Heavy Weather Or Not

Still Images from "The Road to Mount Weather" -- See Selection of Video Online
Three-Channel Moving Image Installation/Projection, Stereo Sound, 15 minute loop/Dimensions Variable, 2006

Cliff Evans is a nice young man with a fertile imagination and a liquid capacity for ominous visual storytelling. Coupled with the endless options for digital appropriation, manipulation, and conspiracy theories available on the Internet, he has produced "The Road to Mount Weather," an epic three channel video hallucination/dream/cartoon/nightmare about the government agenda to control the populace from an underground bunker once life above ground becomes too toxic or demented. Those left up in the cold will be blinded by the media and not realize the truth. Obviously, this is already happening. While not willing to completely commit to being conspiracy minded, he speaks knowledgeably about Mount Weather, describing it as a training facility and bomb shelter for the executive branch, located in West Virginia. He can also allude to conspiracy theories, martial law, and Rex 84, a civil unrest containment exercise in the 1970's that continues to spark paranoia in civil libertarians. But overall, the sound and imagery are more satirical than frightening, acting as a sort of fun house mirror of our culture, our government, and our self-absorption.

A scratch-the-surface, stream-of-media-transcription of the work's layered and sequential imagery:

Your future starts here, drive-in, rockets, halo people in city, planes, smoke, bombs, destruction, Dorothy & yellow brick road trio, refugees, trailers, FEMA, spraying down people, press wearing 3D goggles while blinded to decimation, shooting, birds flying away, football players, canyons, corporate logos, stadium, screaming, cheering, clapping, beatific faces, nude female riot cops, destruction, blank sign holders, soldiers, blue eyed child getting eye scanned, mood change, halo, stewardess, devil, church, tree tops and cell towers, elephant, mat chem warriors, bombers, paisley, tires, bunkers, business men with machine legs, balloons on penis daisy (?), pretty couple, haloed, descends below ground, machines, video monitors, command center, watching, staging media, water park, White House, temples, satellite dishes, U.S. seal, Roman senate, fat women, chickens, banquet tables, butt heads, smiling royalty, devil cupid babies, fly by Reagan with dove.

Whew. As you can see, it covers a lot of bases. Evans spent a year and a half building the piece in PhotoShop and AfterEffects and has been exhibiting it in various settings since 2006. Available for purchase for $25,000, two of the edition have already sold. Technically, although it appears film-like, it is a collection of still images that are rendered in 2D, and sequenced for display in real time. Evans reports that 99.5% of the images are acquired off the Internet, and in his artist's statement elaborates:

"I immersed myself in image-gathering and reconstruction, allowing obsessions and paranoiac deviations to bring in tangential elements. At times, believing myself to be a co-conspirator with the powers presented, I abused my access to information, assimilating data from unknown persons' databases of images and photographs, rending subjects from their context and converting their initial intent or purpose towards my own ends. At other times, I found myself becoming a paranoid heretic attempting to subvert the powers of control, yet under suspicion, fearful of being tracked, monitored, and forced in directions that were beyond my knowledge or will. [...] However much a slippery slope, my intent is not to propagate such emotions, but to bring them closer to a singularity of absurdity, reversing the fear and anxiety towards a (albeit limited) sense of control with a sense of humor.

While much of the imagery is funny, satirical, and plain bent, he confesses that the subject matter of the project did bring him down at times. So it was nice to see that he let himself out of the bunker for awhile to come with his project to Scope Miami this week with his gallery, Curator's Office.

Caught in a Trap

Turkysh Bath, Edition of 6, List $24,000, Sold 5 @ $17,000 at Scope

This guy Marck from Zurich put us in a box and we can't get out. Over and over we try. We are extremely uncomfortable from the spikes, the water is cold, and we are banging our head on the table. The Licht Feld gallery exhibit space where we were displayed is actually Basel-ian, unlike most of what was present at Miami Basel. Gallerist and member Fredy Hadorn reported that Marck goes by Marck from Zurich and the three video, iron, and glass LCD works that were drawing crowds and making us feel claustrophobic in reality and in empathy are all untitled. In spite of the labels with titles. Whatever. A trend at Scope seemed to be that the German and Swiss galleries don't label their art at all, either titles or artists. You have to ask. And even then they won't tell you the whole name. Which is too bad, because then you really have a hard time finding the guy on the Internet. But you can't help but try, because this work is out of the box, a trip, and unforgettable.

