, Andreas Fischer, David Coyle, and Stephanie Brooks. You can find links to a lot of these artists here. 9. Shows at Suitable and Dogmatic; these two longstanding Chicago artists-run spaces regularly show new, risky work. Suitable is considerably more consistent. But both of them, along with the soon to be closed Pond, are more interesting than the young commercial spaces in Chicago. Notable shows, some which I didn't see but I trust the people who told me they were good (or I heard it enough times): Stan Shellaberger, Sterling Ruby, and Vince Dermody at SG, Jack Sloss and Jee-Eun Kim at DG. I only wish Suitable would show more women. 10.) Christian Jankowski's lecture at the Visiting Artists Program of the School of the Art Institute; A star turn that wasn't just about seeing the rock star artist. The audience walked away with things to think about. Honorable mention: Lucy McKenzie's October lecture at Gallery 400. This Glaswegan artist is a smart young woman who knows how to cut through art world bullshit and have something to say. Dani Leventhal's show "feather-stitch" at Gallery 400, Chicago. (Admittedly, my own space. Sorry. I just loved it.) Dani's work is multilayered but beautiful. In performance, drawing, video, a garden and an evocative 8 foot square platform made entirely from dark soil, Dani explores life death, love and community. it sounds hokey but she's got a way of drawing you into her expansive view of the world. Allison Cohen, collector. 1.) Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, Hirshhorn Museum. 2.) Mona Lisa Live, Jean-Pierre Khazem, Rubell Collection, Miami. 3.) Ellsworth Kelly's collage "Ground Zero". 4.) Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay...Eterniday (book) and accompanying DVD The Magical Worlds of Joseph Cornell, Thames & Hudson. 5.) David Palmer's paintings, Scope, Slingshot Project. 6.) Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, Hirshhorn Museum. 7.) Self-portraits on medicine pills, Andy Diaz Hope, Scope, Y&O Projects. 8.) Candida Hofer's photographs, Margulies Collection, Miami. 9.) Winged Migration, Directed by Jacques Perrin, Official Selection Toronto Film Festival. 10.) Flashpoint, a creative laboratory for DC art's industry, Washington, D.C. posted by Tyler  12.19.2003 Even if you've never been to LA's Chinatown gallery district, you'll love this LA Weekly story about Chung King Road. The Hirshhorn will become the latest museum (see the Dallas Museum of Art and The Mattress Factory) to stay open all night. As part of the upcoming Douglas Gordon retrospective, the Hirshhorn will stay open all night on Feb. 28/29. (Hirshhorn bonus note: An artist talk with Eric Fischl is coming on March 11.) The Barnes finds another object they had lost. (Or, more accurately, someone finds it for them.) Can you say, "special master," Judge Ott? Top Tens: I've got several more to post on Saturday, so check back in the afternoon. posted by Tyler Ken Ashton, artist. 1.) Thomas Struth @ the Met. 2.) Masao Yamamoto @ Yancey Richardson . 3.) Robert Frank: London/Wales @ the Corcoran. 4.) Joseph Mills: Inner City @ the Corcoran. 5.) Chris Brooks, "Amistad the Prequel," the money grab preformance, @ 21 WDC. 6.) Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio @ the Whitney. 7.) Philip-Lorca diCorcia from the book, A Storybook Life @ PaceWildenstein Chelsea. 8.) First Exposure, The Kids Are Alright: Photographs by Ryan McGinley @ the Whitney. 9.) Making photos in Dusseldorf. 10.) Bernd and Hilla Becher, Typologies of industrial buildings @K21 Dusseldorf. posted by Tyler  12.18.2003 Tyler Green, the guy who writes this site (except when he can get other people to write it by submitting top ten lists). First, a word of background. I was going to skip year-end lists this year until two things happened: 2Blowhards did their annual post on top ten lists and I read the current ArtForum. The top ten lists in ArtForum are asinine. Thelma Golden, in particular, creates a surreal list that simultaneously points out that she loved being stuck with The People in the blackout ("The blackout worked us. Like nothing in the art world has in a long, long time.") and that Dia Beacon made her list beacuse the exclusive opening party was just too fabulous. Thelma, you're so cool. Wanna know why so many Americans feel out of touch with contemporary art? Read Thelma Golden and find out. (Aside to Thelma: The art world is "working us." See No. 2 below.) Most of the lists in ArtForum, which is an art magazine, didn't have much to do with art. So my list is about art: 1.) Matisse/Picasso @ MoMA QueeNS. It was a great show full of a remarkable number of great paintings. There's really not much more to say. 2.) Kirk Varnedoe's Mellon Lectures @ the National Gallery. I'll never, ever forget the end of the last lecture: Varnedoe used a slide-show stroll through a Richard Serra sculpture to tell us about his passion for art. I've never been in a quieter room -- all 500 people there knew that a dying man was reminding us that having and expressing passion for great work is a great privilege. It is humbling to have a dying man tell you to appreciate great art because, before long, he won't be able to. At the end, there wasn't a dry eye to be found. Next time you come to DC, make an appointment with the NGA library to see that last tape. Take Kleenex. 