At Occupy Wall Street. Photo by Tricia Van Eck.

Canceled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, presented at The Smart Museum of Art in Chicago in 2000, was a metaphorical representation of It’s Me, a 1998 Chinese experimental art exhibition that was canceled by the Chinese government the day before its opening, not just because of its contents but also for fear of the public gathering and seeing it together. With hundreds of protesters being arrested across the US, it is important to ask, what is the danger in peacefully assembling and associating? Could it be that it leads to conversations, debate, and dialogue?

Following up on my last blog, where I asked the question “what is to be done?,” I now look to curator Naomi Beckwith’s Art 21 Blog post Lily Ledbetter*Art, and the ability of the 3R’s of the green revolution– reduce, reuse, and recycle–to affect change. To these I add the 3C’s–conversation, commerce, and collaboration.

Conversation

While Chicago’s Experimental Station on the South side and Mess Hall on the North side for years have fostered communal space encouraging conversation and critical thinking, increasingly more artists, galleries, and institutions are initiating conversations. Artist Jason Lazarus’s recent exhibition The Search invited a cross section of strangers to engage in an hour-long conversation within a ziggurat that they ascended and descended together. From Green Drinks to the upcoming Motiroti pot-luck by Columbia College Chicago, to reading groups organized by Alderman Exhibitions or Brian Holmes’s Slow-Motion Action/Research Collective at Mess Hall–which helps explain and analyze the current economic and political situation–artists are gathering together.

Jason Lazarus. "The Search," 2011. Courtesy the artist and Andrew Rafacz Gallery.

For me, the opportunity for public discussion within the public realm and open to all is one of the unique opportunities created by Occupy Wall Street. All types of people are engaging in debates touching on topics ranging from questioning short sales, to founding a third political party in the US, to asking if given the opportunity would the 99% become the 1%? Amidst this is the People’s Library–donated books for people to become educated on a number of issues–as well as a Food Station, a Media Station, a First Aid Station, a PR Station, a Silk Screening Station, and an Empathy Station. When I asked a woman named Susan who was working at the Empathy booth how she defined empathy, she said empathy starts with sharing a common ground–which reminds me of my favorite poster: 99% + 1% = 100%. If we are all in this together, what should we do together?

Continue reading »

Willem de Ridder. European Mail-order Warehouse/Fluxshop. Winter 1964-65. Photo: Wim van der Linden/MAI. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008.

Fluxus, an international counter-culture collective of artists, musicians, and designers, was formed 50 years ago in 1961/2.  Its goals were laid out in the 1963 offset lithograph Fluxus Manifesto (on view at The Museum of Modern Art), which denounces the “bourgeois” preciousness and exclusivity that surrounds art, promotes art “for all peoples,” and calls “cultural, social, and political revolutionaries to united front and action.”   Fluxus artists and musicians–who hailed from all over the US, Europe, and Japan–felt that art should be affordable, participatory, and closely tied to everyday experience.  In addition to artists who are known primarily for their involvement with this collective–such as George Maciunas, its founder and leader, Robert Filliou, and Ben Vautier (Ben)–a number of artists who began their careers as participants in Fluxus moved on to become influential in the wider scope of Contemporary art, including Christo, Nam Jun Paik, Deiter Roth, Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, and Claes Oldenburg.

“Fluxus Manifesto,” 1963. Offset lithograph. Edited, designed, and produced by George Maciunas. 8 3/16 x 5 11/16" (20.8 x 14.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008.

This fall, two survey exhibitions in New York celebrate the birth of this radical art movement:  Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University through December 3; and Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions, 1962-1978, at The Museum of Modern Art through January 16.  The exhibition at the Grey Art Gallery, which was organized by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue and will travel to the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor early next year.  In addition, a number of focus exhibitions are on view at university and non-profit galleries in the greater New York area.  Fluxus at NYU: Before and Beyond in the Grey’s Lower Level Gallery and at/around/beyond: Fluxus at Rutgers, at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University (through April 1, 2012) highlight the significant role faculty members of both universities played in Fluxus.  Artists Space, Creative Time, and the Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook University, are also all showing related work this fall.  In keeping with the spirit of the movement, many of these exhibitions are supplemented by a roster of events, including gallery tours by the curators and artists, walking tours, performances, and panel discussions (please see exhibition websites for details).  Finally, the biennial performance art festival Performa, November 11-13, will include a number of Fluxus events.