Thorns, Edition of 5, Sold Out, Scope

To remember more about Marck from Zurich:
http://www.marck.ch
http://www.marck.tv

Fairly Fairey at the Fair

Detail, Site-Specific Mural, 29th Street, Miami, December 2008

It seems like Shepard Fairey is all over Miami Basel. With good reason, because he has somehow managed to do the impossible: capture the zeitgeist of the nation's political and cultural mood while producing visually and intellectually rich imagery. He blew into town and created a fantastic mural on the side of a building on 29th Street only five days ago, while his work is a virtual sell-out at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery exhibit space at the Scope alternative art fair. With prices topping out at $25,ooo for the largest pieces and overall multi-fair-wide sales reportedly dampened by the economic downturn, his success is a pleasant testament to talent and ubiquity. When asked about the impact of Fairey's Obama poster on buyer interest, the gallery rep pointed to his pre-existing, ongoing popularity with collectors, as well as the common first-impression that his work might be that of an Asian artist. Nonetheless, a number of first-time collectors have joined the ranks during the Miami event. With limited edition prints going for $1100 and up, the appeal is clear. Buy now and feel good about it.

Detail, Site-Specific Mural, 29th Street, Miami, December 2008

Shepard Fairey at Jonathan LeVine
Obey Giant: Worldwide Propaganda Delivery

Faves and Raves: Miami Basel Alt-Fairs

Some favorite work from three of the Miami Basel alternative fairs: Pulse, Nada, and Aqua -- sprinkled around the Wynnwood area of Miami. These choices are just a small squadron of mostly digital media work among the thousands of artists and artworks. More about more artists to come. The whole experience is fun, fascinating, and fabulous.

***********Pulse***********
Rave:
Lincoln Schatz: Esquire's Portrait of the 21st Century 2008 / CUBE Portraits. Bitforms Gallery

Shatz was standing with a beautiful multi-screen installation of his portrait series and spoke with enthusiasm about the use of his CUBE digital portrait environment and the software he uses to randomize 24 different video streams that he compiles into digital portraits, generating effects and layering them programmatically in real time. When asked about working with the different subjects and the things they chose to do while sitting, Shatz said, "I ask them what they do with their free time, relaxing, and almost everybody says they're on their laptop." While some subjects need to be encouraged, others are naturally inspired to bring a more personal metaphor to the table. Shatz cited Georgie Clooney's decision to dance with ten women to ten different Frank Sinatra songs, one of whom was Shatz's own mother; LeBron James' choice to play a basketball video game in which he himself is animated as the lead player; and Craig Newmark, founder and sole operator of Craig's List, who alone was depicted sitting with a computer.

Portrait of George Clooney

Masami Teraoka, Catharine Clark Gallery

Teraoka mixes traditional Japanese woodblock and painting techniques with commentary about AIDS, gender, sex, consumption, religion, and the hypocrisy of Western cultural, religious, and political life, like a sexy and sardonic pillow book.

Two of his works had sold during the fair, including Adam and Eve / Surge Protector (1995), for $85,000 and Confessional Series (1994) for $65,000.

Although primarily represented by Catharine Clark, Teroka also was on display in the Samuel Freeman Gallery exhibit at Aqua Winwood.

Sarah Anne Johnson, Julie Saul Gallery
Johnson's work has centered around photographed real and recreated scenes in nature. The piece that stood out at the Julie Saul Gallery exhibit was a lenticular print of a pine forest, composed of sequential images of the pines moving in the wind. Part of a series about tree planting, the trees had an affecting hyper-reality. Other work, in which the artist's nature projects are re-staged with tiny sculptural figures standing in for the original humans and re-photographed, is quite different.

Brandon Morse, Conner Contemporary Art
Morse's framed digital animation depicted two three dimensional wire cubes pulling each other in different directions. Simple and timeless, like a zen koan, it showed the inevitable dynamic of all human relationships, reduced to a formula. Available as one of an edition of 6, the the high-resolution work sells for $2500 and can be displayed at any size or on any screen.

John Gerrard, Grow/Finish Unit (Eva, Oklahoma), Hilger Contemporary
Silvery and mesmerizing 3D digital video animation revolves slowly around modern farm buildings in the wide open space of Oklahoma. This Irish-born artist travels the U.S. taking photographs of various scenes that he then recreates in 3D animation software.