3.) Dia Beacon opens. Destination art. Six Flags Over Minimalism. 4.) Robert Olsen @ Suzanne Vielmetter and the Morandi room in the Hirshhorn's Gyroscope installation. Painters reminding us that small, meticulous art can be fantastic. Too bad the Hirshhorn later ruined the room by adding a wall of biographical text. 5.) Lee Bontecou @ the UCLA Hammer Museum. I saw it just a week ago so I'm still processing it, but I know it belongs here. 6.) George Stone @ L.A. Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Art Park. If this show had been in a hip Chelsea space, NYC would still be talking about it. But because NYCers and LAers just don't believe in visiting each other's cities, it's just LA that is still talking about it. If you're a curator or gallery in the Northeast, do yourself a favor and check out George Stone. (More from me on this show coming soon to artnet.com, I think.) 7.) Shirin Neshat's Tooba. For those of us who didn't go to Documenta last year, this counts as a 2003 thing. Tooba received its U.S. debut at Sundance in January, was screened in NYC in February and is now up at the Asia Society. The most-challenging art made about the aftermath of 9/11. 8.) Lari Pittman @ Regen Projects. See here or just scroll down a few posts. I talked about the Pittman show in my post on last weekend's trip to LA. 9.) The comic book catalog for Warped Space @ CCA Wattis. Art = fun. It's good to be reminded of this sometimes. 10.) art:21 on PBS. The Vija Celmins segment alone is worth listing. Honorable mention: New work by Catherine Opie, for more details see a forthcoming issue of Black Book magazine, Chagall @ SFMOMA, Sally Mann @ Houk, Donald Moffett @ Boesky, Carla Klein @ Bonakdar. posted by Tyler  Greg Allen, collector, filmmaker, greg.org guy 1.) Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project being used for a George Bush protest. 2.) The Year of Gus Van Sant (Gerry, Elephant) 3.) Anne Truitt and Agnes Martin shows up at the same time, across the street from each other. 4.) Christian Marclay's Video Quartet, wherever it's playing. 5.) The 36-film Yasujiro Ozu retrospective at the NY Film Festival. 6.) Japanese Cult Kitsch: Mariko Mori's brainpod getting shown up by the Panawave cult road trip. 7.) I love the smell of Dia Beacon in the morning (with the On Kawaras and Gerhard Richter mirror paintings anytime). 8.) Rineke Dijkstra's set of portraits of Olivier, a teenager who joined the French Foreign Legion. 9.) Jean Prouve furniture and architecture show at Sonnabend. 10.) Mega-movie cycles: Lord of the Rings beating Cremaster, Matrix blowing its chance. Honorable mention: Elmgreen & Dragset's spelling chimp at Utopia Station, Venice Biennale, Cheney Thompson's lifesize newsstand painting at The Armory Show (at Kreps), Thomas Scheibitz's completely unavailable paintings at Frieze (at Bonakdar). posted by Tyler  12.17.2003 In addition to posting my own 2003 top ten list tomorrow, I've asked a few other people to contribute their own top ten lists. My invitation was to do any kind of 2003 top ten list they wanted so long as it was about art and not about Being Thelma Golden. Here's the first installment: Alex Worman, collector, artnet.com L.A. correspondent 1.) Solo art exhibition: (tie): Jenny Saville @ Gagosian (Chelsea), and Barnaby Furnas at Marianne Boesky. 2.) Solo museum show: Lee Bontecou at the UCLA Hammer Museum. 3.) Group museum show: Strangers: The First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at ICP New York. 4.) Art-related fiction: The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. 5.) Art-related non-fiction: I Bought Andy Warhol, by Richard Polsky. 6.) Art monograph: Ed Ruscha, by Richard D. Marshall (Phaidon). 7.) Photography monograph: Karambolage by Arnold Odermatt (Steidl). 8.) Movie: Thirteen (Fox Searchlight Pictures). 