Weekly Roundup
Allora & Calzadilla, "Track and Field," 2011. Photo courtesy of Todd Heisler/The New York Times.
In this week’s roundup, Allora & Calzadilla are firsts in Venice, Barbara Kruger wraps a room, Chris Rock praises Michael Ray Charles, and much more.
- Allora & Calzadilla are installing Track and Field, a 52-ton military tank turned upside down and topped with a treadmill and an Olympic runner. This work, along with five other new projects will be incorporated into Gloria, an exhibition that will occupy the American pavilion at this summer’s Venice Biennale. They are the first artists representing the U.S. at the Biennale who work in Puerto Rico, incorporating performance as an artist collaborative. The exhibition will run from June 4 – November 27.
- Barbara Kruger has a solo exhibition at L&M Arts (Los Angeles). The exhibition consists of a multi-channel video installation running 13 minutes, a room “wrap,” exterior wall projection, and room filled with smaller-sized text pieces on panel, the legendary conceptual artist provided a multitude of options to receive her messages and ideas. The show closes July 9.
- Constantin Brancusi & Richard Serra is on view at The Fondation Beyeler (Switzerland). The exhibition consists of 40 Brancusi sculptures juxtaposed with an ensemble of 10 sculptures and a range of works on paper by Richard Serra. These reflect the development of his idea of sculpture over the past forty years, in a form never before seen in Switzerland. The show closes August 21.
"Tate Modern: Tomorrow Is Another Day (After the Economic Crisis)" installation produced by Not An Alternative for the Tate Modern’s 10th anniversary show “No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents.” The work implicated corporate sponsor, Morgan Stanley, for its role in the economic crisis. The piece was accompanied by an essay situating the work art historically as in intervention on participatory art, while simultaneously linking it to other local campaigns targeting Tate sponsorship. May 14-16, 2010 Photo by Not An Alternative.
I encountered the art group Not An Alternative for the first time about a month ago in Corona, Queens, where Tania Bruguera (featured last month in 5 Questions) had assembled a panel on “useful art.” What immediately impressed me was the group’s ability to articulate its ongoing project, which aims both to create new spaces for cultural production and to question the ways that various participatory structures (social media, election processes, relational aesthetics) exclude certain subjects and amplify social and economic inequalities by means of participation.
Through their highly engaged work, work that functions somewhere between political activism, social service, and institutional critique, Not An Alternative confront the limits of what political theorist Jodi Dean has called, after a variety of critical theoretical debates, “communicative capitalism.” In a time of communicative capitalism, our political and social participation is increasingly exploited by the use of new media. Not An Alternative foregrounds this fact, presenting ways of navigating a relatively new digital landscape in which values once cherished by the militant left and avant-garde alike–participation, reflexivity, interactivity–have become corporate watchwords for how neoliberalism manages consent in a networked age.
Networked for some, but obviously not for all. Not An Alternative’s work is also crucial in the ways that it foregrounds exclusion, offering ways to visualize the limits of participation in a society in which obviously one’s ability to participate is largely determined by social and economic privilege. As Not An Alternative said during their presentation in Corona, referring to their collaboration with a homeless advocacy group in the Bronx (discussed below), they recognize the important of “desubjectifying” themselves, where to draw attention to their efforts may work against the causes of the community groups with whom they choose to work.
Adam Smith As an Artist
Part 2 of what art and economics have to do with each other. . . .
A few years ago I came across a biographical sketch of Adam Smith, founding architect of economics, in a book by Walter Bagehot, the British essayist, businessman, and former Editor-in-Chief of The Economist magazine. (The Economist‘s “Bagehot” column on British life, politics, and current affairs is named for him.)
I found the essay, “Adam Smith as a Person,” in a general book called Biographical Studies (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 4th Ed, 1899). That book sat on a high, dusty shelf in a section of the London Library called “Miscellany.” A cursory review of Adam Smith bibliographies did not turn it up, though, following from Murphy’s Law, I’ll brace myself for angry scholarly corrections.
Was Adam Smith an artist?
He was a philosopher who founded the field of economics. I think that act of invention, along with the way he did it, makes him an artist. His thinking was as original and—to borrow a business-ism, “game-changing”—as the first Cubist painting.
1. temperament
The godfather of modern capitalism—whose 1776 book The Wealth of Nations laid the framework for the field of economics—was described in Bagehot’s essay as “one of the most unbusinesslike of mankind.”
Bagehot wrote, “He was an awkward Scottish professor, apparently choked with books and absorbed in abstractions. He never engaged in any sort of trade, and would probably never have made sixpence by any if he had been. His absence of mind was amazing.”
