This post is about a show that’s up at Craig F. Starr Gallery until May 27—a collection of artworks by Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse. This isn’t a review because reviews are supposed to be objective, and the curator of the show, Veronica Roberts, is a close friend of mine.  But the show itself is about friendships between creative people. So the fact that it’s a friend’s show seemed thematically appropriate.

Veronica Roberts, Mass MoCA 2008. (The first picture above is Mass MoCA volunteers in LeWitt quotation tees.

To me, here’s the big question of the show: as an artist, what does it mean to be open enough to another person to allow them to affect your work?  Is that the true marker of friendship—being open enough to receive influence and solid enough to give it too, and being known enough to another person for that to be possible?

Veronica starts her catalog essay with a story that gave me a lump in my throat the first time I retold it:

In 1970, Eva Hesse died at the age of 34.  When Sol received word of her death, he was in Paris preparing a show that would open a few days later.  In that short time he made a brand new work dedicated to Eva. It was the first time in his entire career that he made “not straight lines.”  Everything before that—whether Yaffa-block-like sculptures of “incomplete open cubes” or his “wall drawings” with their ordered lines you could stencil notebook paper off of—was never anything but straight.

Sol LeWitt, "Wall Drawing #46." Vertical lines, not straight, not touching, uniformly dispersed with maximum density covering the entire surface of the wall (detail). Pencil on wall, 108 x 108 inches. First drawn by: Sol LeWitt in 1970. First installation: Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, May 1970. At Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York; 105-1⁄2 x 89-1⁄2 inches.

LeWitt and Hesse are both, by almost any measure, famous artists.  Sol died in 2007.  A retrospective of his work is up for the next two decades (through 2033), at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.  I thoroughly recommend seeing it.

Eva’s work was in a retrospective in 2002 and 2003 that was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum Wiesbaden, and traveled to the Tate Modern.

In the Craig F. Starr Gallery on East 73^rd Street, the space itself supports the intimacy of friendship, with the proportions of a house, and even the careful interior decoration details of someone’s home, down to the fireplace and a breathtaking set of window drapes that exactly match the greenish tint of middle gray of the walls.

In the first room, Wall Drawing #46—the very same inaugural non-straight lines (pictured above), in Eva’s honor—stands as if with its back to the door.  Next to it is a set of works on paper, one by each of them.  Sol’s is a blank page to which he has added neat elegant grids, a veritable constellation of homages to the square.

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Vera Lutter, "Chephren and Cheops Pyramids, Giza: April 12, 2010," 2010. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

A camera is a room and a room is a head, and the head is constantly being filled with images it has to process and make sense of. A person born blind whose sight has recently been restored will initially see the world as planes and blobs of light, until the brain has caught up enough with its new stimuli to package the planes and blobs into names, at which point images distinguish themselves from the murk. A camera obscura can replicate that pre-linguistic, undifferentiated stream of visual stimuli, streaming the outside world onto its dark walls in unexpurgated flow. The history of photography – which began with those uncanny images projected, at first by a chance concurrence of darkness, light and a tiny aperture, later by design – is the history of a sudden revelation and its gradual wearing down into the commonplace. Little wonder the early large format landscape photography of Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge has a visually ravenous quality about it. Trace the accelerated history of photography into the later twentieth century and there’s an almost palpable feeling of an appetite having been sated.

Vera Lutter made a camera obscura out of an old leather suitcase and took it with her to Egypt, surreptitiously making images of ancient monuments (local laws being fairly punctilious when it comes to photography). The intrepid Tintin-meets-Capa narrative is a reminder that the romanticism thoroughly leached out of conventional ‘fine art’ in the 1960s still has a home in photography. Curled at their edges, intimate in scale, their clandestine provenance becomes part of the meaning of each work. The resulting negative images are as unsullied a representation of the pure photographic image – photography as ‘light writing’ – as a fixed image can be. Lutter’s photographs are, in other words, what images look like before language makes sense of them, and her practice involves geographical locations that are swamped and steeped in language: Manhattan, Venice, Egypt. Unphotographable places.

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In the next two weeks, museum leaders gather in two places—art curators in New York May 15-17 and everyone in Houston May 22-25—to contemplate the future of the field.  How do these conversations affect all of us, and what is possible for museums as very specific stewards of the very broad category of imagination and creative thinking?

