Florian Maier-Aichen Discusses “Myth-Making” at Apple Store Soho
A still of Florian Maier-Aichen at work from Season 5's "Fantasy" episode
On October 9, over a hundred art fans arrived at the Apple Store Soho to gain insight into the work and life of German-American artist Florian Maier-Aichen. Organized by Art21, the early evening event featured a special advance screening of Season 5’s Fantasy episode, which features Maier-Aichen, and it provided an opportunity for the public to ask the artist about his artistic practice and inspirations.
Introduced by Art21 Manager of Education and Public Programs, Marc Mayer, the event began with the video segment and continued with a Q&A session moderated by Art21 Associate Curator, Wesley Miller.
Ansel Adams, "The Tetons and the Snake River" (1942) (via Wikipedia)
Known for his digitally altered images, Maier-Aichen arrived in Southern California in the mid-1990s as a student to study art at UCLA. During his studies in Los Angeles, he discovered the American photographic tradition of the late 19th- and early 20th-century that popularized the majesty of the American West. He wondered if America’s love of photography, which he said is more respected as an art form here than it is in Germany, is rooted in this historic period when Americans discovered their nation’s natural beauty through the power of the lens. Miller added, to support Maier-Aichen’s point, that the awe most people felt when viewing those same early photographs contributed to the establishment of America’s first national parks.
While Maier-Aichen felt affinities with those early landscape photographers, such as Ansel Adams and Eadweard Muybridge, he says his work shies away from simple landscape images. “I don’t like pure landscape—it is too boring for me. I like the tension between [the city and nature],” he said.
Some Thoughts on Art + Transformation in American’s Oldest Continuous Artist Colony
Provincetown Art Association & Museum, Photo by jrgts/Flickr
I admit to being surprised at the role the visual arts plays in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In college, I remember learning about Hans Hofmann’s famous school, which taught artists (Helen Frankenthaler, Allan Kaprow, Larry Rivers, Lee Krasner, etc.) about modern art. This once sleepy fishing town, it turns out, wasn’t only an important center for American theatre and art during the middle of the 20th C. but it continues to retain that role even as it transform into a very contemporary community. At the center of this change is a rather superb small museum, the Province Art Association & Museum (aka PAAM).
Last weekend, I traveled to this small town of less than 4,000 year-round residents and met PAAM’s Executive Director, Christine M. McCarthy, to find out more about the town’s fine arts soul. She was friendly, welcoming and exuberant about what has been achieved in Provincetown. “You can’t find more culture in 3 square miles anywhere else,” she offered as evidence of Provincetown’s role as cultural mecca.
Charles W. Hawthorne "His First Voyage" (1915). Gift of Joseph Hawthorne, Coll. PAAM
When I visited, PAAM was hosting five (mostly one-room) exhibitions, including a permanent collection display dominated by works by founding art colony father Charles W. Hawthorne and his ilk, a show of drawings by Hans Hofmann’s students (which included 15 drawings loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art), a retrospective of assemblage artist Varujan Boghosian, Anne Peretz’s paintings of Cape Cod, and a fundraising show featuring work by PAAM members. It seemed like an incredible number for such a small museum.
Some Thoughts on Art + Transformation + Pop Culture
Kara Walker, "You Do" (1993-94). Cut Paper on canvas, 55 x 49 in. (140 x 124.5 cm). Coll. of Peter Norton & Eileen Harris Norton. Photo courtesy artist & Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NYC
Our latest reflection on the theme of art + transformation comes from two popular Philadelphia-based art bloggers, Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof. The founders of TheArtBlog.org, the pair shared some thoughts on the transformative relationship between pop culture & art:
There’s a constant conversation going on between art and pop culture. Each seems to transform the other for better and for worse. iPod advertisements quote Kara Walker’s (Season 2) black on white silhouettes. Cai Guo-Qiang’s (Season 3) firework explosions transform the ultimate pop culture “ooh” and “aah” experience into a commentary on light and space–but also exploding bombs.
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Everything is fodder in Ryan Trecartin’s through the looking glass world. People are transformed with face paint and audio is distorted to the verge of incomprehensibility. And the values of the corporate world and the family world are inverted so that there is no good/bad dichotomy and everything is a crazy jumble. The transformation allows the artist room to comment on how crazy and immoral the real world is.
That ability to transform has magic powers, and the ancients understood that when they donned masks and swallowed peyote buttons. Art is not peyote. It won’t get you through the doors of perception literally. But good art does open up doors of perspective that help us revise our understanding of the world around us.