Bagehot went on to recount a time a stallworker at the Edinburgh fish market once described Smith as seemingly crazy though surprisingly well dressed—“taking him for an idiot broken loose.” On another occasion, Smith was asked to sign a document and instead of writing his own name, produced “an elaborate imitation” of the signature on the line above his.
Smith was, however, a keen observer of actual economic behavior. For instance, he became disillusioned during a Snell fellowship at Oxford that, he felt, the smartest men had gone into the Church of England over academia because the pay was better. An economic actor himself, he also took two years out of professorly duties to travel around France as the well-paid tutor of a twelve-year-old boy. (Some modern-day artists have this commercial instinct in spades.)
Under the Influence
Nathan Oliveira, "Standing Man with Hands on Belt", 1960
Now if anyone happened to dial up the title of this post hoping to see me (or anyone, for that matter) reach down deep and start talking about making art and/or teaching after a few martinis, well, I apologize in advance. I’ve had some experience on the art making side and it doesn’t work very well even though we’re all geniuses for the few moments it is happening. As for teaching in that state… um… no. That’s insane.
What I wanted to talk about this week is actually quite simple and I’m sure many of you can relate.
Since 2002, on a spontaneous visit to the Neuberger Museum, I’ve been regularly returning to the work of Nathan Oliveira, particularly his “Standing Man with Hands on Belt” pictured above. I have been blissfully influenced by this surprise steamrolling of a retrospective almost a decade ago that quietly left a thumbprint on my approach to painting and making art. It also left an impression about the value in surprising myself as a teacher and taking the time (aka planning) to see new art in person. Today more than ever, with the immediacy of image searches and online overload, it’s crucial to make real time for seeing art and engaging with it.
Visiting the Neuberger galleries during the Oliveira show, I decided on my 2nd walkthrough that I had to purchase Peter Selz’ sensational catalogue, if only to be able to return to these figures and continue some of the conversations I started. And just as predicted, I’ve been returning to it ever since. That catalogue has made its way from my home to the studio to school many times and has even been on a few vacations. During that time I learned that Oliveira had a brilliant career teaching at Stanford for over 30 years. I continue to find it easy to open the pages and begin sharing how Oliveira’s figures, in some ways, made me see myself differently at a tipping point in my personal and professional career. More than once I have shared Oliveira’s work only to watch a student look into the painting instead of at it. There’s just something about his work, particularly his figurative painting and monotypes about conflict, that makes me look again. And I try to inspire this in my own students: Make work that makes people look again, look closer, and ask questions.
Many of us have been lucky enough to see some great exhibits over the years, whether or not they made their way into our classrooms or studios. I think about shows such as Marlene Dumas at MoCA; Kiki Smith at the Whitney Museum; Mark Bradford at ICA Boston; Yinka Shonibare MBE at Mass MoCA; Spencer Finch at Mass MoCA; and even Francis Bacon at the Met in 2009. But sometimes a spontaneous visit to an exhibit or checking out an artist you’re unfamiliar with can provide a different inspiration. I often think about how close I was to missing the Oliveira show and how easy it would have been to say, “I’ll look him up,” vs. getting off my ass and driving into the splendor of SUNY Purchase.
This spring and summer create some openings. Allow yourself to be surprised. While Nathan Oliveira may have passed away back in November, his work continues to inspire me. His influence is something I continue to cherish.
I think many of you can indeed relate. Feel free to share some of your own surprises that consequently put you under the influence.
Open Enrollment | Holding Back the Tears
MoMA's symposium this Friday and Saturday. Come get meta.
I’ve never been able to get past the touchy-feely over-share of the title of James Elkins’s 2001 book Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings. When I say, “get past,” I literally mean that I can’t walk past it in a bookstore without shuddering and losing appetite for art, my lunch, and the world. I’m British, and therefore have inherited Victorian attitudes on emotion in academia. I prefer art theory that pays greater homage to T.J. Clark than Oprah’s Book Club (and I love Oprah). That being said, I’m really looking forward to attending Art Speech: A Symposium on Symposia that Elkins is participating in this Friday and Saturday at MoMA. Billed as a public program that will deconstruct and critically reflect upon the very format that it takes as its mode of operation, the two-day event is right up my research alley. Organized by artist and MoMA Public Programs Director Pablo Helguera as an opportunity to “anatomize art historians’ and artists’ habits at the podium,” the symposium will include “reenactments of famous acts of criticism, critiques of the academic slide show, an investigation of the effects of apparently authoritative presentations, experiments in the effects of stage presence, and analyses of the academic introduction and of the performative.” I’m particularly interested in hearing from artist Carey Young, and intrigued about the public deconstruction of a video excerpt of a lecture given by said hero, T.J. Clark. If artists and, latterly, curators have taken “exhibitionality” as their medium, it’s about time the coalminer’s canary of the art world, the public program, got an opportunity for some navel gazing. MoMA’s focus on art speech coincides with the new value ascribed to art education as discursive practice in art, unsurprising given Helguera’s own practice as an artist.
