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MODERN ART NOTES
Tyler Green's modern and contemporary art blog
Weekend cheat sheet
As usual, posting is slow when I'm on travel. (We here at man don't have a girl in Chicago.) Some recent posts for weekend reading:
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Notes from the road...
Posting will be slow again today because I'm on travel in Toronto. (On the plus side, look for a rare weekend post tomorrow.) News and notes:
- The Independent with more on how BritArt has been received in Tehran.
- If you're in New York on March 3, head over to the Landmark Tavern to hang out with AJ bloggers Sandow, Teachout, Herman, Gann, Tobias, Russell, and Perreault. There's more info at the top of AJ. I wish I could be there, but magazine deadlines are going to make that a busy weekend for me.
- Speaking of AJ, the WP's Philip Kennicott wrote about Sam Bergman's RoadTrip blog today. Fun reads, both.
- Steve Mumford has another Baghdad Diary up at artnet.
- Why can't we have a Morandi show too?
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BritArt opens in Iran
The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art just opened a show of contemporary British art. Do you take for granted that there is a museum in your city, that there are artists who make and show art near you? Then don't miss this story. An art tutor told The Guardian this:
"I'm sorry for the behaviour of my students. They're very excited. We have to monitor every development in the art world in books and on the internet. It's so wonderful to see it in person and actually touch it. We haven't had the chance to do that very often. I spent time in class presenting the artists that are featured here today. It's very exciting."
Iran has one of the most active blogging communities in the world (yes, really). Most of it isn't in English, of course, but I'll keep my eyes open for some blogging on the show. (And maybe readers have some finds...)
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Barnes: A non-starter of an idea
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Peter Linett, the editor of Curator: The Museum Journal, floats a new Barnes idea. It's the kind of idea that leads me to wonder if he's been to the Barnes and if he's been following the case closely.
In summary, Linett suggests leaving the Barnes Foundation where it is and opening a satellite space on the Ben Franklin Parkway. Linett writes that temporary exhibitions, archival material, artwork not on the Foundation's walls in the Main Line and other historical materials could be shown on the Parkway. A "BarnesBus" could be run between the Parkway and Latch's Lane.
A bus? A bus? Linett apparently hasn't noticed that the Barnes neighbors hate cars, people, and anyone who isn't bred into Lower Merion society. One can only imagine their response to buses cruising through their stuffy little neighborhood! (Either that or Linett has an admirably sick sense of humor. I'd love to see the shocked looks on the faces of the blue bloods as buses began belching exhaust into their leafy yards!)
Still, kudos to Eric Gibson and the crew at the WSJ for continuing to follow the Barnes story. The arts people at the WSJ have run more opinion pieces on the Barnes than the Philly Inky's arts people.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 | Permanent
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Curatorman = MBAman?
UPDATE: Using this post as (part of his) context, Joseph Clarke discusses the role of the architect today.
As the mega-museums realize that traveling shows from their collections can be a major source of income, I wonder if the role of curators at those institutions is evolving. Is John Elderfield, for example, more valuable to MoMA as a collection guru who can package and create shows for multi-million dollar fees, or is he more valuable putting together a retrospective of the Delaunays?
This question is prompted by the MoMA in Berlin show, which opened this past weekend. The show is costing Berlin about $11 million, some of which is going to shipping, etc., but MoMA will still clear a tidy sum. The show visited Houston before traveling to Europe. I think MoMA earned $7 million for the Houston show, but I can't find the exact amount. (Readers?)
As other museums see the money MoMA is making, will museum directors instruct their curatorial staff to try to send permanent collection shows on the road? Surely the Guggenheim has noticed that a permanent collection show outdrew Matthew Barney. Given their money issues... And what about the Whitney? The Met? SF MOMA? LACMA? MOCA LA?
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 | Permanent
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The Met gets a deal!
Carol Vogel, MAN's favorite New York Times reporter and quite possibly our very most-est favorite-ist reporter on the planet, has again buried the lede. In her story today about the Met's expand-within-the-building plan, Vogel reveals that Met director Philippe de Montebello has apparently designed the improvements himself, acting as both the Met's director and the Met's architect and building engineer. This makes de Montebello's $518,151 salary, his $94,469 in benefits and deferred compensation, and his $253,963 expense account look like a real steal! Here's the key paragraph:
"[de Montebello] said he has spent years studying historic buildings — from Roman villas to the Colosseum — to come up with the most appropriate architecture for the new Roman Court. Mr. de Montebello also assessed every nook and cranny, from air shafts to stairwells, to determine how best to use the museum's space to keep pace with its vast and growing collections."
MAN's questions for Vogel:
- Did de Montebello do any of this inspection while on his hands and knees? If so, does anyone have pictures? (MAN wants them!)
- Did de Montebello find any missing objects from the Barnes Foundation in any of the "nooks and crann[ies]" he "assessed?"
- Given de Montebello's compensation package, shouldn't he really leave air shaft examination to trained personnel?
This paragraph would never, ever pass muster in a story about Sen. Kerry or a Superfund cleanup. Obviously Vogel is engaged in a bit of sucking-up/museum director worship here. (If she's not, I'm serious -- MAN wants pictures of de Montebello sticking his mug into air shafts.) So why do Times editors allow such sloppiness in a front-page story about a museum?
Around the blogosphere:
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Five Artists = Five Curators
Five artists I'd like to see curate a show:
- Richard Serra. Just because.
- David Hockney. Lots of art historical references in his work, this book.
- Sally Mann. What inspired the new wet wet collodion work? (Among other reasons.)
- Edward Burtynsky does Carleton Watkins. Big landscapes, big nature, little people.