I would like to posit that what museums need to do next is not to continue one of the greatest building booms in their history but to redefine art.  Instead of being reservoirs for objects, they need to be platforms—part think tank, part school—for conversations about creativity across fields not just about the appreciation of creativity within the arts.

Right now, one place people go when they want to experience wonder in great works of imagination is not museums but TED—short for Technology, Entertainment, Design—the conference that started as a single event in 1984 and then grew into its current constellation of annual gatherings, each a program of 18-minute talks devoted to “ideas worth spreading.”  Since TED talks first appeared online in 2005, about 300 million people have watched them.

As TED’s mission statement begins, “An idea can be created out of nothing except an inspired imagination.  An idea weighs nothing.  . . .  And yet an idea, when received by a prepared mind, can have extraordinary impact.. . .”

The power of creative thinking is the ultimate disruptive technology to the physical footprint of art museums and the collections they house.  It is exactly at the delicate peak of a sustained building boom that museums must shift their focus from the monumental weight of buildings to the ephemeral power of ideas.

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Jeff Koons, "Winter Bears," 2008. © Jeff Koons, ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland, and Tate. Acquired jointly through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund.

In this week’s roundup, Jeff Koons and Vija Celmins make room for artists, Mark Bradford inspires Chicago youth, and more.

• Jeff Koons‘s artwork is currently on view at ARTIST ROOMS (UK).  This exhibit brings together a works by Koons on display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (UK) and offers visitors the chance to explore some of the artist’s most important and iconic series.  The show closes on July 3.

• Vija Celmins‘s artwork will soon be on view in an exhibition sponsored by ARTIST ROOMS, launched as part of this year’s Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival (UK).  The exhibition will be held at Gracefield Arts Centre (Gallery 2), Dumfries from May 21 – July 30. This special event offers visitors the chance to see 24 artworks including one new piece never seen in the UK before.

• Richard Serra and Bruce Nauman are part of Musee Rodin’s Works in Progress, Rodin and the Ambassadors, which examines the way in which Rodin’s work is perceived and strives to show not only how his sculpture developed but also how it was and continues to be reinterpreted. The exhibition compares 100 or so works by Rodin with 30 modern and contemporary works post-1945. The exhibition is on view May 6 – September 4.

• Laurie Anderson’s Delusion, a 90-minute, multimedia solo piece, will run September 27 – October 2 at the Paramount Theatre.  This performance is part of ArtsEmerson’s 2011-12 season.

• Mark Bradford will soon be view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (MCA).  This exhibition is a survey of Mark Bradford’s work from 2000 to 2010. The 35 works on show include paintings, sculptures, installations, and videos.  The exhibition opens on May 26.

• The Mark Bradford Project connects Bradford with different Chicago communities to interact around the creative process. For the past year, Bradford has served as a catalyst for community activities, including connecting students from the Lindblom Math and Science Academy, as well as teenagers in Digital Youth Network’s YOUmedia Chicago program at the Harold Washington Library.  For more information, check out The Mark Bradford Project blog.

• From May 26 to June 2, the MCA presents (Re)Connect, an off-site art exhibition created by high school-aged students in Chicago. The exhibition includes art inspired by Mark Bradford‘s work and his practice. (Re)Connect will soon be on view at the Pop-Up Art Loop Gallery and a free, public opening will be held Wednesday, May 25, 4:30-6:30 pm.

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Episode #142: Artist Paul McCarthy discusses his interest in art as political theater and his sculptures as akin to amusement park rides. Featuring the works “Bang Bang Room” (1992), “Spinning Room” (2008), and “Mad House” (2008) in the exhibition “Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement, Three Installations, Two Films” (2008) at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Paul McCarthy’s video-taped performances and provocative multimedia installations lampoon polite society, ridicule authority, and bombard the viewer with a sensory overload of often sexually-tinged, violent imagery. With irreverent wit, McCarthy often takes aim at cherished American myths and icons—Walt Disney, the Western, and even the Modern Artist—adding a touch of malice to subjects that have been traditionally revered for their innocence or purity. Whether conflating real-world political figures with fantastical characters such as Santa Claus, or treating erotic and abject content with frivolity and charm, McCarthy’s work confuses codes, mixes high and low culture, and provokes an analysis of fundamental beliefs.

Paul McCarthy is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Transformation of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Bob Elfstrom & Richard Numeroff. Sound: Doug Dunderdale & Merce Williams. Editor: Joaquin Perez. Artwork Courtesy: Paul McCarthy. Special Thanks: Whitney Museum of American Art. Video: © 2011, Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.

