New guest blogger: Kevin McGarry
Thanks to Leanne Gilbertson for her excellent work covering the Houston contemporary art scene. Up next is Kevin McGarry. Kevin is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. His journalism has recently appeared on Rhizome, T Magazine Blog and the online editions of Art in America, Artforum and Interview. He is a director and programmer of Migrating Forms, a festival of new experimental film and video held at Anthology Film Archives in May.
Culture Wars: Trivial Tunes with Mary Heilmann
Left: Mary Heilmann. Art in the Twenty-First Century, production still, 2009. Season 5, Episode: Fantasy. © Art21, Inc. 2009. Right: Sleevefacin’ the Art21 Culture Wars soldier.
What better way to soundtrack an art and pop culture event than to invite an in-tune-with-pop-culture artist to curate a selection of their favorite music?
Mary Heilmann was a natural fit for our inaugural Culture Wars trivia event, and we were thrilled when she accepted our invitation to create a soundtrack for the evening. We really could not have asked for a better pairing. Culture Wars participants were treated to selections from Mary’s music collection—hand picked by Mary herself—as they entered the main stage at the 92YTribeca, and they were treated to more between scoring sessions during the halftime intermission and after the second half.
With Mary on hand at the trivia event, it seemed only fitting to create an entire music-themed “audio” round. Titled Personnel Changes, the round was inspired by the announcement of Jeffrey Deitch’s upcoming appointment as the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The questions involved 10 bands or musicians where a personnel change affected their musical output. Each question included a snippet of a song, and we asked the players to name the band or musician in question (for 1 point) and to briefly state the personnel change (for another point).
A video of the audio round from the January 28 event, along with Mary Heilmann’s playlist, is included below. Play along at home and let us know how you did!
Mark your calendars: The next Culture Wars night is on Wednesday, March 24, at the 92YTribeca.
New guest blogger: Leanne Gilbertson
Thanks to Karthik Pandian for posting his Grand Canyon journals during his guest blogging stint. Fortunately, there is more to come in this series, so look out for a several more posts from him in the next few weeks.
Up next is Leanne Gilbertson. Leanne recently received her Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester. She teaches Modern and Contemporary Art, Theory, and Criticism in the Department of Art at Sam Houston State University. She has held visiting teaching positions at Bowling Green State University and the University of Pittsburgh, and also served as Curatorial Assistant at the Andy Warhol Film Project at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her writing has appeared in *Art Journal* and *InVisible Culture.* Currently she is preparing a manuscript that explores the relationships between the emergence, in the 1960s, of both feminist and queer consciousnesses, and the intermedia artistic experimentation occurring at both Warhol’s Factory and Judson Memorial Church.
Art21 Bloggers’ Top Tens of 2009 and the 2000s
Yes, we know January is more than halfway over and it’s a bit late for yet another compilation of Top Tens. But we’ve been busy speaking and planning the next year of this site. Hopefully we whetted your palate with some end-of-year roundups of the guest blog and video Exclusives rosters. And what about entertainers who moonlight as artists? Or the Year in Meat? We would be remiss, however, not to share with you some of the other images, events, websites, and phenomena caught by our radar not only in 2009 but also across the aughts.
Catherine Wagley, Columnist, Looking at Los Angeles
For art, this has been the decade of the image, just like it’s been the decade of the single song for music. Images can be downloaded as easily as MP3 files, and much of the notable art I’ve encountered since 2000 came to me via Google. I first saw each of these ten photographs on a computer screen, and while I eventually saw many in person, that initial online encounter seared them into my memory.
Outlandish, strangely severe and self-important, Levi Van Veluw’s approach to landscape seems perfectly suited to the virtual information age. It approximates the textures and colors of land, but couldn’t be more unnatural and alienating.
Coolidge’s photograph is equal parts candid and cunning. It plays with normalcy just enough to reveal what we already know: there’s no such thing as normal.
Taken in an abandoned embassy in Germany and then damaged by an airport X-ray machine, Beshty’s murk-filled Travel Pictures, literally scarred by diplomacy and bureaucracy, are relics of contemporary history.
With the uncanny composure of a Jeff Wall image and the rough-and-tumble defiance of grunge, Snow’s photograph straddles a provocative line between professionalism and rebellion.
Images are commodities and technology a game in Lassry’s work. This particular photograph acts as a one-liner, a pithy visual gesture that collapses the difference between design and meaning.
