Weekly Roundup

Paul McCarthy, "Paula Jones," 2007. Fiberglass, 82 x 57 1/2 x 107 inches. via Art Daily.org

This President’s Day roundup begins with a hotly debated exhibition and ends with a divine duo:

• The New Museum has announced the details of their exhibition Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection. Curated by Season 5 artist Jeff Koons, this will be the first showing of the Athens-based collection in the United States. This will also be the first exhibition curated by Koons, whose early work is said to have inspired the evolution of the Dakis Joannou collection. Koons has selected over 100 works by 50 international artists spanning several generations, including Matthew Barney (Season 1), Janine Antoni, Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, (all Season 2), Mike Kelley (Season 3), Jenny Holzer (Season 4), Paul McCarthy (Season 5), David Altmejd, Nathalie Djurberg, Robert Gober, Terence Koh, Mark Manders, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Christiana Soulou, Jannis Varelas, and Andro Wekua, among others. The title of the exhibition alludes to notions of genesis, evolution, original sin, and sexuality. “Skin and fruit,” according to the press release, “evoke the essential tensions between interior and exterior, between what we see and what we consume.” The show will feature one work by Koons — One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1985) — the first major artwork that Dakis Joannou acquired. Skin Fruit opens March 3.

• Art21 artists Louise Bourgeois (Season 1), Cai Guo-Qiang, Hiroshi Sugimoto (both Season 3), and Paul McCarthy (Season 5) will participate in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia’s largest contemporary visual art event. Cai’s installation Inopportune: Stage One (2004), nine cars exploding and rotating in space, will dominate Cockatoo Island’s Turbine Hall. McCarthy will premiere his sound and sculpture installation Ship of Fools #2 (2010) at Pier 2/3. And Bourgeois will have a series of painted bronze sculptures on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Artistic director David Elliott says: “The aim of this Biennale is to bring together work from diverse cultures, at the same time, on the equal playing field of contemporary art, where no culture can assume superiority over any other.” The 17th Biennale of Sydney runs May 12 – August 1, 2010. Read more about the event in the Brisbane Times.

• Works by Season 5 artists Cindy Sherman and John Baldessari are on view in the exhibition Pop Art at the Havana Fine Arts Museum in Cuba. According to the Havana Times, the traveling exhibition (organized by Spain’s State Society for Foreign Cultural Action and the Valencian Institute of Modern Art) features nearly sixty works made by American and Spanish artists in the style/period of pop art. Works by John Chamberlain, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Claes Oldenburg, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, and James Rosenquist hang alongside works by Eduardo Arroyo, Equipo Cronica, Juan Genoves, Equipo Realidad, Josep Renau, Manuel Saez, Antonio Saura, Juan Antonio Toledo, and others. Pop Art continues through March 30.

• On February 22, Season 4 artist Alfredo Jaar will present his most recent short film Le Ceneri di Pasolini (The Ashes of Pasolini) (2009) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A tribute to the Italian filmmaker, intellectual, poet, critic, and journalist Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film incorporates footage from Pasolini’s films and rare interviews conducted prior to his sudden and mysterious death in 1975. The title refers to Pasolini’s own poem, Le Ceneri di Gramsci, itself a eulogy to the Italian left-wing intellectual Antonio Gramsci. In a separate unrelated event, Jaar will lecture in the Remis Auditorium of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on February 17. Both programs begin at 7pm.

• February is the last month that the Fundred Dollar Bill project by Season 1 artist Mel Chin will be at Arizona State University Art Museum (ASUAM). In addition to regular museum hours, ASUAM is holding three free events to give the public a final chance to contribute: On February 9, the museum will screen Chin’s award-winning animated film 9-11/9-11: A Tale of Two Cities, A Tragedy of Two Times. February 16, the Phoenix band Peachcake will give a free concert following a screening of Chin’s 2009 interview with Planet Awesome. February 25, an armored truck will pick up ASUAM’s Fundreds — free music and other festivities will lead up to its arrival. Read more about the Fundred Dollar Bill project in Huffington Post; Utah People’s Post; and The Tartan.

• On February 17 at 6:30pm, Roni Horn (Season 3) will be in conversation with John Waters at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Horn’s traveling retrospective exhibition Roni Horn aka Roni Horn opens at the ICA on February 19 and continues through June 13.

