It was a rainy Saturday and it was the kind of day that amplified the bizarrely romantic quality of Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. During the popular Art Under the Bridge festival the city comes to this compact post-industrial neighborhood to see what’s new and happening.

Unlike the northern Brooklyn art enclaves of Williamsburg or Bushwick which are composed of sprawling webs of studio and gallery spaces, DUMBO is dense and manageable. Officially there were 123 open studios (and approximately 175 artists on display) during the three-day event.

One of the curious realities of festival events is that street artists are increasingly making their presence known whether through specially prepared work for the weekend or their growing presence on the streetscape. This year chalk aficionado Ellis G. decked out Front Street with a multi-colored drawing and French stencil-master C215 was unavoidable (he’s been in town from France for about a month I hear). There was another box-y talent which may be Aakash Nihalani but something tells me it isn’t.

While the street art may be part of the attraction it is the commissioned and studio visits that undeniably bring in the art fans. It’s always a pleasure to wander around private studios and catch a glimpse of trends (if any) emerging. All artists are usually polite and welcoming though some became instantly paranoid whenever I present my camera for a photo, often insisting I don’t snap a pic. “Fine, I won’t blog about it,” I retort. They always seemed disappointed when I say that and often offer up a website with images which I never accept as a compromise–the reason why is a whole different post. Continue reading »

While I promised a view of DUMBO’s Art Under the Bridge festival today, I will have to leave that for tomorrow. But I did want to post this interview with one of the most colorful characters in New York’s online arts community, the vlogger known as James Kalm.

Loren Munk is an artist, a writer, a husband, and a father. He paints thickly covered canvases that play with text, maps, diagrams and illustration as a form of critique and illumination. His two-dimensional work looks heavy and resembles the impasto of Californian artist Jess (Collins).

Then there’s James Kalm, his alterego. James makes The Kalm Report, a serialized online video program that has toured the studios of many New York artists (Chris Martin, Phong Bui, Cris Dam, William Powhida), run into people at exhibitions (including Jonas Mekas), and offered online viewers free tours of shows and events they probably wouldn’t or couldn’t see otherwise (like this panel discussion on The Legacy of Abstract Painting, 1960s-1970s). All in all, his perspective is both entertaining and insightful.

Kalm is an eye into the city’s constantly evolving arts scene. To date, The Kalm Report has posted 231 videos since November 2006. A few have been viewed over 7,500 times (which is remarkable for videos that are usually 10 minutes long) and many have dozens of comments–the video on Cy Twombly’s Blooming exhibit at Chelsea’s Gagosian Gallery last November clocked in 128 comments.

James agreed to talk to me about his online video performances that inevitably begins with a view of his bike and ends with his Edward R. Murrow-esque “goodnight Kate.”

THE INTERVIEW

Hrag Vartanian: First off, how do you want to be identified?

James Kalm: You can identify me as James Kalm, which is a pseudonym I’ve been using for my writing and video work for over ten years now. Because of my instinctive distrust of art criticism (having been an artist for over thirty-five years) I wanted to make a distinction between my work as a painter named Loren Munk and the critic/writer.

I tend to think of [The Kalm Report] more as art-recon, an urban commando collecting data that will help document the community and actions making up the New York art scene circa 2008.

Hopefully I’m helping to blur these lines. Much of my recent painting deals with the concepts of representing the principles of art criticism, aesthetics, history, and influence graphically with paint. Although I hate “art theories” I’ve got one I’m working on called The Physics of Aesthetics. Basically a more “scientific” view of the elements that make up the idea of “taste.”

HV: How did the The Kalm Report come into being?

JK: About three years ago I started watching video clips on YouTube. I read some articles about YouTube stars who’d made reputations, gotten gobs of attention, been discovered by Hollywood and gotten hundreds of thousands of hits. I had no expertise in video at all, no idea how to edit, shoot it or post it. In fact, I generally avoided video when I came in contact with it in gallery situations. As stated above, I’d been documenting the scene photographically for years (I have tens of thousands of photos) but had recently gone digital. One day while shooting pictures with my little Canon Elf, I flipped the mode switch too far and started shooting video. I got home, downloaded the day’s pics, and watched the video snippets. They were funny and interesting. I laughed, but I had no idea what to do with them.

About the same time Irving Sandler (the Dean of American Art History and Criticism), published an open letter to art critics in the Brooklyn Rail titled “The Crisis in Criticism.” One of his complaints was that no one was paying attention to art critics anymore. They were academic and boring, money and the market had taken over, and hence, art was suffering from over-priced mediocrity.

