American Modern

Folding

2011-04-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

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:

2011-02-01T11:04:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-27T21:18:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-20T19:37:00.001-05:00

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

2010-12-31T20:40:00.001-05:00

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

2010-11-01T21:53:00.000-04:00

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)

2010-09-01T21:46:00.002-04:00

-- 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.

Happy birthday, Eero Saarinen

2010-08-22T21:30:00.001-04:00

The Finnish-born architect would have turned 100 on Friday, and the National Parks Service held a party for him at the St. Louis Gateway Arch this weekend (lots of block-building, apparently). I'm a Saarinen fan mostly because his terrifically elegant work helped create the vogue for mid-century streamlining. But I also lived in a Saarinen building, Noyes House, at Vassar a shockingly long time ago. Good photos here and here.

Unfortunately, 1950s styling--even great 1950s styling--was out of fashion during my undergraduate years. But I'm glad I did coursework on a Tulip chair, and I lift a glass (Iittala Aarne, Finnish-designed circa 1949--thanks, J.) to Saarinen's good work. Happy birthday. (Props to Tyler Green for the reminder via Twitter. Image source)

Hiatus

2010-07-16T14:43:00.000-04:00

Deadlines + vacation = back in mid-August. In the meantime, a Potthast beach scene, circa 1915.

Funny stuff

2010-07-11T21:04:00.000-04:00

A round-up of amusements from the art history world:
-- I want to make a movie about a powerful cyborg . . . who studies ancient triumphal arches in moldy archives.
-- In addition to curling and the Concordia Language Villages (which I dearly wanted to attend in tenth grade), another reason to love the northern Minnesota town of Bemidji.
-- Hotter than blazes last week? You could have channeled your 103-degree-fueled aggression via Mel Bochner.

Patriotic paintings

2010-07-04T12:58:00.000-04:00

During World War I, Childe Hassam painted around 30 pictures of American flags. Like this one, they show flags (of both the United States and its allies) flying from New York windows, often along Fifth Avenue near Hassam's studio.

These are, of course, patently patriotic; they mark events including the Preparadeness Day parade of 1916 (depicted here). The flags also offered Hassam a terrifically picturesque subject: block after block of colorful fabric against the massive gray stone buildings. For an Impressionist devoted to color and pattern, the visual appeal proved irresistible.

More examples of Hassam's flag paintings are here and here. And for the very curious reader, I recommend Ilene Fort's book. Happy Independence Day!

Three things

2010-06-25T15:47:00.003-04:00

1. The British Academy has released a report on the cultural worth of the humanities. A lot of studies that defend the arts stress economic value (museums bring X number of dollars to the community, etc.), but this one tries to quantify both the financial importance of cultural institutions and the less immediately tangible "public value". (via the Art History Newsletter)
2. Is this an updated Ad Reinhardt "How to Look at Modern Art in America"?
3. Finally, an open letter to Bravo: If you don't allow full episodes of "Work of Art" to be seen on your site or via Hulu, I can't watch the show and I can't write about it. Which would be a shame because it's so much fun. I don't have cable, and I won't subscribe for just forty minutes of content a week, even if the bon mots and wallpaper-as-portrait from episode #1 (which is available online) are great stuff.

Why I like "Work of Art"

2010-06-15T14:50:00.003-04:00

Bravo's reality series has received both favorable reviews (the Globe's appreciation) and less-than-enthusiastic reports (Christopher Knight's review). I liked it, or at least the first episode, which aired last week. Because we rarely see the creative process on television: the messy plans, the last-minute revisions (eg., Miles Mendenhall's blown bulb necessitating a different printing approach), and so on.

Of course, since this is commercial TV, the show also includes contestants whining about the stress, calling each other hot, and putting down one another's work. And the artists on the show include a remarkable number of young and good-looking types. But I liked the questions the first episode posed: How do you adjust your working method when your technology fails? Must a portrait actually resemble its subject? (The judges said yes.)

Television rarely considers these kinds of issues, so I'm happy to see them addressed, even if in a glossy, borderline-trashy package. In fact, that makes it more fun. You can watch on Hulu.

Quick links

2010-06-10T14:10:00.003-04:00

-- Art history sleuthing for an iconic location (note: serial posts) (via MAN).
-- The French Art Criticism Database is live!
-- A wonderful Dewing at Eye Level.
-- Saw this strong little show by Lucky Rapp at Michael Mut on Avenue C. The photos don't do the pieces justice; they're coated in layers of resin that are tactile and slick.

What hurts your eyes?

2010-06-04T21:05:00.008-04:00

WYNC's Gallerina has a list & photos of the ten least attractive buildings in New York City, which includes Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn (pictured), the Whitney Museum, and Julian Schanbel's house. Readers, what would you choose? Any additions or omissions?

Related radio: Leonard Lopate's guest, Fran Leadon, discusses the new edition of the American Institute of Architects Guide to New York City. (image source)

Louise Bourgeois

2010-06-01T13:53:00.002-04:00

A quick homage to Bourgeois, who died earlier this week. Her work is not always easy: confessional, feral, vulnerable, grotesque. And our visceral reactions to it are what make it so good. Obituary by Holland Cotter and photos from the LA Times.

Reading list

2010-05-27T10:02:00.005-04:00

-- Jerry Salz on Bravo's reality art show and how too much current criticism is "a jargon that only hip metaphysicians can understand." (via AFC)
-- Museums talk about frames.
-- The Whitney's going downtown. (And will the Met use the Breuer building?)
-- A round-up of reporting on last week's major art theft in Paris.

My favorite artwork of the day

2010-05-19T22:03:00.005-04:00

Is neither a painting nor American. It's William Kentridge's 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès, a group of short films, silent, that are both an homage to the early filmmaker Méliès (Voyage to the Moon, 1907) and a beautifully Kentridge-ian meditation on creation, loss, and whimsy.

The seven screens--which were up in MoMA's just-closed William Kentridge: Five Themes --include the artist's hallmark smudged and erased drawings, animated via stop-motion photography. Kentridge also incorporates himself in some of the films, moving forward and backward in vignettes without explicit narrative. (Other films employ ants as performers.) They are technically fascinating, moving, and even sweet.

My favorite painting of the day

2010-05-03T18:48:00.006-04:00

It's not modern, but it is American. This 1825 James Peale still life, in the Worcester Art Museum, shows Peale at his best: gorgeous fruit, a shade overripe (see the barely-too-brown edges of the grapes). It almost smells like late summer, but the composition's slight stiffness & formality keep it from becoming too lush. . . it maintains a colonial reserve, as one would expect from the Peale dynasty. (And if you want to put on your scholarly hat, see the Peale Family Papers at the NPG.)

The internet + art history = much time wasted

2010-04-20T13:19:00.006-04:00

This site, That is Priceless, is highly irreverent and generally pretty clever. Colleagues who teach: assigned reading for your undergrads? Because nothing gets their attention like partial nudity. (Thanks to Bionic Grin for the tip)

Art's own reality show

2010-04-14T20:04:00.004-04:00

At last! The project-in-production I posted about last summer debuts in June on Bravo. Called Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, this "Project Runway with easels" sounds like great fun. I disagree with Gawker's Brian Moylan who argues that people in the art world won't watch because, among other reasons, many "don't even own televisions".

On the contrary, I predict my art-world colleagues will tune in enthusiastically--because who doesn't like seeing themselves (or their industry) simultaneously skewered and glorified? With contestants saying things like "I don't want to work with your poisonous attitude," it promises similar trashy fun as other competition programs. Bravo's official page for the show--with preview clip!--is here.

Olympiad

2010-03-22T20:26:00.005-04:00

I mentioned this back in January, and now it's come to pass. The Art Handling Olympics took place Sunday. With feats of dexterity and stamina, competitors wrapped art, hung paintings, and satisfied demanding "clients." Check it out: the medals feature a flaming tape dispenser.

Reported by AFC and the Times. (image source)

Email is great, but. . .

2010-03-18T21:24:00.001-04:00

Must. Have. This.

What I want to see

2010-03-16T15:45:00.005-04:00

I missed the "Cézanne and American Modernism" show when it was in Montclair, so maybe I'll have to go to Baltimore, its current venue. Lots of early paintings by artists who absorbed Cézanne and then did their own thing (Sheeler, Man Ray), and photos by modernists who liked tweaking spatial relations (Strand). And I'm keen to see Paul Outerbridge, whose early photos are terrific spare studies of volumes and light--and who also went on to shoot early fetish photography (not included in this show, I imagine).

It's hard to overstate Cézanne's stature among modernists in this country; by 1920, any avant-garde artist worth his or her salt would've mentioned him. All that flattened perspective, visible brushwork, and distortion of form presaged every important element of modernism.

Reviews from the Times, the Washington Post (check the slideshow), MAN.