Weekly Roundup

Kara Walker, "A Warm Summer Evening in 1863", 2008. Wool tapestry with hand cut felt silhouette figure, 5' 9" x 8' 2". Edition of 5. ©Kara Walker. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, Banners of Persuasion, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

This week in Art21 artist news we have two tapestry makers, a silk archway, the master of Cremaster, an artist who likes to do laundry, a magical sound installation, environmental issues, creative explosions, and more.

• Opening January 8 at James Cohen Gallery, Demons, Yarns & Tales features hand-woven tapestries created by thirteen contemporary artists: Kara Walker (Season 2), Shahzia Sikander (Season 1), avaf, Peter Blake, Gary Hume, Jaime Gili, Francesca Lowe, Beatriz Milhazes, Paul Noble, Grayson Perry, Fred Tomaselli, Gavin Turk, and Julie Verhoeven. The exhibition was created by the London-based art organization, Banners of Persuasion, who commissioned each artist to design a tapestry, a medium foreign to his or her usual practice. Walker’s A Warm Summer Evening in 1863 uses an image published in Harpers Magazine during the American Civil War, captioned “The Destruction of the Coloured Orphan Asylum on 5th Avenue.” A black silhouette of a lynched female figure hangs in front of this scene. The exhibition will be on view through February 13.

• Renaissance Unframed, an exhibition at Carolina Nitsch Project Room in New York, consists of twenty-five encaustic drawings on muslin and two companion bronze sculptures by Season 3 artist Richard Tuttle. Tuttle’s drawings “explore fabric as a medium to receive color and as a tool to direct its movement” and the bronze works “represent the antithesis of the fabric on the wall.” The fabric pieces are rotated every 2 weeks with only five works being shown at a time. The exhibition is on view through January 9.

• On January 13, Season 2 artist Matthew Barney will speak at the Detroit Institute of Arts and discuss his newest project Khu, a performance and film loosely based on Norman Mailer’s 1983 novel, Ancient Evenings. Barney updates Mailer’s plot from an ancient Egyptian narrative to a present day account of reincarnation and rebirth set in an American landscape. Each chapter will be set in a different city and correspond to the seven stages of the soul’s departure from the body according to Egyptian mythology. The first chapter was performed in Los Angeles in 2007. The latest chapter takes place in Detroit. Barney’s lecture begins at 7pm; a (free) pass is required and can be obtained here.

• Through January 17, work by Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall is on view at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in the exhibition Heartland. The show features site-specific installations and performances as well as drawing, photography, and video by artists and collaboratives working in, and in response to, Detroit, Kansas City, and other cities and rural communities across the region. Also included in the exhibition are artists Carnal Torpor, Compass Group, Cody Critcheloe, Jeremiah Day, Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, Design 99, Scott Hocking, Greely Myatt, Marjetica Potrč, Julika Rudelius, Artur Silva, Deb Sokolow, and Whoop Dee Doo.

• Gate (2005) by Season 2 artist Do-Ho Suh is now on view in the Los Angles County Museum of Art’s Korean art galleries. Made of translucent silk, the piece is a full-size rendering of one of the gates to the artist’s childhood home in Seoul. Suh’s father, the artist and scholar Suh Se-Ok, built the house based on the design of traditional Korean architecture of the 1880s.

• Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change (part of the official culture program for the United Nations Climate Change Conference) is a collaboration of the National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, and Moesgård Museum. The exhibition includes more than 25 artists spread across the four venues. Each space is dedicated to a different theme: Relations, The Implicit, Kakotopia, and Information, respectively. At the Nat’l Gallery of Denmark, A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear, a 2008 film by duo Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) presents viewers with three scenes: gently flowing images of a lush river landscape, a dilapidated interior in an abandoned house, and footage of a young man who drums rhythmically on the slats of a Venetian blind. The piece, shot in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Delta, draws attention to the remaining wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear is on view through April 5. (Note: each theme/venue closes on a different day; check the website for more information.)

• Season 2 artist Maya Lin unveiled her new video, Unchopping a Tree, in Copenhagen last week. This is the latest iteration of Lin’s larger and last memorial project, What is Missing? The video addresses deforestation prevention and sustainable reforestation to reduce carbon emissions and protect endangered species and habitats — watch it here.