Fluxus was primarily about ideas, and the goal was to reach the largest possible audience.   In a time before internet and email, prints and multiples in the form of artists’ books, ephemera, and mail art played an important role in disseminating the artists’ work, which were often group publications.  They also organized festivals, participatory events, happenings, and performances, and created mail art, film, and unique works.  Fluxus Editions were primarily produced and hand-assembled by Maciunas in unlimited editions and offered at low prices, distributed at artist-run Fluxshops or by mail-order.  The first Fluxus group publication, An Anthology of Chance Operations…, 1961/3, (on view at The Grey Art Gallery), was compiled and edited by the Minimalist composer La Monte Young and designed by Maciunas.  In 1962, Maciunas and Robert Watts came up with the idea of “an ever-expanding universe of events” (as quoted by curator Jacquelynn Baas in the introductory text at the Grey Art Gallery exhibition) that could be performed by anyone at any time.  Open-ended and minimal instructions for specific actions using everyday objects, to be performed by a single person or by a group, were “composed” by Watts, Young, George Brecht, and others.  These were mailed via postcard to colleagues, and a festival of performances was organized the following year, to take place throughout the month of May in the greater New York area. It was called “The Yam Festival” (May spelled in reverse).  Maciunas also organized similar events throughout Europe, called Fluxfestivals.

Continue reading »

Ed Ruscha. "Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas," 1963. Oil on canvas. © Ed Ruscha.

Dave Hickey has called us out. “It’s corny,” the critic told the New York Times, referring to Pacific Standard Time, L.A.’s current, Getty-funded initiative to canonize L.A.’s post-war art through a hundred or so thoroughly-researched exhibitions hosted by over sixty institutions. “It’s the sort of thing that Denver would do. They would do Mountain Standard Time.”

L.A. did it first, L.A. is an art capital—I’ve heard some variation of this again and again over the past month. I’ve never flinched when people say New Orleans invented jazz or New York owned the Ab-Ex movement, but it’s different when you hear such praise, such broad praise, about your own city, in your own city.

On one hand, the party’s been fun so far, and some of the art’s been a revelation—like Eleanor Antin’s paper doll hijacking video, and Betye Saar’s mystical installations. On the other hand, I feel sort of like it’s Fourth of July all the time, only patriotism has been replaced by regionalism, or like I’m at the Château de Chenonceau in France in 1560, watching the country’s first-ever fireworks extravaganza and feeling like we invented gunpowder. At the Getty’s nighttime exhibition opening two weeks ago, lights projecting the sun-shaped Pacific Standard Time logo danced all over the complex’s many layered buildings like fireworks and a booming voice walked guests through SoCal’s recent art history. At the reception, you could graze food tables themed after every decade—I took mashed potatoes from the 50s domesticity table. All of it was uncomfortably spectacular.

But some of the work in the Getty’s show, the centerpiece of PST, is uncomfortably spectacular, too, and, I suspect, still relatively unknown by those outside this city.

Peter Voulkos’ bulbous vessels; John Mason‘s ceramic wall pieces:

John Mason. "Blue Wall," 1959. Ceramic. © John Mason. Photo by Anthony Cuñha.

Robert Graham’s funny, sunny dioramas;

Robert Graham. "Untitled," 1967. Polyurethane resin. Collection of Ed Ruscha. © Estate of Robert Graham

DeWain Valentine’s smooth resin; Mary Corse’s impossible-to-photograph, glass-encrusted, white-on-white paintings;

Mary Corse. "Untitled (White Light Grid Series-V)," 1969. Glass microspheres in acrylic on canvas. Permission courtesy Ace Gallery and the artist.

and of course, Hockney’s splash paintings, known outside L.A. certainly, but not fully appreciated unless you’re standing in front of them, soaking up their incredible, confident precision.

David Hockney. "A Bigger Splash," 1967. Acrylic on canvas. Image: © Tate, London 2010.

So what to make of PST? It’s embarrassing for sure. Regional boosterism has to be, especially since it exposes fear of marginalization, which is  the neurotic kind of fear that can persist long after marginalization has more or less receded. But maybe the embarrassment is worth a few good shows? I’m not sure.

My favorite Los Angeles art lore story is from David Hockney, who moved to California in 1963. The first night he stayed in L.A., he checked into a beach front Santa Monica hotel. He saw lights in the distance and walked toward them–he didn’t have a car, and didn’t know how to drive anyway–thinking it must be the city. After walking two miles he got there and found a big gas station. Not a city at all.

That’s the best thing about Los Angeles and its art, that things are spread out, confusing, and hard to find. It’s partly what made historicizing L.A. art difficult and, despite all the aggrandizing PST lingo, it’s something PST has embraced. There are shows beckoning to you from all over the region–Orange County, Pomona, San Diego, East L.A., West L.A., downtown, etc.–and it’s nearly  impossible to visit each and every one. Even when you do, they’ll only be a teaser, not the real city at all.

