Modern Art Notestag:www.artsjournal.com,2008-02-19:/man/132008-05-16T14:41:23ZTyler Green's modern & contemporary art blogMovable Type Open Source 4.1Quiet Fridaytag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135982008-05-16T13:24:24Z2008-05-16T14:41:23ZI'll be back Monday with some thoughts on Robert Rauschenberg and some thoughts on the most disappointing aspect of the media coverage of his death. Until then, enjoy taking the market at commerce off of your computer screen...Also, I'm now...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
off of your computer screen...
Also, I'm now on Facebook. Not sure what I'll do with it, but I'm open to suggestions. ]]>
Afternoon news: GAO on SI, Barnes rulingtag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135922008-05-15T20:35:00Z2008-05-15T20:39:35ZMontgomery County Orphans' Court Judge Stanley Ott has thrown out a suit seeking to provoke a hearing on the Barnes Foundation's move to Philadelphia. The Philly Inky's placeholder story is here, the ruling is here.The General Accounting Office has released...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
Montgomery County Orphans' Court Judge Stanley Ott has thrown out a suit seeking to provoke a hearing on the Barnes Foundation's move to Philadelphia. The Philly Inky's placeholder story is here, the ruling is here.
The General Accounting Office has released its report on Smithsonian governance. Apparently the GAO is as unhappy with the SI regents' performance too. The phrase "persistent neglect of duties" pops up again and again...
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Industry in art: Cao Fei at the 2008 Carnegietag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135872008-05-15T12:33:40Z2008-05-15T13:06:43ZPreviously: Impressionism, Sheeler, Epstein.Throughout the week I've shared examples of artists whose work reflected the way people in their time thought about industry. Today industry is dying in the U.S., and I can't think of an American artist who spends...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/manPreviously: Impressionism, Sheeler, Epstein.
Throughout the week I've shared examples of artists whose work reflected the way people in their time thought about industry. Today industry is dying in the U.S., and I can't think of an American artist who spends much time on the subject. As a result of globalization, industry has moved to Asia, especially to China. Artists have too.
The best example of an artist's interest in Chinese industry is surely Canadian Ed Burtynsky's photographs of Chinese factories and the surrounding industry 'towns.' Burtynsky, who is obsessed with photographing the biggest examples of 'X,' is especially interested in the previously unimaginable scale of Chinese factories. A recent documentary about him, Manufactured Landscapes, emphasized this with a remarkably long opening shot that traversed the length of an entire factory floor. (See the trailer here. The Burtynsky below is 2004's Manufacturing #7, Textile Mill, Xiaoxing, Zhejiang, China.)
Chinese artist Cao Fei is also interested in China's industrialization. Her interest is in the people who fill Chinese factories, the assembly lines of young people who do careful, dexterous manual labor on the cheap. In Whose Utopia (still above, 2006-07), on view now at the Carnegie International, Cao focuses on the people in China's massive factories, suggesting how an active fantasy life can try to make up for the repetitive drudgery of menial work. Cao shows us a line worker dressed up as a ballerina, another dancing, and so on, all posed in their work environment, complete with the painful artificial lighting therein.
I don't think it's the best work in the Carnegie. Whose Utopia never really gets beyond the surface of the issue it tries to aestheticize. I found myself grimacing rather than understanding or feeling. The installation doesn't help: Whose Utopia is awkwardly placed at the foot of a stairway and the sound is difficult to hear. But it is the first work of art I've seen about workers in China's factories. It's a start. Artists have been fascinated by industry for 140 years, so I'd bet we'll see more.
