Want to participate in one of these:

…but finding it difficult to get enough people together? Let Art21 help you out!

Join us this Saturday, June 19, in front of the Brooklyn Museum as we set the stage for anyone to participate in performances for Oliver Herring’s Three Day Weekend and The Present Perfect Weekend.

All are welcome to participate or observe. Collaborate with friends new and old to create a filmed performance, some of which may be selected for screening during the June 23rd live event, The Present Perfect with Art21. We’ll bring the equipment—you just bring yourself! Or, bring your own cameras to create and contribute footage of your own!

Details for the Art21 Pickup Performances
Where: Brooklyn Museum
When: Saturday, June 19, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m

Be sure to join us on Twitter to keep track of where we are or to call us out during the performances

Our cameras will also be ready to film responses and questions for Laurie Simmons, who will also be featured at the June 23rd event. Have something you’ve been itching to tell or ask Laurie? Flag us down and let us know!

Come alone or with friends, and please help us spread the word. The more performers we have, the more possibilities there are to reinterpret the performances. Oliver’s instructions were just suggestions, after all—the true performance comes from what you bring to it.

Not able to participate this weekend, but still interested in contributing your own performance or responses? Visit The Present Perfect site for more information about how to get involved in advance of the June 23rd event.

Update: The University Galleries of Illinois State University in Normal, IL, is organizing a performance for Thursday, June 17, and will screen the live event on Wednesday, June 23rd.

Additional sample videos are available after the jump.

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Painting by Kimberly Castillo

For many of us, a summer break is right on the doorstep and this is the time when teachers tend to think of everything all at once. We think about how the year went, what went well, what didn’t go well, what we will never (ever) do again, how to handle particular challenges next year, how to make the curriculum better, and on and on… It’s really quite bizarre. We can’t STOP planning in our heads. So in the spirit of thinking about everything all at once, here are just a few questions I’m thinking about going into the summer (and please… feel free to add your own!):

• How can we better balance skill-building and teaching students to create work driven by big ideas?
• When it comes to the specific courses we teach, whether it’s an introductory studio art course, photography, ceramics, graphic design, etc., what’s really worth teaching and learning?
• How can we teach students to care more?
• How can we teach students to deconstruct advertising?
• How can we teach students to interpret history through art, rather than learn a version of “art history”?
• In an age consumed by digital media and the ability to shoot dozens of pictures in an instant, what kinds of things can we continue to learn through teaching black and white darkroom photography?
• How can students use sketchbooks in a variety of ways and truly make discoveries through their use that will impact learning?
• Who are the artists that students can be introduced to in the specific courses we teach, and why do these artists make the most sense?
• How can we continue finding ways to teach students that quality matters?

Jump in, the water’s fine.

This spring, in lieu of yet another show of disparate student work, my MFA class decided to create an entirely collaborative exhibition. The seemingly idyllic idea was to work as a single, cohesive group, putting aside our individualistic practices and egos. As a group of eight, we had an ample and qualified crew, ready and able to realize the blueprints we had so meticulously crafted. But of course, as with any collaboration, problems arise, leaders emerge, and the ideas of some are compromised or cast aside. Ultimately, our individual frustrations subsided, tasks were delegated and our collective work came to fruition.

Sign Project Between Groundswell and the DOT

Now that the show is down I am left wondering, “Is collaboration all that it’s cracked up to be?” Is it worthwhile to subject yourself to stress and compromise in order to maintain the collective spirit?

In an effort to better understand the art of collaboration, I decided to return to the place where my interest in collaboration possibly first began. This place is Groundswell Community Mural Project, a small but growing not-for-profit in Brooklyn, New York, which creates collaborative projects between artists and various community groups and institutions.

At Groundswell I met with two familiar faces, Jackie Chang, the Program Director, and Conor McGrady, an artist and long-term staff member. I previously worked with Jackie and Conor in 2006, when I held an AmeriCorps VISTA position at the organization.

The objective of my visit to Groundswell was to find out how collaboration works on a larger scale. It is one thing for a group of students to work together for a couple of weeks, but quite another when grants, funds, and reputations are on the line. How easy is it for community artists to share their work with youth and teen participants? To what extent can community partners influence or censor the artists’ voices?