- Brice Marden.
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Monday linkage
On Friday LAT'er Christopher Knight reviewed that Cathy Opie-curated Mapplethorpe show I've referenced on the right-hand side. Because Knight's review is not online unless you contribute to the Kenneth Turan/Robert Hilburn Pension Fund (and, I suppose, Knight's too) and because you're about to hear a lot about Cathy Opie from me and others in the coming weeks, I'm excerpting:
"In 1993, Catherine Opie made a brilliant photograph that could be the poster image for the dramatic civil rights issue of gay marriage. A stick-figure drawing, like a child's earnest scrawl, showed two smiling girls holding hands in front of a cheerful house. This sentimental image of innocent love had been carved with a knife blade into the freckled skin of Opie's own back. Its bloody, scarified trail offers eloquent testimony to the complex visceral anguish within familial life.
"At Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Opie has organized a show of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89), whose work would be historic if only because its frequent homosexual subject matter slammed the empty closet door and nailed it shut. Given her own photographic sensibility, she's an ideal curator for his.
"'Pictures, Pictures' brings together 44 Mapplethorpe works from the '70s and '80s, arrayed with sharp insight and great style. Opie rarely strays far from ideas of home and communities in her own photographs; her Mapplethorpe show underscores similar - though differently constructed - ideas in his. Autobiography moves to the foreground."
Around the blogosphere:
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Isidro Blasco @ DCKT Contemporary
 What on earth are those things? They hang on a wall, they're made of pictures and wood and screws and glue and clamps. They're photos that have been built out, kind of like buildings. Kind of like buildings...
They're sculptographic models or something. Whatever they are, they're made by a Spanish New Yorker named Isidro Blasco who is now showing at DCKT Contemporary in Chelsea. Blasco is also featured in shows at The Sculpture Center and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Spain later this year.
Blasco’s work provides cross-training for the eye. As I stood in DCKT, every Blasco piece competed for my attention. My gaze moved up and down his constructions, in and out their crevices and across the terrain of their surfaces. 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.
 Blasco's strongest work plays with hallways and the verticality of staircases and fire escapes. Each is perfect for Blasco's work: hallways provide great visual lines and recession, so Blasco makes them into concave constructions. Fire escapes and staircases are similarly active along a vertical axis, and Blasco builds them as our eye experiences them.
Blasco's architectural approach to art-making is a product of his life experience. A native of Spain, Blasco's work reflects a the claustrophobia of someone unaccustomed to the tight interior spaces of New York City. Blasco's emphasis on architectural space is no surprise given that he is a dissertation short of earning a doctorate in architecture.
One of the fun things about Blasco's work is how it exists as lots of different things at once. It's photography -- after all, the work is built with photos. It's architectural model -- the work is built with plywood and glue and screws and clamps. It's sculpture -- to completely see the work a viewer has to walk all the way around it.
Isidro Blasco is on view from February 6 to March 6 at DCKT Contemporary, 537 West 24th Street, New York, New York 10011. (212) 741-9955. Blasco is also included in a group show at The Sculpture Center, In Practice. It will be on view until April 6.
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How'd that happen? + Fun with Blake!
 How did hipper-than-thou Chelsea gallery John Connelly Presents get into the Armory Show after deadline and without applying...
Because I just have to post this: Video of Blake Gopnik in the dark. He finds an elephant "unavoidably touching." Another work makes him a little "twitchy." (Not safe for work. Well, maybe it is. I mean, he IS in the dark, so who knows? And look Blake, I'm doing what Douglas Gordon did -- I must be a great artist too!) I mean...
 "It’s wonderful to be able to pull apart something that grabs us in its natural version. To pull apart something that when you see it in video or on the screen is so exciting you can’t even figure out what’s going on in a sense. And seeing exactly how it was put together, seeing exactly how it works, frame-by-frame-by-frame, shot-by-shot."
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Rick Joy @ the National Building Museum
 Rick Joy is one of my favorite architects. He's not well-known on the East Coast -- so far all of his buildings with one or two exceptions have been built in the Southwestern desert -- so I was thrilled to see that he was lecturing at the National Building Museum on Wednesday night. (More at Unfolio.)
You'll probably hear a lot more about Joy in the coming months and years. While he's best known for his desert houses, he's building a home for Francis Ford Coppola and his wife in the California wine country, he's shortlisted for the new Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, and he may be involved in Richard Meier's West Side Highway project in NYC. (If you're in Denver on March 15, Joy will be making an open-to-the-public presentation of his proposal.)
One of the interesting things about Joy is that he talks about minimalist visual artists providing a sourcebook of images and ideas for his work, not minimalist architects.
"It's not about trying to be minimal," Joy said. "It's about trying to allow a sensory tuning-in to occur."
In a design for an Aman Resorts property in southern Utah, Joy (and two collaborators) have designed a spa that is cribbed from James Turrell. Joy uses sheets of steel in a Serra-esque way: the viewer is aware that it's steel but it's somehow softer and more inviting than steel should be. When Joy builds a wall out of white drywall tilted up against a rammed-earth structural wall, it's easy to see some McCracken in the idea.
Joy even sounds like a minimalist artist. He talked about his respect for materials, about rammed earth as being spiritual stuff, about loving the "honesty, integrity, and completeness" of his materials.
 Perhaps because of his love for the desert, Joy treats the desert itself as one of his materials. (The rammed earth he uses comes from an Arizona company, so, in a sense, the desert is one of his materials.) Joy talked about how as he wanted visitors to his buildings to smell the sage of the desert on their way into the house. In the bedroom of one home, Joy built a little window on the floor so that the clients could open it and smell the star jasmine outside.