And that’s the last I’ll say about PST (in this column, at least).

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” - T. S. Eliot

“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.” - Henry David Thoreau

Satoru Nihei. "The Biggest Surrender," 2011. 30x40 inch poster.

Last January, when I interviewed the Finnish artist Miina Äkkijyrkkä, I asked if she had advice for young artists. She laughed. In fact she may have even scoffed. To quote Äkkijyrkkä, “There is no recipe for being an artist.” It’s true: there is no recipe for being an artist—there are recipes.

How emerging artists concoct their own recipes for success is the subject of this new column, Praxis Makes Perfect. It will be written by artists, for artists, especially those who have recently graduated from a master’s program (or other equivalent programs in academic settings). Shedding the skin of academia is a taxing and humbling process. It can even be painful. I know.

Once upon a time, I painted all day and all night for two years. Then I graduated. After Cranbrook, I went to Finland on a Fulbright grant. I returned to the humidity of the American southeast this past June where I spent the summer months dithering over my “Future.” By September, having thawed from my time in the Nordic corner of the world, I found myself in New York City with a full time administrative assistant job at a law firm and a studio. I have only begun to cut and paste small pieces into the fluid collage of my new life as a professional artist.

If I stop to think about it, how anyone composes a life as an artist baffles me. Often I give little import to the specifics of how it will work, it just will. It must. Thus the end of my career as a student is the unspooling of a new yarn and a new column for this site. This column will show how we, as artists, uncover the unclear image of our futures, beginning with the works and words of other artists. The following quotes are from a baker’s dozen of recent MFA graduates from around the country, reflecting on the period of transition from academia to professionalism—the perfection of praxis.

Without further ado…

Amanda Long, Dharma Talks, 2009, two channel video sculpture.

“Being a young artist in NYC is a bit like being a snowball rolling down a hill–you start small and you very quickly get bigger and faster. My advice to anyone transitioning from school to the city is to surround yourself with other artists. Apply to as many things as possible. Stay active in showing work and do it yourself if no gallery or museum is interested yet. Any show is better than none. Presently I live and work in Exile (an artist in residence “AIR” building) in Long Island City. My plans for the future are to keep applying for larger opportunities, to keep making new work, and to find a decent job.” – Amanda Long, MFA, Carnegie Mellon University (2010)

Continue reading »

John Chamberlain, "King King Minor", 1982 Image: artinfo.com

In two weeks I am taking a group of students to visit the September 11 exhibition at PS1. Most of the high school students in these two classes have some recollection of 9/11 since they were about five or six years old when it occurred and it goes without saying that for some the memory may be much different than others. So for starters, as I prepare to visit a potentially charged exhibit like this one, I want to be thorough on the “front-end’’ of getting ready. Some of my students may have lost friends or even family members in the attacks and I need to talk with them in advance to discuss how comfortable they are about the trip itself.

With 41 artists represented in this show, many of you may already know that a majority of the work was made prior to 9/11. This is also a good time to tell you that one of our biggest reasons for attending the show is not necessarily to continue reflecting on the events of 9/11, but rather to see how a curator worked with this very specific theme in order to select and assemble a body of work. This approach to organizing an exhibit is much different from a single artist working with a theme or historic event and putting together an exhibit. For the curator, working in this case with a very particular moment in history offers an opportunity to process and represent the range of emotion, confusion, anger and even solidarity that resulted from these attacks. The show allows us to see how Peter Eleey has chosen to visually reflect on the events that took place a decade ago and have us think about the lingering effects.

A few days before we attend the exhibit (and after I speak with any students who have any personal experience with 9/11) classes will view selected images from the show and immediately begin thinking about how and why the works may have been chosen. Asking students to make connections and draw conclusions first is just as important as me filling in the gaps and sharing information that may not be apparent, such as how Christo’s proposal from 1964 to wrap two buildings in lower Manhattan may somehow be symbolic of the particular protection or safety we once felt inside our homes and workplaces.

Continue reading »

Gwyneth Anderson. Stills from "Laughing Video," 2011.

After 22 years of Richard M. Daley, the longest-serving mayor in Chicago’s history, our city has a new mayor, Rahm Emanuel. While artists often greet new politicians with a screed of demands, The Happiness Project, which opens in various spaces in Chicago in November, invites artists to illustrate what happiness might look like for themselves, others, and the city. What might a city that advances the collective goal of happiness look like? How might it function? What kind of conditions and policies would that city create?

