Folding

With many new projects--and a finite number of hours each week--it's officially time to close down this blog and follow different adventures.  As a thematic send-off, I've attached an image of a great Noguchi lamp (it's folded paper, see?). 

Thanks for the visits and keep looking at art, everyone.  (image source)

New word of the day:

Gigapixel.  Per Google's ambitious Art Project, which shows "street views" of galleries in some of the world's most famous museums.  Some details in super-high resolution (thus the gigapixel), which is good fun on a computer screen.  What do we think of this?  Bad for actual museum-going?  Good for demystifying the art world?  Discuss.

Winter photos

On a snowy day like this, when the city view is still pristine and not yet turned to black slush, I like to think about André Kertész and his pictures of Washington Square (here's a print at the Getty).  Kertész had a twelfth-floor apartment overlooking the park; he documented daily life with a telephoto lens.  The artist was born in 1894, but his work still looks contemporary--his compositions are a happy marriage of economy and complexity.  More images here at the NGA. (click through)

Good stuff in the new year

Links to pleasant doings:
-- Seriously satisfying for the researching types.
-- Philly gets the honor of this collection.
-- A cache of WPA art by kids. 
-- An overdue resource? (and a critique)

Year-end lists, plus a resolution

Who doesn't enjoy a tally of the good and the bad?  Below are 2010's most important art-world moments, according to this author.  Wholly subjective, in no particular order, and reflecting my affinity for American art (sorry, Renaissance enthusiasts).



Good:
1.  The Met's Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand show (up until April!)

2.  The Whitney's Charles Burchfield exhibition.  The late spooky nature paintings were a revelation.  I am converted.

3.  "Work of Art" renewed for a second season!
 
4. Hard not to love Doug and Mike Starn's "Big Bambu" installation on the Met's roof.  Whimsy, elegance, and real aesthetic chops in one sprawling, crowd-pleasing package.

5.  My favorite scholarly blog.  Wonderful resources, lovingly chosen.

Not good:
1.  The De Young has banned sketching in special exhibitions.  I imagine the rule is to keep people moving through crowded galleries, but really.  Copying from an original is perhaps the best way to study an artwork.  Not to mention it's been a central method of learning art through much of modern history.  Ecole des Beaux-Arts, anyone?

2.   The David Wojnarowicz fracas at the NPG.  The upside: new appreciation for Wojnarowicz's terrifying, moving film.

3.  Museum family days where the content isn't family-friendly.  See above: I'm not squeamish about challenging themes that appear in museums' galleries.  But I'd like museums to broadcast the existence of those themes very clearly, especially when said museums invite small kids.  That's directed at you, New Museum, and the "Skin Fruit" show.  The little placard near the coat check isn't enough.  We love the art projects and the snack bags from Whole Foods--please just let us know when to steer clear of the hard-core stuff.  Thanks.

4.  A brash idea that did not work.

5.  But is it art?  The worst album cover of the year.  (via Prefix)

And the resolution: More posts, more often.

Fall favorites

A busy few weeks of art-going.  What I enjoyed:
--Doug and Mike Starn's Big Bambú: You Can't, You Don't, and You Won't Stop on the Met's roof all summer, which just closed.  Beautiful, whimsical, experiential, it's probably my favorite of the museum's summer rooftop installations. And I'm surprised that I found only one acknowledgment that the subtitle is from the Beastie Boys' 1994 song "Sure Shot." (itself perhaps an homage to the Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight?)
--The solid retrospective of Charles Burchfield at the Whitney.  The reputation of his late paintings is of aggressively weird spiritual vegetation, but Dandelion Seed Heads and the Moon (1961-65, the last image on this page) was revelatory.  Another room papered in a wallpaper of Burchfield's design was lovely, and as I've noted before, he painted melting snow like no one else.
--Rivane Neuenschwander at the New Museum.  Her Rain Rains (2002, image here)--pails suspended from the ceiling, slowly dripping water from holes at the bottom into buckets on the floor--offered visuals, sound, and good conversation with the guard who described the wet process of refilling the whole thing every few hours.

Art world good times (+ one bad idea)

-- Great fun for the museumocracy on Twitter today.  The #askcurators discussion--questions posed by the public and answered by museum staff from around the globe--was funny and lively.  A favorite exchange: One reader asked about museums' favorite exhibition titles.  The Mariners' Museum replied: "Fave title would be the one we have yet to use: a show about navigational instruments called "The Joy of Sextants."  And who says scholars are stuffy?
-- At last!  A uniform for the field. (via TylerGreenDC)
-- Sorry I missed this party. 
-- Finally, the bad idea: don't drink and deal.