Previous Carnegie International posts: The bleakness of the 2008 CI. Vija Celmins and Mark Bradford.Richard Hughes. ]]>
The Smithsonian goes Hollywoodtag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135822008-05-14T18:37:45Z2008-05-14T22:46:48ZStarting next week Night at the Museum II: Escape from the Smithsonian, a Ben Stiller vehicle, will be filmed at the Smithsonian. This is the first time the Smithsonian has allowed its name to be used in a commercial movie...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
Night at the Museum II: Escape from the Smithsonian, a Ben Stiller vehicle, will be filmed at the Smithsonian. This is the first time the Smithsonian has allowed its name to be used in a commercial movie title. See the complete memo from Smithsonian acting Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture Richard Kurin after the jump. ]]>
It is the season for sequels! This e-mail is the sequel to the one you inadvertently received on Monday, regarding the details for the filming of "Night at the Museum II" at the Smithsonian next week.
Two years ago, "Night at the Museum" was a huge hit for 20th Century Fox. Now the sequel to that movie, "Night at the Museum II: Escape from the Smithsonian," starring Ben Stiller, is about to start shooting at the Smithsonian.
Set primarily in Washington D.C., the movie will include scenes at the Castle and, in particular, the National Air and Space Museum. Filming activity--setting up, shooting, breaking down--begins on Friday, May 16, and concludes on Wednesday, May 21.
While you may have seen this movie mentioned in the news media, the agreement with 20th Century Fox was just recently signed and the arrangements made official.
This is the first time in its 162-year history that the Smithsonian has allowed its name to be used in the title of a movie produced for theatrical distribution. Why now? The popularity of the first movie convinced us that this is an innovative way to capture the imagination and curiosity of a young audience. The film positively portrays museums and historical artifacts and will shine the bright lights of Hollywood on the Institution, focus attention on our collection and bring to life heroes such as Amelia Earhart and the Wright Brothers.
The cast of "Night at the Museum II: Escape from the Smithsonian" includes some of the actors from the first movie--Stiller, Owen Wilson, Dick Van Dyke--and additional characters played by Amy Adams and Hank Azaria and others.
The original film, shot at the Museum of Natural History in New York, resulted in increased attendance and interest in the museum's collections. We anticipate a similar reaction following the release of this sequel in May 2009.
While I know many of you have talents that exceed your daily duties and responsibilities here at the Institution, the film company has told us it does not need extras while it is shooting on our campus. Instead, bring your talents to the staff picnic on July 1 and share them with your colleagues!
I want to thank the staff who have worked tirelessly on the contract negotiations and making arrangements for the filming. And I also thank those of you who will be escorting the crews, protecting the collection and those who will be somewhat displaced for a few hours while scenes are shot near your work areas.
Sincerely,
Richard Kurin Acting Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture]]>
Wednesday linkstag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135092008-05-14T17:09:18Z2008-05-14T19:09:27ZInstalling El Anatsui at the Nelson-Atkins.Rolling out Eames chairs on NBC circa 1956.Doug Aitken's Migration (at the CI) meets a Disney video from Boing Boing.There's been much discussion of Robert Rauschenberg's 1953 Erased de Kooning Drawing in the last 24...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
The "Harvard Art Museum" or "Renzo Piano's Art Museum for Harvard" or whatever the former HUAM is, was, were or will be, is sort of announcing expansion plans.
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Rauschenberg post updatetag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135792008-05-14T13:57:42Z2008-05-14T13:58:41ZI'm still updating this post of Rauschenberg coverage. And I'll have a post of my own on the artist soon....Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
this post of Rauschenberg coverage. And I'll have a post of my own on the artist soon. ]]>
Industry in art: Mitch Epsteintag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135772008-05-14T12:30:36Z2008-05-15T13:10:23ZPreviously: Impressionism, Sheeler. Next: Cao Fei at the Carnegie International.In the fifty years it takes us to get from Sheeler to Mitch Epstein (which is about the same amount of time it took us to get from impressionism to Sheeler...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/manPreviously: Impressionism, Sheeler.Next: Cao Fei at the Carnegie International.
In the fifty years it takes us to get from Sheeler to Mitch Epstein (which is about the same amount of time it took us to get from impressionism to Sheeler and the precisionists), we changed: Love Canal. Cleveland's river caught fire. Superfund sites. The Soviet degradation of eastern Europe. Chernobyl. Climate change.
