Jerry Saltz. Via guestofaguest.com.

One of the hot topics among young artists these days is the show Work of Art on Bravo. Take a dozen artists mostly trained in art schools, give them really inane art assignments and let them have at it. Throw in gallerist, curator, critic personalities whose job it is to make the artists pee their pants, and there you have a reality art TV show. To be honest, I watched it a few times but got bored with the art. I guess that not even a pep talk from Sarah Jessica Parker was enough for them to raise the stakes.

One surprise, however, was the presence of Jerry Saltz as one of the judges.

When I just loved art, before I decided to study it, and at the beginning of making it, I used to read his articles in the Village Voice. His direct style, humor, and sincerity were a bridge to a world that I wanted to inhabit. His writing inspired me to articulate my own thoughts about the work I was seeing regardless of training.

Eventually I got to meet him – at art school – and he was pretty much the same in the flesh as on paper, but I got to see him wave his arms at my studio mess (akin to the image above). Shortly thereafter he appeared on a very high stool on networked TV wreaking havoc. After I read his reflection on being part of Work of Art in New York Magazine, I decided to track him down and ask him a few questions. I wanted to know about his experience on the show as performance, and whether it changed his perspective on his role as a critic. The following is our interview and its many twists and turns, read on!

Marissa Perel: I’m glad I caught you. You’re going on a tour, right?

Jerry Saltz: Yes, I’m giving a lecture tour, “Criticism Never Sleeps” starting in Detroit, then Chicago, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, NYC, then London where I’ll be at the Frieze Art Fair.

MP: You’re like a traveling minister.

JS: My career policy is to just say yes, try anything, try everything, get terrified, try harder and don’t look back.

MP: Sounds like your debut as a television personality made you fearless. When I was reading your article, I was struck by the physical scrutiny and augmentation you went through doing the shoots. Can you talk more about that and how it affected your sense of authority? What was it like to have to talk about the work live vs. the personal space of being a critical writer?

JS: The make up, all the people standing around me while I had to stand on a box with a hundred cameras on me was actually ok.  It was more a temporal problem. The form I’m comfortable in needs more time. I’m a slot writer. It takes all 6 days for me to write a little column. Writing is a way that I think, and speaking does not access all of my critical responses, thoughts, etc. I didn’t fully relate my critical self even though my personality was there.  I wasn’t articulate enough about what I like because in speaking there is no time for editing. The Bravo people more or less made me who I am on the show by their editing. I’m not ashamed of it but I wish I could have [done that] on stage more articulately or clearly.

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Back in June, I wrote about a new Internet meme that I started because I was so excited about the idea of circulation. Well, my professor Robin Balliger has done it again—she’s introduced another awesome idea to me called projection. Today, I want to share my projections of the MFA Program at the San Francisco Art Institute, as inspired by a text that Robin assigned titled Reading National Geographic, by Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins. Throughout the text, Lutz and Collins offer a variety of examples that suggest the highly popular magazine’s representations of cultures were anything but objective, non-positioned stories. The magazine’s “glossy, stylized presentation of a highly limited number of themes and types of images” produced a variety of strategies and specific examples of projection, like emphasizing certain colors during the onset of color photography, accentuating topless women in the Pacific, or deferring from covering controversial areas like the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1959. With awesome tools like digital cameras and Photoshop in 2010, capturing reality is like, OMG, the most coolest thing ever!!

Now in my third of four semesters and writing my seventh “Open Enrollment” post for this site , I’ve arrived at a moment where I am extremely critical of the MFA situation. Love it or hate it, I’m enjoying the opportunity to create my own experience rather than subscribe to someone else’s. So to help me, I asked a few of my classmates to participate in capturing their own images of the graduate experience.  Underneath every image, I provide my own caption. Unless otherwise noted, I snapped the picture myself. Like National Geographic itself, I hope to present you with an entertaining look into a culture you thought you knew, but really, you had No Idea!*

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A "missing" poster that the artists places up on the routes of his detachment walks. Unfortunately, some people he knew took it a little too literally.

Earlier this summer, performance artist Nate Hill made an announcement:

Following on the heels of Death Bear (RIP), Mr. Dropout is an unexpected continuation on detachment. While Death Bear aided people in their detachment from objects, Mr. Dropout embodies the detachment itself.