The interiors of Joy's buildings, mostly homes, are visually minimal in the extreme, but are also sensually vibrant. Joy proudly showed off one project where, when you enter it, the ground crunches under your feet, water from a fountain fills your ears and the smell of daffodills wafts over you. Stairs are built to sound like distant bells as you walk on them. Cutouts in walls frame mountain views. (Joy's work is thoroughly informed by Mies, from the cutouts to the use of glass.)
Joy's buildings are designed to be visually neutral, even invisible. (He describes them as duckblinds in the desert.) At the NBM he talked about how he wanted his buildings to be so inocuous that they have the same profile as desert shadows. I noticed that none of the buildings he showed in his slide show were higher than the surrounding saguaro cactus. Detail is everything. Joy is so proud of his attention to detail that he took great pride in showing off a bathroom exhaust fan he'd designed.
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Friday mishmash
(Mish mash is probably two words, but it looks cool as one word.)
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Gallerists, please...
Coming tomorrow: thoughts on a lecture by Rick Joy @ the National Building Museum.
Inspired by a good discussion over at art.blogging.la, a weekend/early week of scores of gallery visits, and one gallerist who, upon hearing I'd penned a couple stories for a culture magazine (Black Book), told me that she didn't think that culture 'zines should do stories on art because "the people" might think it's "serious criticism," some tips and requests for gallerists:
- Buy some benches. Put them in your galleries. I wear old, beat up, comfy tennis shoes to the hippest galleries... and despite that fashion sacrifice, my feet still get tired.
- Shoot your show. Shoot your show the first week it goes up. This serves your artist and provides images for your website, the media, etc. I'm trying to write about an artist for artnet.com right now and one gallery refuses to tell me when (or if) they'll shoot his show. It's fine if the gallery doesn't like me -- I'm a big boy and I can handle that -- but don't take out your dislike for me on your artist.
- When someone, anyone, asks for a CD of low-resolution images of your current show, hand them a CD. You should have a stack of them at your desk. Hassling writers, artists, collectors or curators about who they are or why they want the images is just plain silly. You should want your artist's work out there in the hands of People Who Care. And if the images are low-resolution, say 72 dpi, no one can do anything naughty with them.
- Have a website. I'm stunned by how many galleries don't have websites. (Artists, complain to your gallerists! They represent you.) I'm even more stunned by galleries that have websites but don't bother updating them but once every six months. We want to know what your current show is!
- Have a price list available on the front desk. Don't give me a hard time if I ask about prices. I was in Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco last year and I wanted to write about the show there. Because there were lots of Chinese words in the titles of the photographs, I asked for a list of the work so I could double-check my spelling. The gallery told me no, they couldn't do that, because -- gasp! -- there were prices on the list of works. I shook my head in disbelief, turned and walked out. I didn't write about the show -- until it got to a gallery in New York.
- If you say you open at 11 am, open at 11 am.
- Smile! I think I've seen three gallerina/o smiles in the last week. I see more smiles than that in one visit to Starbucks.
- From blogger and artist Franklin Einspruch: "Wall labels are not a catastrophe, contrary to popular tastes in gallery installation. The cutting-edge thing to do is to leave the walls blank around the art, and instead, make a handout with a floor plan of the gallery labeled with numbers where the art is, the numbers corresponding to a list of titles, media, etc. When I'm handed one of these things, I think, 'What is this, an Easter egg hunt?'"
- If readers send in more good ideas, I'll add them to the list.
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Candidate for the Barnes ED?
We here at MAN take seriously our responsibility to, well, snarkiness. So without further ado, we present to you Christian Narkiewicz-Lain as a candidate to be the next director of the Barnes Foundation. As you'll read in this fascinatingly bizarre Chicago Tribune story (username: ajreader; password: access), he is wacky enough.
BTW, that link comes from AJ, our benevolent host. MAN has been on AJ for about a month now and I've had a total blast here. My thanks to Doug McLennan.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 18, 2004 | Permanent
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The crawl and the eye
Last week, along with several friends, I walked through the Hirshhorn's Douglas Gordon survey. (Apparently if you're under 40 and haven't created a body of work rich enough for it to be called a retrospective, museums call it your show a survey. As a result, perhaps we are not supposed to comment on the thinness of the show. After all, it's just a survey, not a full-blown mid-career retro.)
My friends loved the show; I was completely bored. While the installation was well done, the work itself was utterly dull. I kept telling people that there was nothing in the show I actually wanted to look at, that I found the show visually tiresome.
Case in point: Douglas' Self-portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe. The wall text identifying the work was bigger than the actual work, so the eye gravitated toward the text first. By the time I'd read the title, I didn't need to see the work: Gordon wearing a blonde wig. Such is the problem with much conceptual art: Once you grasp the idea, you often don't need to look at the art.
I thought about this on the train home from New York on Sunday morning. Everyone who looks at a work of art subconsciously puts it to a test in the first three-to-five seconds they look at it. I know I do. For me it's a very straightforward test: Do I want to look at this? Is there something here to keep me visually engaged?
As I sat on the train, I wondered if the nature of the Chelsea crawl, 30-40 galleries in six hours, creates or contributes to that. Or does it just discipline the art-goer to look closely and recognize what s/he already likes?
More later perhaps, and perhaps other arts bloggers will weigh in. (The lit bloggers talk about this stuff alla time -- the arts bloggers don't, so...)
Bloggers discuss: Collected Works.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 18, 2004 | Permanent
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Things that scare us
ArtForum's weekly roundup of foreign-language arts coverage often includes gems. Here's one from today about the Berlin Biennial: "When you go to the museum, don't forget your reading glasses," advises the Süddeutsche Zeitung's Holger Liebs, who likens the exhibition's theoretical bent to an "introductory seminar on subcultures."