After spending some time at Occupy Chicago this week and Occupy LA a few weeks ago, it is clear that many people across the United States are not happy. On October 11 in Chicago, during the Futures Industry Association’s and Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual meetings, a group of activists known as the Robin Hoods greeted the bankers as they entered Renzo Piano’s bridge to the Art Institute of Chicago. As the bankers walked high above the crowd to attend their party, the crowds of people below chanted, “We are the 99%.”

From February to June the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA) presented artist Susan Philipsz’s sound works We Shall Be All and Internationale, reflecting Chicago’s rich labor history which includes the 1886 Haymarket Affair and the creation of the International Workers of the World (IWW). Also in Chicago in March, artist Paul Durica organized a reenactment of the 1915 Parade of the Unemployed, which at the time demanded hunger relief and public works projects. Both artists draw parallels to the similarities between then and now. So, what is to be done?

Recently addressing Occupy Wall Street, critical theorist Slavoj Zizek said, “We don’t want higher standards of living; we want better standards of living.” The current paradigm for measuring standard of living is the GNP (gross national product) index. However, because consumption of products doesn’t necessarily correspond to one’s standard of living–as evidenced when traffic jams increase gasoline consumption–the country of Bhutan has proposed the GNH (gross national happiness) index as the new “standard of living.” When the Dalai Lama visited Chicago in June, he urged people to pursue happiness. The next day, the United Nations’ General Assembly encouraged its Member States to give importance to happiness and well-being in measuring and achieving social and economic development.

Continue reading »

We are back with our next podcast featuring the latest in art news and reviews from Chicago and the Midwest! This month, Duncan Mackenzie, Dan Gunn, and Art21 Blog Editor Claudine Isé review Bruce Nauman’s exhibition at Donald Young Gallery and debate the merits of ArtPrize, a city-wide art contest in Grand Rapids, Mich., whose winners are determined by public vote. The stakes are high–the grand prize winner receives $250,000! This year, artist Mia Tavonatti won for her stained glass mosaic titled Crucifixion. Apologies–on the podcast, we mis-pronounced the artist’s name as meeah; the correct pronunciation is myah. We also talk up the shows and events in Chicago that we’re most looking forward to over the coming months; you’ll find links to all of them below. Thanks for listening!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

All images of Bruce Nauman’s works are copyrighted by the Artist’s Rights Society. Click here to visit the Donald Young Gallery for images and brief video clips of the Nauman video we discuss this week, Combinations Described (Chicago), 2011.

Watch this video to learn more about Mia Tavanati’s winning ArtPrize entry:

Panelist’s picks for the month of October:

Claudine: Nancy Holt: Sightlines, at the Graham Foundation, October 7-December 17, 2011.

Dan: Jonathan Baldock at Peregrine Program, October 9-November 6, 2011.

Duncan: Hand in Glove conference and the MDW Fair Fair Showcase at the Geolofts, October 21-23, 2011.

Hundreds of giant, silver, cloud-like, helium-filled Mylar balloons reading “Magic Bullet” float in a white room in the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto. Magic is right. The shiny, crinkling objects of air dance like parts of a mobile rotating above a child’s crib. And “bullet” is also right: the shape of each balloon–a pill–is meant to evoke the anti-viral drugs that artists Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal – two thirds of the famous Canadian art collective General Idea – would have taken for AIDS-related illness. AIDS is one major theme explored in the AGO’s Haute Culture: General Idea retrospective, alongside “the artist, glamour and the creative process;” “mass culture;” “architects/archaeologists,” and “sex and reality.” The 300 works on display take you from bizarre and comical objets d’arts like faux fossils, to hilarious video spoofs on beauty and glamor pageantry, painted macaroni, and a series depicting a trio of neon poodles copulating on black-painted canvasses. Life, including death, it appears, is as dark as it is humorous.

Untitled (detail), 1986. Acrylic and pasta on canvas. Image courtesy VoCA. Collection of Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Mudam), Luxembourg.

General Idea. Canvas from the series "Mondo Cane Kama Sutra,"1984. Image courtesy the Estate of General Idea; ©Pierre Antoine, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris / ARC, 2011.

"Mondo Cane Kama Sutra," 1984. Installation view. Image courtesy the Estate of General Idea; ©Pierre Antoine, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris / ARC, 2011.

General Idea delighted in their sense of humor; case in point: poodle symbolism is everywhere in the exhibit. Operating as a stand-in for “the artist,” the poodle is General Idea’s alter ego, chosen for the banality of the animal and the arbitrariness of sophistication ascribed to it. For General Idea, poodles can have an air of importance about them the way that artists do: not much has to necessarily be there before people are buying into it and once they do, others come to attribute the same sense of value to them, et voila! Suddenly everyone’s a believer. Thus the image of the display dog, preened to make its grand and glamorous appearance, shows itself throughout the exhibit: on flags ironically hailing the artist, on shields and crests, in illustrations, and rigidly presiding on straw in hilarious installations.