I’d known Nate through his work, which has received extensive press. I’ve also seen him quite frequently around Chelsea. He easily stands out: tall and elegant with a quiet gait and pleasant, even shy demeanor, he’s usually dressed as a milk man, complete with a box of fake milk bottles. After he made the announcement, I found time to watch his performance come to life on Broadway near Macy’s and Herald Square and shot the following video.

Though his performance is mysterious, even opaque, I was struck by his use of Twitter not just to announce his Detachment Walks but to create a secondary layer of performance, an opportunity to quite literally speak from behind the veil. I spoke with him via email about his latest project.

An Xiao: Thanks, Nate, for agreeing to chat with me. Let’s start with a basic question: where did you get the idea for Mr. Dropout?

Nate Hill: I was moving on from my character Death Bear, who was the man dressed as a bear that performed house calls to strangers where he took objects causing you pain back to his cave where they disappeared forever. I did not know what my next character was going to be, but I knew I was ready to bring something new. Even though I had nothing to give in that moment, I decided to give you this “nothing” that I had and make a piece that was about coming up with an idea for a new identity. I want to present myself as art even when I don’t have real art to present.

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"Repetitive Vision" installation by Yayoi Kusama. Photo by Matt Niemi.

As an institution that exhibits contemporary, site-specific installation art through a fully supported artist residency program, we only ever get to experience exhibitions for a few months and then they go away—in some cases, forever. And once they do, the galleries are de-installed, painted cleanly, and left to wait for the next artist to arrive and begin again the process of creating a new space with new meaning. The Museum’s Education Department develops programs that help to define and differentiate the very unique experiences that impermanent installation art and artists provide and to create dialogue — beyond the museum visit — about human behavior and the physical world.

When we talk about artwork at the Mattress Factory, we attempt to make contemporary art and artists real and relevant. Through discussion, we make connections between what is in the gallery and what is in one’s life. The process of seeing and noticing extends outside of “art” spaces and into everyday situations and scenarios. For children particularly, the importance of facts, figures, and art historical references play second (or third or fourth) fiddle to how something makes us feel. Is it fun, sad, or stressful? Is it familiar, scary, or silly?  Is it beautiful or ugly or maybe both? Is it even art at all?

By asking why something makes us feel a certain way, we get to point out all of the important decisions that artists make in their creative process.  We try to help visitors grapple with the notion that the environments that they stand in, absorb, love or hate, are most likely fleeting and exist because an artist has made very specific choices. By critically examining how a space is configured and what physical characteristics play a roll in our mental mapping and interpretation of it, we get to understand the whole work differently. Ultimately (or hopefully), by carefully pointing to moments of change or alteration within the gallery we empower visitors to then find these gestures everywhere in their lives.

How do we facilitate discussions of installation art that will create lasting impressions on the way visitors interpret their environments once they leave the gallery? Furthermore, how do we convey these messages and lessons to those unable to visit the Museum at all?

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Elizabeth Murray, "Landing, 1999." Photo: Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.

In this week’s roundup Elizabeth Murray lands, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle and Jessica Stockholder speak, Mark Bradford and Paul McCarthy highlight L.A., and more.

• Don’t forget to mark your calendars to view William Kentridge: Anything is Possible about the life and work of South African artist William Kentridge on October 21!  Check your local PBS listings for times.

• A Nancy Spero retrospective will soon be at the Centre Pompidou (Paris).   The exhibition will feature her monumental masterpiece Azur and is on view October 13 – January 10, 2011.

• Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle highlights his recent work about natural and constructed phenomena, including climate change as part of a lecture on Tuesday, October 12 at the Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons The New School for Design.  The event is 6pm – 7pm and admission is free.

• Mark Bradford has a solo exhibition at the White Cube Hoxton Square (UK) which features the artist’s painting, collage, sculpture, film, and performance.  The Pistol That Whistles explores ever-changing conditions and spontaneous networks in urban societies, e.g. Los Angeles.  The exhibit is on view October 13 – November 13, 2010.

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Margarita Paksa, "Fuego," 1969.

I am happy to once again be blogging for Art21. This is the first of three posts loosely based around contemporary art from/in Latin America.