And speaking of annoying things, check out Artopia, where John Perreault is absotively correct about dogs and phones.
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Tuesday Miscellany
There are nine primarly links in this morning's post. Each is a good bit of fun, but it's not like I've found Mapplethorpe's long lost nude photos of Matt Drudge. Er, I mean of Schwarzenegger. (I hear the sound of MAN readers rushing to Google.)
- Greg Allen blogs the opening of The Quilts of Gee's Bend at the Corcoran. Greg mentions that the Classic Rug Collection -- which almost has to be a classier outfit than it sounds like it is -- is offering knockoffs of TQoGB. This is kind of like museums that sell painted knock-offs of works in their collection. Or exactly like Thomas Kinkade galleries. And of course, the Corcoran being the Corcoran, the Classic Rug folks were hawking their wares at the exhib opening. Classy.
- Ionarts with a cool idea: get art with your library card.
- To clear up any misunderstanding in the TQoGB post, the Classic Rug Collection sells actual rugs-for-your-floor based on TQoGB. Not patterned toupees based on same.
- The Philly artblog with a delightfully honest post about a recent Richard Artschwager talk in Philly.
- Conscientious finds Richard Avedon's website. Is anyone else tired of seeing the same Avedon photo in the New Yorker every week?
- Janet Jackson vs. Robert Mapplethorpe, on KCRW's ArtTalk (that's LA's NPR station).
- Queen Sofia of Spain gave a tour of ARCO, the big art fair in Spain. Because it's fun: Picture pResident Bush giving a tour of Art Basel Miami Beach or The Armory Show. When you're done laughing (and I know I can barely type after picturing that), check out Walter Robinson's ARCO wrap-up at Artnet, complete with a pic o' the queen.
- I will be writing about this and Mark Rothko later this week, I think. (Of course, I was writing about Mapplethorpe too but certain LA galleries (Arcm-ay Wynsel-ay, we're talking about you) are lousy at delivering what they promise...)
- In your best sing-songy, school-yard voice: Vince and David, sitting in a tree, L-U-S-T-I-N-G; Vince and Collier's boys, sitting in a tree, W-R-E-S-T-L-I-N-G.
- Someone with my exact same name writes about Carter Potter on artnet.
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Questions for Malcolm Rogers
In this Sunday Boston Globe piece by Geoff Edgers (click it today, I think the link expires on Tuesday), MFA Boston director Malcolm Rogers comes across as stunningly arrogant, a man above addressing criticisms made of his museum-for-rent philosophy. Instead he laughs at his critics and diminishes them based on arguments they never made. This is intellectual dishonesty unbecoming the leader of a museum.
So, Malcolm Rogers, here are the questions and issues you aren't addressing:
- In the Globe story, you conceded that there is a small "issue here." Could you outline the "issue" and explain why it is a small issue and not a big one?
- Are there groups, people or organizations to whom you would not rent the art in your museum's collection? If there are not, please list a few of them and explain how renting to those groups are different from renting works to a private corporation gallery that is based in a casino?
- In Edgers' story, he (apparently) paraphrases you asking how people can be so critical of a show they haven't seen? Why is it not fair to criticize the concept of a museum renting out work to a for-profit gallery in a casino, regardless of what the resulting show is?
- The Guggenheim runs an accredited space at the Venetian Hotel. If this is really about sharing your Monets with culturally bereft Las Vegas, as you say, why not loan your Monets to the Vegas Guggenheim? Is it because they wouldn't pay you $1M+ and someone else would? Did you explore all available options regarding showing the Monets at an accredited, non-profit space?
- In talking with Suzanne Muchnic of the LA Times (here and jump here), you justified your decision to rent out your Monets by saying that you are always looking for "new funding source[s]." Museums do more than show art, a significant part of their mission is to preserve cultural legacies that are important to humankind. Is treating art as a "funding source" appropriate given a museum's mission? Can you give us some examples of what would be inappropriate funding sources for a museum?
Update: Felix Salmon jumps in here. I don't agree with him (well, his first sentence is brilliant! Brilliant!), but it's a good read.
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Revisiting Anne Truitt's Daybook, Day 4
 In this passage from Anne Truitt's journal Daybook, Truitt recalls a visit to the National Gallery. Truitt arrived at the NGA before it opened, waited patiently on the steps, and when the doors opened she made a beeline for a Rembrandt self-portrait. Truitt writes that Rembrandt painted it when he was 53. At the time of this visit, Truitt was 53. The image at left is Anne Appleby's Red Osier Dogwood (2001). (Appleby's work doesn't translate very well to the web, alas.)
"There is a sort of shame in naked pain. I used to see it in my patients when I was working in psychology and nursing. They found it more seemly, more expedient to pull over themselves thin coverlets of talk. There is wisdom in this, an unselfish honor in bearing one's burdens silently. But Rembrandt found a higher good worth the risk and painted himself as he knew himself, human beyond reprieve. He looks out from this position, without self-pity and without flourish, and lends me strength.
I sat for a long while in one of the rectangular courtyards, listening to the fountain. Feeling the artists all around me, I slowly took an unassuming place (for two of my own sculptures were somewhere in the museum) among the people whose lives, as all lives do, had been distilled into objects that outlasted them. Quilts, pin cushions, chairs, tables, houses, sculptures, paintings, tilled and retilled fields, gardens, poems -- all of validity and integrity. Like earthworms, whose lives are spent making more earth, we human beings also spend ourselves into the physical. A few of us leave behind objects judged, at least temporarily, worthy of preservation by the culture into which we were born. The process is, however, the same for us all. Ordered into the physical, in time we leave the physical, and leave behind us what we have made in the physical."