Epstein has lived through all this, and its impact on him shows in his work, most notably his American Power series, which started in 2003. [This is Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia, 2004. It's in SFMOMA's collection.] Gone is the impressionist co-existence with industry, and gone is Sheeler's awe. After being banished by Sheeler, people are back -- but they're hidden from our view. (There are people in a number of other 'American Power' pictures.) The pollution that is so romanticized in impressionism -- smoke from smokestacks melding into clouds -- permeates everything in Amos. It's Turner's mist, only worse. The shadow of the tree in the foreground of the picture is sickly.
Epstein's picture is foreboding, even scary. I'm tempted to yell into those houses, 'Do you people realize...' And I know that they do, and it's a little bit heartbreaking.
I'm not sure exactly when in the 20th-century artists went from lionizing industry (think of all those heroic WPA-era pictures, or Margaret Bourke-White's love of shiny, machined things) to being wary of it. In her book on earthworks Suzaan Boettger argues that earthworks are deeply influenced by the environmental movement, but that's different. Time-wise though, it's probably right around 1970 or so... ]]>
Getty staff cuts announcedtag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135702008-05-13T23:21:15Z2008-05-14T01:58:57ZIf you read this story in the Los Angeles Times and you're looking for Getty CEO James Wood's March memo, it's here....Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
this story in the Los Angeles Times and you're looking for Getty CEO James Wood's March memo, it's here. ]]>
Robert Rauschenberg, dead at 82tag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135652008-05-13T15:42:19Z2008-05-15T16:58:52ZObituaries: Michael Kimmelman, Alan Artner, Christopher Knight (part two via PBS), AP, Rachel Campbell Johnston, Blake Gopnik (who gives credit for the recent Combines show to the Met rather than to MOCA, which organized it), Alastair Macaulay, Diane Haithman, Rauschenberg's...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
Michael Kimmelman, Alan Artner, Christopher Knight (part two via PBS), AP, Rachel Campbell Johnston, Blake Gopnik (who gives credit for the recent Combines show to the Met rather than to MOCA, which organized it), Alastair Macaulay, Diane Haithman, Rauschenberg's Time magazine covers, Kriston Capps, Richard Lacayo, Regina Hackett, Peter Plagens, Jen Graves, Ed Schad, Rauschenberg's 'hometown' paper, the SW Florida News-Press. Also: A nice New York magazine-enabled excerpt from Mark Stevens' and Annalyn Swan's de Kooning bio is here. ]]>
Industry in art: Charles Sheelertag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135642008-05-13T15:38:57Z2008-05-13T15:38:39ZNota bene: I'll keep the Rauschenberg post at the top today, updating it as I can. As a result, this will be the last 'industry' post today. Continued from this morning...This is Charles Sheeler's 1931 Classic Landscape, from the collection...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/manNota bene: I'll keep the Rauschenberg post at the top today, updating it as I can. As a result, this will be the last 'industry' post today. Continued from this morning...
This is Charles Sheeler's 1931 Classic Landscape, from the collection of the National Gallery of Art. The people are gone. There is no sense of siting; whereas 50 years earlier the impressionists showed industry within the context of suburbia and bourgeois weekenders, Sheeler shows us a giant Ford Motor Co. plant as a self-contained monstrosity. There are no people visible in this painting or in any of Sheeler's Rouge River paintings. Pissarro used a gravel path as the diagonal that led us into this painting; Sheeler uses industry itself in the form of a railroad track.
One similarity between this Sheeler and the 1870s French paintings: Impressionists often showed smokestack emissions melding with clouds. Sheeler does too. ]]>
Industry in art: Impressionismtag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135622008-05-13T12:30:24Z2008-05-13T12:56:52ZLast week I posted a Manet that I first remembered seeing in a T.J. Clark book. Writing the post inspired me to pull the book off of a shelf and to re-read it.One of the chapters in The Painting of...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/manLast week I posted a Manet that I first remembered seeing in a T.J. Clark book. Writing the post inspired me to pull the book off of a shelf and to re-read it.