9.) Architecture: The Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry. 10.) Art magazine: FreEye (the quarterly Dutch photography magazine). * Special mentions to the exquisitely-designed Phillips auction catalogues, and The Sagamore Hotel in Miami Beach. posted by Tyler  Coming Thursday: As mandated by 2Blowhards, MAN's Top Ten list for 2003. (And I promise it won't be as goofy, ridiculous, or lame as the lists in ArtForum this month! Thelma Golden, we'll be talking about you...) posted by Tyler  I received a couple of emails yesterday asking me if all I did was look at painting shows in LA. Nope. It's just much more of a painting town that NYC. (Do they teach painting at Yale?) Some links from around the web... At 2Blowhards, Michelle Vaughn has a long, interesting post about emerging as an artist. New-to-me arts and art-heavy blogs: From Toronto, Sally Mckay. And Plep is a link-o-rama to a hodgepodge of images, sites and lots of other stuff. Interesting mix of gallery show and website at cherrydelosreyes in Los Angeles. The site, which gave birth to a show curated by its creator, is called femalepersuasion.net. It bills itself as an online network for women artists who use the body as a jumping-off point for their art. posted by Tyler  12.16.2003 Thoughts from Los Angeles... Lee Bontecou @ UCLA’s Hammer Museum. This is a great show. If you're in NYC, especially, get out to LA to see this show. It won't be this good in the cavernous MoMA QueeNS galleries. I think I'll write more on this show next week. Lari Pittman @ Regen Projects. (Regen doesn't have a website -- doh! -- so take a look at Doug Harvey's review in the LA Weekly for the writing and for an image. And read Harvey's review -- the last paragraph is completely fantastic and I wish I'd written it.) This is the best gallery show of the 25 or so I saw in LA. It's kind of easy to write about minimalist art because there's some empty space in which to write. Same for straightfoward abstractions or virtually any c-print ever created. But where to start with Lari Pittman's paintings? Pittman's phantasmagorias are the equivalent of Victor Hugo's 823-word sentence in Les Miserables -- there's so much going on that it's hard to know where to start or stop. It is, however, easy to know where to enter: central to each painting at Regen is a different tool of destruction, something that can do some wicked harm. From that one object, the paintings explode into landscapes of disjointed narrative. Built from matte oil, aerosol lacquer, cel-vinyl on gessoed canvas and wood panels, Pittman's paintings are full of suns and moons, violent implements, recliners, axes, totem poles, robots, diamonds, spray bottles, spray mists, cucumbers with barbed spikes, desolate, mountainous landscapes and about a zillion other things. While violence usually tears situations apart, here each painting is held together by the threat of violence. But forget the six-syllable words, the lists, what the paintings are made out of, or any of that stuff. Just go look at them and imagine yourself inside them. These are paintings that can not just be seen -- these are paintings that you have to try to walk into and live in. After these two shows, which I flat-out loved, the rest of the gallery-going was a mixed bag made up of a few gallery shows of promising, but still developing, artists, a couple of shows of a mid-century California painter... and one stinker. Emerson Woelffer @ Manny Silverman. There are two Woelffer shows in Los Angeles right now, a show of mostly paintings from the 1970's at Silverman and an Ed Ruscha-curated retrospective at the new Redcat Gallery in the Disney Concert Hall. (I hear locals don’t call it The Gehry, so I’m trying not to, too.) I preferred the Silverman show, which was built around the neo-zips that Woelffer painted in apparent response to Barnett Newman. That’s the problem I have with the Redcat show: Woelffer seems to be always responding to someone: Motherwell, Miro, Kline. For me, the neo-zips are more than mere responses to Newman. Woelffer re-creates the zip as a multi-hued, discipline-free, occasionally whimsical burst of energy. The obvious example is actually in the Redcat show. Titled Nookie, the painting is a zip with a protruding and ejaculating penis. Matthew Byloos @ Solway Jones. Byloos paints flowers and trees laid over depth-creating geometric shapes on mahogany boxes that extend from the wall. There’s some Cecily Brown in these paintings, but not so much that the Cecily-ness is distracting. I like the paintings that feature an interesting mix of loud painterliness and flat, geometric shapes -- those paintings give my eye something to do. Other paintings in this show kind of sit there with a little too much scrambled eggs visual texture and not enough visual vibrato. It's almost as if Byloos felt that the strong lines took away from his painterly accomplishment and toned it down in some images. Still, he's on to something. Stan Kaplan @ Mary Goldman. Kaplan is mid-career age (he’s 35), but he's relatively new to painting. The works in this show are big, thinly-painted abstractions painted almost entirely with a Diebenkornian palette (only one painting departs from Diebenkorn colors). I'm a Diebenkorn slut, so I'd never complain about RD colors, but should my first thought about Artist A be about Artist B? The more I looked at Kaplan's paintings I thought I didn't really care whether he'd borrowed a palette or not, I was enjoying myself. I was particularly interested in the way dominant threads and splotches of color run through Kaplan’s abstractions, holding them together, creating strings of bright color on top of abstractions. Alexis Smith @ Margo Leavin. Here’s a reason to love art and to love discussing it: I walked away from this show laughing at myself, amazed at how horridly bad, simplistic, dumb, vapid, reactionary and unfulfilled this show was. My Sunday brunch-mate thought it was fantastic, important and tinged with clever duality. Take a look for yourself... or don't. Rant ahead. Rant: Two of the biggest galleries in LA, Margo Leavin and Regen Projects, don't have websites. Another biggie, Blum & Poe, more or less doesn't either. Why not? Their artists should be none-too-thrilled about this. I'm none-too-thrilled about this. Do they still think it's 1988? Kaoru Mansour @ LMAN, which is at least "coming soon" to the web: Mansour is a Japanese-American artist who paints beautifully. At LMAN are a series of paintings on wooden boxes (see Byloos, Matthew) that are painted off-white and given an antiqued finish which makes the white look old, cracked adn weathered. Intricate flowers are painted in suspension above the white finish and geometric, almost protozoan shapes are suspended above the flowers. The result is an intensely hand-made object that mixes a crafty feel with painterly touch. Each piece is only $800, which may explain why LMAN relegated many of them to hanging in a staircase. Hodgepodge: Wal-Martists take LA @ Bank, a downtown gallery with a cool space and Tecate at their opening. Alison Foshee's "paintings" built from white labels were the most interesting work in the show but they didn't quite transcend their materials the way the work of Rosana Castrillo Diaz or Dan Steinhilber does... Three times in the last week I've seen watercolors by Kim McCarty, first at the cherrydelosreyes set-up at the Scope fair and then on this trip at Baum and then back at cherrydelosreyes in LA. The group show at Baum is disjointed and it's not clear to me why the nine artists in the show are thrown together, but McCarty's work stands out. Her watercolors of children, each Caucasian but otherwise ethnically ambiguous, are simultaneously creepy and endearing. The children's blank looks connote curiosity or fear or both... There's a uber-hot, Brooklyn glue-and-glitter feel to the drawing show at Sixspace (think Clayton Brothers). The standout is Laura Mosquera whose two engrossing ink drawings on canvas are full of emotion and confusion more complicated and fully adult than anything else in the show. I wanted to see more... The installation show at LA MOCA might be the worst show in a major American museum right now. It's that bad... Their Gehry show, as much of a show of wish-list items as architectural accomplishment (yes, the Corcoran fantasy is in the show) isn't much better... At least the small exhib of works on paper from the permanent collection is interesting, especially works by Los Carpinteros (hey MOCA -- that's a very washed out image! Re-shoot it!) and William Anastasi... Apparently budget issues at LA MOCA are so acute that they no longer run a shuttle between their downtown Cal Plaza location and their Little Tokyo Temporary Contemporary outpost... posted by Tyler  12.15.2003 When I was growing up, San Francisco was known as Baghdad by the Bay (or at least Herb Caen aimed for it to be) because San Franciscans believed that they were the modern realization of a certain classical ideal. That ideal was Baghdad, a crossroads of cultures and beauty. In the aftermath of war, LA Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff has traveled to Baghdad in search of what made Baghdad such a remarkable city. He's written a four-part series on Baghdad and it's an absolute must-read. Here's the link to the series' main page. Make sure you check out the Flash-built image galleries on the right, too. The images are amazing. (When prompted, username: ajreader, password: access.) (P.S. Consider reading the LA Times your prep for MAN's mini-tour of What I Liked In LA, coming tomorrow!) posted by Tyler  I'm looking forward to the opening of the Smithsonian's African American history museum, whenever that is. But here's an item that's been completely overlooked: One of the sites widely discussed for the museum a few months ago was the empty plot between the National Gallery's East Wing and the Capitol. (Here's a map.) This was notable because that