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Revisiting Anne Truitt's Daybook, Day 3
 This passage was written by Truitt in August of 1974. She was still at Yaddo (see yesterday's post) and was shortly to leave for Washington, DC. The work at left is a detail from a painting by San Antonio-based artist Augusto Di Stefano.
"Wood is haunting me. In 1961, I thought of making bare, unpainted wooden sculptures for the outdoors. On the National Cathedral grounds in Washington there is a carved wooden bench honed to honey color by weather. It stands under a tree, and so could a sculpture; this was my thought last spring as I ran my fingers ove rthe pure, bare surface of the bench. I have been thinking about Japanese wood and the heavenly order of humble materials.
I come to the point of using steel, and simply cannot. It's like the marriage proposal of a perfectly eligible man who just isn't loveable. It is wood I love."
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Carter Potter at Numark Gallery
 Work at left: Carter Potter, Detail from We Cure Everything #4 (Zebra).
From me on artnet.com about "Carter Potter: We Cure Everything," at Numark Gallery:
"I want to dislike Carter Potter's work, I really do.
It's bling-bling for the wall in your life. It's bright and shiny, kind of like a new toy or a Jeff Koons work, which may be the same thing. It puts that R.E.M./B-52s song Shiny Happy People in my head. I am not a shiny, happy people kind of person. Potter's art should annoy me.
Except. . . except I like it."
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Jim Sanborn + Dan Brown = Brown's next novel
Dan Brown is the It Novelist of the moment. (This is something like being the It Girl of the moment, only less breasty.) The Da Vinci Code, Brown's most recent novel, has been on the NYT bestseller list for 46 weeks and has spent most of them at the top.
MAN hears that Brown is a big Jim Sanborn fan. Washingtonians know Sanborn well -- he's a local artist who was recently featured in a a show at the Corcoran (with a concurrent show at Numark Gallery). Much of Sanborn's work deals with codes, cryptography and secrets. (His Kryptos sculpture, hidden from public view at the CIA, has been the subject of much attention, speculation and mystery.) Brown's books address codes, cryptography and secrets.
The fun is this: Brown is talking with Sanborn about his next novel. Expect it to be substantially Sanborn influenced.
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Revisiting Anne Truitt's Daybook, Day 2
 In July, 1974, Anne Truitt lived and worked at Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs. In the paragraphs immediately before this passage (from Daybook), Truitt talks about the joy of spending evenings at Yaddo, listening to poets read poetry. The image at left is a detail from a "tape drawing" by San Francisco-area artist Rosana Castrillo Diaz. (Courtesy Rosana Castrillo Diaz.)
"Poetry was drawn out of my life, pulled out into lines. Sculpture is not. The works stand as I stand; they keep me company. I realize this clearly here because I miss them. I brought only table sculptures with me [to Yaddo]. In making my work, I make what comforts me and is home for me.
I expanded into love with the discipline of sculpture. Although my intellectual reason for abandoning writing for sculpture in 1948 was that I found myself uninterested in the sequence of events in time, I think now that it was this love that tipped the balance. Artists have no choice but to express their lives. They have only, and that not always, a choice of process. This process does not change the essential content of their work in art, which can only be their life. But in my own case the fact that I have to use my whole body in making my work seems to disperse my intensity in a way that suits me."
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 11, 2004 | Permanent
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The Barnes Foundation Now
Given the recent Barnesian developments, I thought I'd do an overview of my thinking on the Barnes.
I have long favored:
- The overhaul of Barnes management, including an expanded and more active board;
- The move to the Parkway;
- The hanging of the collection exactly as it is now for at least six months of the year (allowing some of the higher-hung works to be seen during other parts of the year); and
- The devotion of a significant portion of the new building to historical exhibits about Barnes, early modern American art collecting, and the role of John Dewey, and the pragmatism and progressivism (particularly in education) that Dewey and Barnes espoused.
I won't rehash my arguments in favor of the move, but I acknowledge that pretty much every art critic in America disagres with me.
So given recent developments, here are some thoughts about what's next:
Judge Ott strongly hinted that if the Barnes can raise a $50M endowment (which would kick off around $2M-$2.5M a year), it's staying on Latch's Lane.
First, can the Barnes raise $50M for an endowment? The big question is the value of Ker-Feal, the Foundation's most valuable single sellable asset. If Ker-Feal isn't worth around $20M (hello! Inky!), it's hard to imagine the Barnes getting anywhere near $50M even with an expanded board. Even if they expand the board, how can they raise $50M to stay in Latch's Lane as long as the Barnes administrative leadership is losing pianos and vases at every turn? Individuals and foundations give money to endowments when they have confidence in the long-term leadership of an organization. If you were a donor, would you give the current Barnes leadership $1M? I think that even if Ker-Feal brings in $20M, the Barnes will have a darn hard time raising $50M from foundations and individuals.
Which would mean that to $50M, they'd have to sell off materials (archives, works of art, etc.) that are not on the gallery walls. I'm strongly opposed to this. The archives and works in the Foundation should be kept together, not sold off. Right now it looks like the Barnes has two options: sell of Foundation works to remain on Latch's Lane or move. I wonder what opponents of the move think of that choice.
I still favor a move, especially if staying in Latch's Lane means dismantling some of what Barnes built.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 11, 2004 | Permanent
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A new MAN file
This doesn't fit anywhere else, so we're forming an official MAN "What the Heck is That?" file. The first item has nothing to do with Jed Perl. I swear. (Not that it couldn't...)