• In Roberta Smith’s review of Days and Giorni by Bruce Nauman (Season 1) — two sound installations on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — she writes: “Each piece consists of 14 recordings of seven people reciting the days of the week. Their voices are broadcast from 14 wafer-thin white speakers, around 23 inches square, arranged in seven facing pairs, one for each person’s voice. Each speaker is simply clipped to two wires strung tautly from floor to ceiling. It’s like paintings by Robert Ryman hanging on Fred Sandback’s string sculptures, and the effect is magical. Read more here.

• “A countdown began two minutes out. 90 seconds. One minute. 50 seconds. 40. 30. And so on. And then: fireworks! And then: fire! The blossom burned, glowing orange against the museum and the now dusky sky, and dark smoke billowed into the air. The crowd oohed and aahed.” Click here to read more about the recent “explosion events” by Season 3 artist Cai Guo-Qiang (as reported by Kris Wilton of Artinfo.com).

• Congratulations to Art21 artists Vija Celmins (Season 2), and Judy Pfaff (Season 4) who have been granted the United States Artists annual award for $50k.

• Season 4 artist Jenny Holzer has shared her morning routine, favorite household chore, travel rituals, and more with Times Magazine. Read her witty profile here.

• More on the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2): Man of the World, The New Yorker; Pic of the Day: Gabriel Orozco’s Home Run, Flavorwire; and Gabriel Orozco: The Art of the Readymade, WNYC.

On Location: Filming Art21 Educators in Southern California

In our new column, On Location, Art21 Director of Production Nick Ravich breaks his silence and gives you the scoop on Art21’s production comings and goings including, among other things, straight-from-the-set reports on recent shoots and some (hopefully) enlightening discussions on those areas where television production and contemporary art collide. And if we’re lucky, Nick will expand his column to include some non-Art21 related musings, reviews, interviews, and other ephemera on the world of production and art in general. — Ed.

If you’re willing to indulge a little Art21 navel-gazing for this very first post, I’d like to inaugurate this column by highlighting something I’ve been hoping to spread the word on for some time – our web exclusive video production. As a lot of you readers are probably aware, in addition to the content we specifically shoot for the broadcast series, Art21 has been actively shooting footage specifically for release on the web. Past exclusive pieces have included our three recent videos on Kerry James Marshall (On Museums, Being an Artist, Black Romantic).  But what a lot of folks might not be aware of is that, as opposed to the broadcast model where we hire outside crew, we’re using in-house personnel and gear to produce these shorts, soup to nuts. And it’s not just production staffers like coordinators Larissa Nikola-Lisa and Ian Forster, but other non-production folks like our Associate Curator, Wesley Miller, and our Education and Public Programming personnel, Jessica Hamlin and Marc Mayer, have all been involved. More importantly, we’re starting to expand the scope of these videos beyond Art21’s roster of broadcast artists.

And now’s a particularly opportune time to mention the widening range of this project because we’ve just come off one of our most ambitious and non-artist centered shoots to date: two full days shooting with the rather amazing art students and teachers at the Besant Hill School in Ojai, CA, and Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, CA. Our subjects weren’t Art21 broadcast artists, but teachers and students who actively use Art21 in the classroom. (The teachers are part of our Art21 Educators art education initiative. They had participated in an intensive Art21-organized professional development session in New York last summer; this shoot was part of a follow up classroom visit with the teachers.)

At the Besant Hill School in ludicrously beautiful Ojai, CA, we shot with teacher Lucia Vinograd and her uninhibited Advanced Class. The following pictures can only really do the experience justice. And yes, you’re looking at students who were body painting-dancing, blind water gun painting, and acetylene torching (a la Season 4 artist Judy Pfaff.) Oh, to be young again.

Left: A Besant Hill School (Ojai, CA) student gets ready for a body paint performance. Right: Early Judy Pfaff? No, a Besant Hill School student draws with an acetylene torch. All stills are from Art21's HDV original video footage, shot by Nick Ravich, 2009.

These and other student projects were all precociously creative responses to Lucia’s semester long curricula, “The Uses of Chaos, Chance, and the Unpredictable in Art” — a lesson plan influenced by some of the chance strategies of previous Art21 artists, like Cai Guo-Qiang. Students were asked to set up an art-making situation where some primary creative/mark-making element was out of their control. (I wish I had an art teacher like that in high school. I’d be a much cooler person today.)