Short-term sign-off

2010-02-20T20:19:00.001-05:00

Thanks to a bunch of deadlines, I'll be back in a couple of weeks.

Museum director smackdown!

2010-02-07T16:20:00.006-05:00

Kickoff for Super Bowl XLIV is two short hours away, but Indianapolis Museum of Art director Max Anderson and New Orleans Museum of Art director E. John Bullard began their trash talk a week ago. They've each bet the loan of a great painting to the other if their home team loses.

If the Colts win, the IMA borrows a Claude from NOMA; if the Saints prevail, NOMA gets the IMA's Turner. (The whole back-and-forth, plus images of the wagered paintings, are at Modern Art Notes. It's particularly funny when Anderson describes a NOMA Renoir as "sentimental blancmange".)

Apparently the commingling of high art and hyped sport is pretty funny--the story's gotten a lot of attention, from art sites, to ESPN, to the BBC (it's not even their kind of football!), to a piece on public radio. Bring it! (image source)

Update: Looks like the Indianapolis Museum of Art's Turner will be visiting New Orleans.

More about higher ed

2010-02-07T15:59:00.003-05:00

Further to my Woe Unto the PhD post below, my friend J linked to this article about Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee. Gee advocates that candidates for tenure be weighed for accomplishments other than the usual publish-in-a-scholarly-journal sort--these alternate qualifications could include teaching skills and mainstream writing (might that include exhibition catalogues?).

Related reading: Ernest Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered. Or visit the Chronicle of Higher Education and search "tenure" for pages and pages of tales from the trenches.

Whither the PhD?

2010-02-03T21:16:00.006-05:00

As those of us who follow trends in academe may have read, Louis Menand's recently-published The Marketplace of Ideas takes to task the entire structure of the academy. And correspondingly, he critiques the PhD-getting process.

I haven't yet read the book--just the excerpts published in Harvard Magazine (the comments after the article are worth a read, too). The gist of it, very roughly:

It takes nearly a decade to earn a PhD in the humanities. Only about a quarter of students who start a PhD program wind up with tenure-track jobs. So why put students through such a grueling, penurious process? Does it really require nine years of training to become qualified to teach undergraduates?

Well, of course not. Here's what Menand offers instead:

"there should be a lot more Ph.D.s, and they should be much easier to get. The non-academic world would be enriched if more people in it had exposure to academic modes of thought. . . . And the academic world would be livelier if it conceived of its purpose as something larger and more various than professional reproduction . . . . If Ph.D. programs were determinate in length—if getting a Ph.D. were like getting a law degree—then graduate education might acquire additional focus and efficiency. It might also attract more of the many students who, after completing college, yearn for deeper immersion in academic inquiry, but who cannot envision spending six years or more struggling through a graduate program and then finding themselves virtually disqualified for anything but a teaching career that they cannot count on having."

Related breaking news, from the Art History Newsletter: the College Art Association 's Online Career Center reports that job listings for art historians "declined 14.3% from FY 2008 (July 1, 2007–June 30, 2008) to FY 2009 (July 1, 2008–June 30, 2009) and are on track to decline another 36.9% in FY 2010 (July 1, 2009–June 30, 2010)." No one will be shocked to learn that at least one professional organization states part-time and adjunct positions increased during this period. The breakdown of CAA stats is here. (image source)

Good-bye to "American Stories"

2010-01-24T18:16:00.004-05:00

The Met's "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915” closed today, and I was sad to bid it farewell. Mainly because so many of the many, many pictures were the stuff of American Art 101. Walking through was akin to stepping into a slide carousel (well, a PowerPoint), in the best possible way. Favorite old friends, in chronological order:

-- John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark (1778). Famous for good reasons: primeval danger, compelling characterizations, and a real-life story.

-- Richard Caton Woodville's Politics in an Oyster House (1848). Dining and punditry, nineteenth-century style.

-- Lilly Martin Spencer's Kiss Me and You'll Kiss the 'Lasses (1856). Beautifully rendered, a fascinating period interior, and a funny conceit. All by a woman who supported her family of 13 children (only seven survived) and a mostly-unemployed husband.

--William Merritt Chase's Ring Toss (1896). Lovely homage to Spanish art, all lush brushstrokes and a surprisingly modern big swath of empty space. (Plus, you can buy your own ring toy--pictured here--at the museum store)

-- John Sloan's Cliff Dwellers (1913). Cheerful squalor.

A well-done blog accompanied the show. Would love to see similarly focused, relevant blogs for exhibitions at more museums. That is, with all that extra time curatorial staffs have. . .

Related: I recently learned of the the Archives of American Art's blog.

Good links. . .

2010-01-22T12:43:00.004-05:00

. . . to fun stuff:
CSAs for artists, the Art Handling Olympics, and Mona Lisa in your coffee. (via Modern Art Notes, AFC, and c-monster)

Art as memorial

2010-01-18T13:44:00.012-05:00

Work on the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial on the National Mall recently began at the Tidal Basin. And appropriately enough, the Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution both reported the story this weekend. The project is slated for completion in about 18 months.

So this may be a good moment to consider memorial art. Why do we--meaning humanity as a whole--so often make public art to commemorate a person or an event? What's the earliest example--the Paleolithic wounded bison in the Altamira cave? Roman equestrian monuments? The Bayeux Tapestry? (a fun aside: Make your own Bayeux Tapestry here!)

As social creatures, making art is one way we tell stories and preserve history for each other and for ourselves. We go to the National Mall to see Jefferson in his Pantheon and Washington's obelisk. In 2011, we'll also go to see Dr. King. (image source)

Do Klingons like art?

2010-01-12T21:13:00.005-05:00

In case you need a reason to appreciate social media and digital photography: without them, we never would have seen this. (And SAAM is particularly good at harnessing these technologies in the service of the museum.)

My favorite painting of the day

2010-01-12T20:44:00.004-05:00

Is Franz Kline's massive 1952 canvas at the Art Institute of Chicago. It's huge, it's bold, it's the apotheosis of Ab Ex muscular grandeur. It's also subtle in really interesting ways. Typical of Kline's paintings, the blacks and whites here are not monolithic; the layers of underpainting are visible, and the artist let drips remain throughout. He left evidence of his process in this enormous composition--which might otherwise have overwhelmed the viewer with its size and scale.

More on van Gogh

2010-01-05T14:34:00.006-05:00

Adam Gopnik has a piece in the January 4 New Yorker about new van Gogh scholarship (you must register at the site for the full article). Last spring I mentioned this book, by German scholars Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans. The authors argue that Paul Gauguin may have sliced off van Gogh's ear--that perhaps the famous wound was not self-inflicted after all.

Gopnik describes van Gogh's quest, ultimately futile, for an artistic community in the town of Arles. And he makes a compelling observation about the role artists play for the rest of us:

"We gawk and stare as the painters slice off their ears and down the booze and act like clowns. But we rely on them to make up for our own timidity, on their courage to dignify our caution . . . . [We spectators] all make our wagers, and the cumulative lottery builds museums and lecture halls and revisionist biographies. But the artist does more. He bets his life."

Top Five Top Ten

2009-12-31T19:38:00.003-05:00

A roundup of art-related top lists for 2009:

1) Artnet's picks for most important art-world stories
2) Top art books, per the Daily Beast
3) Jerry Saltz's favorite art of the year (some not safe for work)
4) Time's favorite exhibitions
5) Top ten auction sales (interesting: 7 of the ten are modern era/contemporary)

Happy new year!

Homage to a winter painting

2009-12-28T20:06:00.005-05:00

John Twachtman painted winter as well as anyone ever did (other American artists who aced the subject are here). His Winter, in the Phillips Collection, is a particularly nice example of snow, ice, and gray sky. Twachtman's snow scenes are justifiably famous among historians of American art; their broad expanses of whites and grays, their careful brushwork that emphasizes the paintings' surfaces, and their indistinct details read today as nearly proto-modern. It's not hard to find a harbinger of Robert Ryman in these pale landscapes.

But of course Twachtman wasn't painting in the late nineteenth century with abstraction of the 1960s and 1970s in mind. Instead, these paintings stand as terrific examples of Impressionist and Tonalist experiments with light and color (which is why Duncan Philips was such a fan). Twachtman evokes chill in the best possible way. Brr!

My favorite painting of the day

2009-12-03T20:00:00.003-05:00

Is John Vanderlyn's awesomely scaled panoramic view of Versailles, from 1818-19. The painting--all 165 feet of it--was originally installed in a building designed for it in lower Manhattan. Visitors entered the Rotunda and vicariously experienced the palace and gardens; the canvas circled around them to dramatic effect. Vanderlyn painted not only contemporary European notables (Czar Alexander I, the king of Prussia) among the figures in the scene, but also included himself.

