Piero Manzoni: Merda d'artista, 1961 When the Shit Hits the Fan 1. Let's get it over with, right here at the beginning: excrement, feces, crap, poo-poo, doo-doo, ca-ca, poop, turds, shit. Notice how so many of the words are baby-talk. Like Dada. 2. "A wonderful fertilizer -- money." -- Percival "Money Bags" Montgomery Hower (played by Clyde Fillmore) in … [Read more...]
Tehching Hsieh: Caged Fury
Tehching Hsieh has created only six artworks or, more precisely, performed them. This is not counting his earlier jump from a window in Taiwan or, before that, the paintings he made. The six artworks are the ones he lists on his website and that have been validated as art and valued as … [Read more...]
On Kawara: Just in Time
Kawara Has Not Dated Who would have thought that On Kawara would now look like a major artist? His work has a certain Dada purity. One of the things Kawara does, has done, and continues to do - since Jan. 4, 1966 -- is paint the date wherever he is, in white on a monochromatic ground. Of course, it gets more complicated. The date is not painted every single day. Furthermore, some days he paints the date two or three times. I assume that whoever buys a date painting is … [Read more...]
David Burliuk, the Ukrainian Father of Japanese Futurism
Life Is a Gas David Burliuk was a living, breathing art paradox. At first glance, his life was more interesting than his art. Or was his life, rather than his paintings, his real art? There's an intriguing exhibition honoring him at New York's Ukrainian Museum, 222 E. 6th Street, to March 1. The exhibition, which originated at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, is entitled "Futurism and After: David Burliuk 1882-1967." Burliuk is the nearly … [Read more...]
Beth Lipman: Smart Glass and Various Time Warps
The Sins of Synchronicity? Frantisek Vizner, Blue Bowl, 1996 Sometimes subjects and themes just fall into place. I was invited by American Craft Magazine to write a review of the work of Frantisek Vizner (Czech, b.1936), on exhibit at the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. I had been impressed with Vizner's work, and seeing a goodly collection of it I was not disappointed. His severe cast-glass art - vessels in … [Read more...]
MOCA: WILL IT TANK?
MOCA Grand Avenue Museums for Sale Tongues are wagging, heads are shaking. It appears that the highly regarded Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is doomed. It has been running a deficit for six of the last eight years. It has been raiding its endowment. And now the plucked chickens, the headless fowls, have come home to roost. MOCA might not be able to go on. What I want to know is where was the MOCA's … [Read more...]
theanyspacewhateverreview
YOU'RE CLOSER THAN YOU KNOW. … [Read more...]
A.I.R. GALLERY, JENNY HOLZER, GILLIAN JAGGER
Agnes Denes: Photograph of Wheatfield -- A Confrontation, 1982 What Do Women Want? In Artopia, art is gender-neutral. This does not mean we deny that women, for one reason or another, cannot offer art that deals with what are sometimes called "women's issues." And men can deal with "women's issues" too, or for that matter, topics deemed male or manly by our weird little culture: sports, war, guns and cars (as if women were immune to these). Nor do we need to ban … [Read more...]
Street Works in Colorado; Libeskind and Kirkland in Outer Space
John Perreault: Critical Mass Redux (1971-2008) How History Is Rewritten Yours truly has finally managed to get a few things off his chest. Or, more correctly, off his back. As keeper of the Street Works and Performance flame, I have carted around a burden these many years since the late '60s, waiting for someone, anyone, to delve into these phenomena. Two-hundred-and-forty-two sheets of paper and various souvenirs are now on display in an … [Read more...]
LARRY RIVERS: A CAUTIONARY TALE
Larry Rivers, The History of the … [Read more...]