plot is the only place left for the National Gallery to expand -- the only other empty land directly adjacent to the NGA will be the Newseum in a couple years. So in the Nov. 20 Washington Post story about the Senate moving forward with the new African American museum was this tidbit: "The legislation calls for the Smithsonian Board of Regents to select the site within 12 months. In recent weeks, the sponsors agreed to drop a request that the museum be adjacent to the Capitol Reflecting Pool, which borders the east end of the Mall." So journos, did the NGA twist some arms to keep that bit of empty space empty? Do they have a super-secret expansion plan? posted by Tyler  After a week of Barnes-related postings (which, if the hit counts are to be believed, amuse me much more than they motivate you), I thought I’d wrap up the thoughts on some artists I saw in Miami: At the Margulies collection, I enjoyed the way mid-century German photography (mostly, if not entirely, B&W) was hung next to the Dusseldorf drones. I can still vividly remember specific images of August Sander, Werner Martz, and Peter Keetman… but I can’t remember a single Ruff or Struth. Advantage old guys. (This was, obviously, a prime motivator for my c-print rant from last week.) The only Becherian I repeatedly enjoy is Candida Hofer. The geometry in Hofer’s photography appeals to my eye, kind of like the way the geometry in Bonnard’s painting appeals to me. See Bibliotek Kunsthalle Basel, 1999 for a good example. (I couldn't find a link, but perhaps someone can...) Speaking of c-prints, I tried to go out of my way to find some examples of c-prints that I liked. (There is nothing so unbecoming as writing off an entire medium!) Also at the Margulies I found Anita Witek, whose photographs of white bathrooms and white interiors tweaked the alleged strength of the medium: its saturating color while emphasizing the lines and geometry of the spaces she shot. (Is there a trend here?) Back to the fairs: Isidro Blasco @ Slingshot Project. One of my favorite discoveries of the fair was Isidro Blasco, a Spanish artist who lives in NYC. Blasco’s work combines elements of sculpture, architecture and photography, which, if one poorly, would result in one heckuva jumbled mess. Instead, Blasco’s work fascinates. First, Blasco builds structures out of small, rectangular blocks of wood. These structures don’t have any flat surfaces; picture the geometry of a cupped hand made out of wood. Onto these structures he glues mounted, collaged photographs of the rooms in an apartment, creating a single work of art that provides glimpses at entire rooms or city blocks. Blasco’s work is cross-training for the eye. My eye moves up and down his constructions, in and out their crevices and across the terrain of their surface. This ocular journey was offset by the way my eye experienced the smoothness of each strip of photo-collage. Blasco’s larger work required me to walk around them in 180-degree arcs. My eye worked hard, I burned some calories getting from one side of the work to another and I enjoyed a uniquely architectural look at photography. Paul Paiement @ Heather Marx: While Wal-Martists start with a consumer object and make things from it that, ideally, result in beauty-added objects, Paiement works from the other direction. The cute little paintings @ Heather Marx were paintings of consumer objects… each built out of watercolors of bugs. Too little art has a cloying sense of humor. Paiement’s work does. posted by Tyler  12.13.2003 The future of the Barnes Foundation-to-the-Parkway plan got thrown into even greater doubt this week, and now it looks like the proposed Ando-designed Calder Museum is on the rocks too. posted by Tyler  12.12.2003 Even when the Barnes folks aren't on the witness stand, they can make bizarre news. The piano that they admitted to "losing" has been found. Apparently the Barnes sold it seven years ago. Oops. A family in Ardmore, Pa. paid (apparently) $3600 for it, $1400 below the asking price. Steinway says the piano is worth $12-15,000. No word on the Matisse, et al. posted by Tyler  Greetings from California, where L'Affaire Barnes continues apace. Finally today the wackiness gave way to some relative normalcy. Mind you, pretty much anything that could have happened in court Thursday would have been normal after the Barnes' admission that it had lost hundreds of works of art and archival documents. So why was today normal? Easy: the Barnes people didn't say anything remarkable. Of course they had help in avoiding this by not being on the witness stand. (As my grandfather used to say: It's better for people to think you stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.) Greg Allen correctly diagnoses my rabidness and makes an interesting point