Living in a city other than New York means that visits to it become shameless frenzies of nonstop art viewing. Every new show and space that has sprung up in one’s absence must be experienced, lest an essential trend or development be missed. One of my favorite stops on my summer treks there was the recently opened Henrique Faria gallery on East 67^th Street. Faria, who previously ran Art Cabinet on Madison Avenue, has used his first few exhibitions in the new space to define an intriguing sub-genre within Latin American conceptual art that is sure to receive increasing attention in coming years. In contrast to the better-known, participatory examples of conceptualism from the region—Tucumán Arde (1968) in Argentina, Cildo Meireles’s Insertions into Ideological Circuits (1970) in Brazil, CADA’s street-based protests in Chile (late 1970s-early 1980s)—these more cerebral practitioners favored photography and language-based works on paper. On first glance, their work hews closer to the North American and European “conceptual art” that Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer distinguished from Latin American “conceptualism,” but they were no less focused on the disastrous political events unfolding around them in the 1970s, and it is this subject matter that creeps into their displays of language and information.

The show that I saw at Henrique Faria in June was Horacio Zabala and Margarita Paksa: Analogies and Differences. These two artists’ oeuvres make a fruitful comparison with Juan José Campanella’s recent film El secreto de sus ojos [The Secret in Their Eyes], which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. All three provide narratives of just before and after 1976 in Argentina, when a right-wing military junta overthrew the government and ultimately disappeared some 30,000 people. Campanella frames the period through a police procedural: a detective tracks down a perverse killer who, once the junta comes to power, is released from prison as a member of the death squads in Ford Falcons who are assassinating “subversives.” The widower of this killer’s original victim is found, decades later, to have kidnapped him and kept him alive in a barn on his property. This is an allegory for holding onto bitterness and trauma: victim and victimizer alike remain chained together, unable to move forward. At the beginning of the film, waking from a nightmare, the detective scribbles temo, or “I fear,” on a pad, yet by the end he is able to transform it into te amo, “I love you,” through the addition of a missing “A” for Argentina—a suggestion that the trauma has been “worked through,” the dark period and its mysteries behind us.

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When I visit an exhibition for the first time, my attention is foremost on the work and how it has been curated. Soon after, I come to think about its peripheral framing, or how this exhibition fits into its broader surroundings. I blame this on my vocation as a radio host of arts segments. At work, I have to produce programming for a specific target audience while also being responsible for providing context for potential regional listeners too. When I report on the arts, I do extensive research combing through a multitude of stories; this leads to interviewing artists, musicians, and filmmakers, and finally editing segments before I select the most interesting stories worthy for broadcast to the public. Is curating similar in some ways? On a smaller scale, in my independent curating projects, I see parallels between my radio work and selecting art for a specific space. It leads me to wonder how ideas about exhibiting art trickle down to a broader museum-going public, one that may not necessarily have an art critique background.

One such way is when curators take on the responsibility of translating an exhibition for a local audience by interpreting its significance through “home grown” parallels of political and historical experiences that resonate locally. So when Vancouver Art Gallery launched the first Canadian solo exhibit of Art21 artist Kerry James Marshall, I was curious to see how the curators (director Kathleen S. Bartels and artist Jeff Wall) might relate the show to Vancouverites, people whose city has a relatively very small black population. Marshall himself shared his awareness of this fact in a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, citing that there are very few black-identifying artists getting attention in Vancouver. Of course, it is important that locals understand the significance of Marshall’s profound work completely on its own merit, but I wonder if Bartels and Wall could have ventured to tie the exhibition in with Vancouver’s uniquely diverse ethnic population.

I won’t go so far as to suggest what Bartels and Wall could have considered adding to their already fine show. It is a well-known fact that curators often deal with incredible limitations in putting together exhibitions, especially of this magnitude. However, the creative and ambitious proactivity of so many curators today to help draw surprising and interesting local connections is exciting. It’s a way for an incredible survey of works, like Marshall’s, to really live differently, breathing new life into each environment beyond the gallery’s walls.

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Thanks to Mike Brenner for his highly entertaining and educational posts about his time running Hotcakes Gallery.