This photograph appeared in W Magazine before Brad and Angelina, the “it” couple of the decade, were officially together. It’s visually arresting, melodramatic, and a prescient mockery of the domestic lives of the rich and famous.
Maier-Aichen made landscape seem unfamiliar again and this particular topography looks so flat and textured that it feels like an intimate abstraction even though it’s an expansive aerial shot.
Pfeiffer re-imagined romanticism in the context of a basketball court, removing and manipulating contextual details and imaging emotionally raw, vulnerable scenarios.
Vulnerable, voluptuous and defiant, Opie’s self-portrait, simple in its premise, ushered identity politics into a new era.
Placing a young man in the pose of Helga, painter Andrew Wyeth’s famous muse, Schorr created what I believe is the decade’s most resonant portrayal of gender performance.
Ben Street, Columnist, Letter from London
[Caveat: one of the requirements of writing an end-of-year best-of list is that you remember what you've seen right from the beginning of the year, and I'm not sure that the pieces of art I remember seeing this year are necessarily the best ones. (I can remember, for instance, Adel Abdessemed's fighting animals video at David Zwirner in New York quite clearly, although I thought it was pretty rubbish as art). The other requirement is that you demonstrate a) that you're an enormously well-traveled and cosmopolitan person by featuring art from a broad range of far-flung locations and b) that you have privileged access to the most obscure and under-the-radar art events which most ordinary mortals won't even have heard about. So, actually, the best art show I saw this year was a video installation down a mineshaft in Azerbaijan, but in the interest of the reader, I'll try and keep it relatively mainstream. So: this is a list of (mostly) individual works of art that I've seen this year that have both stubbornly remained in my memory and are, I think, really good.]
New guest blogger: Karthik Pandian
Thanks to Joel Holmberg for guest blogging this last fortnight. Up next is Karthik Pandian. Karthik is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. He is represented by Richard Telles Fine Art and has contributed essays to Bidoun and Motherwell. While his work may best be described as 16mm film installation, his practice follows in the footsteps of such diverse figures as Imhotep, Steve Wynn, Carmen Sandiego, Ole Worm, and Benjamin Franklin Gates. He is currently working on a solo exhibition slated to open at Midway Contemporary in Minneapolis in September 2010, but hopes one day to reopen the Musée de l’Homme on the Pacific Trash Vortex, where he will serve as Curator of Ruins and IMAX 3D projectionist.
Announcing Art21 Educators 2010-2011
Art21 Educators: The Summer Institute, July 2009.
The Education staff at Art21 is launching the second year of Art21 Educators and we are now accepting applications. For those of you just hearing about this program, Art21 Educators is an intensive, year-long professional development initiative designed to cultivate and support K-12 art educators interested in bringing contemporary art, artists, and themes into their classrooms.
This program provides a unique professional development opportunity for educators to:
- Spend an intensive year working with Art21 and a network of peers,which kicks off with a 6-day institute in New York City;
- Share innovative ideas, resources, and strategies with educators from across the country;
- and use video and other media to document and reflect on your teaching practice.
Don’t take our word for it. Listen to some of the current participants present their perspectives on Art21 Educators. In this uncut video testimonial, Keeley Stitt, an art teacher from Chicago, IL, discusses how the program made her rethink her ideas about art education.
Art21 Educators Testimonial: Keeley Stitt from Art21 on Vimeo.
Stacey Ward Kelly, a current Art21 Educator from Beacon, NY, shares how the Art21 Educators program changed her approach to teaching.
Art21 Educators Testimonial: Stacey Ward Kelly from Art21 on Vimeo.
This round of Art21 Educators we will be accepting applications from K-12 art and media teachers from across the United States. We want to create a diverse group of participants who reflect urban, rural, and suburban communities as well as distinct student populations.
Join us and be part of a national group of educators who will explore, design, and implement curriculum utilizing the visual art of our time. Apply now!
For an application form or more information, please visit art21.org.
Applications must be received by the Art21 Education Staff by Monday, February 26, 2010.
Questions? Read our FAQs or, if you’re still stumped, email education [at] art21.org
BLOG THIS! Blogging the contemporary arts, a panel discussion this Friday at X-Initiative
Raised Eyebrows/ Furrowed Foreheads: (Black and Blue Eyebrows), 2008. Three dimensional archival print, laminated with lexan and mounted on shaped form with acrylic paint, 57 3/4 x 102 x 6 3/4 inches. © John Baldessari, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
WHEN
Friday, January 15, 6:30 pm
Please note that the Gallery is open 12 – 6 pm so arrive early if you want to view the final phase of exhibitions at X.