The Met has installed the painting in a fabulously-lit circular space tucked away in the American Wing, if you'd like a visit. In the meantime, a video of museum director Tom Cambell talking to the press in front of Versailles is here, on Culture Grrl's blog.

Boo!

2009-11-02T13:01:00.004-05:00

I should've linked to this Saturday, but it's not too late! A Halloween costume for your art. (props to Modern Art Notes who found it first)

More on Lincoln

2009-10-26T15:41:00.003-04:00

If you can't get enough of Abe Lincoln imagery (as I can't), you'll be pleased to know that there exists an Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and that its activities include an upcoming lecture by MacArthur-winning photographer Deborah Willis. Info about her talk here, and a link to the commission here.

Autumnal mini-break

2009-10-08T09:47:00.000-04:00

Back in a couple of weeks.

Who needs art historians?

2009-09-28T13:41:00.006-04:00

Hooray! The always-informative Art History Newsletter is back this month after its summer hiatus. This post links to a great research project/website, the Dictionary of Art Historians. Wondering about the careers of Katharine Kuh or Rudolf Arnheim? Here's your source.

O'Keeffe at the Whitney

2009-09-25T14:07:00.007-04:00

Big opening(s) last week for the O'Keeffe and abstraction show at the Whitney. My favorite pieces include a series of paintings of a shingle and an oyster shell. Three versions, all from different museum collections, are hung together (the painting from the Boston MFA is here.). The arrangement is a particularly nice study of the artist's thinking about abstraction vs. representation. And maybe more importantly, it exemplifies the best purpose of a museum show: to bring together artworks that tell a story. In this case, the whole is greater than the sum.

While the museum's website has very few images from the show (unless you watch the brief promotional video, you'll see just three paintings, all flowers), the catalogue is more interesting. Reason alone to have a look are the letters from O'Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, her dealer/lover/husband, included in an appendix. The Beinecke Library at Yale made this correspondence available only in 2006, and the selection here is great--intellectual, steamy, fascinating stuff for those of us who love American art.

Labor Day

2009-09-04T12:15:00.005-04:00

In honor of Monday's holiday, an image of labor. This mural--by Walter Speck, who ran Detroit's WPA arts program--is from that city's headquarters of the West Side Local 174, UAW.

It's a quintessential example of unsubtle 1930s iconography. Check out the assembly line and smokestacks, bosses in suits, workers holding signs (one reads "Today GM, Tomorrow Ford").

I give the artist extra credit for putting both a man and a woman front and center in his mural; it's nice to see the ladies getting the whole muscular-heroic-worker treatment along with the men. Happy holiday! (See here for a great photo of the artist working on the mural. Image source).

Opportunistic curating

2009-09-01T09:29:00.005-04:00

Apparently, some artists and curators in London are turning otherwise empty storefronts into temporary gallery/exhibition spaces. The benefits for all involved are clear: The artists get to move their work from studios into more visible spaces, curators can practice their craft, landlords have a more appealing spot to market to longer-term tenants, and neighborhoods have activity and bustle in a spot that otherwise might carry a whiff of dereliction. What's not to like?

There's a location in my neighborhood that would be perfect for this kind of experiment. A card & tschochke shop/Lotto outlet left a large space down the street a year ago, and the "for rent" sign and dusty interior don't do much for the aesthetic appeal of the block. Lots of windows, some 2,000 sf of space, and a site just a couple of blocks from the subway = appeal for artists wanting exposure. Plus, it's just a dozen or so yards away from the former home of Reena Spaulings Fine Art. Any takers?

On vacation . . .

2009-07-28T19:21:00.001-04:00

and back mid-August.

Real art, really?

2009-07-22T20:00:00.004-04:00

This sounds fantastic. Bravo is creating a reality show about visual artists. The competition's winner will get cash and shows at a gallery and museums (though the Times report doesn't name the venues).

My hope is that it won't only be a fun watch for art professionals, but it will also draw people who aren't otherwise engaged in art. As judge Simon de Pury of Phillips put it, the show will help dispel the rarified air of "hermetic inapproachability" around the art world. No word yet on when the show will air, but I. Can't. Wait. (Thanks to J for the tip.)

Frenchy love!

2009-07-15T18:54:00.005-04:00

In a slightly belated nod to Bastille Day, I'd like to give a shout-out to the relationship between American artists and the great nation of France. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, any American artist worth his (or less often, her) salt spent some time in la France soaking up aesthetic education, either formally or less so.

A much-studied--and absolutely wonderful--example of an American in Paris is Mary Cassatt's In the Loge, from 1878 and in the Boston MFA. A Philadelphia native, Cassatt moved to France permanently in the 1870s and pursued her career there (being independently wealthy helped with the whole prejudice-against-women-artists problem).

The woman at the opera trains her glasses toward the stage, or toward another audience member. At the same time, the man in the background is looking at her. And in a very modern way, we, the viewer also become part of this voyeuristic exercise. It's all a deliciously complex and skillfully wrought exploration of manners and conventions. Ah, oui. (image source)

Pay the artists (and the administrators)

2009-07-08T19:56:00.003-04:00

What lucky blogging timing! In my previous post, I wrote about money going to the arts, and a couple of days ago CultureGrrl summarized the recently-announced NEA grants that are part of the stimulus package. As CultureGrrl notes, the cash is spread pretty thin. (Grants of $25,000 and $50,000 aren't going to save many museum jobs.) But still. I don't think the recipient organizations are complaining.

Pay the artists

2009-06-30T11:23:00.003-04:00

A good argument for federal spending on the arts by Felix Salmon in The Atlantic. Here's the gist: since artists are generally wildly underpaid, grant money is spent both "quickly and carefully", thus sending the cash back into the economy fast fast fast.

And then, of course, there's the longer-term benefits of the art that's produced. Here's a favorite product from the New Deal, Thomas Hart Benton's enthusiastic mural, "The Social History of Missouri," in the state capitol building. (Click on the image for a video tour.)

Paintings about summer

2009-06-24T19:14:00.004-04:00

After a remarkably cool and wet June here in Gotham, we are promised seasonally-appropriate heat beginning tomorrow (fingers crossed). So here's a list of favorite summer paintings, in keeping with previous weather-related posts here and here. Once again, I'm writing about American art from the early twentieth century.

First off, sweaty urban heat in John Sloan's Roofs, Summer Night and Reginald Marsh's raucous mass of humanity in Coney Island Beach. (bonus photo: Marsh sketching while riding a Coney Island carousel horse!)

I'm also a great fan of other beach scenes, including Marsden Hartley's blocky, muscular Canuk Yankee Lumberjack at Old Orchard Beach, Maine and Maurice Prendergast's more genteel (or at least less naked) Beach, St. Malo. This last one, by William Merritt Chase, is a bit of a cheat because it's from 1891--but it's a great pastoral interpretation of summer. Happy beaching, everyone.

Layoffs at the Met, continued

2009-06-22T18:45:00.002-04:00

It's official. Reported by the Times here.

Reductions at Met & Guggenheim

2009-06-18T20:33:00.005-04:00

CultureGrrl reports on cuts at the Gugg (formally announced Tuesday) and at the Met (official announcement soon). (image source)

Play it again!

2009-06-09T11:03:00.003-04:00

This public art project in London sounds wonderful. Could it work in New York? Why not Debussy in Union Square? (Or more likely, Chopsticks--here's a happily messy interpretation on YouTube.)

Correction: More on the Met

2009-06-05T21:39:00.004-04:00

According to museum management, there were no layoffs yesterday. A staff reduction of 10% was announced on March 12, starting with 127 merchandising employees. Voluntary retirements and other staff reductions will be announced in the next several weeks.

Layoffs at the Met

2009-06-05T13:44:00.004-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art laid off some of its staff in the last few days; numbers are unconfirmed.

Photography in the service of. . . ?

2009-06-05T12:10:00.007-04:00

Michael Kimmelman has a thoughtful article in yesterday's Times about a show in Paris, "Controversies: A Legal and Ethical History of Photography." Along with a Benneton ad and a photo of Angelina Jolie, the exhibition includes images of extreme suffering and degradation, prompting Kimmelman to question the wisdom of looking at such terrors:

"To see something. . . is to face the prospect of becoming inured to it, even if only slightly. Photographers reveal horrors to which they also accustom viewers. That was the ultimate problem with "Controversies." The show squandered our mercy for a rambling survey."

So should we avoid looking at terrible imagery? Is it preferable to read about heinous crimes or hear of them spoken? How to preserve our humanity and acknowledge terrible events?

Copyrights gone wild

2009-05-27T19:29:00.003-04:00

A while back, I wrote a bit about copyright & permissions, and what that means to those of us who traffic in the visual arts. Greg.org recently described how Slate could not get permission to reproduce a Richard Prince photograph--and the irony lies in the fact that Prince photographs advertisements and calls them his own.