about the Barnes collection and the Miami collecting mania of the present. I'll post more on ABMB soon, it's just that the Barnes (aka the hit-count killer) is ongoing.... posted by Tyler  12.11.2003 One of the fun things about following the Barnes saga this week is that it gets wackier and wackier by the day. Yesterday the judge in the case suggested that the Barnes examine the possibility of "leasing" its paintings as a way to cover its budget shortfall. Where did Judge Stanley Ott get such a nutty idea? Why, the heads of Christie's and Sotheby's, of course! (Gee, what could their interest be, the good of the collection and the good of the institution or their own bottom lines?) Ott went on to suggest that the Barnes might even sell some of its paintings to cover its budget shortfalls. (You have got to be kidding me. Someone at the Met, MoMA, etc. get some amicus briefs filed today!) It doesn't help anyone that Barnes officials keep having to admit mistakes and oversights on the witness stand. The key question in this case is rapidly becoming: Why is the Barnes running defecits: is it the financial problems associated with being in Lower Merion or is the whole mess management and board-related? And does a move to the Parkway solve either, both or neither? Let's just say for the sake of argument that the Barnes wins the case and is allowed to move. That means a rapid expansion of the board. Can you imagine a new board leaving the current management in place after this week? (More on some artists I saw at ABMB later tonight.) posted by Tyler  12.10.2003 They seem to have misplaced a piano. Just when you thought L'Affaire Barnes couldn't get any weirder comes this news: The Foundation has lost some of the art in the collection, as well as some archival material. Among the "hundreds" of missing items are works by Matisse and Renoir. It appears that some of the pieces may have been lost or mis-catalogued by Barnes himself, but it also seems possible that works may have gone missing since Barnes' death. The early Inky story is unclear on this point. Very sad. posted by Tyler  As the Barnes Turns... One of the fun things about watching the Barnes court case unfold is watching the, er, strange management of the Barnes come into clearer view. (Though if you've been reading MAN and not the Inky or the NYT these many years you already knew this.) Today's oddity: The Barnes, which has lined up $150M from three big Philly foundations, says it didn't have any money with which to do a study to determine if the move would fix their budget defecits problem. Ironically, this probably supports the Barnes' contention that the foundations aren't calling the shots on the move but just provided money when asked. If the foundations were calling the shots as some have charged, surely they would be competent enough to run a feasibility study, if just so that it could be referenced in court. So to recap, the Barnes says they want to move because they're hemorraging cash in Lower Merion. They say that if they move to the Parkway that their problems will be fixed and they'll stop losing money. But they didn't bother to commission a $50-100,000 study to demonstrate how that would work, thus throwing into question their very rationale for wanting to move. There is a point it which it occurs to me that these folks have more Matisses than I do and I deserve them a heckuva lot more than they do. This would all be comedic if the art weren't so good. Plus, in the Wall Street Journal: John Anderson (who wrote a book on the Barnes) argues that it increasingly looks like the Pew Foundation is "taking over" the Barnes rather than saving it. I understand the concerns that a lot of people have regarding the history of the Foundation and its place in American intellectual life, but if this court case is revealing anything, isn't it revealing that the Barnes management deserves its own laughtrack and that the Barnes being taken over might not be so awful? Also consider: Anderson writes, "At about the same time [the Barnes announced it was broke], a report in the New York Times spoke of "the vague outlines" emerging of a plan for transporting the Barnes 'to a site in central Philadelphia.' From the Times account it was clear that such discussions had been under way for some time." As we noted on MAN at the time, several newspapers reported the move and each had different stories about how it happened and how it would be funded. Then, in with what can only be described as Barnes-ian timing, Barnes ED Kimberly Camp told ArtNews that no move was afoot -- and this in an published after the news of the move was out! I'm not sure there's as much Pew-driven machinations going on as Anderson thinks. While he draws a line between the beginning of Pew's change-in-tax-status