Vija Celmins Wins the Roswitha Haftmann Prize
Art21 artist Vija Celmins (Season 2) is the third woman to receive the Roswitha Haftmann Prize, first awarded in 2001. This prize is hailed as the most valuable award in Europe for contemporary artists. The Roswitha Haftmann Foundation, the organization that administers the prize, aims to recognize outstanding achievements in the visual arts. Every one-to-three years the foundation selects a living artist based on the artistic significance of their work without regard to their personal circumstances, which are loosely identified as nationality, age, gender, etc. The foundation values Celmins’ “masterly and uncanny way of exploiting widely differing artistic media to the utmost advantage for her creative purposes.” Art21 congratulates Celmins on her recent award.
New Guest Blogger: Emily Liebert
Join me in welcoming Emily Liebert, our next guest blogger. At the moment, Emily is getting her PhD in art history at Columbia where she studies American art of the 60s and 70s as well as contemporary African art. She has worked at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX, Creative Time, The Andy Warhol Foundation and MoMA. Recently she has given lectures on the Center for Land Use Interpretation at MoMA’s graduate symposium and on contemporary uses of photography in Ghanaian funerals at the Triennial of African Art. In addition to her academic research, Emily has worked as a recipe researcher and tester for cookbooks and has spent some time on a stage as a comedienne. Food and comic timing, who could ask for anything more?
Many thanks to Amy Mackie for her contributions, especially her post Socially Acceptable. Keep a look out for Amy’s next projects at the New Museum, she is currently working on a special commissioned project with multi-media artist Jeremy Deller that will culminate in the construction of a mobile Iraqi War museum.
Sound and Vision: A Night with Barry McGee, Japanther, and PAPER RAD
A full roster of public programs accompany Life on Mars, the Carnegie International 2008. On Thursday, July 24th Douglas Fogle, curator of the 55th Carnegie International, will host a conversation with Art21 artist Barry McGee (Season 1). McGee will discuss his work as well as artists’ response to the phrase “life on Mars.” For the exhibition, McGee has transformed an ordinary hallway with his mixed-media installation using bold colors and dynamic geometric shapes. Following the talk will be performances by Japanther, Extreme Animals [Paper Rad], and Centipede E’est with DJs Cutups and Edgar Um in the Sculpture Court. This event titled Sound and Vision will not disappoint.
New Guest Blogger: Amy Mackie of the New Museum
Many thanks to Laurel Ptak for her interesting posts and The Best of the Web recommendations. You can continue to follow Laurel’s blog at iheartphotograph.
Next we welcome Amy Mackie to the guest blog. Amy is a curatorial assistant at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York as well as an independent curator. She has worked on projects with both mid-career and emerging artists including Andrea Geyer, Paul Ramírez Jonas, and Ana Prvacki as well as with the collectives LTTR and Ridykeulous. In 2007 she was exhibition coordinator for Art in General’s Anniversary Exhibition, 25 Years Later: Welcome to Art in General. Amy recently received an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Louise Bourgeois—Songs Remembered
In anticipation of Art21 (Season 1) artist Louise Bourgeois‘ full-career retrospective, the Guggenheim Museum in New York presents a free concert on Saturday evening, June 21 titled Louise Bourgeois—Songs Remembered. Bourgeois, a Paris-born, NY-based artist, chose her favorite music and songs by musicians including Debussy and Billie Holiday as well as French standards such as C’est Si Bon by Jean Sablon. Metro accordionist Francois Parisi will travel from Paris to perform these selections, along with traditional Parisian street music.
The concert will take place on the sidewalk on 5th Avenue and 89th Street and is part of the museum’s popular series Works & Process, in collaboration with Make Music New York, an organization that presents over 850 free concerts across the city, once a year on the summer solstice.
Louise Bourgeois—Songs Remembered
June 21 @ 5:30 p.m.
Guggenheim sidewalk, 5th Ave. at 89th St.
As part of Make Music New York
FREE and open to the public
Revolving Revolt: 16th Biennale of Sydney
From June 18 through September 7, the 16th Biennale of Sydney: Revolutions - Forms That Turn presents the work of 180 artists , including 50 newly commissioned projects. The exhibition “articulates the agency embedded in forms that express our desire for change.” Among the 180 artists are Art21’s Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Dion, and Pierre Huyghe all featured in Season 4 as well as Bruce Nauman (Season 1) and Paul Pfeiffer (Season 2). The Biennale of Sydney is taking place across the city in multiple venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cockatoo Island, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Pier 2/3, Artspace, the Sydney Opera House, and the Royal Botanic Gardens.
For those not in Australia, one can still view the online venue, revolutionsonline. Each visit to the venue presents a new series of works that include film, audio, images, interactive works, live streaming performances, texts and links to existing websites. Works are continuously uploaded to the venue, creating an ever-changing constellation.