In his post, Greg gets into the implications of pixels; the whole thing highlights the sometimes strange logic involved where the law meets art-making. In the spirit of appropriation, this image of the Marlboro Man is the Prince photograph (lifted from Greg.org), not the original ad. (Thanks to Heidi for the tip.)

My favorite artwork of the (Memorial) day

2009-05-25T20:41:00.006-04:00

In honor of the holiday, one of my favorite New York City memorials. This one is by Augustus Saint-Gaudens to Admiral David Glasgow Farragut; it's at the north end of Madison Square Park.

Dedicated in 1881, the sculpture commemorates the Civil War naval commander who famously cried, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." (or a variation of it, depending on who you believe.) Saint-Gaudens adapted the customary standing figure type to reflect Farragut's work--the feet are far enough apart to suggest bracing for balance on a ship's deck, and the right edge of his coat flies back, as if from wind.

This corporeality contrasts with the design of the exedra--the semicircular bench that serves as pedestal--by Stanford White. Below Farragut float allegorical figures (Loyalty and Courage, apparently) carved in low relief, all ephemeral and, quite literally, wavy. But my favorite part of the piece is a bit of a sly joke. It's a bronze crab embedded among the bronze "stones" at the base, inscibed with the names of Saint-Gaudens and White.

And an aside: I have discovered there are precious few good images of nineteenth-century public sculpture online. There are snapshots of, say, the photographer's girlfriend posed next to the piece, or a good view from several feet below aplenty. But I guess you need a tall ladder and some serious photography skills to get a good shot of a dead guy in bronze. Here are the two sources of these images; there are also very good images here, but beware the busy slide show.

Michelle Obama at the Met

2009-05-19T11:33:00.004-04:00

So our First Lady made a highbrow cultural visit to New York yesterday, where she visited the Met and the American Ballet Theater. She cut the ribbon at the (partial) reopening of the museum's American Wing, right in front of the 1820s bank facade that once lived on Wall Street. This part of the renovation includes revamped period rooms (fun!); I'll write about the changes once I visit after Memorial Day.

Michelle said at the museum: "The arts are not just a nice thing to have . . . . [the arts] define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation." Can't argue with that, of course. And it's always good to hear someone with policy pull saying so. But here's the part that I don't get: apparently in attendance at the Met were Ralph Lauren, Iman, and Anna Wintour. (Here's more on the fashion angle from the Huffington Post) Really, Anna Wintour? Because Vogue is all about colonial fashion for fall? It's the American Wing, not the Costume Institute. What was that all about?

In any event, the Met has a "behind-the-scenes" video tour of the Engelhard Court up on YouTube, for the scholarly wonks among us, as well as a clip from the FLOTUS visit, if you want another view of MO's purple suit.

Back on the LES beat

2009-05-11T14:12:00.003-04:00

Since I've been remiss in my visits to Lower East Side galleries lately, this past Saturday I stopped into a few. Sorry to report that the majority of it just wasn't that interesting; most of the art I saw was either overly facile or way too complicated. (Seriously: if I spend time with the checklist and read a review and talk to the gallerist on duty, and I still don't understand it, the art isn't working.)

As I want to keep this blog a positive and upbeat place, I won't name names of what I did not enjoy. But I'll rave about the one show I thought was quite successful. Bridgegallery (that's right, there's no space between the words) on Orchard Street has Sydney Cash's work up right now. Cash uses mirrors, glass, and light to create wall-mounted pieces--sculptures, really--that are, at heart, optical illusions. To figure out how the pieces work, a viewer has to look closely from different angles, which is always a good exercise. But the work is also visually compelling, even if you don't get up close and personal. Nice.

Van Gogh's ear

2009-05-11T13:47:00.005-04:00

More headline-making art history! On the heels of two other examples of art scholarship making news (I wrote about them here and here), a pair of German academics are reporting that Van Gogh's ear loss was not self-inflicted. Instead, Paul Gauguin may have sliced it off during an argument. The Guardian's article is here.

Now, what happened to Van Gogh's ear is not especially important to understanding the art he made. He was terribly unhappy, probably mentally ill, and that is relevant to his career. The details of how he ended up ear-less, not so much. The fact that scholars have studied this--and that the story is considered news--says more about the curiosity & voyeurism the mutilation inspires. Celebrity worship or actual art history? I'm leaning toward the former.

Fun aside: here's where I illustrated the missing ear a few months ago. Wonder if this new information will alter the goofy museum store gifts?

Physics for art historians

2009-04-27T20:06:00.006-04:00

Those scholars are at it again! On the heels of geographers charting culture comes a physicist pinning down the techniques of the Old Masters. The Washington Post reported how David Stork is using his skills in physics to parse the processes of Vermeer, Velasquez, and Caravaggio. The results aren't exactly earth-shattering--as it turns out, Vermeer depicted light very, very close to the way it actually falls, while Caravaggio fudged the illumination in The Calling of Saint Matthew a bit. So what, right?

Well, it matters because it can't hurt to know more (or more accurately, to have another educated guess) about what our aesthetic forebears were up to. And I believe it's healthy to mix disciplines up with each other. It's easy to get all territorial about the biases and conventions particular to a field--and easy to be dismissive of studies from "outside," when those studies can be valuable.

Finally, and most philosophically, inquiry for the sake of inquiry is a good thing. Why not study the puzzle of Las Meninas for the umpteenth time? The painting is remarkable, and our continued interest in it speaks to Diego's brilliance (have a look at the animated study on the Post's site). Art history lives! And isn't that great? (thanks to Melita for the tip)

See you soon

2009-04-14T12:58:00.001-04:00

In the middle of several deadlines, I'm taking a short hiatus from posting. Back in a week or two.

Bzzzzzzz

2009-04-10T12:37:00.007-04:00

It's a couple of days old, but this article from the Times is really interesting. Using geographers' tools, a pair of scholars mapped cultural buzz. The result, a study titled "The Geography of Buzz," used photos from Getty Images to mark the places where cultural events happen and are recorded.

It's a terrifically challenging idea: using quantitative tools to define something so malleable. And the study is limited to events deemed buzz-worthy enough to photograph, and for those photos to be made available for sale. So ultimately, the results are determined by the amount of media coverage an event received.

Not surprisingly, by this definition of buzz, small-scale or far-flung events didn't get recorded, while Times Square and Lincoln Center got a lot of hits. Put simply, "there were not enough events in Brooklyn to be statistically significant." Yikes! Tell that to the hardworking folks at St. Ann's Warehouse or the legions of artists working in the borough.

Still, it's a compelling project--a marriage of a very slippery concept with carefully worked methodology. Gladdens the hearts of geeky academics everywhere. (image source)

Art about rain

2009-04-06T20:01:00.008-04:00

In the spirit of wet and windy, a rundown of good paintings about rain. Like the art historical challenge I set myself for winter paintings, I sought examples from the early twentieth century.

First up, Everett Shinn's pastel, Fifth Avenue, at the Brooklyn Museum, does urban grey well. And in John Steuart Curry's Wisconsin Landscape (a favorite from the Met), the artist got the drama of a Midwestern storm right on.

Checking in with the Stieglitz Circle: this very early Marsden Hartley from the Wadsworth Atheneum is all about the clouds. As is Arthur Dove's Storm Clouds, which includes a very literal--and quite startling--"eye" of the storm! Don't forget your umbrella.

My favorite painting of the day . . .

2009-03-29T14:50:00.005-04:00

. . . is My Egypt, Charles Demuth's 1927 masterpiece (and that's not a word I throw around lightly). Here's what makes the painting great:

1) The title. These are grain elevators, not Giza. Demuth acknowledges--and winks at--the industrial/agrarian system that produces America's grandest monuments.

2) The paint application. Hard to see in reproductions, but Demuth typically applied his paint very thinly and smoothly; brushstrokes are invisible.

3) The ray lines that shoot around the canvas. The ones emanating from the top left suggest divine approval of the industrial site (Madonna of the grain elevator!), while the others indicate optical effects of sunlight. It's a happily Cubist-inspired distortion.

The painting is in the collection of the Whitney.

Real fake

2009-03-20T08:40:00.006-04:00

The guerilla theater / good-natured urban mischief group Improv Everywhere staged this "gallery opening" in the 23rd Street A/C subway station. Watch the video; read the wall text. If you remember the Home Depot slo-mo project, you won't be surprised to learn the same folks were behind this. (Thanks, Kate, for bringing this to my attention.)

College Art round-up

2009-03-13T11:59:00.003-04:00

I didn't attend the College Art Association's annual conference--the massive event that everyone in art history seems to love to hate--that was held in LA last month. But I've been catching up online, and the reports are as interesting & impassioned as one would expect.