Instead, I give you the College Art Association, which gave its annual Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism to the Guerilla Girls. Who don't write art criticism.
posted by tylergreendc @ Wednesday, February 11, 2004 | Permanent
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Revisiting Anne Truitt's Daybook, Day 1
 Blogs are shared daily journals. Humans have been journaling for almost as long as humans been writing. The difference between most journals and blogs is that blogs are open to public examination.
In 1978, when Apple sold 7,600 Apple II computers, Anne Truitt wrote a journal and opened it to public examination. It was published in 1982 as Daybook. Truitt's writings are full of personal observations, details, and introspection. In other words, it's just a journal. But it's a very good journal by a very good artist.
Now is a good time to re-read it: Truitt will be featured in MOCA LA's upcoming minimalism show and she is the subject of a show at Emory University's museum. It would be nice to see more Truitt shows. Truitt hasn't showed in her home metro area of Washington since 1995. Someone here should do a Truitt show.
For the rest of the week, MAN will feature a different passage from Daybook. Each day I'll pair Truitt's text with work that I think fits. Today, Truitt writes about her 1973-74 retrospective, organized by Walter Hopps. It opened at the Whitney before moving to the Corcoran:
"[F]or all the strains of retrospectives, I am most profoundly grateful to have had the opportunity to see my work. There were radiant moments. Like the night at the Corcoran Gallery of Art when Walter Hopps and I walked into the room in which we were preparing the exhibit. The sculptures stood in long rows, barely visible, lit only dimly by a skylight. We did not turn on the lights. I walked up and down the corridors between their massive forms, most of which towered over me, and held out both my hands to feel them, not touching them. They stood in their own space, in their own time, and I was glad in their presence."
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Dissent on Currin: finally!
 Finally, in the last week, a few voices of dissent about John Currin: After weeks of hearing even resolute Currin dislikers backtrack (the wishy-washy Kim Levin is Exhibit A), a few critics are expressing doubts about the MCA Chicago/Whitney Currin show.
Even the Whitney is celebrating the end of the Currin show with that image at the left. (Ed: Uh, no. That's from their ad reminding people to go see the show before it's gone. Nice try though.) At the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz wrote in semi-opposition to Currin. And at The New Republic Jed Perl says that we're all going to hell because all art sucks; and we're stupid and he's not; and how dare the people of the world even think nice things about John Currin; and he, Jed Perl, is so far above this crap that he really shouldn't be bothered to remind us how crappy it all is. (He did not add: "Kids these days just have it too easy." or "Kids these days should have to drink castor oil by the bottle just like I did.")
(Aside: If there's one thing I hate, it's agreeing with Jed Perl on anything. Perl and I agree that Currin is not God's gift to painting. But as usual, Jed Perl's writing on this topic is an abomination to both wordsmithing and reasoned thought everywhere. He is, almost certainly, the worst writer on art in North America.)
For the record, I'm working really hard not to go on an anti-Perl rant. He's just not worth it. Let's just say that Perl is far too in love with the passive voice, inspecific arguments, name-calling and crass, baseless characterizations. Why TNR lets him get away with some of that garbage is beyond me -- do you think Ryan Lizza would get away with as much passive voice as Perl is allowed?
Oh yeah, this post was about Currin wasn't it?
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Friday randomness
DC performance artist and gallerina Kathryn Cornelius dislikes inchoate art writing as much as I do. (That's right Fusebox: I'll see your 'effete' and raise you an 'inchoate!')
Artnet.com had a really good Thursday. The only way it could have been better? Photos of Charlie Finch doing yoga. (Aside to Walter, Sherry or someone else in NYC: You get 'em, MAN will post 'em! Bonus points for Charlie doing yoga with Adam and Larry at the Whitney.) Steve Mumford filed a new Baghdad Journal and there are lots of reasons to read the news roundup.
MANfave Chicha (OK, it's only sometimes art-related. But it's always Chicha!) is having fun at Coudal all month. The Fresh Signals section is much Chicha, much of the time. I think you shouldn't miss it. (Aside: Do you think Chicha knows that there is a lounge named after her here in DC? That reminds me, it's 2 pm on a Friday which means it's time for me to go find a martini.)
(Hint: You gotta click just about all the links to get all the jokes. Kind of like Jason Rhoades' art: You've got to see all of it to realize how much it sucks. Oh, wait, maybe you don't...)
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Bush, the NEA and the Barnes Foundation
(And with a headline like that, this post has the potential to bizarre and scary. I mean, could the Barnes lose a White House piano?)
Here's what it looks like is about to happen with the Barnes: An exhibit of early modern American paintings held by the Barnes but not in the galleries on Latch's Lane, is about to tour America. It looks like the project will be funded by an "American Masterpieces" grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. This would be a new NEA project, funded by the $18 million increase in the NEA's FY 2005 budget. The exhibit would include works by the Prendergasts, Glackens, Sloan, Lawson, and others. In other words, someone seems to be thinking, "The hinterlands deserve nothing but the weakest work in the Foundation's collection!" (This isn't a done deal, but it souonds close.)
 In Sunday's Philly Inky, Patricia Horn nestled this interesting sentence about halfway through her story: "The National Endowment for the Arts is in preliminary discussions with the Barnes to use some of the non-gallery American paintings as part of a tour of American masterpieces. "It would be a wonderful fit with us," said Felicia Knight, NEA director of communications." The WP's Jacqueline Trescott also raised the Barnes possibility here. (Aside to regular MAN readers: Why is it that I think everyone is burying their leads lately? Am I such a geek that only the obscure details interest me or are people really burying their leads? Methinks the latter... For example, The Art Newspaper never even mentioned that Cremaster was a relative flop.)