I was curious see if Groundswell was collaborating with the same community groups as I remembered. I was also interested to see how many of the same artists and volunteers were still involved.

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In a special series of posts, Wesley Miller watches Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, frame by frame, and attempts to uncover what it all means through the medium of animated GIFs. This is his journey. — Ed.

GIF wall after the jump (images will take time to load). Continue reading »

Image courtesy of chuckmeyers.com

As Gawker posted the other day, in an act of what now seems like prescience, Chicago artist Chuck Meyers painted a leaking “BP Truck” in oil. This was back in 2006 and was simply part of his Series of Car Problems. Now he has made a new version, called Oil Spill– Matchbox BP Truck, which is for sale on eBay for the next few days.

Howdy y’all.  First a little news from Art21 production HQ.  After a successful shoot in London (expect an Exclusive on Season 5 artist Yinka Shonibare’s just-unveiled Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle work, installed on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, soon), we’re completely battle stations for a shoot that’s totally new for us and a little scary for me – a talk with Art21 artists Laurie Simmons and Oliver Herring, moderated by Robert MacNeil (of MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour fame) that will be streamed LIVE at 8PM on Wednesday June 23, 2010.  That’s right, LIVE.  A first for any Art21 production.  And that’s the scary part.  Three cameras and roll-in video, a big old switcher and soundboard, lotsa cables, a ten-person crew, and yours truly will be directing.  Please pass along any suggestions for calming my nerves and please check out the cool mini-site that Art21 web guru Jonathan Munar has built for the event, The Present Perfect with Art21.  There’s some new Oliver- and Laurie-related videos and a great opportunity for users to submit their own Oliver Herring-inspired dance video; select submissions may be screened and streamed at the event!

Mendocino, CA. Photo: Nick Ravich

In other news, I just got back from a really, really nice time representing Art21 at the 2010 Mendocino Film Festival in crushingly beautiful Mendocino, CA.  Contrary to usual festival practice, the programmers at Mendocino, lead by Pat Ferrero, paired individual Season 5 segments – as opposed to full hour episodes — with other related-documentary and narrative pieces.  Our Jeff Koons segment screened with The Great Contemporary Art Bubble (2009); Kimsooja with the 2010 Peabody Award-winning doc on contemporary origami Between the Folds; Julie Mehretu with the extremely charming 2009 Oscar documentary short winning Rabbit a la Berlin.  Probably the most entertaining, certainly the most clashing pairing was the Koons.  The Great Contemporary Art Bubble is an unashamed piece of arts muckraking in the Michael Moore vein:  a funny, snarky, easily-offended, at times breathtakingly unfair introduction and tour of the contemporary art market, led by British critic Ben Lewis.  It very effectively picks off certain high-profile contemporary art sales – visually presenting them as deck of cards, a not so subtle gambling metaphor – to construct a narrative of the aughts art market’s rise.  And Jeff Koons is of course name-checked.

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Scenery by Santiago Calatrava, image (c) Paul Kolnik

As an art form, dance is a mixture of the visual and the auditory. While we watch dancers perform aesthetic pieces onstage, we hear music meant to enhance the experience. Because of this inclusive nature of dance, collaborations among designers, musicians, and choreographers are commonplace and have been for some time, allowing for artists in their respective fields to showcase their talent alongside each other. In 1913, Nijinsky and Stravinsky brought audiences the ballet, The Rite of Spring before a set by the designer Roerich. Picasso designed the scenery and costumes for Cocteau’s ballet Parade in 1917, which was set to music by Satie. And closer to home, Merce Cunningham initiated a number of creative and fruitful partnerships. He worked with musicians such as John Cage, Sonic Youth, Sigur Rós and Radiohead, and visual artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Olafur Eliasson. Though he hasn’t worked with a dance company yet, William Kentridge, who was featured in Art:21 Season 5, has designed sets for productions of The Magic Flute and The Nose.