Frenchy But Chic covered the proceedings with a post titled "Invasion of the Slide-Worshipping Zombies":

"One needs an outlet after being made to suffer through such indignities as enduring a CAA session where phrases include: "paradigmatic shift" (used mainly when things are stagnant), titles are made post-Barthesian by an immoderate use of the '/' or 'and/or', identities are forever in the need to be reframed and concepts have to hybridized, or worse, enhanced. 'Politics' in your title earns you brownie points, 'Questioning' and 'Frameworks' within the same sentence can make you win the Monopoly!"

More serious, but just as pointed is a comment in the Art History Newsletter:

"CAA is a disaster of an organization, a thrilling mediocrity of a conference. Fewer panels with better papers would improve things slightly, but the whole organization seems to be blithely unaware of or unwilling to deal with the truly monstrous problems facing the discipline--the need for massive curtailment of graduate programs, support of young professionals beyond the 'emerging professionals' claptrap, ethical use of adjuncts, etc."

I have fun at CAA conferences, paradigmatic shifts and all. But I see these writers' points. I bet loads of attendees would be interested in professional panels on good practice or workshops on job skills. Perhaps more focus on daily life in the field--rather than an umpteenth paper with "dialectic" in its title--would be a good idea.

The bad, the good

2009-03-13T11:46:00.003-04:00

Here's something disappointing. And here's some comic relief (what must the guards think?).

How to shake it up?

2009-03-09T10:58:00.005-04:00

Back in Friday's New York Times, Roberta Smith reviewed the National Gallery of Art's reinstallation of its American painting rooms (And by American painting, we mean the old stuff: pre-war, pre-abstraction. When museums say "American art," they rarely mean Frankenthaler, Nevelson, or Currin.).

Her take is that by hanging the portraits, landscapes, and still lifes in the customary chronological and subject groupings, the museum does the artwork a disservice. It looks dull. "As I watched groups of Washington schoolchildren slip through these galleries, I worried about what could be done to hold their attention. Then I realized I was just projecting my own boredom; I didn't want to stop either."

To make the galleries more appealing, she proposes including fewer examples of the work currently on view--and I confess that an entire room of paintings by George Catlin wouldn't set my heart aflame, either. Smith suggests mixing up the traditional artwork with so-called naive painting; the museum has strong holdings in American folk art from its Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch Collection, such as this Ammi Phillips painting, Strawberry Girl.

I haven't seen the reinstallation, so I can't speak to its success directly. But when it's time to reinstall the reinstallation, why not bring out some of the Garbisch pieces? It's another part of the story of American art, and an aesthetically interesting one, too. (Thanks to Dr. J for bringing this review to my attention). (image source)

My favorite artwork of the day

2009-03-03T09:57:00.005-05:00

This one is by Geri Forkner, on view until yesterday at Tanner Hill Gallery's booth at the Works on Paper Fair. For this piece, 365 Days of the Year, Forkner took found bits of paper, cut them apart, and then wove them back together; each resulting square represents a single day. Then she secured them with staples and stitched them with black thread, creating twelve vertical strips representing each month of the year (this piece is from 2007).

Complicated and tactile, the result lies somewhere between Dada collage and quilting. But what makes it really compelling is how personal these reworked scraps of paper become. The work (do we call it a collage? weaving?) functions as a visual diary of ephemera, surprisingly eloquent and striking. (image courtesy of Tanner Hill Gallery, Chattanooga)

Paper, please

2009-03-02T11:24:00.007-05:00

I visited the Works on Paper Fair at the Park Avenue Armory over the weekend, and was reminded why I enjoy fairs in this building. First, there's the contrast between the massive exterior and the ornate grillwork, chandeliers, and discolored (or poorly lit) nineteenth-century portraits inside--all down-at-heel relics of the Aesthetic Movement. More info on the fabulous building here.

Then there's the fair itself, temporary and posh, all flowers and wildly overpriced coffee. Lots of good art to see this time. My favorites included a Will Barnet watercolor with graphite at Babcock Galleries, Aubrey Beardsley at Chris Beetles, and Judy Pfaff's intricate & luminous new pieces at Tandem Press. (Tandem Press gave me a pass to the fair.)

This fair is not a large one, which may be an unfortunate economic indicator. But from an aesthetic perspective, perhaps that's a good thing. Since works on paper are often small in scale, they reward close looking. And it's hard to look closely for very long--so maybe we visitors were spared eye strain this year?

New look

2009-02-25T19:23:00.001-05:00

I changed things around a bit for what I hope is an easier read. Thanks, Blogger templates!

What would Barack hang on his wall?

2009-02-25T19:01:00.004-05:00

According to the London Times, the Obamas are decorating with modern art borrowed from U.S. museums. The article identifies the choice as confirming the couple's "reputation for stylishness and modernity," and it's hard to argue against Ed Ruscha--one of the artists apparently under consideration--as stylish and modern.

But I wonder why we identify modern and contemporary art as stylish? What makes that category more hip than, say, Henry Kirk Browne's topical nineteenth-century sculpture or a lush Giorgione nude? Any dealer of Old Masters will confirm that the clientele doesn't lean toward the young and fashionable. So will we always gravitate toward the new new new? Or have there been times and places where up-and-coming collectors have chosen the musty and venerable?

Abe in bronze

2009-02-22T13:05:00.007-05:00

As a slightly belated homage to Abraham Lincoln on his bicentennial, I spoke to Karen Lemmey about the 1868 sculpture of Lincoln in Union Square. Dr. Lemmey wrote her dissertation on the piece's sculptor, Henry Kirke Browne. Dr. Lemmey was at the National Gallery of Art until 2007, and is currently working on the forthcoming Augustus Saint-Gaudens exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

American Modern: The Union League Club, a Republican organization, commissioned the sculpture. What was the story there?

Karen Lemmey: The Union League Club existed to counter anti-Lincoln sentiment in New York. The city was politically split [during the Civil War]. The mayor, Fernando Wood, suggested that New York secede from the Union. And a lot of people in New York City were financially invested in the South . . . the cotton trade was part of New York. So Lincoln wasn't universally loved here. The Union League Club decided to commission a sculpture within hours of Lincoln's death.

AM: How did the club choose Brown for the job?

KL: Brown was one of the top sculptors in the United States and in New York City. He was a shoo-in. And he was already well-known for his sculpture of George Washington in Union Square [unveiled in 1856].

AM: Why Union Square?

KL: Although Central Park was already open, Union Square was designated in peoples' minds as a good place for monuments--Washington was there. Originally, the Washington sculpture was on the Southeast corner of the park, and Lincoln was placed on the Southwest corner. So you would understand them as pendant pieces if you saw them in the 1870s.

AM: What was public reaction to the Lincoln sculpture?

KL: Not terribly favorable! It's very hard to make Lincoln look heroic. After the sculpture was unveiled, the Daily Tribune described Lincoln as a "remarkably homely man." And in the sculpture itself, there's no action, no reference, nothing going on.

Lincoln is holding a scroll in his left hand, so what else could it be but the Emancipation Proclamation? But that was just a document--and that was so inflammatory [to the divided New York audience] that Brown couldn't do much to make it more explicit. A first version of the sculpture showed a black man kneeling before Lincoln, but the Union League Club thought the symbolism wasn't appropriate, and they refused to commission that design.

AM: In the 1930s, Lincoln and Washington were both moved from their original sites for subway construction. What else is different about the contemporary experience of seeing the sculptures?

KL: The most important change in our 21st-century understanding of 19th-century monuments is the scale of the buildings around them. We can't take away the chaos around Union Square today. The only way to get a quiet remove [to see the sculptures] is to go upstairs to Whole Foods with a cup of coffee and look down. That's one nice thing about the intrusion of the 21st century.

American Modern. . .

2009-02-11T18:36:00.001-05:00

. . . is on vacation. Will be back after February 18th. Happy Presidents Day!

Art around the LES, part 2

2009-02-04T19:56:00.003-05:00

. . . which is a belated follow-up to a post in December. A round-up of current local gallery shows:

At the bottom of Orchard Street, Lisa Cooley Fine Art has the first of a series of three-person exhibitions. The premise is interesting: each show includes work by one canonical artist, one established, and one emerging. Of the works up now--by Mark Barrow, Anthony Pearson, and Blinky Palermo--my favorites are Pearson's black-and-white solarized photographs. They look like ink on paper, all gestural and smooth.

Around the corner, next to the almost-too-ornate-for-this-neighborhood Forward building, is the spare white box that's home to LaViolaBank Gallery. Ivan Orkeny and Sandy White's show, Blue Room, uses animation and photography to create a universe of mechanized sculpture. The moving bits are kind of a Pixar cast of characters, only more industrial and less obviously adorable. (you can see some video clips here)

And over on Broome Street is my favorite show of the bunch, John Gerrard's Oil Stick Work at Simon Preston Gallery. This is a "virtual sculpture," a computer generated image of a barn and silos. A worker (also computer generated) arrives each day in real time and paints the structure with a black oil stick until he's done for the day. The buildings will finally be covered with black pigment in the year 2038--that's 2038 in our time.