At the very urbane Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, CA, teacher Pam Posey – an accomplished artist in her own right — took her 9th grade art class down the street to the Santa Monica Museum of Art, to check out the Tell Me Something Good: A Collaboration between Kim Schoenstadt and Rita McBride show. The exhibition of photographs and documents is, in the words of the museum’s website, “inspired by the conceptual art exhibition, Art By Telephone (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1969), in which participants phoned in their specifications for their works of art.” A pretty heady premise for 9th graders but one that, as they got comfortable on the exhibit’s floor and were guided by Pam’s expert promptings, they were able to really bite into and discuss.  Are the instructions hindering or helping the artist’s creativity? In the end, are the instructions more interesting than the art? Moreover, this show and discussion dovetailed nicely with Pam’s on-going lesson plan, “What Roles do Rules Play in Art?” – itself nicely reminiscent of some of the rules-based thinking behind the work of Season Five’s Systems artists.

Continue reading »

Help Wanted

Plaster sculpture by Matthew Labrake, Nyack High School

Once in a while teachers are so amazed and proud of the work their students accomplish that they just have to share it, and I’m all about flying in that time zone this week. Two weeks ago, I wrote a column called The Same, But Different,  which discussed beginning a painting unit for the second year in a row that incorporates the theme of power with my Studio Art students. While we are well under way with forming some ideas for our paintings, I wanted to share a partial list of “powerful words”, “words we associate with power”, and “forms of power” that my Studio Art classes recently compiled. After a few partnered and small group conversations, here is a sample of what they discussed and came up with this past week:

Powerful Words: Outrageous, Wallin’, Loyalty, Perseverance, Death, Love, Hate, Faith, Pride, Terminal, Permanent, Never, Art, International, Soul, Law, Skyrocket, Boom!, Nuclear, Life, Morose, Wisdom, Cancer, Magic, Fight, Burn, Supernatural

(You can see why I’m smiling, right?)

Words We Associate with Power: Domination, Independence, Control, Strength, Bravery, Conquer, Mighty, Superiority, Confident, Intelligent, Love, Action, Wealth, Energy, Leadership, Stamina, Sexuality, Fear, Corruption, Time, Chaos

Forms of Power: One person over another; Family; Independence; Age; Manipulation; Karma; Terrorism; Co-dependence; Sexism, Rejection, Friendship, Love, Luck, Knowledge, Segregation, Censorship, Authority, Weapons, Sickness, Money, Addiction, Size

And these are just a few of the answers the students generated!

Now, here’s where the “help wanted” part comes in…..

While we discussed and viewed the work of Ida Applebroog, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Layla Ali last year, I’m looking for new artists to add to the mix. Inspired by a suggestion from my colleague Marc Mayer, I decided to share the brainstorming students have done and put the call out right here in the column: Looking at these lists so far, which artists would YOU suggest we incorporate in the new Painting About Power unit? Please share your ideas and comments!

Weekly Roundup

Art21 artist Barry McGee stands in front of one of his geometric creations. Courtesy Wallpaper.com.

From the west to the east coast and over to Taiwan, Art21 artists are involved in a number of new and large-scale exhibitions:

• Works by Barry McGee (Season 1) and Philip Frost are the focus of mindthegap, the inaugural exhibition of Prism, a three story gallery located on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Curated by P.M. Tenore, founder of RVCA clothing company and the associated publication ANP Quarterly, the display includes embellished baseball bat and surf board sculptures, paintings, film and interactive installations. Flip through images of the show at Wallpaper.com.

• Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities is currently on view at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta. The all-star artist roster includes Ellen Gallagher (Season 3), Cindy Sherman (Season 5), Renée Cox, Lyle Ashton Harris, Lauren Kelley, Mequitta Ahuja, Kalup Linzy, Wangechi Mutu, Lorraine O’Grady, Gordon Parks, Lorna Simpson, Renée Stout, and Mickalene Thomas. Undercover runs through December 5; a closing reception will take place December 10. Read Rebecca Cochran’s review of the exhibition for Artforum.com.

• Days and Giorni, two sound installations by Season 1 artist Bruce Nauman, are on view at The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) through April 4, 2010. These works made their international debut in Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens, the exhibition organized by PMA in conjunction with the Universitá Iuav di Venezia and the Universitá Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, to represent the United States in the 53rd Venice Biennale. Days and Giorni at PMA marks the first time in seven years that Nauman is showing new major installations in the United States. Film and video works made by the artist in the late 1960s — Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (Square Dance); Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk); and Wall-Floor Positions — are also on view.