The New York City Ballet is presenting the latest dance-art relationship, offering what could be described as a gesamtkunstwerk, the Wagnerian term for a total work of art. Their Spring 2010 season features an extensive listing of artistic collaborations among instrumental music, dance choreography, and the visual arts. Among the new commissions are four original scores and seven new ballets, five of which are to be performed against backdrops designed by renowned Spanish architect and artist Santiago Calatrava. It is appropriately called The Architecture of Dance. Commissioning scenery from an architect is an interesting choice on the part of the Ballet and must have been an exciting challenge for Calatrava. While sets change throughout a short work of dance, buildings and bridges — Calatrava’s usual fare — are meant to last.

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Andrea Zittel, "Indianapolis Island", 2010. via Indianapolis Museum of Art.org

In this week’s roundup you’ll find two island exhibitions, some curiosities of Monaco, a photographer who pushes buttons, and a group of artists who keep it real:

• Indianapolis Island, a floating habitat by Andrea Zittel (Season 1), was commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art for installation on the lake inside of 100 Acres, one of the largest museum art parks in the country, and the only one to feature the ongoing commission of site-specific artworks. Two students of the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis will live on the Island for six weeks. Michael Runge and Jessica Dunn, who will graduate from Herron next May, will move into the piece by June 20, the park’s opening day. Follow them as they chronicle their experience on the IMA blog “Give and Take.”

• Clasp, a solo exhibition of works by Zittel, is on view at Sadie Coles Gallery in London through July 31. Here’s an excerpt from the artist’s exhibition statement: “The works in this show present a study into the four dynamic modes of experience –pure (or what I call native) experience and the three methods of its representation: A representation of the experience (Factish Depiction); an idea of an experience (Ideological Resonator); and the result of an experience (Material Manifestation). In all of the works presented there is the common denominator of touch. Touch is the single mode through which we physically negotiate and impose our will on the world around us and on those who reside with in it. It is the prosthetic activity of our brains. In the case of this exhibition the strand is seen as the extension of this touch – as a ligament of will, control, and support.” Continue reading about Clasp.

• Mark Dion (Season 4) has created a piece for EMSCHERKUNST.2010, the biggest art project of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010. Scheduled to last 100 days, the project is staged on Emscher Island, which is in the process of being transformed from “a grim by-product of the industrial revolution” to the new Emscher Landschaftspark. It is currently the largest nature restoration project in the world. Forty artists have created 20 public works on the island, including a “singing” rock, a community garden, and an itinerant Punch-and-Judy puppet show. EMSCHERKUNST.2010 runs through September 5.

• Works by Louise Bourgeois (Season 1), Kiki Smith, Gabriel Orozco (both Season 2), Arturo Herrera, Mike Kelley (both Season 3), and Julie Mehretu (Season 5) are included in the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition Keeping it Real. The exhibition, which will be installed in four “acts,” explores the way that artists have used materials to look at the relationship between art and reality. The objects are drawn from the D. Daskalopoulos Collection based in Greece. Bourgeois and Smith are featured in Keeping it Real: Act 1: The Corporeal, which continues through September 2010. Kelley, Mehretu, Orozo and Herrera are included in successive installations, namely Act 2: Subversive Abstraction, and Act 4: Material Intelligence.

• Recent works by Season 3 artist Fred Wilson are on view at Mitterrand+Sanz in Zurich. The objects were selected by Paris-based curator Ami Barak who has helped to “transfigure” the artist’s language of institutional critique for the gallery space. Included in the display is Regina Atra (2006), a copy of a diadem made for the coronation of George IV, in this case, constructed of black diamonds; a bust representing Ota Benga, the Congolese pygmie who was exhibited in the Saint Louis World Expo of 1904, with a white scarf obscuring his ethnic identity label; and a series paintings of flags of African and African diaspora nations, stripped of color and reduced to their graphic forms. Fred Wilson closes July 24.

• From June 18 to September 19, works by Sally Mann (Season 1) will be on view at The Photographer’s Gallery in London. Mann’s first solo show in the U.K., it will include images from various series made throughout her career, such as Immediate Family (1984-94), Deep South (1996-98), and What Remains (2000-04). On the occasion of the exhibition, titled The Family and the Land, Blake Morrison of The Guardian talked to Mann about why she likes “pushing buttons.” Read Morrison’s article Sally Mann: The naked and the dead.