I don't only like this last piece because of the inherent futility of it (What's the point? It's fascinating, beautiful, and strange) but because it reminds me of my doctoral dissertation. I wrote about barns in Precisionist paintings and photographs in the 1920s and 30s; the art I studied (like this photo) shared with Gerrard's piece a spareness and a reduction of detail. Maybe they're spiritual kin, maybe not, but I enjoyed Gerrard's piece a lot.

More on Brandeis

2009-02-03T10:44:00.003-05:00

An update to my previous post. The latest analyses suggest that Brandeis can cover its budget shortfall without closing the Rose Art Museum and selling its contents. (once again, Richard Lacayo has great information; basically, the Rose supports itself.) In other developments, the university's student paper, The Justice, reported on student protests against the closure, and the Museum of Bad Art is selling a painting to help save the day.

In the Times, Roberta Smith put it well in her article today. The whole piece is worth a read, but here's the gist:

"What the university's president, Jehuda Reinharz, and the trustees don't seem to realize is how their actions stain the reputation of Brandeis itself. He characterized the choice as 'painful' and 'difficult,' but it had all the earmarks of a desperate quick fix rather than a rational decision. He even said it in no way diminished Brandeis's commitment to the visual arts. . . "

For real? Eliminating the museum doesn't hurt the school's reputation for the arts? I wrote about the virtues of--and place for--university museums a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, Reinharz doesn't share my enthusiasm.

My favorite artwork of the day

2009-01-29T15:10:00.010-05:00

I've written about favorite pieces before (here are two of them). But this is the first time I've focused on an artwork other than a painting, and it's the first that is by a woman. The former bias simply reflects what I've been seeing, but the latter is just embarrassing. I oughta know better.

Anyway, I first noticed Sarah Sze's work at the Whitney Biennial of 2000, and I found it appealing, surprising, and lots of fun. So I was happy to see another piece, Proportioned to the Groove, at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art last month. Sze stretched string (yarn? filament?) across the gallery, to create a grid that's like some sort of 3D graph or a room-sized Agnes Martin painting. In a corner of the room are assembled collections of tiny objects--styrofoam cups, plastic flower petals, just stuff--in piles and scattered around. (The MCA's tiny image doesn't do the piece justice, so here's a similar work that was at the Marianne Boesky Gallery.)

The effect is both chaotic and highly controlled. It's whimsical, too, a mini-city or an OCD dollhouse.

Installations like these aren't the sorts of things we can put in our living rooms--at least not if we live with dogs or toddlers, or if we mind risking strangulation during a late-night refrigerator run. But they're also a nice reminder of how art can be big and unruly, difficult to ship in a crate.

Brandeis ignominy

2009-01-29T14:29:00.006-05:00

In case you haven't heard, on Monday, Brandeis University announced its plan to close the Rose Art Museum and sell the entire collection to raise cash for the school, where the endowment is down about 25%. Not surprisingly, the arts community, Brandeis alumni, and culture fans in general called the move what it is: cynical, ill-informed, and a colossally bad idea. (Some of the best coverage is from the Boston Globe and Modern Art Notes. And the AAM has condemned the plan.)

Now, apparently, the school is backpedalling, and fast. Richard Lacayo of Time summarizes the latest developments. The school now says it wants to sell "some of the art," but still close the museum. (As Lacayo notes, this is a convenient way to get past the ethical guidelines that censor museums' deacessioning artworks. No actual museum, no ethical problem.)

This abrupt change of tone has me wondering. Did the university not expect such a strong response? Did the president and the board have no idea that alumni donors would be angry to see gifts to their alma mater on the block at Sotheby's? Seriously? It strikes me that the powers that be didn't seek advice from anyone in the art world. (image source)

Portraits-in-Chief

2009-01-27T20:57:00.005-05:00

Note: After I wrote this, I discovered a pain-in-the-neck technical difficulty. The links below don't go to the individual paintings; instead, they all go the to National Portrait Gallery's homepage for the presidential portrait "exhibition". All of the paintings seem to have the same url. Until I figure out how to get the links to go to individual images, you'll have to click on the name of the president in the left-hand column to get to the images. Sorry.

To acknowledge to our peaceful change of national leadership, I took a virtual stroll through the National Portrait Gallery's collection of presidential portraits. It's a fun study of 200+ years of changing art historical conventions. Join me, fellow (art) history fans!

Early on is baby-faced John Adams by John Trumbull--simply head and shoulders and a dark background, without trappings of wealth or the promise of high office. (He does look a bit like Paul Giamatti in the HBO miniseries, doesn't he?) Next up in the presidential gallery is Thomas Jefferson by Mather Brown; this time the sitter's arms rest on papers, and a bit of antique-looking sculpture stands behind him, both nods to the Jefferson's erudition. (The goofy-looking wig, however, is something else.) Both of these portraits were painted years before the men took office, unlike most of the other paintings in the NPG online collection.

Jump ahead to Grover Cleveland by Anders Zorn, another president who got literary props. I also like the portrait of Theodore Roosevelt by Adrian Lamb (after Philip de Laszlo), because the portrait isn't explicitly presidential--he's holding a riding crop! Very sporty of him.

But my favorite surprise of this bunch is Norman Rockwell's portrait of Richard Nixon. That's right, Mr. All-Americana painted President Enemies List. The horizontal format is a nice change of pace from the usual vertical orientation for portraits, but mostly I like how humane and grandfatherly Rockwell made #37 look. Who knew?

Where are all the pretty pictures? Part two

2009-01-22T20:29:00.007-05:00

Lest I sound like a complete ingrate in my previous post, I do understand the point of copyright protection for artists. Imagine you are poor, tortured Edvard Munch. You channel your fear, rage, and fin-de-siècle alienation into The Scream, and then someone goes and turns your painting into a necktie.

Creative work needs to be protected. If an artwork is going to end up as a necktie, or a coffee mug, or a musical throw pillow, the artist should certainly have the authority to say yea or nay to the project. And if the project is a money-maker, the artist should have a share in the lucre, too.

When I worked with clearing rights many years ago, however, I saw how the existing system is difficult for scholars. Particularly early in their careers, art historians need to publish. And journals and book publishers often require that authors clear the rights to their illustrations--and pay for those rights--themselves. The paperwork is daunting, and the fees can reach into the thousands of dollars for a book. And what good is a book on art without pictures?

Perhaps a better system would allow easier and cheaper access to images for scholars who use the artwork for certain categories of publishing, like academic journals or for university presses and museum publications. Granted, this is my own background and my own bias, but there may be a happy medium both for artists and those of us who love to write about them. (image source)

Where are all the pretty pictures?

2009-01-21T19:42:00.003-05:00

For a blog about art, there are very few illustrations here. That's because I'm trying to be careful about following the law. In the U.S., an artwork is protected by copyright for the length of the artist's life, plus 70 (or 90) years. Here's a fun link to the U.S. Copyright Office that explains the law in more detail.

This means that if I want to write about, say, Paul Strand's Abstraction, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, I have to understand that the artist died in 1976, and therefore his work is still protected by copyright. So I have three choices (And for the record, I have no beef with the Strand estate--I've never worked with it, and I don't know who represents it.):

1) I provide a link to an image of the photograph, as I've done above.

2) I contact the artist's estate, or its representative, and ask for permission to reproduce the photo on this site.

3) I post the photo on the site and risk getting a reprimand and a fine.

Number three isn't a good option--I'm terrible at disobeying authority. Number two, contacting the estate, is not impossible; most artists' estates are professional & responsive. But it requires time to write the letter or send the email, and to wait days or weeks for the okay. And there is almost always a fee for use of the image.

So I'll stick with number one, sending my readers to another site to see what I'm writing about. It's more cumbersome than having the image right next to my insightful commentary, but I know it's legal. You may notice that the artwork that I have posted on my blog is all by very long-dead artists (or by contemporary artists who have given me permission to reproduce their work). I'm just trying to keep it on the up-and-up.

My next post: what this system means for art historians--and artists.

In defense of Andrew Wyeth

2009-01-19T18:45:00.007-05:00

My friend J (an art historian and author of the terrific Mommy, hungry! parenting blog) suggested I post something on Andrew Wyeth and his broad, and I argue, often misunderstood, legacy. So here goes:

Wyeth died last week; the best of the obits I read was Michael Kimmelman's in the Times. During his lifetime, Wyeth got a lot of flak from the critics for being too accessible, too narrative, too liked by the non-elite. Which makes some sense--he was painting at the same time that Jackson Pollock and the Ab Ex crowd were in ascendance. And Wyeth's Winter 1946 is a completely different sort of painting from Pollock's Free Form, painted the same year.