planning and the Barnes move planning, there are other reasons for Pew to want to change its status, including legislation in Congress to change some of the rules under which foundations operate. I hear what Anderson is saying, I'm just not quite convinced. I am convinced of this: The Barnes' management is a mess and seems tailor-made for a big foundation or three to push around. (And why is it that the first day of the case is good enough for the NYT but the second day doesn't rate? Did Carol Vogel have to get back to midtown to receive a hot tip from Christie's?) posted by Tyler  12.9.2003 More art-from-ABMB tomorrow, but check out Ariana French's post and links to military combat artists. posted by Tyler  The primary reason I go to ABMB is to see artists from galleries that are off my beaten path. I don't get to Mexico or South America much, for example, so I'm always particularly interested in seeing what those galleries bring to the fair. A few highlights (look for additions as the day goes on): * Ignasi Aballi @ Madrid's elba benitez. As I noted yesterday, I'm tired of seeing crisp, super-saturated, shiny c-prints everywhere I look. If I'm going to have to look at c-prints, I want to see an artist challenge the medium rather than simply make another bright, pretty photo. At the elba benitez gallery (wasn't I just complaining about galleries that use all caps? Are all small letters better?), Aballi's photos were of bookcases and books that were obscured by sheets of plastic. Once upon a time wealth was measured in land ownership and acreage was an important determinant of status. Abstraction rooted in landscape painting referred to that history without being explicit. In an era where new wealth is often information-based, Benitez builds striking, beautiful abstractions rooted not in landscape but in the carriers of our new wealth: information, books. From a formal standpoint, his c-prints tweak the medium in the same way Gregory Kucera's chromogenic prints do: they use a medium known for its ability to be crisp and use it to make gripping abstractions. * Ernesto Ballesteros @ Buenos Aires' Ruth Benzacar. Benzacar only displayed one work of Ballesteros', a drawing on paper. It reminded me of the work of Rosana Castrillo Diaz in that it challenged the way we see. In the work at ABMB, Ballesteros drew squiggles that began in a rectangle, just inside the edge of the paper. The squiggles worked their way toward the center of the paper before evaporating, leaving the center of the drawing empty. It was fun to look at -- a quality that should not be undervalued. posted by Tyler  12.8.2003 If you read MAN regularly, you're pretty much expecting the Philly Inky to do a lousy job of covering the Barnes court case. (OK, I concede this case preview is pretty good.) In the Inky story about Day One, it buries the lead (or lede as journos inexplicably spell it): "[Board chair] Watson's testimony showed that the Barnes had done surprisingly little research on how it would make a move into Philadelphia work financially, other than saying its backers had already raised $100 million." If I'm the Barnes (and I might as well talk like it because I support the move), I want to make the move look like a carefully considered decision made after extensive study and consideration. The Barnes has been marked by poor planning and fundraising for years -- apparently the move to Philly is no different. The Barnes board has long been the gang that might be able to shoot straight but had never quite gotten around to taking the gun out of the holster. Old habits die hard. posted by Tyler  Update: News from the court begins to come in. But does what the Barnes board chair says pass the B.S. detector? The Barnes Foundation court case begins its early stages today. posted by Tyler  As about a hundred people heard me say during the just-concluded Art Basel Miami Beach, the primary utility of a big art fair is to help certain broad ideas about contemporary art come into focus. Later this week I’ll post some notes on artists I particularly enjoyed seeing, but first a start on the broad ideas: * Holy ektachrome! If I never see another c-print again that will be just fine with me. C-prints, the art equivalent of trade paperbacks, are everywhere. Every photographer worth the Becher signature on his degree has embraced the amped-up color and crispness of the c-print. The color on steroids, the shiny-smooth surface, the crisp edges of the art object itself… it all begins to look alike after a while. Art professors don’t let your students grow up to make c-prints. Someone teach the kids how to print their own stuff and make ‘em do it. So why are c-prints everywhere? For artists: they’re cheap, they enable photographers to compete with the size and colorful oomph