Rave:
Ori Gersht, Falling Bird, Angles Gallery
Named one of Alistair Hicks' "Ten Talents to Watch," Gersht's digital painting loops from a hypnotic meditation on water splashing to a digital trompe l'oeil à la William Harnett, in which a dead pheasant is dropped in the water. Packaged complete with frame, screen, computer, and DVD for $45,000. Edition of 8.

Hell'o Monsters, Untitled, Think 21
The collective of four Belgian graffiti artists worked together to produce this piece, their second animated painting. Gallery rep Christel Tsilibieris reports that they are interested in monsters and anatomy books, and the intersection of eastern and western popular culture. The obvious reference to Hello Kitty is played out in the colorful wall painting, which they came and applied personally. The animation is projected onto the painting, and playfully comments on the functions of the body. The piece is unique, and will be destroyed unless bought. The artists will recreate on site. 3000 eu for the work alone, or 4000 with projector.

***********Nada***********
Marcus Coates, Dawn Chorus (2007), Workplace Gallery
This video installation is probably more staid than Coates' typical work. The project involved recording morning birdsong in Northumberland and northern England, and then video taping various trained amateur singers singing the songs much more slowly. (Similar to Nina Katchadourian's Please, Please, Pleased to Meet 'Cha?) The installation features each of the singers on separate video screens, sped up so that they sound like the normal bird song. Lovely and funny. Ha ha, not peculiar, like this picture of Coates in performance:

Still, Journey to the Lower World, Workplace Gallery

***********Aqua Wynnwood***********

Jim Campbell, Home Movies, 1040-1 (2008), Hosfelt Gallery
LED lights hang in a grid against a large screen, flickering a ghostly black and white home movie to life, barely, like a whisper. Like Shatz, he's got a programmer's mind. See his slide talk on computer-generated art.

Rave:
David Fried, Self-Organizing Still Life, Sara Tecchia Roma New York

Impossibly analog sculpture that moves in reaction to sound, adding motion as the balls click and clack into each other. Wonderful and mysterious, a perpetual motion machine that can be put to sleep by silence.

Uncomfortable Art Positions

Art Positions

In the shadow of the ever-renovating South Beach hotels, Art Basel Miami hosts 20 young galleries in converted orange shipping containers in the outdoor exhibition "Art Positions." Each container has been provided with a rampway, a door, and a shelf space for information about the galleries. Each container is attended by a young woman with bangs, wearing a black dress or something oddly shaped, and speaking Dutch or Castillian Spanish. Cognescenti report that these cell-phone wielding mini-models are gallery interns; the market for interns seems to be an unexpectedly strong economic indicator.

The container concept is totally cool, and cries out for better ideas, planning, execution, and professionalism. Overall, the art on display seems amateurish, unintentionally funny, and poorly displayed. Some containers have a handful of bland, forgettable drawings or photographs. Others have quasi-installations that fail to meet the challenges of the space, present coherent ideas, or interesting imagery. Many display video works that seemed to have been pulled out of a VCR from 1986, or a blender from 1960. The Galerie Andreas Huber features a video by Judith Hopf entitled Zahlen! / Counting, ostensibly a tribute to Hans, the famous counting horse of fin de siècle Berlin, in which a horse is taunted by a quartet of people peeping over a fence while wearing mime-like make-up. Coulrophobia, anyone?

Perhaps the effort and expense involved in transporting the work from around the corners of the globe was daunting. The general effect is like a Top Design project in which the contestants get mad at each other and give up, and the rejected contestants from Project Runway all come to take a look.

In addition to the excellent people-watching, a stand-out:

Teresa Margolles' 21, at the Galeria Salvafor Diaz, appears at first glance to be a Miami Beach jeweller's showcase, the 21 pieces of lavish gold and gem-encrusted jewelry displayed and lit as if in a Bal Harbour store window. Margolles' work is preoccupied with the many causes, effects, attributes, and artifacts of death in her native Mexico. This particular collection of pieces was fabricated under her direction by a jeweller from her local market using shards of glass collected from narco grudge-murder sites in place of jewels, with settings similar to those favored by the narco gangsters. These pieces are beautifully rendered, gaudy with excess luxury, and casually horrifying.