Being a practical joker and trickster, always looking for ways to extend the reach of my high-jinx, I envisioned using YouTube as a means to reach a new audience that was unserved by the likes of ARTFORUM, Art in America and the other tony New York art publications.

I went to the Fountain Art Fair, turned on the camera, and started talking and shooting. Fortunately I have some very computer savvy kids and they helped me learn how to upload and edit the work. The rest has been an embarrassing case of learning how to make videos in public, and mostly I’ve enjoyed every second of it.

Continue reading »

Whichever candidate succeeds this November, there will be a discernible effect in art. The last eight years have seen a resurgence of politically motivated art comparable to that produced during and after the Vietnam War. Characterizing the nature of art made now is, of course, a quixotic and thankless task. Contemporary art is far too multifarious and globally produced, experienced, and consumed to be bracketed into an “ism.” However, an art born of outrage revitalizing art’s shock tactics has emerged within the last few years, and may be seeing its twilight in the run up to a new administration.

Political outrage can blast the subtlety out of artmaking, and not all attempts to articulate it have been successful. Too often, real events throw artists’ discontent into stark relief. Thomas Hirschhorn’s Superficial Engagement at Barbara Gladstone in 2005, nail-studded, gnarly, and startling, looked mute and minor in relation to the Abu Ghraib revelations.  A new show of work by veteran minimalist and performance artist Robert Morris at Spruth Magers in London has a pre-emptively archaic look to it: all inverted American flags, big black eagles, and screaming skulls in relief: theatrical, even camp in its outrage.

However, some works have addressed contemporary history with a lucidity and thoughtfulness that has asserted the importance of art as a forum for non-mainstream discussion. Mark Wallinger’s State Britain installation at Tate Britain was a rare example of a poised and poetic response to the curtailing of civil liberties that have taken place during the Iraq war, and is one of a number of more oblique responses to contemporary events that drag the discussion into the realm of art without compromising their efficacy as works of art (Alfredo Jaar‘s and An-My Lê’s works operate on similar levels). And Maypole (Take No Prisoners) (2007), by fellow Protest artist Nancy Spero, might be this generation’s Guernica: a howl of pain and anger distilled into a direct visual language that feeds into a historical continuum of the human cost of war—the visual articulation of horrified disbelief. Graphically simple paintings on paper of human heads–screeching, wailing, vomiting–radiate suspended from blood-red threads around a maypole, conflating historical circularity (the pole itself recalls the grotesque folk ritual dramatised in The Wicker Man), the theatrics of warfare, and raw human emotion.

The example of Spero is, in fact, instructive; the best political art has always been able to be comprehended in mass-media contexts. It’s significant that Goya’s Third of May and Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa–both produced on the cusp of the mass-distribution period that produced Guernica, a painting that replicates the striations of newsprint–retain their visual currency in political cartoons. Conversely, successful photographic icons of wartime have a pictorial quality that links them to the heritage of painted protest. Staged propaganda photographs from the American Civil War and photographs of atrocities from Abu Ghraib share a compositional quality that taps into a subconscious compositional sympathy (Art21 guest blogger Emily Liebert has written succinctly and fascinatingly on the role of photography in wartime here).

The revival of protest in painting has re-engaged the connection between painted mark and emotional intensity muffled by the generation of post-Richter distanced photorealists. Increasing mistrust of mainstream media coverage and the euphemistic language of contemporary conflict may turn out to be art’s gain; we may return to it as the basic language of human understanding and communication. Whether or not that continues to be the case will, in part, depend upon what takes place in six weeks’ time.

Mark Dion is the 2008 winner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum‘s prestigious Lucelia Artist Award. Given to an artist under fifty who has shown distinguished vision and achieved a substantial body of work, the award honored Dion (Season 4) for his prolific creativity and impressive production, which includes mixed-media installations, sculptures and public projects that explore the relationship between art, science and history through pseudo-scientific methods of investigation and display.

A selection panel of five independent jurors chose Dion from a nominee list that included Doug Aitken, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla (Season 4), Slater Bradley, Matthew Buckingham, Keith Edmier, Spencer Finch, Harrell Fletcher, Mark Grotjahn, Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2), Rachel Harrison, Zoe Leonard, Suzanne McClelland, Wangechi Mutu and Dana Schutz.