Spinning Room, 1970/2008. Installation view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Show control, video equipment, steel, Servo motors, industrial motion controller, electrical components, plywood and lights; 132 x 744 x 744 inches. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. © Paul McCarthy. Photo by Ann-Marie Rounkle.

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Miriam Simun, "The Lady Cheese Shop," 2011.

Miriam Simun’s The Lady Cheese Shop, installed at Michael Mut Gallery in New York for four days between April and May, served up three different types of cheese at its opening reception and tasting. All made from local breast milk, Simun’s art des fromages, made in collaboration with Chef Sarah Hymanson, offered plenty food for thought.

Now when it comes to eating, I consider myself to be fairly adventurous. Watching those crazy food challenges on The Amazing Race, I like to believe that, if put to the test, I could stomach fried rodents better than most people. It seems that for some adults the thought of breast milk is just as disgusting. So perhaps part of me was excited by the sort of dare to eat Simun’s “human cheese.” And since I was born with a severe milk allergy (now long gone), I was quite conscious that in this itsy-bitsy gallery on the Lower East Side, I would come close to having an experience I missed, quasi connecting with a bosom as a source of nourishment. “Midtown Smoke,” the only cheese that was left when I arrived, was described as being “made from the milk of a young Chinese mother living in midtown Manhattan, and a goat hailing from Northern Vermont…” As soon as the curd touched my tongue and its smoky sweet flavor hit my taste buds, I nearly puked.

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Today marks the conclusion of our Blog Party! fundraising campaign. Many thanks to all who have contributed over the last six weeks.

As this blog approaches its fourth birthday, it has grown in leaps and bounds from its humble beginnings. From the seventeen columns we publish monthly to our biweekly guest blog (amounting to over 100 bloggers-in-residence) and ongoing Flash Points series, our writers work hard to offer original, insightful, and engaging content.

Help us encourage their important contributions and keep this site running for at least another four years. Support arts writing. Donate to Blog Party! today.

Teresa Margolles, Untitled (2010), October 28, 2010 - August 2011, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Late last night, a friend and I decided to find a restaurant we’d seen once, over a year ago, when walking through Virgil Village to Silver Lake. We remembered the place as being hedged in, strangely, even comically, hidden from the freeway above and from the main road in front of it. When we found it—El Caserio, a “place where you can relax to the explosive tastes of South American and Italian Cuisine”—, we couldn’t figure how to get in. All the entrances were dark, except the door in the back, off a cul-de-sac, that looked as heavy as a drawbridge. It had to be pulled open, frame and all, by a white and black rope, but it took us a good three minutes to figure this out (and then it wasn’t our effort but the help of a man and woman who came after that got us through). Inside, El Caserio has loud music, tall walls, vines, all meant to circle you in and close out any sign (or sound) of cars passing.

I imagine that Carey McWilliams, that cultural historian whose muscular criticisms were smoothed over by his tender affection for SoCal, would see El Caserio as a holdover of what he called L.A.’s archipelago quality. No cultural or economic lines bisect L.A. he wrote in his book Southern California: An Island on the Land, published over sixty years ago now. Rather, self-reliant, island-like circles enclose communities to the exclusion of others. I still feel that here—circled in when I’m in neighborhoods close to home, or like I’m circle-surfing when I go from East L.A. to West.

Carey McWilliams's book, first published in 1946.

There’s a circle on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art right now, subtle enough to accidentally overlook but brutal in its own way. It wants to be closed-in and opened-up at the same time, and it’s made up of six low-to-the-ground benches that look to me like Aztecan stairs re-imagined in the International Style—which means they’re earthy, regal, and have a faux, modernistic modesty. But they also have a real modesty that mainly comes from their unaffected smallness in comparison to the big museum behind them.

Teresa Margolles made these benches, which have no title, out of concrete, just as she made six benches for Jardin Botánico Culiacán, a Botanical Garden in Culiacán, Mexico, in 2006. The benches for LACMA—commissioned as part of the young non-profit Los Angeles Nomadic Division’s VIA project, which has installed site-specific works by Mexican artists throughout L.A.—resemble the benches from Culiacán in size and shape, but they have one distinct difference. The concrete for the L.A. formss has been mixed with fluids used to clean four corpses, victims of drug- and gang-related violence, according the press release, at an autopsy room in Mexico. So there are bodies implicit in the concrete, which means if you decide to sit, you’re engaging with violence you likely have no first-hand knowledge of, whether you know it or not.