"XXX (bleu)," 1984. Image courtesy the Estate of General Idea; © Pierre Antoine, Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris / ARC, 2011.

Another room reveals three poodles used to paint blue “X”‘s onto large canvasses, suggesting that the General Idea alter ego had to put its whole self into making art work. General Idea were aware that in irony lies mockery and truth, once saying, “We knew in order to be artists and to be glamorous artists we had to be artificial and we were.” Their appropriationist method also extended to playful recreations of recognizable symbols of consumerism; for example, macaroni paintings of well-recognized logos, and renditions of iconic Mondrians. They were not created with homage in mind, but rather they were poking at the establishment of value and status in the art world, and the fame and notoriety that go along with it–an idea they explored most thoroughly with their Miss General Idea Pageant and Pavilion.

Continue reading »

6018NORTH.

The unpredictable and often ephemeral encounters that occur when art, community, audience, and ideas intersect are what excite me most about working with artists. For my last project at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA)– I left in June 2011 to start 6018NORTH, which I will explain below–we invited artist Mark Bradford to do a community residency. It began immediately at our staff meeting since, instead of me introducing Mark to the staff, he turned it around. He wanted to know what it was the staff did, saying that because they work at the MCA, they each have cultural capital. He then asked, how could they share that capital with others in their field, and in their community? This type of generosity–which Mark brought to the communities in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, where he sited his ark for Prospect. 1– is important to foster, and it is especially important during a time of economic instability and uncertainty: we need to share our cultural capital.

With Interactions: A Four-Month Companion Series of Artist and Audience Activations, an MCA show which involved 17 artists or artist groups (one each week from Jan – May 2011), I asked how each could encourage audiences to perform, engage, or open up to an artistic experience. The last work, Mnemonic,
 by artist Katrina Chamberlin, invited the public to receive an actual tattoo of a small black dot. An elderly woman asked for a tattoo. Sitting in the chair, she gathered a crowd because it meant something different for her to get a tattoo as opposed to someone young. During the process, she said to Katrina: “It’s so important that you have done this. You’ve brought so much love and connection to people.” Partnerships and participation are key: people want to be participate in something larger than themselves.

Katrina Chamberlin giving a participant a tattoo as part of her work "Mnemonic," at the MCA Chicago.

A woman displaying the tattoo she received as part of Katrina Chamberlin's "Mnemonic" at the MCA Chicago.

Participation also builds empathy. “Change the environment and you change the people.” I copied this from somewhere, so I can’t take credit for it, but in curating or creating art, architecture, or design, we are changing the environment. We provide the opportunity for people to see the world around them with new eyes. On September 27, 2011 in Chicago at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum’s weekly RE-THINKING SOUP series, farmer/activist John Kinsman from The Family Farm Defenders asked, “How can we change competition into cooperation?”

Continue reading »

Tricia Van Eck. Photo by Jason Lazarus.

Our huge thanks to previous guest-blogger Rachel Mason for her fantastic profiles of some of the most interesting performance artists and performance-related work taking place right now in New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. You can keep up with Rachel’s upcoming gigs and projects by visiting her website here.

Next up, we’re pleased to introduce Tricia Van Eck as our latest blogger-in-residence. Van Eck is the Artistic Director of 6018 North, a green, non-profit space for experimental culture, installation, performance, and sound located in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. Prior to this, Van Eck worked as Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where her last project was the Chicago presentation of The Mark Bradford Project. Previously she had curated Interactions, a four month series of artist and audience activations that served as a companion to the MCA’s exhibition Without You I’m Nothing: Art and Its Audience, which Van Eck co-curated. Much of Van Eck’s focus at the MCA had been on audience engagement and extending the MCA’s reach into the community, as seen in exhibitions such as Here/Not There, Hide and Seek: An Out of Gallery Experience, Theaster Gates: Temple Exercises, and Tino Sehgal’s Kiss. She served as coordinating curator of the MCA’s presentations of various traveling exhibitions such as Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe, Andy Warhol: Supernova, and the Jeff Koons retrospective. Van Eck’s many exhibitions of Chicago artists at the MCA include Mapping the Self and Kerry James Marshall/One True Thing: Meditations on Black Aesthetics, which she co-curated, along with numerous UBS 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work exhibitions showcasing the work of emerging Chicago artists.