Archives for April 2010

Are these the artists of the future? Art Basel, which begins its 41st edition on June 15, thinks so. It has just released the names of 26 artists, all born since 1966, who will be featured in this year’s Art Statements section of the fair. They were selected from more than 300 applications by the Art Basel Committee, and they come from 17 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

Art Statements, now in its 11th year, has apparently had a fairly good track record of raising the profiles of participants with curators and collectors. “Many previous participating artists have been awarded major exhibitions as a result of being discovered at Art Statements,” the press release says.

Among them are Ghada Amer, Vanessa Beecroft, William Kentridge and Elizabeth Peyton.

Of course, since it’s dealers who make the choice, the artists’ galleries may figure in the choices. Nonetheless, here are this year’s artists, who will make new works for Art Basel. Art Basel lists them by their galleries:

A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro): Maria Nepomuceno, born 1976

Miguel Abreu Gallery (New York): Sam Lewitt, born 1981

Arataniurano (Tokyo): Takahiro Iwasaki, born 1975

Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris): Kerstin Brätsch, born 1976

Laura Bartlett Gallery (London): Elizabeth McAlpine, born 1973

Boers-Li Gallery (Beijing): Yang Xinguang, born 1980

Chatterjee & Lal (Mumbai): Nikhil Chopra, born 1974

Cortex Athletico (Bordeaux): Benoît Maire, born 1978

Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam): Lara Almarcegui, born 1972

Dépendance (Bruxelles): Benjamin Saurer, born 1977

Freymond-Guth & Co, Fine Arts (Zürich): Dani Gal, born 1975

Hollybush Gardens (London): Claire Hooper, born 1978

Hunt Kastner Artworks (Prague): Eva Kotatkova, born 1982

Galerie Iris Kadel (Karlsruhe): Adrian Williams, born 1974

Galerie Kamm (Berlin): Michelle Di Menna, born 1980

David Kordansky Gallery (Los Angeles): Rashid Johnson, born 1977

Michael Lett (Newton / Aukland): Sriwhana Spong, born 1979

Lullin + Ferrari (Zürich): Edit Oderbolz, born 1966

Proyectos Monclova (México): Nina Beier, born 1975

Monitor (Roma): Francesco Arena, born 1978

Neue Alte Brücke (Frankfurt am Main): Simon Fujiwara, born 1982

ProjecteSD (Barcelona): Iñaki Bonillas, born 1981

Rokeby (London): Bettina Buck, born 1974

Gallery SKE (Bangalore): Sreshta Premnath, born 1979

T293 (Napoli): Patrizio Di Massimo, born 1983

Sassa Trülzsch (Berlin): Dieter Detzner, born 1970

 

You can read the full press release here.

 

Photo Credit: two works by Maria Nepomuceno, Courtesy Steve Taylor Contemporary, Los Angeles

  

Otto Dix, as I write in my review of the Otto Dix show at the Neue Galerie, published in today’s Wall Street Journal, is not an easy artist to like. But he is one to admire, mostly. I am glad he has his first solo exhibit in North America in my backyard.

Although I have a hard time with his sexual murder pieces, his portraits are fantastic (see some on the WSJ slide show). And although they are not his best, I enjoyed looking at most of the paintings that he toned down, for various reasons.

The picture of his family at left, painted in 1927, is an example. It’s a Madonna and child, as are one or two other paintings in the show.

Back to those lustmord paintings, though. Olaf Peters, the art-history professor at the Martin-Luther-University-Halle-Wittenberg who curated this exhibit, told me that Dix created them in the full knowledge of, and desire for, the notoriety they’d spark. It worked.

I call this the “shock and awe” tactic and many artists and writers of all disciplines use it. When the artists actually awes with talent — as Dix did — it doesn’t bother me so much. But too often artists deploy shock and awe to great effect without the necessary raw talent. They are long on shock and short on awe. It’s a mystery to me why curators, etc., go along.

Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her definition of talent — so I won’t name names that I think are getting away with it. But it’s worth thinking about.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Neue Galerie

 

 

This is definitely a post I’d rather not write. But since it was just a few days ago when I told the story of former museum director Edmund “Ted” Pillsbury’s short tenure as U.S. director of the French Regional and American Museum Exchange, I feel duty bound.