One of the chapters in The Painting of Modern Life is substantially about how the impressionists incorporated industry (or pointedly didn't) in their paintings of early Parisian suburbia. I wrote about this a little bit here last April when I discussed a fine Pissarro show at the Baltimore Museum of Art: Impressionists, especially Manet and Pissarro (the Indianapolis Museum of Art's The Banks of the Oise near Pontoise is at left), used suburban smokestacks as compositional keystones, as 'rhymes' for other elements of their paintings, and as a curious (to our eyes) backdrop for bourgeois leisure time.
Consider: In 1863 Manet was putting his frolicking urbanites at play in forests, as French painters had done for generations. By the mid-1870s he was putting them along the Seine and in front of a smokestack. For Parisians the playground had changed, and it revealed something about how they were happy to share space with industry. One hundred and forty years later...
Throughout the day I'll feature some rapid-fire posts on how artists have portrayed industry, how it's a reflection of the times in which they made their work. I'll wrap up the mini-series of posts tomorrow morning (back) at the Carnegie International. ]]>
Webcam delightstag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135562008-05-12T19:19:24Z2008-05-12T19:29:48ZI'm a sucker for museum construction webcams, so when I read the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin say that a Renzo Piano-designed bridge between the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing and Millenium Park was going in over the weekend, I...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/manI'm a sucker for museum construction webcams, so when I read the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin say that a Renzo Piano-designed bridge between the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing and Millenium Park was going in over the weekend, I looked forward to daylight and checking out the AIC's webcam. Here's the image I took from it at about 3:15 EDT. The latest full-size JPEG will be that link, and here's a Kamin update. ]]>
The Carnegie International: Richard Hughestag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135382008-05-12T16:05:46Z2008-05-12T16:17:13ZAt first glance, it is a discarded, moldy, soggy, disgusting mattress. It looks like it's been in the weeds for a while: Grass seems to be growing where water has pooled in the middle. Mushrooms are pushing up too. Only...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/manAt first glance, it is a discarded, moldy, soggy, disgusting mattress. It looks like it's been in the weeds for a while: Grass seems to be growing where water has pooled in the middle. Mushrooms are pushing up too. Only a musty stench would make the scene more complete.
The 'mattress' one of three Richard Hugheses in one of the most dour galleries in the Carnegie International. Last week I said that curator Douglas Fogle's CI was one of the bleakest shows in recent memory. Hughes' gallery is especially grim. Everything here points toward when societal disintegration has progressed to abandonment. There is The Big Sleep (2007, above), Chandlerian in both title and allusion to the inevitable fatalism of noir. (But Gober-ian in construction: The Big Sleep is made of jesmonite, pigment, acrylic paint, modeling putty and plastic.) In the middle of the gallery are two shoes with their laces tied together, as they might be if someone had tossed them over a power line. (Trip Over, 2007, below.) Except here the laces are on the floor, under a 'brick' and the shoes are sticking straight up in the air. Are we underwater? Is that why paint is peeling off the walls, revealing layer after layer after layer of prior care? (That would be untitled, 2008.) Did climate change cause sea levels to rise that much? Or did something else cause all this?
Along the same line as Hughes' work is Doug Aitken's Migration: 365 Hotel Rooms (stills here),
in which animals have re-taken land (and hotels) apparently given up by
humans. Ditto in Bruce Conner's photograms in the Carnegie's Hall of
Sculpture: There are no people in them, only vapors left behind. In all of these works, humans seem to have vanished.