“The Lucelia Artist Award acknowledges Mark Dion’s tireless imagination and ongoing achievement as an artist and educator. His archeological digs and museum interventions celebrate the value of exploration and learning, and invite audiences to embark on their own journey of intellectual discovery. This approach, coupled with a prodigious commitment to visual creativity, has inspired a generation of artists and established Dion as one of the most innovative contemporary artists working today.”

Dion is the eighth annual winner of the $25,000 award, which is intended to encourage the artist’s future development and experimentation. Congratulations!

Every two years, the Triangle Arts Association organizes a workshop that welcomes dozens of artists from around the world for the Triangle Workshop. Participating artists are offered free room and board while they work in a communal studio space, usually a subdivided floor of a large industrial or commercial building, which allows them to work freely and collaborate. This year’s workshop kicked off on September 14.

Begun in 1982 by British sculptor Anthony Caro and London-based collector and businessman Robert Loder, the Workshop culminates in a dynamic Open Studios event that this year falls on Saturday, September 27. I should mention that I am honored to have been asked to join the board of Triangle this year.

One of the workshop events that people often look forward to during Triangle is the panel discussion. This year’s panelists were: Thomas Butter, sculptor and painter who teaches at Parsons and Brooklyn College; Nora Herting, an artist who works with photography, alumna of 2006 Triangle Workshop, and recent recipient of a grant from the Brooklyn Historical Society for a project that will involve portraits of people of Brooklyn; Ethan Kruszka, artist from St Paul, MN, member of the Fluff Artists’ Collective participant in Triangle 2008; Andrea Liu, art critic who writes for Art US, fellow at the New Museum Night School  (I think that’s what she said, but you better check); and Karen Wilkin (moderator), critic/curator and board member of Triangle Arts Association. The topic of the panel was “Eternity?: Do you imagine your art as lasting into perpetuity or do you make it to exist only for its time?“ I’ll try to give you a sense of what the panel was about.

I attempted a novel way of following the event, namely Twittering (or tweeting) the panel to allow my first reactions to be broadcast unfiltered by reflection (which I hope I don’t regret). It worked fine but I felt very anti-social as I continuously typed into a three inch screen–eventually I gave up.

The discussion started when the artists on the panel were asked whether they think about the longevity of their work as they create. Nora Herting explained that as a photographer she is more aware of time because of her medium (which Wilkin rightfully pointed out “stops time”) but she doesn’t feel self-conscious about longevity. Butter, who is known to use unorthodox materials in his art, had an insightful anecdote about Michaelanglo’s David (1501-4) which he said was iconographically rooted in the politics of its time but today continues to inspire us today because of its emotional impact and the clarity of its language.

Critic Andrea Liu wondered if the notion of longevity wasn’t a white male issue [though I'd argue the ancient Egyptians and their pyramids disproves the notion that longevity is a white issue]. She clarified that there hasn’t been a line of art produced by women to suggest that longevity is of interest to female artists. She also discussed the impact of the 1980s art boom and how many of these people have not lasted in terms of their reputation or market (Julian Schnabel being the most obvious example).

Artist Ethan Kruszka argued that growing up in the 1980s generation the idea of permanence seemed anathema during that materialistic age that was dominated by junk bonds and consumerism. Everything feels disposable, he said and he even wondered if any artist created work that is meant to last anymore–Herting quickly pointed out that Jeff Koons is an example of a contemporary artist “practically making pyramids” in our own age.

The dialogue was dominated by discussions of modernism and postmodernism, suggesting that there was a divide in perspective that revolved around people’s notions about the role of art.

After the panel I asked the moderator, Karen Wilkin, to explain what she thought was the takeaway from the evening’s discussion: “For me, the panel underscored the apparently unbridgeable gulf between those who believe that the physical, formal, and material qualities of works of art are essential components in conveying emotion and meaning and those whose fundamental assumption is, as Ethan Kruszka said, that ‘Ideas last. Objects are expendable.’”

Monday: Touring Triangle Open Studios & the DUMBO “Art Under the Bridge” Festival

Designed by Allied Works Architecture, the bigger and better Museum of Arts and Design opens this weekend in New York. Located in the dizzy vibrant Columbus Circle on the southwest corner of Central Park, the new space (doubled the old scale) will for the first time have dedicated acreage for its permanent collections, as well as educational facilities and a 155-seat auditorium.

The ribbon-cutting kicks off with the inaugural exhibition Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. Featuring work and installations made from the ordinary and everyday, the smart and auspicious show includes artists and designers like the Campana Brothers, Tara Donovan, Xu Bing, El Anatsui, and Season 2’s Do Ho Suh, who contributes a jacket made of military dog tags.