His death on March 25, at age 66, has been ruled a suicide. It was not a heart attack, as I orignally reported here. The Dallas Morning News was the source of the original obit, and is also the source for the update (here).

Pillsbury was director of the Kimbell Art Museum for 18 years, during which time he purchased many masterpieces. As The New York Times obit said:

Among the paintings Mr. Pillsbury acquired were “Portrait of Don Pedro de Barberana,” an unusually large piece by the 17th-century Spanish artist Diego Velázquez; “The Cardsharps,” a seminal work by Caravaggio from the 1590s; a 1906 Picasso, “Nude Combing Her Hair,” “L’Asie,” a 1946 oil by Matisse; and art by Fra Angelico, Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens, Cezanne and Mondrian.

Pillsbury was a scion of the Pillsbury flour company. 

Sadly, when I spoke to him in mid-March, he told me he wanted to do some writing about his life.

My thanks to Lindsay Pollock for telling me about the updated news about Pillsbury’s death in the Dallas paper.

Photo Credit: Courtesy Heritage Auctions

Emails went unanswered, phone calls unreturned. Business had ground to a halt.

That’s pretty much how Chelsea dealer Casey Kaplan (right) described the atmosphere in New York’s gallery world in recent months, as he said last night (at a press reception) what he, and a group of 49 other contemporary art galleries and seven non-profit groups, plan to do about it: Start New York Gallery Week.

It’s not really a week — just Friday, May 7, through Monday, May 10, set just before the big contemporary auction sales at Christie’s (May 11) and Sotheby’s (May12). But it is an attempt to create some excitement. Some galleries will stay open on Friday night and some will stay open on Monday night; they’ll all be open on Sunday. Inside, they’ll mount solo shows and there will be plenty of events in the galleries. Artists themselves will not only give talks, but gallery tours. (Curators, art historians, etc. will also do some of the honors.) 

As Kaplan said, big-time collectors often meet artists, this is an opportunity for others to do so.

There’ll be panel discussions, etc. too. A list of the participating galleries and the artists they plan to show is in the press release. The non-profits include White Columns, The Drawing Center and Artists Space.

The organizers have of course created a website, which also lists the participating galleries. Some events have been posted (click on the date!), and more is to come. They’ve reached out to hotels, restaurants and tourism groups to help program and promote. They’ve got a FaceBook page.

I’m all for it. Yes, the art circuit gets tiring sometimes — one can’t possibly do it all — but events like this draw in new people, who may go for the “happening” part and end up getting hooked on the art.

Mark your calendars.

 

“Tell me a story.” Research shows that stories can be life-shaping.

I’m not going for that here, though, and — probably — neither is the Library of America,* which if you don’t know about its mission to publish and keep in print “authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing,” you should.

But it’s in everyone in the cultural world’s interest, it seems to me, to promote reading — no matter which discipline most interests you. And that’s what LOA is doing through a new effort begun in January. It’s called “Story of the Week.” Every Monday, LOA emails a short narrative, selected from one of its many books. The first, in December, before it was a regular feature, was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Cut-Glass Bowl.”

Other examples: “A Memorable Murder” by Celia Thaxter, “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” by Edith Maude Eaton, and “A Wind-Storm in the Forests” by John Muir. This week’s is about baseball, taken from “Baseball: A Literary Anthology.” (Who knew?)

Now, who has time to read a story on Monday mornings? Apparently, many people. Cheryl Hurley, LOA’s president, tells me that 39,000 people have already signed up. People have promoted the feature on FaceBook, Stumble Upon, Twitter, etc. and some libraries have done the same on their website.

As it requisite nowdays, LOA has a website where readers can leave comments.

I’m writing this not only because it’s a good cause, but also because it’s a lesson for non-profits in using social media. Presumably, subscribers will buy LOA books — because they are entitled to discounts for signing up.

Here’s the SOTW website, where you can read and/or sign up (link).

Photo Credit: Courtesy Library of America

*A consulting client of mine supports the LOA