Beyond the Reel
On Thursday, June 19, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden opens the second installment of The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image, titled Part II: Realisms. While Part I: Dreams addressed film’s ability to transport viewers out of their everyday lives and into the darker recesses of the imagination, Realisms explores the irony that in an age where documenting “real life” is made ever easier, the line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly complicated.
Pierre Huyghe (Season 4) is one of nineteen artists in Realisms. In his work, “The Third Memory” (1999), Huyghe gives John Wojtowicz, the bank robber portrayed by Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet’s 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon, a chance to recount his version of the events that inspired the film. Huyghe’s work reveals that, as time goes on, Wojtowicz’s memory of the actual robbery has become intertwined with the story as portrayed in Lumet’s film. Part I: Dreams also included Art21 artists Teresa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler (Season 3). Recently they spoke about their process, artwork, and part one of the exhibition in the museum’s public program series, Meet the Artists, which exists as a podcast.
Part II: Realisms, on view through September 7, also includes works by Candice Breitz, Matthew Buckingham, Paul Chan, Ian Charlesworth, Phil Collins, Jeremy Deller, Kota Ezawa, Omer Fast, Runa Islam, Christian Jankowski, Isaac Julien, Michèle Magema, Julian Rosefeldt, Corinna Schnitt, Mungo Thomson, Kerry Tribe, Francesco Vezzoli and Artur Zmijewski.
Image: Pierre Huyghe “The Third Memory,” video still 1999 © Pierre Huyghe, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New York.
Contemporary Jewish Museum Opens in San Francisco
On Sunday, June 8th, San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum welcomed visitors for the first time in their new building designed by Daniel Libeskind, architect of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Housed in the landmark Jessie Street Power Substation near Yerba Buena Gardens, the architect made an adaptive reuse of the building, adding on blue geometric forms to the existing structure. According to The New York Times, Libeskind was inspired by San Francisco’s culture of “freedom, curiosity, and possibility.” The architect’s other Jewish museums in Berlin, Copenhagen, and Osnabrück, Germany seem to be haunted by “tragedies and traumas of the Jewish past.”
The Contemporary Jewish Museum explores contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas through exhibitions and programs. One of their inaugural exhibitions, In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis, commissioned work from seven artists to respond to the first book of the Torah, including new work from Art21 artists Matthew Ritchie (Season 3), Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2), and Ann Hamilton (Season 1). These new commissions are installed alongside artworks from the museum’s collection, including some by Marc Chagall, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and others.
Island of Misfit Toys
Salon 94 Freemans just announced that Art21 artist Maya Lin (Season 1), will create a site specific installation in their downtown New York City gallery space. This installation is described as consisting of ‘trash asteroids’ created out of old children’s toys. Salon 94 is asking for donations of toys to facilitate this project, specifically;
- retired toys that are unsuitable for donation to charities (with parts missing or electronic toys that no longer work)
- balls of various sizes (hard and soft)
- novelty vending machine “eggshell” containers
This installation will open in December 2008, just in time for Christmas. You can drop off your donations to either Salon 94 location.
Uptown: 12 East 94th Street (between 5th and Madison)| 646.672.9212 | Hours: M-F 11-6
Downtown: 1 Freeman Alley (off Rivington, between Chrystie & Bowery) | 212.529.7400 | Hours: Tu 1-6 W-Sat 11-6
Hot Topic is not Punk Rock!
Reading Ben Street’s recent post Pop (and) Art, I started to consider links between music and art. It is easy to support Ben’s idea that the relationship between music and art was closest in the sixties, yet the music of the 60’s and 70’s seems to be a hot topic for contemporary art institutions today. Case in point, right now Malcolm McLaren is guest blogging about ArtBasel for “The Moment” on The New York Times. While art might not be comfortable with pop music, some curators are excited to draw on the nostalgia for rock and punk music of those bygone days.
Over the last year, there has been a wave of exhibitions that point to rock and punk music as inspiration for many artists’ practices. Double Album: Daniel Guzmán and Steven Shearer, currently on view at the New Museum, cites rock culture and male adolescence as strong influences on both artists. Music is a Better Noise, exhibited at PS1, looked at genre jumpers, “musicians who make art and artists who make music.” Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years explored the “vibrant art scene that emerged during these [punk] years,” at the Barbican; it included works by Art21 artists Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Raymond Pettibon (Season 2), and Jenny Holzer (Season 4).
It is Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 that seems to be receiving the most press and perhaps the most scorn. The exhibition features work by Raymond Pettibon (Season 2), Mike Kelley (Season 3), and Laurie Anderson (Season 1) is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. Sympathy for the Devil is described as “the most serious and comprehensive look at the intimate and inspired relationship between the visual arts and rock-and-roll culture to date.” This assertion is troubling considering omissions of influential musicians like George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Sun Ra, and Bad Brains which makes me wonder, would rock-and-culture exist without black culture?
Considering this trend of rock and punk influenced exhibitions, I am left with a question posed by critic Pedro Velez in his artnet review of Sympathy for the Devil, “How do you tame counterculture into the prepackaged pretext of High Art?” Responses welcomed.