Score Settling #5 (Preliminary investigation), Culiacán, October 19, 2007

Bal Harbour Website, Not Margolles

Art Basel Miami

Brando-matic for the People

Truman Capote went to visit Brando in Kyoto in 1957 while he was filming Sayonara. He describes the Japanese-style hotel room:

"All that he owned seemed to be out in the open. Shirts, ready for the laundry; socks, too; shoes and sweaters and jackets and hats and ties, flung around like the costume of a dismantled scarecrow. And cameras, a typewriter, a tape recorder, an electric heater that performed with stifling competence. Here, there, pieces of partly nibbled fruit; a box of the famous Japanese strawberries, each berry the size of an egg. And books, a deep-thought cascade, among which one saw Colin Wilson's "The Outsider" and various works on Buddhist prayer, Zen meditation, Yogi breathing, and Hindu mysticism, but no fiction, for Brando reads none. He has never, he professes, opened a novel since April 3, 1924, the day he was born, in Omaha, Nebraska."

An externalization of all of Brando's interests, aspirations, and failures, this description does more justice to him than any statement that he makes in his monologue about himself under the scrutiny of the tiny, malevolent writer. Capote's piece is like the mirror-image of a recent New Yorker piece by Claudia Pierpont. Capote documents Brando's contradictions, self-involvement, and childlike behavior, casting the actor as shallow, troubled, fragmented, arrogant, and alone. Pierpont turns that around and with the same information, creates a portrait of someone deep, troubled, fragmented, humble, and lonely. She is forgiving and compassionate, while recognizing all of the same issues. Brando in 1957 was already a popular obsession, universal icon, and cultural cliche. Where Capote tries to expose the man behind the curtain, Pierpont brings out the sadness and misery of a person in that position, with a talent that cannot be realized, not only because of the fame and expectations, but also because of emotional imbalance.

Pierpont also gives serious attention to Brando's talent, technique, and hit-0r-miss history. Describing Brando's performance in Streetcar, she conveys the artistry he brought to modulating his performance in order to make the transition from stage to screen. Viewed today, the hashed-over Kowalski tee-shirt rending Streetcar trope is banished by his physical beauty and his rendering of the childlike ignorance and menace that flicker through the movie like a living current of electricity. And yet, Capote quotes Brando himself as saying about the movie, released six years earlier in 1951, "Of course, movies date so quickly. I saw 'Streetcar’ the other day and it was already an old-fashioned picture."

Such a beautiful failure...

Claudia Pierpont Roth, New Yorker, 10/27/2008: Method Man
Truman Capote, New Yorker, 1957: The Duke in His Domain
Street Named Desire in IMDB

Twilight of the Guys

In case you haven't been watching the media lately, a new craze has taken over the hearts, minds, and tee shirts of the 12-16 year old female. Something like Rudolf Valentino, heroin, Walt Disney's Prince Charming, and NightStalker all mixed together, the Twilight Phenomenon was witnessed first hand this weekend, when some young friends went to the movie wearing Team Edward tee shirts (two store-bought and one home-made with green glitter pen.) Words cannot describe the pent up hysteria that threatened to unleash itself in the car on the way to the theatre. Dogs could not tolerate the frequency of the shrieking that reverberated through the theatre while waiting for the movie to begin. Long hair, tight straight legged jeans, Converse sneakers, and popcorn were de rigueur.

Stephanie Meyer's gothic teenage vampire franchise had its seeds in a dream she couldn't stop writing about, resulting in four books and now a movie about a teenage girl's obsessive relationship with a seventeen year and 100 year old vampire boyfriend. Bella and Edward have inspired the swooning equivalent of the bobby soxers, only these kids are reading. Also texting, IM'ing, Facebooking, and making green glitter pen tee shirts.


What is so bad about all this vampire love?

1. It's actually not the vampire-ness, but the same sort of distorted romantic expectations that were created in the mothers of the Twilight fans by the heaving-bodice-romance novels from the 70's like The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Of course, rather than a dominance/submission fantasy, the vampire boyfriend is so attentive and devoted that he seems sure to turn into an abuser, as his protectiveness and perfect anticipation of the young heroine's needs begin to seem creepy and controlling to women familiar with the pattern. But not to young readers, who sigh for the brooding passion and mind-meld that emulates the constant connection they maintain with their female friends over their devices and in their giggling cliques. It turns out, fortunately or not, that men and women don't really relate like that, no matter how passionate or soul-matey their communion.

2. The heroine starts out as an extra smart independent girl who is funny and with whom people want to be friends. She ends up totally focussed on an icy cold boy who comes into her room and watches her sleep every night, drives her to school, and then inexplicably rejects her just when she is most vulnerable. All of that is in book one. The result, as you might expect, is not especially becoming or healthy.