None of these artists t offer any looks at what might have gone wrong, why the people just got up and left. In fact, that's one of the most fascinating things about the 2008 CI: There is little -- if any -- artistic musing about problems, difficulty, specific issues, or anything of that sort. There is no art explicitly about global warming, or Iraq or globalization or anything else. (Thomas Hirschhorn's Cavemanman comes closest to being about something specific -- terrorism -- but it's so cartoonish, such a shallow, Baroque scattertrash one-liner, that it doesn't earn much consideration.)
Instead the exhibition is full of a dry acceptance that we live in a time of decline. Nevermind what's causing it, Fogle seems to be arguing, accept it.
Related: The bleakness of the 2008 CI. Vija Celmins and Mark Bradford. ]]>
Weekend rounduptag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135302008-05-12T12:06:38Z2008-05-12T12:13:58ZThe Indianapolis Museum of Art is suing the state to avoid registering as a porn purveyor, says Tim Evans in the Indianapolis Star. David Bonetti headlines a thorough package on St. Louis architecture in the Post-Dispatch. In a related story,...Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
The Indianapolis Museum of Art is suing the state to avoid registering as a porn purveyor, says Tim Evans in the Indianapolis Star.
David Bonetti headlines a thorough package on St. Louis architecture in the Post-Dispatch.
Perhaps most of today's stories will have a link to Saarinen: The Oakland Museum of California is a catch-all museum that has long lacked an identity. (The museum's confused early Kevin Roche design doesn't help.) The museum has a decent art collection, but has never known what to do with it. That's changing, says Timothy Buckwalter in the SF Chron. The story includes this gem of a quote from the museum's chief art curator, Phil Linhares: "[T]he Art Gallery was designed
like a Rite Aid drugstore, with dividers spaced throughout: toothpaste
here, hair-care products there."
The SDU-T's Robert Pincus basks in the art historical references in Julie Heffernan's paintings.
The Chicago Trib's Blair Kamin says that a Renzo Piano bridge linking the AIC to Millenium Park is now in place. (Or should be.)
There's a nice story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a show of New Deal-era art at the Weisman, but it's impossible to link to without seeing 98 pop-ups, scrolling through umpteen pages, and being yelled at by my browser. So here's a link to the Weisman's show instead.
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Yes, it's really...tag:www.artsjournal.com,2008:/man//13.135142008-05-09T17:41:36Z2008-05-09T17:42:23ZYour weekend awesome: Jumping in Art Museums. Yes, really....Modern Art Noteshttp://www.artsjournal.com/man
Jumping in Art Museums. Yes, really.]]>
Previously: Impressionism, Sheeler, Epstein.
Chinese artist Cao Fei is also interested in China's industrialization. Her interest is in the people who fill Chinese factories, the assembly lines of young people who do careful, dexterous manual labor on the cheap. In Whose Utopia (still above, 2006-07), on view now at the Carnegie International, Cao focuses on the people in China's massive factories, suggesting how an active fantasy life can try to make up for the repetitive drudgery of menial work. Cao shows us a line worker dressed up as a ballerina, another dancing, and so on, all posed in their work environment, complete with the painful artificial lighting therein.
Previously: Impressionism, Sheeler. Next: Cao Fei at the Carnegie International.
Nota bene: I'll keep the Rauschenberg post at the top today, updating it as I can. As a result, this will be the last 'industry' post today. Continued from this morning...
Last week I posted a Manet that I first remembered seeing in a T.J. Clark book. Writing the post inspired me to pull the book off of a shelf and to re-read it.
I'm a sucker for museum construction webcams, so when I read the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin say that a Renzo Piano-designed bridge between the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing and Millenium Park was going in over the weekend, I looked forward to daylight and checking out the AIC's webcam. Here's the image I took from it at about 3:15 EDT. The latest full-size JPEG will be that link, and here's a Kamin update.
At first glance, it is a discarded, moldy, soggy, disgusting mattress. It looks like it's been in the weeds for a while: Grass seems to be growing where water has pooled in the middle. Mushrooms are pushing up too. Only a musty stench would make the scene more complete. 