Read it and weep.
Whether classroom teaching, itinerant program, or more outré encounter, the public presentation of ideas is indeed a performance, and the reflective act of presenting “programs” to an enthralled/frustrated/borderline angry mob audience (delete as appropriate) within the museum has been part of the artist’s arsenal since Andrea Fraser asked “May I Help You?” Recently, I sat down with Berlin-based artist Johanna Bruckner at her temporary home at Flux Factory in Queens to talk about her pipeline project Art as Research, which asks similar questions to Helguera’s This is not a Panel Discussion (2009) – itself an etymological twist on Tino Sehgal’s This is… series. Bruckner’s work occupies the liminal space between producing text research for a PhD in art practice (Elkins has written on that subject too!) and the desire to create, document, and archive her research in visual form through film and video. Currently working on a staged symposium to be performed in Stockholm later this year, her work is particularly invested in reflecting upon the socio-political context of knowledge production manifested by the ever-proliferating pedagogical arms of international art biennials. Put simply, her work questions what is achieved through parallel biennial programs of presentations, temporary libraries, and pop-up workshops. Is it further artistic product? What is the relationship between artist, curator, educator, and audience, and how can these relationships be reconfigured or reflected upon? Does art speech in this form have any hope of criticality, reflection, or truly democratic engagement of communities outside of contemporary art boundaries? Are these even the goals to which such education efforts ascribe?
Open Enrollment | The ITP Class of 2011
When I read Nicole Caruth’s write-up of Miriam Simun’s Lady Cheese Shop last week, I screamed, “she stole my blog post!” Simun was a fellow student of my program until a week ago, when she presented her thesis and secured her graduation from our program. My work area at school was across from hers this past semester and I got to watch as her projects developed. At times she used my desk without my knowledge, but she was very considerate of cleaning up any curdled and sticky messes.
I had been meaning to blog about Simun’s work but I was clearly too slow. I’m not taking any more chances. Here is a selection of the finest work of the recent graduates of Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Best of all, their thesis presentations are available for viewing here.
Open Enrollment | “Feet on the Ground, Head in the Clouds”
Katja Tukiainen, "Hi, my name is Peter. Do you want to find out why?," 70 x 70 cm, 2010. Courtesy the artist.
In the Deer Forest
“Hi, my name is Peter. Do you want to find out why?” With these words, I became acquainted with Katja Tukiainen. In the back room at a friend’s holiday party last December, I was shown a square bubble gum pink painting above the bed depicting two school girls in identical uniforms: one was pinning the other down, merrily holding a candy cane. Along the bottom edge of the canvas, the caption was painted in cursive handwriting, curving up the right corner of the painting.
Later I met the artist at her opening, Deer Forest, at Hasan & Partners in February. Under a glow from the soft pink lights in the installation, I was introduced to Katja Tukiainen as the girl who loves unicorns. This fact was relevant in Katja’s installation, densely populated with deer, fairies, and an army of adolescent girls. Katja herself appeared to have stepped out of one of her own paintings: she was wearing a vintage bisque-colored dress on which she had inked her dainty deer and fanciful female characters. Encircling Katja was an impenetrably rosy air.
Katja Tukiainen, "Paradis e (Extension of my personality)," from the series of painting installations "Katja Tukiainen: Paradis a-z," Finnish Institute in Estonia, Tallinn, Estonia, 2010. Courtesy the artist.
Nordic Shangri-La
Much like Katja’s installation, I have been living in a dream world in Helsinki, my Nordic Shangri-La. The stipend from my grant releases me from the burdens that my colleagues, recent graduates from Cranbrook Academy of Art, have been facing: finding jobs, apartments, support, etc. From afar, I have been observing their struggles as they embark on the epic quest to find the magic elixir of living and creating as a professional artist. My Fulbright grant to Finland is a year-long placebo, a temporary lapse before this inevitable hardship. Now, as my stay abroad nears its end, the vastness of my future, no longer neatly spliced into more manageable chunks of time, is starting to weigh on me.
Art21 Educators 2011-2012: Jack Watson and Holly Loranger
This week, we continue our introductions to each of the eight pairs of educators who were chosen to participate in the third year of Art21 Educators. Last week we met Maureen Hergott and Julia CopperSmith from Chicago, IL. Now we are excited to introduce Jack Watson and Holly Loranger.
Jack Watson and Holly Loranger hail from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Jack has been teaching for six years. He currently teaches Art History and 2D Visual Art classes at Chapel Hill High School with Holly, a Social Studies teacher whose classes include Arts Focus US History and Comparative Religions. Jack admires his partner’s ability to engage students in critical thinking and says, “There are times when my students come into my classroom continuing a conversation about religion or culture that they started in her class, sometimes days earlier.” Holly is excited to work with Jack in a formal collaborative setting. She describes her experiences working with her partner, remarking that, “he is an incredibly innovative and inspirational colleague.”