WHERE
X Initiative
548 West 22nd Street
New York NY 10011
RSVP
Moderator: Robin White
Panelists:
Barry Hoggard, Bloggy, ArtCat, Culture Pundits: blogger, collector, entrepreneur
Paddy Johnson, Art Fag City: news and opinion blogger, writer
William Powhida: artist, blogger
Kelly Shindler, Art21: educational blogger
Edward Winkleman: gallery owner, blogger
Blogs about contemporary arts and the art world play an increasingly important role by providing multiple viewpoints, information and commentaries about the art market, the gallery scene, artists and their work on a daily basis. As the number of printed newspaper and culture journals decreases, some blogs are becoming a source for substantial art journalism and art criticism. By pairing the 5-most read, and hotly debated, bloggers of New York City, we want to touch on a topic that is timely and relevant, and offer a dynamic and lively conversation at the X-Initiative.
We have curated the panel to incorporate a wide spectrum of practicing bloggers: from art news to art education, from the perspective of the art market including both the point of view of an artist and a gallerist, and those who are taking the online art world to a whole new-networked level.
About the Panelists
Barry Hoggard writes about art and politics on bloggy.com. He is the editor, along with James Wagner, of the arts calendar ArtCat, and proprietor of CulturePundits.com, a curated network of today’s leading cultural websites and blogs. He recently began publishing Idiom, an online publication of urban artistic practice. He is also a software developer.
http://bloggy.com/
http://www.culturepundits.com/
http://www.artcat.com/
http://idiommag.com/
Paddy Johnson aka ArtFagCity blogger, has been published in artreview.com, Art in America, FlashArt, Print Magazine, Time Out NY, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post and many others. Paddy lectures widely about art and the Internet and in 2008, she served on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowships and became the first blogger to earn a Creative Capital Arts Writers grant from the Creative Capital Foundation.
http://www.artfagcity.com/
William Powhida’s blog has covered controversial topics including creating an “enemies” list as well as letters addressed to famous contemporary curators, collectors and critics, requesting recognition. According to Wikipedia as an artist he constructs work deliberately about growing his own fame, addressing the major obstacles facing emerging contemporary artists.
http://williampowhida.blogspot.com/
Kelly Shindler, Art21 Blog Founder and Editor, has worked at Art21 since 2003, where she is presently Director of Special Projects. She is also a curator and writer, as well as a dual Master’s candidate in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism/Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
http://blog.art21.org/
Edward Winkleman is an art dealer and a blogger. He started his eponymous blog about the art world and politics in 2005 and is a contributing editor to the international blog Art World Salon. He began his career in the art world with a series of guerilla-style exhibitions organized in New York and London under the name ‘hit & run’. In 2001 he co-founded the Plus Ultra Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Moving into Manhattan’s art district Chelsea in 2006, he changed the name of the gallery to Winkleman Gallery.
http://edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com/
New guest blogger: Joel Holmberg
Thanks to Nova Benway for her series of posts on artists employing earnestness in their work. Up next is Joel Holmberg. Joel (b. 1982, Maryland, USA) creates artwork with computers and online services, but also sometimes with his bare hands.
Art21 Guest Blog Year 2
This being the last week of 2009, it is time for our annual year in review. 2 weeks ago, we gave you a sneak preview with a guide to our second year of Art21 Exclusives. For the rest of the week, we’ll be bringing you our top picks for the year – from within the pages of this blog to real life—in exhibitions and the like around the world—courtesy of our well-traveled and art-inundated writers. But first, we kick off this week with a nod to the year’s roster of incredible guest bloggers, who enriched this site with every post. Click on each writer’s name for an index of all his or her posts. Many thanks to all twenty-six of them for their informative and often entertaining insights! Here’s to the Art21 Guest Blog Class of 2009.
Interested in guest blogging for Art21 in 2010? Email a letter of interest, 2 writing samples, and relevant links by January 15, 2010 to blog [at] art21 [dot] org.
New guest blogger: Nova Benway
Thanks for Kelly Rakowski for digging in archives from the world over to find unusual patterns in everyday life. Read future posts back on her own blog, Nothing is New, here.
Up next is Nova Benway. Nova is an M.A. candidate in Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She has been a curator of the Berwick Research Institute’s artist residency program, and Program Manager at the Boston Center for the Arts. From 2002 to 2005, she was a member of Teach For America in Oakland, California.