3. The couple cannot have sex, although their desire is the engine that keeps the books chugging along. Also the quest for survival. And sometimes both at the same time. The boyfriend tries to protect the heroine from his dangerous desire to drain her of all of her blood, so they endure a forced chastity while spending 24 hours a day together. A more skeptical person might suspect that the boyfriend was really gay. But that's another book.


New York Times: The Vampire of the Shopping Mall
New York Times: Love and Pain and the Teenage Vampire Thing
Vanity Fair: The Twilight Zone

Commoners and Heroes

NPR's Weekend Edition today had a segment on Tod Machover, the inventor of the video game and cultural phenomenon known as Guitar Hero, composer of digital music, and creator of hyperinstruments and HyperScore, a software application that supports music composition through non-instrumental inputs similar to the Guitar Hero controllers.

Over the past several years, more and more people are playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band at parties, with their kids, and in their living rooms. Many kids are getting their first exposure to classic Rock through the game. According to Wikipedia, many people buy the songs they play in Guitar Hero, and Guitar Hero is replacing Karaoke at the local bar. And many players step into playing actual real guitars as a result of Guitar Hero, and may benefit from the foundation of dexterity, eye-hand coordination, and ear training that the game provides. However, like the mother who said her kids overestimated their ability to actually play real tennis based on their use of the Wii tennis game, players of Guitar Hero have no understanding of music, technique, or the actual mechanics of playing the guitar.

Machover's vision extends far beyond the commercial: he sees a future where the music in a person's mind can pour out unimpeded by the need to coerce sounds out of a balky instrument, made possible through the interface between the computer and the human body. He asserts:

"Imagine if [Guitar Hero] were truly expressive, truly personal, truly creative. The wonderful thing about Guitar Hero is that it opens up the door for everybody to be not just a passive listener but a real active participant in music," Machover says. "I think that is the future of music: music that is a collaboration between what we traditionally think of as composers and performers and the audience."

In a completely unrelated article in the New York Times Magazine today, Lewis Hyde is profiled regarding his work to define the particular landscape of American creativity and the cultural commons on which all creative people should be allowed to draw, re-think, re-assemble, and collaborative re-create into new expressions. His theory is that all creativity is a gift that gains currency and value through being shared. His enemies are the recently expanded copyright laws and growth of intellectual property wars.

Interesting that Guitar Hero provides to its players the opportunity to immerse themselves into the experience of performing the American Rock Canon, a most influential piece of our cultural commons. But Guitar Hero exists at the intersection of the opportunity for the commoner to make music without elitist training and the opportunity for money to be made from their desire to do so. Three chord music that retains the dusty DNA of its Deep South plebian origins, and yet, each and every part of it is licensed in a web of copyrights, clearances, royalties, secondary rights, derivative products, and lawsuits. Gibson has sued the company for copyright infringement on their use of the guitar controller. Aerosmith has made more money from Guitar Hero royalties than they have for any album. What do you think the blues players who played for change on the street corners of Mississippi would make of this?

American Election Idol

John McCain: 57,434,084 - 46.1%

Barack Obama: 65,431,955 - 52.6%

Sanjaya Malakar, Voted Off in Week 4, Ranked in the Bottom 2

Once again, the American Idol Effect has helped eliminate the obvious losers, as demonstrated by the choices shown above and their respective election results. Even the vote-for-the-worst strategy of the Republican party didn't pan out. Our participative culture actually got off the couch and voted in their local polling places instead of through a cell phone. According to Wikipedia, our touchstone of truthiness, 124,372,419 million voted this year.

"The voter turnout for this election was broadly predicted to be very high. One widely publicized early estimate predicted turnout of 136.6 million people or 64% of the voting population—which would have been the highest rate in 100 years. However, as of 1 p.m. Eastern Time on November 9th, with 99.6% of the precincts reporting, the total number of votes stands at only 124.47 million, just 2.2 million more than in the 2004 election."

While Sniffipedia may think that a 2% increase is just only a little increase, it should be hailed, as in 2004 fewer people voted for the winning candidate George Bush (62,040,610 votes) than voted for the winning American Idol contestant Fantasia Barrino (65 million votes). This year, Idol winner David Cook did not receive more votes than either McCain or Obama, although his 54.2 million votes were an impressive share of the all-time Idol high vote of 97 million.