of painting and, of course, c-printing allows someone else to do the work. For collectors, the editioning of most c-printed images enable them to own big-name photographers – and to tell their pals that Marty Margulies and Tony Podesta own two of the other six in the edition. For conservators, they provide the promise of continual employment – in 80-100 years all those c-prints will turn the color of slime unless (or until) someone discovers a chemical savior. As I think back to the photography I’ve seen in the last few days, little stands out. Sure, there were big Thomas Ruffs and big Candida Hofers, but I remember the names more than I remember the images. The photographs I remember are these: two little Francesca Woodmans, each one black and white and no bigger than four inches-by-six inches. They are the anti-c-prints and I hope more photographers go back to basics. I did notice one departure from the c-print mania: Jason Falchook, a long-time MANfave who shows at Washington’s Fusebox has made a series of color inkjet prints that aren’t much bigger than an index card. I spent more time looking at them than at most big photography just because of the novelty of the different size. I talked with a number of dealers during the fair, nearly all of whom said that their artists didn’t need to be at the fair because the dealer was there for them. While I understand their point, I can’t help but think that if I was a photographer floating around Miami Beach this weekend, I’d realize that by making big c-prints at the very least I was failing to differentiate myself from the competition in the marketplace. It might even inspire me to make small art. This just in: Greg Allen noticed about the same thing. posted by Tyler  12.2.2003 MAN arrives in Miami for ABMB tomorrow morning. I don't know what the posting schedule will be like during the fair, but I'll try to post something every day. (I said that last year too and it didn't happen.) If you're a MAN reader and you spot me in Miami, say hi! Just for fun: Because I just absolutely hate it when people bring their hyperactive little dogs into art galleries, I'm going to keep track of how many dogs I see inside the fair at ABMB, inside the side fairs, inside the warehouse collections and indoors at the Design District party. (If I see a twitching little dog in a Murakami purse anywhere on South Beach, that counts double.) Readers who wish to play along may send their guesses may send them to: GuessingDogs@hotmail.com. (Or just tell me when you see me in Miami.) I'll come up with some kind of ABMB prize for the person who ends up being closest to correct. posted by Tyler  There is such a thing as seeing too much art in too short a time, and modern science is on the case. posted by Tyler  12.1.2003 Finally, more than a year after MAN started using the Barnes Foundation's tax records as the basis for posts (dare I call it reporting?), the Philly Inquirer decides that maybe they should look at the Barnes' tax records! The story points out many of the things I've pointed out on MAN before -- notably the board doesn't seem to be very active when it comes to managing the institution -- but the Inky ignores the obvious: The Barnes board doesn't raise much money. As I've said here before, the board of a non-profit has two primary responsibilities: making sure that an institution has sound financial management, and to raise money. The Inky rightly (but gently) raps the Barnes board for their financial oversight but neglects to point out how poor a job the board has done when it comes to raising money. This sentence is pretty mystifying too: "The Barnes' inability to display its art to more than 1,200 people per week also has made it hard to attract financial backers," the Inky says. Uh, why? posted by Tyler One of the few arts critics to have won a Pulitzer, the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin, writes about the Brad Cloepfil-designed St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum. (Username: AJReader, PW: access.) Kamin makes a good point: the Cloepfil does a good job of existing within the city, rather than apart from its surroundings. posted by Tyler  It's ABMB week in the USA, so we're all itching to go get sand in our shorts. (The Miami Herald has a fair website.) Check out the link to the first part of MAN's three-part preview at left. But before we all head to the sun... Terry Teachout responds to my post about Picasso and Matisse and such. Perhaps this Brit sculptor should have read about Tilted Arc. Also, the flu that kept posting here down to a bare minimum is gone, so posting should be back to normal the next couple days. From Miami, I dunno. posted by Tyler  posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, December 3, 2003 | Permanent link