Some Thoughts on the Transformative Power of Walking + Art
Photo of Pocket Utopia's Rolling Gate. Courtesy Sharon Butler
Austin Thomas is a New York-based artist, curator & sometimes salon host. When I asked her about art + transformation, she offered these thoughts about the transformative power of walking and its impact on her art practice.
“The best ideas come when I’m doing the dishes,” That’s what Tracey Moffatt once told me. (But I never really do dishes.) She also told me, “the best ideas come back” and they do. I get my ideas and do my best thinking when I walk.
After completing Pocket Utopia, a 2-year, community-based salon project in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick, I’ve started organizing art walking tours called “Art Stumbles.” These tours offer up food for thought, refreshments and refreshing perspectives on the art geography of a particular place.
Until recently, Pocket Utopia was a place for showing other artists’ work, and I thought of it as an extension of my own artwork. I re-engaged my ideas by constructing a social space. I learned what it really meant to be an artist running Pocket Utopia.
New Guest Blogger: Dehlia Hannah
It has been a fun two weeks with Quinn Latimer as she offered us a window into her corner of the Swiss art world. We traveled to the “Holbein to Tillmans” exhibition, visited new “roommates” Plattfon + Stampa, read some thoughts on the relationship (if any) between high culture and crime in Dresden, and enjoyed her musings about wandering the streets of Basel.
Next up, we welcome our latest blogger-in-residence, Dehlia Hannah.
Dehlia Hannah is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at Columbia University completing a dissertation entitled “Nature Vexed: Scientific Experiment as Aesthetic Form,” which examines the use of scientific methods and materials in contemporary art and the aesthetics of scientifically-mediated nature.
She is a graduate of Smith College, where she studied philosophy and chemistry, and has received an M. Phil. and a Certificate in Feminist Inquiry from the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University. Her areas of specialization are philosophy of science and aesthetic theory and philosophy of art, and her work is informed by feminist and queer theory.
She is currently teaching Contemporary Civilization in the West at Columbia College.
Her posts will begin tomorrow.
Some Thoughts on Art + Transformation in Williamsburg
Loren Munk–of the infamous DIY online video program James Kalm Report–is a walking encyclopedia of the history of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg art community. So when I asked him about his take on the notion of Art + Transformation, he shared his thoughts through words and video on the transformation of Williamsburg:
Until recently, Williamsburg has been the venue of choice for underground gorilla art actions. The crumbling old piers on the west side of the ‘Berg have provided generations of local kids, the homeless and the avant-garde with unregulated space to play.
In June 2005, artist Chris Martin in preparation for his upcoming exhibition, decided to throw an unauthorized “happening/photo-shoot” to create an image for a poster. The resulting party represents the last gasp of Old Williamsburg.
Four years latter, developers have seized on this strip of coast as some of the most desirable real estate in New York City. The unrestrained construction of glass and steal apartment towers and massive throngs of tattooed hipsters, being cajoled by Borough President Marty Markowitz bares testament to the extraordinary, though not necessarily positive, transformation of this area.
-Loren Munk
Some Thoughts on China + Transformation
Mu Li "The Fruits of Blue Lotus Flower"
In the final week of the Transformation series, I’ve asked a number of people with diverse points of view to offer their thoughts on the topic.
To kick things off, I introduce Ellen Pearlman, a Brooklyn & Beijing-based writer, curator, critic and film maker, who shares her thoughts about the notion of Art + Transformation in regards to China’s art scene:
Cao Fei, one of the featured artists on Art21, came of age during China’s accelerating transformation playing out through Second Life scenarios issues of fragility, loss and alienation. Other young Chinese artists are also delving into issues of their country’s transformation. International cities like Shanghai just had its first gay festival and though Beijing remains the art hub, second tier industrial and provincial regions like Wuhan and Sichuan and Hangzhou are also adding their voices into the mix. Instead of the block buster exhibits mounted by more recognized artists experiments are exploring themes of infantilism and powerlessness with new Chinese Anime, existentialism and ennui with WAZA, and issues of cultural dislocation and transgression with O Zhang.
O Zhang, "Daddy and I" No. 16
MoMA Trumpets Amsterdam’s Role as Hub of Conceptual Art
Jan Dibbets. "Untitled" (1969). Photolithographed postcard, 4 1/16 x 6” (10.3 x 15.2 cm). Publisher: Seth Siegelaub, New York. MoMA. Art & Project/Depot VBVR Gift. © 2009 Jan Dibbets/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. MoMA Imaging Studio, photograph: Jonathan Muzikar
While today Conceptual Art is utterly ubiquitous, MoMA’s current “In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960-1976” examines a period when only a few cities in the world seemed to embrace this idea-based world of visual art, foremost among them, Amsterdam.