Nearby in Queens, from openings to closings, you have three more days left to catch That Was Then… This Is Now, PS1’s 1960s-forward activist art exhibition that is divided into three parts, Flags, Weapons, and Dreams. The show’s conceptual framework places these representations as central to artists’ collective aspiration towards progress and explores themes of protest through elements of nationality, patriotism, violence, iconography, and graphic arts. The expansive list of artists include old and new, from Andy Warhol and Leon Golub to Jen Denike and Alfredo Jaar (Season 4).

EXCLUSIVE: Kerry James Marshall discusses his relationship to museums during the installation of the exhibition Black Romantic at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, which features five paintings from the artist’s Vignettes (2003-07) series.

Kerry James Marshall’s work is based on a broad range of art-historical references, from Renaissance painting to folk art. A striking aspect of his paintings is the emphatically black skin tone of his figures, a development the artist says emerged from an investigation into the invisibility of blacks in America and the unnecessarily negative connotations associated with darkness.

Kerry James Marshall is featured in the Season 1 (2001) episode Identity of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

ART21: What’s the relationship between your series of Vignettes (2003-07) and what’s commonly referred to as post-black art.

MARSHALL: The work of African-American artists has for a long time been seen more as a kind of social phenomena instead of aesthetic phenomena. The social implications of the work — be it identity politics and things like that — seem to be privileged in terms of the way the work is received, as opposed to any kind of aesthetic project or intervention the work might be organized around. And so if you read any of the critique that was made around the Freestyle (2001) show at The Studio Museum in Harlem, you’ll find an undertone that seems to suggest that the mainstream critical world and art aficionados were tired of this whole identity politics and multiculturalism moment.

If you examine the subjectivity that a lot of African-American artists address, it often has a kind of cultural, social, political, or historical angle to it. So for the mainstream to suggest that it was sort of tired of having to address those kinds of issues, then, what’s really left for these artists to do if that’s something that’s meaningful to them? On some level, I thought maybe the only thing that was left to do was to make paintings about love. And to take a cynical approach to the concept of love, to the concept of the Vignettes (2003-07), so that they don’t seem to directly address the social and political issues that had been relevant to me and maybe to a lot of other artists who want to make work.

I began by looking at a lot of 18th Century French painting — Rococo work — like Boucher, Fragonard, Bouguereau, and other artists who themselves are also critiqued but critiqued for a lack of political depth in their work, for the frivolity of the work and for the work being kind of saccharine and sentimental and overly puffy and flowery. I started to take those two things and see if I could put them together — to preserve a certain element of the social, political, and historical narratives that are still important to me, but also to deal with the sentimentality, frivolity, and excesses that are embedded in Rococo painting.

ART21: The paintings are a sequence of images, an animation of sorts. Were you thinking viewers would relate to them cinematically?

MARSHALL: They’re cinematic only in that it’s a sequence of images that constitute one motion. And so in that regard, it is cinematic in a sense because you’re supposed to be constantly aware of the rotation of the two figures. It’s five phases of a 360 degree rotation. But that’s the only thing that’s constant in the group of works, because everything else around them is different. It’s like they are different pictures but they are a part of a single sequence of action.

ART21: Why are they painted predominantly in black-and-white?

MARSHALL: One of the reasons I use the grisaille technique in those paintings was to deny a bit of the Rococo. If you take a genre of painting that’s recognized for being pretty or flowery, but you want to start to do some other things, then you have to strip away some of those characteristics. One of the first characteristics is the over-investment in color that those pictures would have. So I stripped away the color, which reduces a certain amount of sweetness in the pictures. Black and white always tends towards a level of seriousness, and you can use it to avoid sentimentality when you’re dealing with highly keyed chromatic kind of relationships. The only color note in there is the cartoony pink in the hearts. The pink is a way of refusing to deliver on all of the points of which grisaille is supposed to deliver. And I chose to paint the hearts pink specifically to emphasize the disconnection between the overtly romantic imagery in the foreground and the historical or political imagery in the background.

ART21: What advice would you give to younger artists?