Imagine Yoko Ono, It's Impossible If You Try

Yoko Ono: Cut Piece, photo of performance, July 20, 1964 (Kyoto, Yamaichi Hall);
photo courtesy of Lenono Photo Archive ©Yoko Ono; Oxford Art Online

I pity all those people who don't love Yoko Ono. Not that John Lennon isn't great, and worthy of his acclaim, following, sainthood, biopics, and posthumous merchandising (there's that Yoko again). But Yoko is the coolest, and not just because she eclipsed all those mopheads with her romantic Svengali-like influence on John.

He wisely recognized that the woman was not only smarter, but had more interesting ideas in her pinky than he had in his entire band. Just look at this picture from her 1964 performance work "Cut Piece." Brave, resonant, enduring, original. Extremely annoying to the average yokel at the time and today exhibiting a classicism and simplicity that is unmatched. Compare this with the arrival of Beatlemania in America and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Quaint and corny isn't it?

Tomorrow is the second lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower, erected in John Lennon's honor off of Rekyjavik, and to be lit every year from Lennon's birthday on October 9th to his death day on December 8th. You can still send a wish to be included in the October 9th lighting if you act fast.

From the Imagine Peace Project Website:

"The IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is a work of art conceived by Yoko Ono in memory of John Lennon. It is dedicated to peace and bears the inscription 'IMAGINE PEACE' in 24 languages. Its construction and installation is a collaboration between Yoko Ono, the City of Reykjavik, Reykjavik Art Museum and Reykjavik Energy.The work is in the form of a wishing well from which a very strong and tall tower of light emerges. The strength, intensity and brilliance of the light tower continually changes as the particles in the air fluctuate with the prevailing weather and atmospheric conditions unique to Iceland. Every year it will light up between October 9th (Lennon's birthday) and December 8th (the day of his death). In addition the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER will be lit on New Year's Eve, during the first week of spring and on some rare special occasions agreed between the City and Ono.The electricity for the light comes entirely from the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant."

Today Iceland had to borrow 5.5 billion dollars from Russia because nobody else would help bail them out. Their economy has virtually collapsed due to the credit crisis; their currency has fallen 30% against the euro; the United States couldn't spare 5.5 billion for them. You may say I'm a dreamer, but couldn't we elect Yoko Ono?

Pigs in Versailles, Not in Shanghai

Noteworthy events this week in the art world included the censoring of the artist Wim Delvoye by the SH Contemporary Art Fair in Shanghai and the opening of an exhibit of Jeff Koons' work at Versailles. Both artists have elements of the pig in their work, and at least one of them has some aspects of the pig about his personality.

Wim Delvoye

Also with a French connection, Delvoye's work consisted of pigs that he had tattoed with the Louis Vuitton logo and Disney imagery. Arguably beautiful, and emminently rejectable on any number of grounds (animal cruelty, grossness, and decadence), the work was determined to be not artistically valid, i.e., "not art." On the other hand, Koons, whose work receives many of the same criticisms (particularly related to his self-pornography with his ex-wife Italian porn star La Cicciolina (aka Ilona Staller), for which the Humane Society could justifiably pursue him for inflicting inhumanity and grossness on both Ilona and the viewing public), has been provided with the most exalted venue imaginable for the display of his kitschy, immense, and amusing sculptures, the symbol of cultural decadence that is Versailles. Press reports indicate that the some visitors to Versailles wish that a similar judgement had been rendered against Koons in order to prevent this exhibition as well.

"Ushering in Banality" by Jeff Koons at the Château de Versailles exhibition.
Ed Alcock for The New York Times

Delvoye and Koons are both multi-dimensional artists who incorporate themes related to society, aesthetics, art history, branding, and consumption into work that takes a wide variety of visual forms, media, and directions, with an emphasis on fabrication of exceptional quality in the service of questionable taste. Provocative, prolific, and never underwhelming, but occasionally annoying. What more could we ask of them than work that is "not art?"

