Archive

Monthly Archives: February 2011

Interesting Times

Interesting Times

May you live in interesting times… This ambiguously Chinese curse implies that interesting (i.e. historically significant) times are usually not peaceful ones. They are times of change and therefore, times …

New guest blogger: Lindsay Lawson

New guest blogger: Lindsay Lawson

Thanks to Thea Liberty Nichols for chronicling the artists, curators, and historians coming through the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Visiting Artists Program. Up next is Lindsay Lawson. …

Louise Bourgeois

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

  In this week’s roundup, Louise Bourgeois is in two collaborative exhibitions, Walton Ford is featured in Juxtapoz, Charles Atlas presents new work, and more. Louise Bourgeois collaborated with Tracy …

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Brandon Anschultz

Inside the Artist's Studio

Inside the Artist’s Studio: Brandon Anschultz

Full disclosure: I have spent many happy hours in Brandon Anschultz‘s studio, located near Lafayette Square in St. Louis, MO, drinking wine, laughing hysterically at his sharp wit, and admiring …

Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu

“I’m really trying to pay homage to the notion of the sublime and the abject together and using the aesthetic of rejection, or poverty, or wretchedness as a tool to …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Ephemerality and Eternity in “All of this and nothing”

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Ephemerality and Eternity in “All of this and nothing”

“It’s really about the magical and the mysterious in the everyday,” says Hammer senior curator Anne Ellegood, in the online video introducing the museum’s newest exhibition, All of this and nothing.  …

Tobias Putrih

Tobias Putrih

“I don’t think art is about consistency. It’s about complexity … The key question for me is how to make an object that expresses its own self-doubt, questions its own …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | biriken

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | biriken

biriken is the five year old interdisciplinary, collaborative project of Melis Tezkan and Okan Urun. Working at the intersection of performance art, installation art, and traditional theater practice, Tezkan and …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Graffiti in the Classroom

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Graffiti in the Classroom

Students often have lots of interest and questions about graffiti, graffiti art and street art. My response usually includes the fact that I love graffiti art and street art, especially …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: An Afternoon with Miina Äkkijyrkkä

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: An Afternoon with Miina Äkkijyrkkä

As if I am perched above on a watchtower, I am peering out the window of Café Java in the Lasipalatsi plaza with my friend and Finnish translator, Marjukka. The …

Yael Bartana

Yael Bartana

“It’s not that I have concrete solutions to the problems … I’m constantly mirroring human conditions and political situations. Is it possible to create this reality or not, that is …

Open Enrollment

The What? The CUNY Graduate Center? Is that, like, part of NYU?

Open Enrollment

The What? The CUNY Graduate Center? Is that, like, part of NYU?

I’ve really been enjoying reading the posts from my fellow Open Enrollment bloggers over the last month, but Stefan’s post on his current experience at the Courtauld in London caught …

Flash Points

Speaking of Influence: A Monument’s Invisible Man

Flash Points

Speaking of Influence: A Monument’s Invisible Man

“To make the monuments speak again we must question the often bland surface they show the world.” –Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves “Do I speak for everyone? No. No …

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Characters, Not Caricatures: The Multifarious Art of Rachel Mason

Center Field: Art in the Middle with Bad at Sports.

Center Field | Characters, Not Caricatures: The Multifarious Art of Rachel Mason

Rachel Mason’s work is not easy to neatly summarize. I’ve been following her projects for several years now, and I still have difficulty explaining what exactly it is that she …

RMB Opera

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

In this week’s roundup, Cao Fei puts avatars on stage, Laurie Anderson to be on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Barbara Kruger looks back in Dazed & Confused, Laylah Ali …

Kori Newkirk

Kori Newkirk

“No one can make a better Kori Newkirk about Kori Newkirk than Kori Newkirk.”(Kori Newkirk: 1997-2007. Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporary Art, 2007, 29) The Visiting Artists Program at The …

Letter from London

Letter from London: Gutter Rug

Letter from London

Letter from London: Gutter Rug

Whether or not computer games are actually any good for us – some argue they cause children to become withdrawn and asocial, and others suggest that they provide valuable life …

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: How Do You Like These Apples?

Gastro-Vision

Gastro-Vision: How Do You Like These Apples?