MARSHALL: The drive to be relevant — not just for yourself and the people who like your work — has moved a lot of artists throughout time to do the kinds of things they do. If you look how artists became artists in the past, there were smaller numbers of people vying for positions in the royal courts and churches and atelier system. They didn’t have five thousand people coming through the system back then. But now we have these graduate programs at universities that are putting out thousands of credentialed artists every year. And so what are these artists trying to do? They are all trying to get a gallery show. They’re trying to get the grants. They’re trying to get written about in the newspaper. They’re trying to get their work collected. They’re trying to do all of those things so they can keep on making their work.

Now the only way you can do that really is to distinguish yourself from what everybody else in the field is doing. And so if you were taught while you were in school that being a part of the club — being one of many amongst other artists — that that’s somehow worthwhile, then how do you sustain your development and your productivity? What do you aim for?

Whatever it is you’re aiming for has to be judged by somebody outside yourself as having a kind of value. But if you just leave that to people who are out there, who somehow supposed to know more about what you’re doing than you do, then I think you are in a world of trouble. If you don’t have any mechanism to determine to some degree what your chances might be of achieving the kind of success as an artist you want to achieve, then you’re in deep trouble. And I think there is a lot that can be done. I think you can decide. And the way you decide is to know what it is artists are trying to do and what is meaningful to the discipline above and beyond what you think is meaningful to you as a person trying to express yourself.

This is why I say it’s not about self-expression. If it were really just about self-expression, then that would require a receiver who is so sensitively attuned to your sensibility that they are capable of recognizing an intrinsic value — not in what it is you’re doing, but who it is you are.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller and Nick Ravich. Camera & Sound: Nick Ravich. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Kerry James Marshall. Thanks: Jack Shainman Gallery.

PHOTO | All works: Kerry James Marshall, (top and center) Vignettes, 2003-07; (bottom) Untitled, 2008. Production stills, 2008, © Art21, Inc.

The link is the lifeblood of any blogger and here are my picks for the week:

>> According to AMNP, Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects hailed parametricism as the great new style after modernism arguing in Venice last week–and I’m simplifying–that fields and not modernism space define this new era (truncated manifesto here);

>> Painter Karin Davie’s hypnotically lush canvases are on display at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut in an exhibition titled Symptomania;

>> In other Connecticut news, Two Coats of Paint lets us know that the Mattatuck Museum is hosting the inaugural Connecticut Biennial, titled Speak to Me until January 11, 2009;

>> A mural grows in Brooklyn at the home of BushwickBK blogger Jeremy Sapienza, who chose to forgo the expensive restoration of his building’s facade in favor of the vibrant mural that reflects both his north Brooklyn neighborhood’s love of murals (here‘s another one) and the newer wave of artists that call Bushwick home (some great pics here);

>> A classic art blog smackdown that involves questions of originality…C-Monster knows there’s something fishy with the LA Times’ new Culture Monster blog. I have to admit that I thought the “C” in her blog title stood for “culture” before I knew her real name (not telling);

>> James Wagner takes a sneak peak at this weekend’s Triangle Arts Workshop‘s Open Studios in DUMBO, Brooklyn and suggests it as a small relief from the general malaise of the current economic crisis;

>> Street artists will be strutting their stuff for Urban Mantra at Chashama’s W44th Street space…included are some interesting sidewalk pieces by Ellis G., plexiglas pieces by Celso, and paintings by Skewville & Infinity; and

>> Finally, one of the most original concepts for communal performance I’ve seen in ages comes via Philly’s ArtBlog, which posts about the Philadelphia Complaint Choir, “a homemade Philly choir (no experience necessary) that performs a song created from complaints collected from Philadelphians.” While the idea began in Finland it has since spawned similar choral groups in Budapest, Montgomery (AL) and elsewhere…brilliant!

Image caption: The Budapest Complaint Choir courtesy Artblog’s Flickrstream.

Tomorrow: Discussing Eternity & Longevity in Art

Last week’s Teaching With Contemporary Art column, Mining Ideas, had some very interesting thoughts and perspectives submitted by Jennifer, Eric, and Sue. I want to continue the dialogue this week by suggesting two ways educators can use sketchbooks to influence teaching with and about contemporary art.

During our time working with Contemporary Art Start at MoCA, Los Angeles this past August, we asked participants to use their sketchbook to plan an installation or site-specific work inspired by a big idea after viewing and discussing Art:21 segments featuring Alfredo Jaar and Allora & Calzadilla. Participants were then encouraged, after seeing a variety of sketchbook samples, to literally think big and label their plans with specific media, effects, scale, site details, lighting, sound effects, etc. Many participants mentioned not having the chance to think and plan in this way before, but it was clear that there was a certain freedom in utilizing the sketchbook to plan for something that in the end may be too large (or expensive, or delicate) to actually build. What was important was the fact that participants thought through their idea and committed that idea to paper.