In this well-curated show of objects–which is somewhat ironic since conceptual art often rejected the very notion of the art object–MoMA’s curator of prints and illustrated books Chirstophe Cherix focuses on an influential gallery in Amsterdam, Art & Project, that served as a laboratory for conceptual art practice when it opened in 1968.
Spurred by a recent gift of 230 works by the founders of Art & Project (Geert van Beijeren and Adriaan van Ravesteijn) to the MoMA, this show fills in the blanks of our art historical knowledge, most notably the connection between Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Phillip Van den Bossche describes the unique connection between these two cities in the catalogue as “the first direct links between Europe and the American West Coast–which is to say without New York playing an intermediary role.”
The exhibition offer a great deal of insight into the work of a number of Art21 artists who were either in contact with some of these seminal figures or more significantly benefited and learned from this generation of conceptual artists, including Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Allan McCollum, and Bruce Nauman, all of whom experiment with objects, language and narrative.
Lawrence Weiner's redesign of the hallway that leads to the "In & Out" exhibition
At the entrance to the exhibit there is a commissioned piece by Lawrence Weiner that combines nautical forms and triple-X wall images, both alluding to the city’s role as a major port for shipping and site for pleasure. On the right side of the hall, an eclectic collection of Dutch posters from the period set the mood. Continue reading »
New Flash Points Topic: Transformation
Cindy Sherman, "Untitled" (2004), color photograph, Courtesy Metro Pictures
Starting today (and while the Art21 Blog editor, Kelly Shindler is on vacation), I’ll be guest editing the Art21 Blog while Kelly gets some much needed R&R. To kick off my temporary stint as blog editor, I’d like to introduce our next Flash Points series: Transformation.
The fifth season of Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century will premiere this fall on PBS with four thematic episodes: Compassion, Fantasy, Transformation, and Systems. In the last two months, we’ve explored Compassion and Fantasy but now we’re thrilled to present Transformation, a contemporary topic if there ever was one.
While Transformation evokes associations of all types, in relation to art the topic conjures up a long list of associations, including how we refashion identity, how we reinvent ourselves and how art adapts and changes over time.
Some of the many questions that beg to be answered, include:
- How does our ability to transform who we are, or how we look, impact the way we see ourselves?
- Is our ability to transform or reinvent ourselves what makes us truly modern?
- Has our culture’s relationship to art changed and if so, how?
For the next three weeks, we’ll publish posts about the artists profiled in the forthcoming Transformation episode — Yinka Shonibare MBE, Cindy Sherman, and Paul McCarthy — as well as showcase some thoughts on the topic by guest writers, who will explore the theme beyond the series to new and interesting places.
Feel free to help us start the conversation by leaving a comment below…and save the date for the Transformation episode which debuts nationwide October 21, 2009 on PBS!
Yinka Shonibare MBE (b. United Kingdom, 1962). "Scramble for Africa" (2003). Fourteen life-size fiberglass mannequins, fourteen chairs, table, Dutch wax printed cotton, 52 x 192 x 110 in. The Pinnell Collection, Dallas. Image courtesy of the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, & James Cohan Gallery, New York. © the artist. Photo: Stephen White
Paul McCarthy "Blockhead" (2003) and "Daddies Bighead" (2003). Installation at Tate Modern, North Landscape. Courtesy: Hauser and Wirth Gallery London/Zurich & Luhring Augustine, New York © Paul McCarthy. Photocredit: Copyright Marcus Leith/Andrew Dunkley Tate Photography
New Guest Blogger: Quinn Latimer
As we say goodbye (but never farewell) to Daniel Fuller for his extensive posts on museums living beyond their means, art hopping in Athens & Venice, a love letter to a curious museum in Philadelphia, an interview with a member of Red76, and a look at Triple Candie’s Maurizio Cattelan is Dead: Life and Work, 1960 – 2009 pseudo-memorial exhibit, we welcome a new blogger-in-residence to Art21…ladies and gentleman, introducing Quinn Latimer.
Latimer is a poet and critic based in Basel, Switzerland. She writes regularly about contemporary art and literature for numerous magazines, including Art on Paper, Artnews, Bookforum, Frieze, and Modern Painters. Her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, The Paris Review, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals, and in the anthology Best New Poets 2006.
Most recently, she was an associate editor at Modern Painters magazine in New York; previously, she did editorial time at American Letters & Commentary, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, and Columbia: A Journal of Literature & Art.
Latimer earned her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. She is currently finishing her first collection of poems. She has a small Chihuahua named Paul Celan.