Any mention of The Boston Tea Party today is likely to evoke thoughts of the current political movement, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin. That might soon change with the urban …

Lisa Freiman

Lisa Freiman

“When I first came here, people said, ‘Why are you going to Indianapolis?’ I said, ‘I’m going to Indianapolis because it’s a huge opportunity.’ They answered, ‘What huge opportunity? There’s …

Art21 Extended Play

An-My Lê: “29 Palms”

Art21 Extended Play

An-My Lê: “29 Palms”

SUBSCRIBE TO EXCLUSIVE: RSS | ITUNES | YOUTUBE | ARTBABBLE Episode #136: “I just wanted to approach the idea of war in a more complicated and more challenging way” says …

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Amy Balkin

5 Questions for Contemporary Practice

5 Questions (for Contemporary Practice) with Amy Balkin

For the past couple years, I have been teaching Bay Area-based artist Amy Balkin’s work within a curriculum about environmental art and “land expropriation.” I teach her work besides Karl …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Blue

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Blue

A few friends and colleagues have suggested that I share some of the stories I tell in class here on the blog. I sometimes forget as I write the column …

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Letters to a Young Art Historian?

Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment: Letters to a Young Art Historian?

November 2009, I was in the middle of a dark blue funk, something along the lines of a post-collegiate quarter-life crisis. Working a menial, low-paying job in museum retail and …

José Muñoz in Chicago

José Muñoz in Chicago

I write with the animating glow of philosophical idealism, and I articulate my thought through descriptions of performances of queer aesthetics practiced in everyday life, literature and art. — José …

Flash Points

Flash Points: Intimacy and Art

Flash Points

Flash Points: Intimacy and Art

If deprived of intimacy—without the closeness of another human’s body and touch—a human child has little chance of survival past infancy. In societies where the majority of people have all …

No Preservatives: Conversations about Conservation

No Preservatives: Getting to Know Thornton Dial

No Preservatives: Conversations about Conservation

No Preservatives: Getting to Know Thornton Dial

IMA conservator Richard McCoy talks about his experience working on Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial.

The School of the Art Institute’s Visting Artists Program

The School of the Art Institute’s Visting Artists Program

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is one of the oldest accredited art and design schools in the US, and The Visiting Artists Program (VAP), where I …

New guest blogger: Thea Liberty Nichols

New guest blogger: Thea Liberty Nichols

Thanks to Kevin Buist for his terrific posts on design, technology, and dilettantes. Follow his pursuits with ArtPrize here. Up next is Thea Liberty Nichols, a Chicago-based arts administrator, independent …

Laurie Simmons

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup

In this week’s roundup, Laurie Simmons shows us her love dolls,  Collier Schorr is backstage at Barneys New York, Yinka Shonibare MBE inspires live action origami, and more. Laurie Simmons‘s The …

A willing participant at EMPAC’s “Uncertain Spectator”

A willing participant at EMPAC’s “Uncertain Spectator”

No matter how many times I fly, there are several minutes while tons of metal lift dozens or hundreds of bodies into the air that I can’t help but think …

What Ever Happened to the Dilettante?

What Ever Happened to the Dilettante?

In June, the contemporary art podcast Bad at Sports (and regular columnists on this site) featured an interview with artist Mark Dion. Dion said something in the interview that has …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part II)

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part II)

Following is the second half an interview Elizabeth Wolfson conducted with Vasif Kortun. Read part one here. — Ed. Perhaps more than any other individual, Vasıf Kortun has redirected the …

Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. Courtesy Patti Smith Archive.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Owning Robert Mapplethorpe

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Owning Robert Mapplethorpe

  “I don’t know why my pictures come out looking so good,” photographer Robert Mapplethorpe once told his brother. “I just don’t get it.” He had that innate knack for …

Egypt Rising

Egypt Rising

On January 31, BA177 hummed with mixed messages. Tourists who’d been vacationing in Cairo’s International Airport sighed with relief. Evacuated expats who left their homes doubled up on tiny vodkas. …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part I)

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part I)

Perhaps more than any other individual, Vasıf Kortun has redirected the trajectory of recent Turkish art history. As Chief Curator and Director of the 3rd Istanbul Biennial in 1992, Kortun …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Follow-Up (and, To Sir Ken With Love)

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Follow-Up (and, To Sir Ken With Love)

Two comments from the recent When One Day is Not Enough post inspired me to write a little bit more. Plus, I want to pass along a superb video link …