A second idea for utilizing sketchbooks in the classroom involves teaching students to use them while they view films about art and artists. Students can use their sketchbooks to jot down quotes, create questions for the artist, write a short reaction to a specific work, or even begin “working off” a particular artist to begin new ideas for themselves. Any of these starting points (and generating starting points can be one of the greatest uses for a sketchbook) can lead to thoughtful and exciting finished works of art.

Please feel free to share some specific ways you use sketchbooks in the classroom to influence teaching and learning by posting a comment below.

Artist Chris Martin admits that the initial idea behind the exhibition title, Party at Phong’s House, was to throw a party at Phong Bui‘s home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The longtime publisher of the Brooklyn Rail is a fixture in the city’s art scene and he regularly entertains at his home.

Yet, the resulting exhibition at Galeria Janet Kurnatowski is a rather thrilling journey through some abstract tendencies in current painting. While the show focuses on painting in Brooklyn, Martin includes a cross-section of generations and geographic regions. The press release for the show declares that it is an exhibition “about the new abstract painting” and clarifies the real motive behind the gallery display (just in case you thought I was joking) was “to have a party afterwards at Phong’s house”–coincidentally the party happened after the opening this month and Phong was out of town at the time. 

The artists included in the show are–to name only a few–some well-known painters (Amy Sillman, Bill Jensen, Peter Acheson, Thornton Dial), emerging artists (EJ Hauser, Ben LaRocco, Nora Griffin), and some fresh new faces (Malado Baldwin struck me immediately). Phong was also included with a large piece purposely propped up on wood blocks. Amidst the human artists was the work of an elephant painter–the gallery owner assured me there’s a whole industry around animal art.

All in all, the paintings in Party at Phong’s House seemed vibrant, compact, and shied away from hard-edge abstraction preferring a more human (by which I mean imperfect) line. They are hung in unorthodox ways and places–on the ceiling, leaning against the wall and on shelves. There is a sense of simplicity in the works accompanied by an almost folksy pleasure in the materiality of paint. It was a show that seemed to be curated based on instinct and it inspired me to speak to the curator about his curatorial choices. Below is an edited transcript of that brief email interview.

By the way, I should mention that for a 360-degree view of the show visit here and here to view my complete Flickr set of the exhibition.

Hrag Vartanian: What is Party at Phong’s House about? Is it about the state of abstraction today?

Chris Martin: I don’t know what it’s about. I think the show was going to be about abstraction today but realized that I’m not so sure what abstraction is, or means… People think of me as an abstract painter but I spend a lot of my time thinking about Thornton Dial, so I put Dial in the show…

HV: One of the oldest jokes in the contemporary art world is the idea that “my kid could do that.” In your exhibition you include a painting by an elephant, why?

CM: When I was a guard at the Guggenheim Museum–a long time ago–I used to hear that quite a bit. It used to make me feel defensive about modern art… But then I realized, they’re right! Their kid could do that. The real question is–could THEY do it?… I mean kids are the best artists in the world…Interesting that at the opening there was this little kid and his favorite painting–he kept going up to it and pointing–his favorite piece was by Sri Siam the elephant. I put this elephant in the show because I think he’s a good painter.

HV: The way you hung the show was rather unorthodox, clustering panels on one wall and including the ceilings. Is there a reason?

CM: I don’t know why I hung the show the way I did.

HV: There is a heavy Brooklyn-focus to the show. What are you trying to say about Brooklyn abstraction? Is there anything that defines or unifies abstract artists working in Brooklyn now?

CM: The Brooklyn focus to the show probably reflects that most younger painters—and many many artists live in Brooklyn… but not Anrud, Acheson, Gallo Dial, Fox, Tal R, Siam… I sense a feeling of openness with Brooklyn artists young and old, a feeling of new possibilities, an eagerness to make paintings, and to make more paintings and more paintings. I think many young Brooklyn painters are not worried about maintaining or achieving a singular image or style. They aren’t so interested in any boundaries of abstraction or figuration. They seem confident to experiment and pursue the energy of painting wherever it leads. Common heroes are Forrest Bess, Tal R, Siena. Nozkowski, Bill Jensen, Al Jensen, Stout, Emma Kunz, also Guston, Polke, and the great Kippenburger…

Tomorrow: Some Links