(Inky eds: We want more! Tell us more! This deserves its own story! Does the Barnes get a lump-sum government grant? Who curates the show, an indy curator or a new Barnes staffer or someone else? Where will it go? Could the works be sold after the show? Or during the show? Will any works come off of gallery walls to go in this show? Those tiny Demuth watercolors are precious but would they hold up to travel?)
I guess that the Barnes would likely pull some cash out of this, something that would count toward their $50 million goal/total. This program would also continue the Bush Administration's deeply conservative arts programs. You may recall that the Bushies thought that America needed a national Shakespeare tour too, because, after all, it's just damn hard to find Shakespeare in this country.
Sorry, but I just don't think America needs a traveling Glackens exhibit. I know that I'm happy that so much Glackens is in one place outside Philly and that I don't have to see it all that often. If I really want to visualize some Glackens, I'll just imagine what the love child of Claude Monet and Thomas Kinkade would paint. However, perhaps Glackens should be memorialized in some way. Perhaps a national ban on ever again painting gazebos.
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An LA paper exposes a Boston institution
If you care about art and the institutions that preserve it for all of us, this is a must read: In the LAT, Christopher Knight says that the Museum of Fine Arts Boston is "beyond loopy," and that it is behaving "baldly inappropriately." (He's right and other art critics in America should pile on.) Suzanne Muchnic explains the backstory. Both stories are here, with the jump here.
Knight's essay today is an example of the value of art critics. Too many American art critics only look at and write about exhibits; Knight takes on issues too. He's been the leading critic on the Barnes fiasco even though it was 2,800 miles away from LA and he's out in front of the east coast media on this Boston mess too. If you're an art critic whining about a perceived lack of influence, can it and think bigger. (Cases in point: At the Washington Post, Blake Gopnik has taken a pass on the Barnes mess (instead: neuroesthetics). In Philadelphia, Inky critic Edward Sozanski has opined about the Barnes only once. To the best of my memory, no NYT critic has opined on the Barnes.)
One note: Knight and Muchnic both, in different ways, say that museums are financially distressed. Well, kind of. Any financial distress caused by deciding to raise $425 million, as the MFAB is, is self-inflicted. Their operating budget, to the best of my ability to judge these things through tax returns, is in no real crisis. There are museums who are financially distressed: the GuggEnron and the Corcoran to name two. Self-inflicted injuries both.
What should happen next: Someone at the Washington Post should investigate (In case you just missed it, that was this morning's joke. Arts journalism at the Washington Post? Hah!) the deal under which the Phillips Collection sent works to Vegas a couple years ago and whether the Guggenheim, Steve Wynn, the casino or someone else was the loan-receiving institution. (The Phillips didn't "rent out" its works quite as crassly as MFAB -- they took the gate for the show.) When I tried to figure it out a couple weeks ago the trail was quite muddy. It's worth checking out.
And after you read those two, check out the new content on the right-hand side of MAN. Some fun links, some favorite young artists, some must-read books, lotsa fun (I hope).
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A Tale of Titian and Philip
Usually Titian painted commissions for wealthy patrons. It comes as no surprise that this is how he came to paint Venus With a Mirror. But when Titian died, Venus With a Mirror was in his personal collection, apparently having been rejected by several patrons. Here, revealed for the first time, is the true story of how Titian came to keep Venus.
The year is 1555. Tiziano Vecellio is presenting a painting to his patron, Philip II of Spain. Phil sits silently as the artist, now better known as Titian, pulls a curtain away from the painting, revealing it for the first time. Philip nods, but expresses no other emotions.
"You don't like it, P2?" Titian asks, using his pet name for Philip.
 "Well, it's, uh, it's..."
"Say what you think, Phil, I can take it." Titian began to look a little nervous.
"Well, er," Philip was rising to a full blush and stammered on for a moment before looking down. "Her breast, Tizi, her right breast is, is, uh... pruriently exposed."
Titian didn't know what pruriently meant, but it sounded bad so he gasped. He didn't quite understand... After all, breasts had been bared in art and performance for centuries. It never occurred to him that his patron would be such a prude about something so beautiful. But, of course, the last thing Titian wanted to do was offend his patron, so he searched his brain for an explanation.
"Oh, goodness!" Titian said, his eyes open wide for effect. "I'm so sorry! I hadn't noticed! I was just painting, and painting, and, well... I think, I think the model had a wardrobe malfunction and I was so busy painting I just didn't notice. "
Philip looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Titian continued.
"My lord, I am most apologetic. I could hardly have known that Venus' velvet robe would slip off of her torso. Obviously she didn't either -- she's clearly trying to cover up." Titian thought that last bit a rather good save.
Philip shook his head sternly and looked down at the artist. "It won't do, Tizi. It simply will not do."
Philip paused. He began to shake his head slowly, then with more vim, and finally his gesticulations became quite pronounced. Titian could see that Philip was either rising to anger or was providing a damn good facsimile thereof. "Tizi, Tizi, what will people think! If you walk around painting breasts -- breasts, Tizi! -- people will desire them! People will start dreaming of them! They'll start copulating in the, in the, in the streets, Tizi! We can't have commoners copulating in the streets!"
Titian thought about this. Given the amount of open sewage in the streets, this truly might not be a good thing. Still, it seemed to Titian that Philip ought to be more worried about raw sewage than about the representation of a beautiful breast on a piece of canvas.
"Golly Phil, I see what you mean. If people saw a breast and actually thought about copulating or anything like that, it could bring down the Spanish empire. I never thought of it that way."