In his video profile, Jack tells us about his family, city, and students, and he introduces himself as an artist, musician, and top-five list-maker. (Note: while we were impressed with Jack’s album selections, our musical taste had no influence in our decision.)
Jack learned about Art21 Educators last spring, when he and several of his students went to a TASK Party hosted by Art21 artist Oliver Herring at the University of North Carolina. Herring later visited Jack’s classroom and recommended that he apply to the program. As part of his application, we asked Jack to describe a specific work of art, artist, or exhibition that recently inspired him and/or his teaching practice:
I saw Mark Bradford’s solo show at the Wexner Art Center last summer and was inspired by the way he reclaimed the castaway detritus of his neighborhood — old signs and posters, record covers, permanent-wave end papers, etc. — and the way he layers them in dense and complex abstract compositions. The surface beauty of his work seduced me, but when I watched his Art21 segment, I became interested in the idea of palimpsest and trace memory and how layered images can create a juxtaposition of ideas.
When I returned to school that fall, I planned a project for my advanced students called Paradox Drawings. Students were asked to select a paradoxical idea and investigate it in a mixed media work that utilized paradoxical processes: concealing and revealing, traditional and non-traditional mark making, found surfaces and prepared surfaces . . . Students responded well to Bradford’s work . . . and matched my enthusiasm for both the concept and the visual experiment.
No Preservatives | “Chaos 1″ Returns to Life
Jean Tinguely, "Chaos 1" in 2007. Image from Flickr user S.E. Bennett.
New Year’s Eve 2007 was the last time Jean Tinguely’s monumental sculpture, Chaos 1, was visible to the public. While this artwork remains loved by many residents of Columbus, Indiana, it’s probably mostly unknown to the rest of the world.
The idea for the creation of this sculpture came in 1971 from Cesar Pelli, who was then working for Gruen Associates, to develop a building for the city of Columbus. His commission was to create both a mall and civic space, something like a Italian piazza — but in this case a glass-enclosed piazza. At the center of this civic space (later named The Commons), Xenia and J. Irwin Miller and his sister Clementine Tangeman sponsored the creation of an artwork at Pelli’s request. Pelli describes what he had in mind for this artwork in a 1971 letter to Mrs. Miller:
What the Civic Mass needs is a very large “toy.” A fun, friendly, expectable, super clock machine. If possible, it should also be a work of art.
Mr. Jean Tinguely is the only artist I could think of capable of building such a toy and with good chances of it also being a work of art. A super toy is a very difficult problem where a good number of artists have tried and failed. Tinguely’s Eureka in Zurich is a successful machine and also a very good sculpture.
Cesar Pelli holding a model of Tinguely's "Eureka." Clipping from The Republic newspaper, November 9, 1971.
The sculpture was created by Tinguely with help from various assistants in the city of Columbus from 1972 to 1974. He used found and fabricated components from around town, including Kroot’s scrapyard. While there is a great deal of information about the sculpture in the city of Columbus, there remains no significant publication that describes it in detail, the context in which it was created, and its nearly 40-year history.
Inside the Artist’s Studio | Juozas Cernius
Juozas Cernius, "Bale Mountains, Ethiopia," February 2011. Photo credit: Anita Vizsy.
Juozas Cernius is a Canadian visual artist based in Toronto. He has received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2004) and his BFA from Concordia University in Montreal (2002). Juozas has worked in numerous media and has exhibited drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures in both Canada and the United States. He has shown at Allen Gallery, at Denise Bibro, and at the Dumbo Arts Center, among other exhibition spaces.
His advertising photography has appeared in Elle Décor (UK, Hong Kong, Russia, USA), Byzance (Middle East), Architectural Digest, Wallpaper* (UK), Art+Auction, and others. He also contributes photographs to ArtFagCity.
Having said all of the above, the reason for this post is Juozas’s most recent enlightening realization that art, opportunities, life, and the world do not end in Manhattan. You see, it all started when one day, waking up in New York for the 7th consecutive year as a legal alien stopped making sense. In 2010, time came to renew his visa again – Juozas had tenaciously pursued an art career and life in New York until Truman Burbank’s spirit took him over for good this time.
"The Truman Show" by Peter Weir, 1998
He packed his camera bag and got on a plane to a journey of discovery, which lasted over 200 days starting on December 1, 2010. Juozas visited more than 53 towns and cities in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Swaziland, and South Africa. Last month, he returned to Toronto with a vast body of work of over 12.500 photographs.