It’s that last part, knowing it or not, the irks me a bit. How many of the people who walk by the benches on LACMA’s ground will have read the press release? How many who choose to sit will know they’re on objects infused with liquid evidence of human cruelty? Few, I suspect. I certainly hadn’t done my homework when I first felt charmed by the benches’ low-to-the-ground, zig-zagging and quiet arrangement. Sitting on them felt like entering a specifically intelligent, contemplatively circular space, entering a circle inside the larger circle of LACMA (the museum’s recent exhibition of Mexican-American art was called Phantom Sightings and it aimed to highlight the “stealthy” public interventions of the Chicano movement; Margolles, though not Chicana, has stealth too, placing one small community of concrete bodies on the grounds of another). The extent to which I was interacting with a history of violence was lost on me. Knowing now makes me feel like I’ve been had.

Teresa Margolles, Untitled, 2006, courtesy Jardin Botanico Culiacan and CIAC, Mexico.

It might be symbolic—after all, each community has its own lurking layers of hidden history that many engage unaware—but I don’t want my public art to leave the blinders over my eyes. Even if it’s covert or mysterious, I want to be invited to peek at what’s behind the mystery before I decide to engage.

I guess that’s why I liked El Caserio. After walking around three times, we knew all we could about its context, no press release needed. Then, inside, its attempts to sever itself from the fastness and noisiness of the city it lives in were so explicit (“the ambience is just right,” says the website) that we were at least, during the course of our meal, knowing inhabitants of the inside circle. I don’t mean to undercut the serious, stunning qualities of Margolles’ installation by comparing it with a funny fusion restaurant under the freeway. But El Caserio does get some things right.

My publisher Greg Albers of Hol Art Books got me thinking about museum wall labels again recently.  In Greg’s honor, I thought I would host a (drum roll, please)…

Wall Label Writing Contest!

The impetus was the announcement of a panel at next year’s College Art Association meeting called “Your Labels Make Me Feel Stupid”: Museum Labels as Art-Historical Practice.

Here are five pictures, a bonus sixth at the top of this post:

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Spring is in the air. The end of the school year is upon us, or for those who bob and weave right through June, almost upon us. This is the time of year (and more than once) I’ve thought about getting out the proverbial lounge chair and giving assignments that won’t push too hard and won’t interrupt the slow change from spring to summer outside the window. But you know what? I’ve learned (and more than once) that this is a bad idea.

In a previous post about Rochelle Feinstein’s most recent show (a “retrospective collection, assembled in the present tense,” as explained in Jason Friedman’s wonderful Bomb interview with the artist) I mentioned that Feinstein’s approach reminded me of a favorite series of lessons to teach towards the end of the school year called “Catharsis”. Mainly about release, revisiting older work and re-seeing, the unit focuses on students first taking stock of what they have accomplished during the course- a real thoughtful look through their portfolio and sketchbooks highlighting successes, challenges, and even the flops along the way. Conversations are had, reflections are written. More conversations are had. It drives students bats, but most of the time in a good way.

Then, in a moment of truth, students are asked to pick a single work of art from their portfolio: Something that they want to destroy, change, alter, rip, tear, rearrange or reassemble… and make into a brand new work.

Do I ask them to choose the “worst” piece? No. Do I ask them to pick the work they “hate” the most? Definitely not (I try to avoid using hate as motivation for art when I can). But I will ask them to pick a work that has potential in some ways, just not its current form. I will ask them to pick a work that could be put together differently. Unlike Feinstein’s approach in The Estate of Rochelle F., students are allowed to add to the revised and rearranged work, perhaps drawing into it, adding a new medium, or even changing the medium (drawings can be rearranged and then photographed, for example). Students wrap up by discussing and sharing what the work was originally about vs. what the work became about in its altered form.

In Justin Lieberman’s interview, Rochelle Feinstein goes on to say:

I do believe in a finished work. Yet, if the work is still in my possession, and I’ve concluded that it needs to be “fluffed” because of the current circumstances, then I will do so. The “original” then exists as the foundation for a new “original”.

The end of the school year, instead of being an opportunity to go easy on students who could use one last creative kick in the pants, is a perfect time to take stock of what happened, what was learned, and perhaps create something new and beautiful (?) from work that may very well have been left behind or stuffed under the bed for Rover to snuggle with when the weather turns cold again.