But different doesn't mean worse. Wyeth was really, really good with watercolor. He painted it fluidly, he painted it dry, and did both loose handling and close detail equally well. Benjamin's House (1955) depicts a flat expanse of wall, but Wyeth was concerned with the effects of shadow and light rather than literal transcription.

Like Grant Wood (and I am a BIG Grant Wood fan, but that's for another post), Wyeth appeared to paint straightforward homages to Americana: small towns, rural landscapes, hardworking farmers. But his images are more nuanced than that. There's a current of melancholy and hardscrabble cold in his work. And some hot blood, too--I once saw a reproduction of a painting of a young male neighbor of the artist's, posed nude, that is downright sexy. (And no, I don't remember where I found it!) There's more going on in Wyeth's paintings than apple pie and the American flag.

Quincy Jones Appointed to Obama Cabinet!

2009-01-16T11:00:00.006-05:00

Well, not yet, anyway. NPR's Morning Edition aired a segment today about establishing a cabinet-level culture minister. Apparently, Quincy Jones is, uh, jonesing for the creation of such a position. He has an online petition, found here, that's been circulating the internets for a while.

Jones won't say if he would actively seek the title, but how cool would that be? He knows everyone and he's affiliated with lots of socially worthy organizations. Would it not be awesome to have the man who played with Lionel Hampton, arranged for Ella Fitzgerald, and produced Michael Jackson's Off the Wall at the helm of our great nation? Secretary Q sounds pretty good to me. (image source)

My favorite painting of the day

2009-01-14T12:05:00.007-05:00

Hans Hofmann was so tremendously good, but he remains a not-famous-enough part of twentieth-century abstraction. For many, he's probably best known as a teacher--his students included Lee Krasner, Louise Nevelson, and Larry Rivers. In fact, Hofmann taught well into his 70s, and only painted full-time after his retirement.

A recent visit to the Chazen Museum of the University of Wisconsin reminded me of my Hofmann love. The museum owns August Light, a fantastic example of his coloristic genius. But it's not just the juxtapositions of orange/blue/yellow/green, etc., that work so well. Some parts of the canvas are very thinly painted--really just a wash of color--while other passages sport thick creamy swaths of pigment. The photo of the painting really doesn't do justice to the painting's surface; it would be a tough feat for any photographer to capture Hofmann's complex and appealing glow.

My visit to the Chazen also reminded me how much I enjoy smaller comprehensive museums. Because university collections generally serve a teaching need, they often provide a broad view of a lot of movements. You can walk from Ancient Greece & Rome, to the early Renaissance, to Pre-Columbian Latin & South America, to Abstract Expressionism in a few galleries.

And at a really big institution, the most famous of the famous pieces are on the walls and in the vitrines--you can practically check off the slide list from Art 101 while walking through the Met. (Here's a slide list if you want to play along!) At a smaller institution, you have the chance to see work by less famous artists, or oddball pieces by the big names. In a way, visiting the smaller place is a greater visual and art historical challenge.

Winter, winter everywhere

2009-01-09T18:19:00.010-05:00

Mother Nature has dumped another six inches of snow on us here in the upper Midwest, and the forecasters promise insanely cold weather next week. (Highs of -4. Seriously!) With shoulders sore from shoveling, I present a roundup of frigidly picturesque depictions of winter. The geeky challenge I set myself: early modern works by American artists.

Charles Burchfield painted slush better than anyone--probably because he lived in Cleveland and Buffalo. He really understood the look of a Great Lakes winter; note the exposed muddy patches at the tree trunks in Early December Snow (1945). George Ault's January, Full Moon (1941) is an utterly still and chilly portrait of a barn in Woodstock, New York.

George Bellows used blue paint to convey the cold in Blue Snow, The Battery (1910). And another urban scene, Alfred Steiglitz's Winter - Fifth Avenue (1893), features a commute that looks just as uncomfortable as slogging through city streets today. Bundle up!

My favorite painting of the day

2009-01-05T20:41:00.006-05:00

By the time John Steuart Curry painted Our Good Earth (it's dated 1940-41), Curry's brand of Regionalism--muscular farmers, fertile fields--was well established.

Curry's hunky farmer is handsomely tanned and chiseled, and the fair-skinned kids with him suggest the next generation of workers to risk sun damage. Curry gets the vastness of the flat land and enormous sky just right, paying homage to a plentiful land worked by noble overalled citizens.

Fun fact: Curry held the first artist-in-residence post in the United States, at the University of Wisconsin. The UW's Chazen Museum owns the painting. (Image source)

Times of London honors MacGregor & a wish for the new year

2009-01-02T15:32:00.007-05:00

Happy new year! In case you missed it, the Times of London recently named British Museum director Neil MacGregor "Briton of the Year". Can you imagine that in the U.S.? Time Magazine putting, say, National Gallery director Earl Powell on its cover?

Time has never featured someone involved in art or culture as its "Person of the year". Unless you count Bono; in 2005 he was included as a "Good Samaritan" along with Bill & Melinda Gates. But that was for his humanitarian efforts, not for his work on the Rattle and Hum album. So here is my fervent hope for 2009: the mass media consider the fine arts as real and relevant news, not just a highfalutin' aside.

(note: On her awesome CultureGrrl blog, Lee Rosenbaum already posted about this. But I had drafted my own entry when I found hers. Great minds. . . )

Top five favorite art blogs of 2008

2008-12-30T12:25:00.004-05:00

In the spirit of year-end list-making, and in the grand new tradition of bloggers endlessly referring to each other and themselves, I present my five favorite art blogs from 2008:

1. The Art History Newsletter. Issues and breaking news from the academic and museum worlds (yes, there is breaking news in academia!). So geeky and wonky, and entries are very well chosen. I love it.

2. Modern Art Notes. Critic Tyler Green has useful analysis--and some great scoops--about museums, galleries, and the people who love (and hate) them. Frequently updated and loads of good links.

3. Eco Art Blog. The title pretty much says it. My only request: more frequent posts, please.

4. Eye Level. The Smithsonian American Art Museum's blog.

5. The Two Percent. Based on the premise that only 2% of current gallery shows in Chelsea are worth viewing, this site recommends the best stuff. Check out the video tutorial for gallery-going newbies on the home page--it's both funny and helpful. Extra added bonus: a list of restrooms in the neighborhood.

Barbara Probst at MMOCA

2008-12-28T10:02:00.008-05:00

MMOCA (say it with me: "EM-moca!") is the Madison [Wisconsin] Museum of Contemporary Art, which reopened in a snazzy new/refurbished Cesar Pelli-designed space in 2006.

One current show is of photographic tableaux by German-born Barbara Probst. In her carefully crafted photo shoots, she takes several images simultaneously, all of which are very different from each other. Each photo suggests an entirely different scene: an urban street, an introspective kid, a fashionable woman. This notion of capturing multiple experiences of a moment isn't new, but Probst executes it in a particularly striking manner.

Barbara Probst: Exposures, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Chicago's Columbia College, is on view at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art through March 8.

Plagens on politics and Koons

2008-12-28T09:25:00.006-05:00

In the December 22 issue of Newsweek, Peter Plagens compares the Bush 43 presidency with the oeuvre of Jeff Koons, and Plagens isn't pleased. He describes Koons's Hanging Heart as "a cloying cliché presented as profundity." He continues:

"Much as the Bush administration has waved off an intimacy with Big Oil and professed down-home empathy for regular 'folks,' Koons likes to pretend that he's not an avatar of irony for billionaire collectors. "

This short essay by Plagens is spot on and utterly apt. With the exception of 2000's Puppy installation at Rockefeller Center, I'm not a fan of Koons's work--I find it too cynical and knowing, and the slick surfaces are not all that interesting to look at. Thanks, Mr. Plagens, for phrasing it so well.

Out-of-office reply

2008-12-28T09:23:00.002-05:00

I'm away from New York for a bit, so won't be posting on what's on view in Gotham for a few weeks. Until then, dispatches from the Midwest and other bright ideas.

Fun museum stats

2008-12-15T13:20:00.003-05:00

I learned of these nifty features on the websites of the Indianapolis Museum of Art & the Getty from one of my favorite art blogs, Modern Art Notes. The museums have posted stats detailing, among other things, where visitors to their websites go, what paintings they look at, and how long they stay. Great fun from a visitors' services point of view. Google analytics = amazing.