Up next is Marissa Perel, a performance artist, writer and independent curator currently working in Chicago, IL. She is interested in how the fields of writing, performance, visual art and criticism intersect and inform one another. During her featured time on this site, she will talk with critics who are invested in the performative in their writing, and she will also write about performances that are happening this month in the U.S. and abroad. Her work has been shown at Dance Theater Workshop, The Chocolate Factory Theater, through Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church and numerous clubs, bars and lofts in New York. She is currently working on a performance and video screening for Links Hall in November. The Chicago Cultural Center, the MCA (Club Nutz), Co-Prosperity Sphere and Elastic Arts are among the many galleries and dance venues in which she has performed in Chicago. She has also performed at Medium Gallery, Slovakia and the D.I.V.O Institute, Czech Republic. She holds a B.A. in Writing and Literature from Naropa University and an M.F.A in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Check out her website and blog.

Art21 announces our new William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible Back to School Campaign, designed to raise funds to support free resources for educators. By giving as little as $5, $15, or $25, you can support the delivery of education resources to teachers around the world as part of our eight-week focus on education programs accompanying the release of William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible, our new feature film.

Since 2001, Art21 has explored innovative ways to bring contemporary art into the classroom, providing tools and resources for educators, and public programs for students of all ages. These efforts have led to the development of numerous projects including free screenings across the U.S., a national institute for educators, professional development workshops, and the distribution of over 150,000 free Art21 Educators’ Guides to teachers worldwide.

For William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible, Art21 is developing new workshops, an Educators’ Guide and Screening Guide, as well as web-based resources including short-format online films. These resources offer support for teachers covering multiple themes and humanities subjects, including materials that focus on the literary and musical aspects of Kentridge’s work and process.

“William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible provides an incredible opportunity to delve deeper into the methods and motivations that drive artists today. The breadth of Kentridge’s artistic practice, the scope of the footage included in the film, and the complementary resources we have developed to further illuminate his work and process will support teachers working not only in the visual arts, theater and music, but also the humanities, language arts and social studies.” – Jessica Hamlin, Director of Education and Public Programs

A little goes a long way with your BACK TO SCHOOL donation.

• $5 will help cover the costs of supporting Art21′s free screening programs in cities nationwide.
• $15 will contribute to the editing and design costs of the William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible Educators’ Guide
• $25 will help send a DVD of William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible to a deserving teacher, to complement the Educators’ Guide.

Thank you for supporting Art21! The film premieres nationally on PBS October 21, 2010 at 10 p.m. ET (check local listings).

William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible Film Site

The last year my art gallery, Hotcakes, was open, there were a number of significant yet manageable setbacks, but when Milwaukee’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau got into the business of public art, I drew a line in the sand.

My nonprofit art service organization, the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network (MARN), had been working with Milwaukee’s Eastside Business Improvement District (BID) for a few years trying to build an arts incubator. We got grants to hire a number of different consulting firms and went though a feasibility study, did program development, and completed an architectural analysis of all the available properties in the neighborhood. The BID got a line on a $150,000 incubator grant from the state of Wisconsin, and found an investor willing to buy a gorgeous 30,000 sq. ft. building and lease it to us at a very reasonable rate. Then the consulting group we hired to write our business plan came back NOT with a business plan but a warning. They had apparently spoken with all the major funders in the city, and were told nobody was interested in funding MARN’s arts incubator. Why? Because another arts service organization in Milwaukee, founded after MARN but with all the right old men on its board of directors, had gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding and had been totally unsuccessful. Their past had destroyed our future, and any hope of me ever getting paid a livable salary for running MARN.

Around the same time, Hotcakes was invited to show in Miami during Art Basel Miami, the second largest art fair in the world. There is big business done that first week in Miami every year. It’s a who’s who of the international art-buying world, and it was growing exponentially. I saved for over a year to come up with the roughly $10,000 it cost to cover all the expenses of exhibiting at one of the thirty-seven art fairs for four days. I showed twenty-six Milwaukee artists at the Aqua art fair, but ended up only selling $6000 worth of art; this meant after my commission that I had lost $7000. Based on my experiences doing Art Chicago, I knew it would take a few years of doing fairs in Miami before I could expect to make any money, but I had hoped to do much better.

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