At the Court of the Sun King, Some All American Art (NYT)

Pigs Out, But Artist Sells Tatoo Off Man's Back (NPR)

Jeff Koons Versailles Exhibit

Look Homeward, Angel

Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

Can you go home again? Every artist has peaks and valleys -- more often, troughs of despair. In tagging the recreated Keith Haring mural in NYC is his former collaborator Angel Ortiz (a.k.a. L.A. II a.k.a. Little Angel) looking forward? Or is he clinging to a past moment in order to explain his disappointment in his overall accomplishments? The pathos that seeps through the NYT story could be a product of the reporter's intention to highlight a point of view, or it could be a sad reality that Angel doesn't quite get it. Studying his tags on the Keith Haring image -- are they a contribution, a defacement, a desperate plea for recognition? Do you think they enhance, detract, play homage to Keith, or attempt to stand on his shoulders for another moment?

On the other hand, on whose shoulders did Keith Haring stand? Or does his estate stand now? Is it the artist or the machine that oppresses Mr. Ortiz?

Appropriation, collaboration, exploitation, merchandising. Haring was a very young man when he first began working with Ortiz. At 22, he was barely 9 years older than the teenager. His education may or may not have illuminated all of the ethical implications of collaboration, much less with one so young. Could he have predicted the impact that his meteoric rise would have on someone who came from such disadvantaged circumstances? Would he have approached it differently if he could? In truth, didn't more artists in the 1980's echo Haring's motifs than did Haring echo Angel Ortiz?

An artist has no right to recognition or appreciation, right? Ars gratia artis after all -- tag that!

My Picture Made in the Keith Haring Coloring Book

On another note, it is interesting that the Haring Foundation website warns against access by children, at the same time that their focus is continuing his work with children. So they have a separate kids site, which has some neat features, including this interactive coloring book in which I pay homage to LA II's tagging of the Keith Haring mural. But when you think about it, isn't it strange that Haring's work is childlike and appealing to children, while often being pornographic?

Little Angel Was Here: A Keith Haring Collaborator Makes His Mark

Flickr Slideshow of Pornographic Keith Haring Bathroom Mural

Keith Haring Aztec Artist Kids Flash Projects

Keith Haring Foundation

Louie, Louie, Louie, Louise

Art21, Inc. 2003

She's having a retrospective of the longest career of a still-living artist ever. She has worked continuously as an artist since 1923, when at 12 years old, she drew tapestry cartoons for her parent's tapestry repair business. She is now 96, and in the last 10 years has made some of the most monumental work of her life. She didn't become well-known until she was in her 60's. She has made work that has mutated through different materials and processes, scales and surfaces, images and shapes, retaining an intellectual, spiritual, and visceral consistency while constantly evolving and changing.

" The Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum includes this untitled 2004 hanging piece. Holland Cotter writes: Spirals abound in Louise Bourgeois’s art. She says they make her think of control and freedom, and of strangling someone. So it’s perfect that her retrospective, seen in London and Paris, is now in the looping rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum. It looks great there, clean but organic – fecund, tumid, hands-on -- and unclassically classical. Photo: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times"

Quarantania, I. 1947-53; reassembled by the artist 1981

Articulated Lair, 1986

"A work of art doesn't have to be explained," she says. "If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed."

Art21

Defiance (Le Défi), 1991

"As she wrote in 1988, in an essay on her piece "The Sail," the work speaks for itself: "Whatever the artist says about it is like an apology, it is not necessary." (Then she went on to discuss the motivations behind "The Sail" for four pages.)" Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, February 4, 2002

Untitled from Fugue. 2003 (published 2005)

Mortise, 1950

Amoeba 1963-5, cast 1984

Exhibition at Guggenheim

NYT Review of Guggenheim Retrospective

NYT Slideshow

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine (Documentary)

• Trailer on YouTube
• Review in NYT

Art21, PBS (documentary, videos, slideshows, interviews)

The Spider’s Web: Louise Bourgeois and her art. Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, February 4, 2002

Wikipedia Entry

Artcyclopedia

Eliasson Waters NYC

Oh Olafur. So many people love you and love your work. Does that make you suspect? Some critics have sniffed a bit at the experiential aspects of your installations. Do they have big ideas, or are they just big? Is phenomenology an art idea or an art anti-idea?

The Weather Project caused people to lie down on the floor and bask.

Round Rainbow has a formal elegance and ingenuity that may not have a big idea, but is far greater than the sum of its parts.



Today's debut of your four waterfalls around the New York's East River waterfronts and bridges has inspired a lot of talk. In the New York Times, commentary was running towards the irate: a waste of energy, money, and yet not quite big enough or powerful enough. Some are even alarmed at the thought that it is spreading disease through wafting mists of polluted river water. Still, it seems pretty neat that you got to do it, even though you told the BBC "Waterfalls I love them because everybody has something to say about them."