Another favorite painting

2008-12-14T18:49:00.006-05:00

During my recent trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I revisited one of John Singer Sargent's greatest. He got this 1899 portrait of the Wyndham sisters absolutely, wonderfully right. (The full title of the painting is The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant.) It's a gorgeous example of a nineteenth-century grand manner portrait. Lush paint handling, a terrifically "casual" composition, an opulent setting appropriate to the commission. Delicious! And the painting is grand--nearly ten feet tall and seven feet wide. Laid on the floor, it would be much larger than my kitchen.

The painting usually hangs in the museum's American Wing. But since that area has closed for renovation, it has hung with European paintings in the nineteenth-century galleries; portraits by Anders Zorn and Giovanni Boldini currently flank it. This placement--at the end of a series of rooms, dominating the wall and the gallery--gives the Sargent the drama it deserves. Back in the American Wing, it was hung at the bottom of a short staircase, difficult to see from a decent distance.

This new venue for the painting underscores the artificiality of the American/European division imposed by the Met--to be fair, a division that many museums (and college and university curricula) adhere to. While Sargent was born in the United States, most of his training and career occurred in Europe; the Wyndham sisters were British and their portrait was set in their family's London home. So why does the painting usually hang in the American Wing of the museum? Because Sargent is claimed by historians of American art as one of their own, along with Mary Cassatt and J.A.M. Whistler, two other famous Americans who spent most of their careers abroad. I believe these three have been held up as premier American painters to bolster the the argument for American art as a whole.

American art is too often treated as the poor cousin of European art, aesthetically impoverished and utterly beholden to the sophisticated relatives across the pond. The current shuffle at the Met serves as a happy reminder that the two are wholly interrelated, far more than most art historical categorizations allow. Hooray for mixing it up! (image source)

Art around the LES, part 1

2008-12-08T13:30:00.006-05:00

In a previous post, I promised to follow up on last month's special section in the New York Times about the art scene in my neighborhood, the Lower East Side. This is the first of a few posts in which I visit some of the galleries that the Times surveyed. The Grey Lady could only give each space a line or two, so I want to spend a little more time at some favorite spots.

For starters, a couple of the places I tried to visit were closed. What kind of commercial gallery is closed at 3 p.m. on a Friday? Maybe for installation (in which case a sign would be useful), but just plain shuttered up and locked tight? Attention, gallerists: please make it easy for visitors to stop in and, you know, visit. On the upside, the places I did visit were staffed by very friendly & knowledgeable folks. The rarefied gallery world gets a bad rap for being chilly and unapproachable, so it's good to see that stereotype challenged.

First stop: Smith-Stewart Gallery 's small space is home to videos and an installation by Katie Gilmore (at left). Gilmore erected sheetrock partitions and summarily knocked through them; monitors on the walls play videos of the artist, wearing party clothes, destroying other such projects. The results are often funny--I loved a video clip of a high heeled shoe punching through a wall. Kind of lady-superhero-kicks-low-rent-butt. And the titles of these pieces are also funny: Between a Hard Place, Walk This Way. Totally coincidentally, Gilmore is included in the group show at Apexart I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Gilmore's show at Smith-Stewart is through January 18, 53 Stanton Street.

A few blocks away, at Thierry Goldberg Projects (5 Rivington Street), the paintings are food related, and not entirely happily. Hayv Kahraman paints highly stylized women slaughtering a lamb, a ritual traditionally performed by men in her native Iraq; the series ends with a tableau of lambs' heads on a platter. And I-Ling Eleen Lin depicts a dinner party you would never, ever, want to attend. (It's the image at the far left in the link). Through December 21.

Finally, across Sarah D. Roosevelt Park to Kumukumu at 42 Rivington Street. The gallery's inaugural show is "Bun," and it's about rabbits. That's right. Every artwork is about bunnies. Photos of bunnies, sculptures of bunnies, paintings of bunnies. (But no video--maybe because the subjects kept hopping away?) It all works because it surprises that so many artists--Vik Muniz! Kiki Smith!--have turned to the theme, and because the show is just the right size. Any larger and we'd get rabbited out.

My favorite painting of the day

2008-12-03T13:11:00.004-05:00

My previous post was about a cabinet in the Met's current show of highlights from de Montebello's reign (we'll so miss that delightful accent!). But to return to this blog's focus on American art, today I give a shout-out to a gorgeous Thomas Anschutz painting in the same exhibition. A Rose features the skillful paint handling of the best late nineteenth-century portraiture--the sheen of the skirt's fabric, the nap of the rug, and all that good tactile stuff. But Anschutz, bless him, gives his sitter (Rebecca Whelan, whose father was a trustee of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Anschutz taught at the Academy) a personality. (photo source)

She doesn't smile or simper all compliantly, as so many portrait sitters of the period do. Instead, her expression is more complicated, and it isn't particularly inviting. Anschutz suggests that she's not just a delicate & lovely specimen of nature, despite the flower on the sideboard behind her. Thank you, Anschutz, for granting this sitter more psychological weight than, say, Thomas Wilmer Dewing's elegant, vacant ladies.

Fabulously weird at the Met

2008-12-02T10:56:00.007-05:00

So I went through the show of acquisitions from Phillippe de Montebello's years as the museum's director, and I stumbled across this nineteenth-century French cabinet.

The photos don't do the outrageousness justice. The piece commemorates a military victory in the fifth century A.D. against Attila and his Huns; the bronze details suggest war and physical power. But this iconography itself is not so strange--lots of art refers to great historical battles. What is so bizarre about this cabinet is how over the top the artists went. The sculptural axe along the top of the piece (included in the photo detail) extends a good four inches out from the surface, and it looks sharp. It's not a real axe, exactly, but if it separated from the rest of the relief, it could probably do serious damage to the poor person who tries to pull a shirt out of this armoire. (Not that this kind of object would be used in a bedroom, but still).

Other nutty elements in silvered bronze: hairy, cloven oxen hooves; bug-eyed creatures with hummingbird wings and frog feet; and in the central panel, the victor's chariot running over a slain opponent. Astonishingly strange in all the right ways. (photo source)

The exhibition itself is huge, and it features only a very few of the objects that the museum acquired during de Montebello's tenure. In his 31 years as director, more than 84,000 pieces came to the museum--my calculator says that's around 2,709 objects each year, or more than seven objects each day (including weekends and holidays!). This huge amassing of stuff may be a testament to de Montebello's skill at cultivating donors. But it says more about the sheer size of the museum. And its acquisition budget.

Elizabeth Peyton at the New Museum

2008-11-24T17:43:00.007-05:00

I guess I'm late to jump on the Elizabeth Peyton bandwagon--the New Museum's show opened some six weeks ago. I've seen her paintings before, but I must have forgotten their small scale. Or maybe this time the size struck me because the paintings were dwarfed by the awkwardly vast spaces in the museum. Installing these little works must have proven a challenge for the exhibition designers, but the pieces are at just the right height and there are enough of them to hold the gazillion-foot-high walls reasonably well. (In her review of the show in the Times, Roberta Smith identifies Jonathan Caplan as the designer.)

Plenty of others have written more and better analyses of Peyton's work, so I'll leave the big picture to them. (see here why Donald Kuspit doesn't care for her paintings.) I spent a good deal of time with the Kurt Cobain portraits, which makes me like everyone else--the bay with these paintings was the busiest part of the show! Peyton renders Cobain's skin shockingly pale; the contrast of while flesh and bright red lips in translucent oil is both ghostly and vibrant. The effect is weird and a little unsettling. It's especially striking because the paintings are posthumous (from 1995; Cobain died in 1994). This near-immediate immortalization reminds me of Warhol's Marilyn paintings, some of which were also created shortly after the star's death.

But my favorite pieces in the Peyton show are the pair that replicate Alfred Steiglitz's photographic portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe. It's a subject near and dear to me--I studied O'Keeffe as part of my doctoral dissertation--and Peyton's take is intriguing. In Georgia O'Keeffe after Stieglitz, she renders in paint a Stieglitz photo of O'Keeffe posing before one of her own watercolors. I found it a bit unsettling until I realized that Stieglitz's photo was black and white. So the colors that Peyton chose for her version of the "photo" were from her own imagination, not the original source.

Bradley Narduzzi Rex

2008-11-21T14:41:00.002-05:00

Recently I've spent some time looking at the paintings of Bradley Narduzzi Rex, whose work is the subject of a solo show at Borhgi Fine Arts in Englewood, New Jersey (a very easy hop over the George Washington Bridge. Seriously, it takes longer to travel from Park Slope to the Whitney than it took me to get to Englewood from Union Square).

I wrote an essay for the catalogue accompanying Bradley's show. The paintings included at Borghi are indebted to graffiti & billboards, reinterpreting fragments of the advertisements and spray-painted walls the artist sees in and around his home, Mexico City. They don't only abstract everyday visual ephemera and turn it into "high art"--the paintings also mimic the rough surfaces of their sources while remaining beautifully worked, smooth and polished. Very clever.