• Models, sculptures, photographs and videos by Season 5 artist Yinka Shonibare MBE are on view at Nouveau Musée National de Monaco through January 16, 2011. With this exhibition, Shonibare embarks on a new series entitled Looking up…™ Alongside Shonibare’s own works are recently restored works belonging to the artistic history of the Principality of Monaco, many presented for the first time. These include the Visconti Maquettothèque of the Monte-Carlo Opera (a collection of model set designs), the Bosio brothers’ sculptures and etchings, Eugène Frey decors, the Marquis du Périer de Mouriez’s collection of transparent paintings, religious boxes from the de Galéa Collection, and many other “artificialia” that evoke the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th and 18th centuries. Looking up…™ will be accompanied by a 180-page French/English full-color catalogue.

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SUPPORT ART21: With just over a month left to our campaign, Art21 wants to thank the 59 donors who have shown their support of Art21’s Exclusive series. Together, these donors have raised critical funds that will support new videos that provide a rare backstage view of art making — in this case, following Allan McCollum’s work from conception to presentation, from Maine to New York City. In the next 36 days we need 41 fans to take action in order to reach our goal. Help us out with as little as $1 – join the 100 x 100 Exclusive campaign! And now without further ado, today’s video:

Episode #110: Horace & Noella Varnum in Sedgwick, Maine, describe their experiences working with artist Allan McCollum on the Shapes from Maine (2009) exhibition at Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York.

Applying strategies of mass production to hand-made objects, Allan McCollum’s labor-intensive practice questions the intrinsic value of the unique work of art. McCollum’s installations—fields of vast numbers of small-scale works, systematically arranged—are the product of many tiny gestures, built up over time. Viewing his work often produces a sublime effect as one slowly realizes that the dizzying array of thousands of identical-looking shapes is, in fact, comprised of subtly different, distinct things. Engaging assistants, scientists, and local craftspeople in his process, McCollum embraces a collaborative and democratic form of creativity.

Allan McCollum is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Systems of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Download-to-own the full episode from iTunes.

VIDEO | Producer:
Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich.
Interview:
Susan Dowling.
Camera:
Richard Kane & Joel Shapiro. Sound: Kenny Weinberg. Editor: Lizzie Donahue & Paulo Padilha. Artwork Courtesy:
 Allan McCollum. Special Thanks: Horace & Noella Varnum

"Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present," MoMA, 2010. Photo by Marco Anelli.

“We lay hold of the full import of a work of art only as we go through in our own vital processes the processes the artist went through in producing the work. . . . For to perceive, a beholder must create his own experience. And his creation must include relations comparable to those which the original producer underwent.” — John Dewey, Art as Experience

For Dewey, the perception of a work of art resembles the creative process. As a gallery director and as an educator who believes that it is my job to give non-specialists the tools they need to approach contemporary art, I find Dewey’s claim both provocative and, to a certain extent, unsettling. If you take a moment and think about the creative process, the energy and investment it takes, the surprises and even the frustrations that are inherent to any creative endeavor, Dewey’s seemingly innocent claim becomes a challenge. “Appreciation” is clearly an inadequate term to describe what Dewey believes viewers should do when they encounter an artwork.  What, then, should we be teaching students who wish to engage contemporary art?

I am particularly interested in what Dewey calls the problematic phase of the creative process, and how that might find a parallel in a viewer’s experience. Dewey asserts that the artist “does not shun moments of resistance and tension”; rather, she “cultivates them for…their potentialities” because “the movement of passage from disturbance to harmony is that of intensest life.” Compare this to Bridget Riley’s recent description in the London Review of Books about her drawing process: “For me, drawing is an inquiry, a way of finding out – the first thing that I discover is that I do not know. This is alarming even to the point of momentary panic. Only experience reassures me that this encounter with my own ignorance – with the unknown – is my chosen and particular task, and provided I can make the required effort the rewards may reach the unimaginable.”  This panic-inducing encounter with the unknown is essential to the creative process (as Riley calls it, “my chosen and particular task”). Building on Dewey’s claim that engaged perception is analogous to artistic creation, I’m suggesting that it is equally essential to the viewer’s experience of a work of art.

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