Photo: Vincent Laforet for The New York Times

New York Times Slideshow
New York Times Art Review: Cascades, Sing the City Energetic
The New York City Waterfalls (Official Site)
New Yorker Profile: Seeing Things: The art of Olafur Eliasson

High Prices for Low Art

Christy's of London had a record setting auction price for a Monet painting today -- $80.4 million dollars for “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas." It is a pretty painting, but since Monet's work has been reproduced endlessly on everything from shower curtains to umbrellas to trash cans, it just doesn't seem like it's all that special.

Le Bassin aux Nymphéas

The auction of Impressionist and Modern Art included works from Signac, Bonnard, Matisse, Degas, Renoir, Chagall, Picasso, Kandinsky, Lipchitz, Leger, Gaugin, Cezanne, Pissarro, Magritte, Kirchner, and Miro. Another record was set for highest price for a painting by a woman -- $10,870,506 -- for "Les Fleurs" by Natalia Goncharova.

Les Fleurs

Lowest sale: "Environs du Faou" by Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) $61,438. Looks like a comparative bargain.

Environs du Faou

But the most interesting work was by Egon Schiele. A gouache "Liegende Frau mit grünen Hausschuhen" has echoes of Japanese woodblock and pillow book, perverse and beautiful. The bedroom slippers a nice touch. And only $4,264,746.

Christie's Auction Results
NYT: A Monet Sets a Record

Disappearing Polaroids

The polaroid is disappearing from our lives, fading away like itself in reverse. Another lost medium, becoming a ghost. A tiny blurb in the Times business section back in February, a lot of angst from the artists and devotees, an article here and there, a radio piece. To no avail...

POLAROID QUITS INSTANT FILM The Polaroid Corporation, the company that pioneered instant photography, is exiting the film business and closing plants in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands as it focuses on digital photography and flat-panel televisions. Polaroid will cut 150 jobs in Massachusetts by the end of the quarter, the chief operating officer, Thomas L. Beaudoin, said. Polaroid will make enough instant film to last into 2009, and plans to license its technology to third-party companies for diehard customers. (BLOOMBERG NEWS)
New York Times February 9, 2008

Last Stock Online, June 2008

Pre-digital instant pictures used by artists, anthropologists, teenagers, coroners, architects, designers, police, dermatologists, moms, dads, kids, living room pornographers, photo booths...

Collection of Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Untitled (Patti Smith),” a 1973 Polaroid

Beautiful Polaroid Slide Show On Flickr
Beautiful Polaroid Archive at polonoid.net
Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids at the Whitney
Coroners, Police, and Artists Hurt: Boston Globe, February 27, 2008
Top Photographers, John Waters Upset: New York Magazine, May 4, 2008
Farewell, My Lovely Polaroid: New York Observer, May 13, 2008
Artists Lament Polaroid's Latest Development: NPR, February 29, 2008
Artist Stefanie Schneider And The End Of Polaroid Film: Huffington Post, March 1, 2008
Sign the Save the Polaroid Petition
Planned Disappearance Dates on polaroid.com
Save Polaroid: collective action

Pictures of Us

Today is the anniversary of the ambush that killed Bonnie and Clyde on Mary 23 1934, a little off of what is now Interstate 20, an hour east of Shreveport. They lived their lives expecting to die but kept escaping because Clyde was more experienced at shooting people than the small town cops they ran into. It's hard to believe today, 75 years later, that this little group of folks could move around a five state area for years, committing crimes and living in public places, and never get caught. Described by culturists as the first celebrity criminals, they were also pre-cursors of today's self-referential and -reverential twenty-somethings who used the media to burnish their mystique, took pictures of themselves posed "in character," and turned themselves into american idols that the public followed, supported, and destroyed.

In the Movie About Us, Please Make Us Prettier
Photograph: Kobal Collection

In order to finish them off, the law had to take unprecedented and illegal tactics, including shooting them to pieces with no warning when Bonnie had no warrants for violent crime outstanding. Clyde, however, had shot to death at least nine policeman, and a few others. (See Wikipedia).

That day's story in the New York Times describes Clyde Barrow's body as "a smear of red, wet rags."

New York Times, May 23, 1934

Movie of Death Scene

Is it better to burn out than to fade away? At least if you do so before everybody gets tired of you...