Philip nodded wisely. "Tizi, people will talk. I'm going to have to punish you. I think I'll issue a stern statement proclaiming myself outraged and calling your painting offensive. We can't have breasts. You understand don't you?"
Titian nodded, said he understood, packed up the painting and took his leave of his patron. Once out of Philip's palace Titian stopped in the street to relieve himself. "True, I probably should have picked a more private spot," Titian thought to himself. "But hey, Philip was so busy getting worked up about Venus' breast that he probably won't have time to get mad about a little more sewage in the street."
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Monday news and notes
Hirshhorn curator Kerry Brougher is a busy guy. (You know him most recently as the organizer of Open City.) Brougher is now working on two shows: the Gwangju Biennial, of which he is co-curator, and a museum exhibit that will examine the relationship between art and music. Titled "Visual Music," it will travel to MOCA LA in February, 2005. The Hirshhorn isn’t sharing any details (!?), so we don't know who's in the show or when it will be up in DC.
 Regarding today's item about The Art Newspaper's attendance list: Writer Emma Beatty plays up (and so does ArtForum) this detail: "[O]ur survey of exhibition attendance in 2003 reveals a decline in the number of visitors to museum shows on both sides of the Atlantic." Actually, no, it doesn't. What about institutions that didn't reply? Did the same insitutions that replied last year reply this year? (If not, you can't compare the two lists and make the statement they made.) Were there fewer total visitors or just fewer visitors to the blockbusters and special exhibits traced by The Art Newspaper? How did their survey take into account the recent run of permanent collection shows at major museums? It's a fun list, but it's hardly a scientific or statistically significant report. TAN (and other publications that link to them) should be a little more upfront about the limitations of TAN's method and what their list doesn't reveal.
Would you believe that there hasn’t been a Jasper Johns show in Los Angeles in 20 years? A show of Johns’ works with numbers is up at LACMA and the LAT’s Christopher Knight takes a good look here (with jump here). My favorites are 5 (which reminds me of Demuth’s portrait of William Carlos Williams) and 8, with its visually punny reference to figure 8’s.
NYT chief critic Michael Kimmelman is usually one of the clearest, most direct critics around. Sometimes this manifests itself in hyper-gushy reviews. Sometimes, as on Sunday, it results in a fine essay. Read his piece comparing the process that gave us Santiago Calatrava’s PATH station and the process that resulted in the WTC memorial design selection.
AJ'er Terry Teachout on why the web is the place where so much of the interesting writing about art is happening. He's right. Related proof: This month's five featured blogs up in the blogroll on the right.
Special exhibitions are "retail opportunities." Chicago Tribune art critic Alan Artner talks with the new head of the Art Institute of Chicago, James Cuno. (Username: ajreader; Password: access) It's long but Cuno is an excellent counterpoint to the Thomas Krenses of the world. Print it out and read the whole thing.
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The 2006 Whitney Biennial: All Cleared Up
Last week we picked up on an item in The Art Newspaper that seemed to indicate that new Whitney director Adam Weinberg was planning to make the 2006 Whitney Biennial a permanent collection show instead of a traditional Whitney Biennial. This morning the writer of the story, TAN's chief U.S. correspondent Jason Edward Kaufman, wrote in to explain:
"I want to clear up a minor confusion about my piece on Adam Weinberg. My original text read, "Mr Weinberg has not decided how to organize the 2006 edition. Asked about future projects he mentions giving serious thought to an installation of the entire museum top-to-bottom with the collection." The edited version cut out the "asked about future projects," and the resulting text could suggest he's thinking of swapping the collection show for the Biennial, which is not the case. Sorry for the confusion."
Worth noting: Kaufman still scooped NYT scribe Carol Vogel regarding the Whitney's consideration of the Armory as a site for future Biennials.
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The Cremaster Myth: Attendance
Last week The Art Newspaper came out with their annual museum attendance list. The concept is simple: rank a jillion museum shows by average number of visitors per day.
As has been the case of late, TAN buried the lede: Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cycle wasn't the Krensian success that the Guggenheim (and a compliant press corps) had claimed. Here's why: Cremaster drew 3,151 visitors a day to the GuggEnron. Meanwhile, the show immediately after Cremaster drew 3,314 visitors a da, outdrawing Cremaster by over 100 people a day. What outdrew Cremaster? A permanent collection hanging.
But wait, wasn't Cremaster the biggest museum attendance story of the year? Yes, but only if you keep in mind that for all the money that the GuggEnron spent on the Barney myth, Barney was less of a draw than a (much cheaper to install and market) permanent collection show.
Other tidbits from TAN's list:
- We're in for more Richard Avedon shows (groan). The Met's Avedon show was No. 7 for the year with 4,932 people a day.
- How many people go to museums? Every day it was up, the No. 1 show on the list drew half as many people as show up at an average Knicks game. Same for much of the top ten.
- The Hirshhorn's Gyroscope 'non-exhibit' (so they say) isn't on the list presumably because the Hirshhorn doesn't consider a rotating permanent collection a show even though it had "gyroscope" signage made up, there was a beginning and ending date, etc. Still, I wonder...
- Who would have guessed a de Stael show would rank with Titian, Matisse, Picasso, Manet, Velazquez and Leonardo as a top ten show?
- Speaking of which, Thomas Struth was in the top ten, but his Met dates overlapped completely with the Leonardo drawings show. Somehow TAN missed this too.
- Where are the LA shows? Not a single LA museum show broke the top fifty. The top LA show was a Illuminating the Renaissance @ the Getty with about 2,000 visitors a day. I wonder if LACMA and MOCA LA responded to the survey? (Working on it...)
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