• In more Philly news, the PMA and the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) will present Fallen Blossoms, a multi-site exhibition of works by Cai Guo-Qiang (Season 3). A series of four gunpowder drawings and a sculptural installation will be on view inside the PMA in a presentation titled Light Passage. Two newly commissioned works, Time Flies Like a Weaving Shuttle and Time Scroll, will be on display at FWM. One of Cai’s signature “explosion events” has been commissioned for the exhibition and will take place at both sites on opening day, December 11.

• Hanging Out in the Museum is Cai’s second collaboration with the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan. The retrospective exhibition features new gunpowder drawings, and the site specific installation Cultural Melting Bath (1997), which invites audiences to join a medicinal bath located in the museum’s outdoor courtyard. Hanging Out in the Museum remains on view through February 1, 2010.

• Cleveland Cavaliers center Shaquille O’Neal has added curatorial work to his resume. His forthcoming exhibition Size DOES Matter will explore the idea of scale in contemporary art through works by Tim Hawkinson, Paul Pfeiffer (both Season 2), Fred Wilson (Season 3), Jeff Koons, and Yinka Shonibare MBE (both Season 5), among others. Hosted by the Flag Art Foundation in New York, the exhibition is scheduled to open February 19, 2010. In Lindsay Pollock’s report for Bloomberg News, O’Neal says, “As a curator, I have a responsibility to the artists, who are my ‘teammates.’ We all have to make each other look good — no different than what I do on the court.’’

• The new home of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) — designed by Season 2 artist Maya Lin — opened to the public in September. The 14,000 square-foot space incorporates environmentally sustainable design solutions, and features a sky-lit courtyard that “harkens back to the memory of a traditional Chinese courtyard house.” Lin says, “MOCA’s new space focuses attention on individuals and families of Chinese heritage who have made their homes throughout the country, and who are very much a part of the fabric of this nation. The space was designed to show the dynamic presentation of the Chinese American story, as an integral part of the greater, and continually evolving, American story.” Read more about MOCA’s new building here.

• Season 1 artist Richard Serra is included in the group exhibition 1969 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. Serra’s work was highlighted (along with Nauman’s) in Peter Schjeldahl’s review for The New Yorker. Schjeldahl states, “The year’s most original artists were the post-minimalists Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra…Nauman and Serra addressed a culture in which “artist” was becoming a job description, at once secure and drained of meaning. Having nothing to do, but having to do something, they made the situation clear and just a little bit dramatic.” Read the entire review here.

The Same, But Different

Artist at work: Cai Guo-Qiang. Art21 production still. 2005

About a year ago at this time I was getting ready for Art21 to come in and film me teaching about the theme of power with my freshman Studio in Art class. I was a bit nervous, but when it was all said and done, I was happy with what we had filmed and the story that got told about how students tackled the idea of visually depicting power in a variety of ways through painting. The number of hours that went into that 5 minutes of film (fame?) still blows me away.

It’s that time of year again. And while I’ve decided that I will return to the theme of power with my new students, the beginning has already been different. Rather than start with a customary skill-building approach similar to our recent drawing unit, which is the way we began in 2008, I decided after looking at some reflections in my notebook that maybe I wanted to begin with specific challenges students already have when it comes to painting. It seemed a lot easier than assuming what they did or didn’t know.

Borrowing an idea I learned while mentoring teachers in New York City, I set up a “parking lot” (aka a large chart for students to place written responses to a specific question) this past Monday and gave each student four Post-It notes in the ugliest color I could find. I asked each of them this time around to identify four specific challenges they have experienced working with paint in the past (a quick survey told me that over 90% of the class had some experience with painting pictures). After they finished, students placed their answers in the parking lot I had set up near the door.

Later that afternoon, I looked over the chart and realized that the beginning of this unit would be a little different than last year. Based on the answers I received, students wanted the most help with blending, color mixing, and coming up with good ideas (“Not making a mess” was a close runner-up, by the way). So this time around, we will be trying some specific experiments around mixing and blending before re-emphasizing, as was the case last year, a variety of ways artists get good ideas and put them in motion.

In my work as a teacher and an artist, I am constantly reminded that just because something went well once doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be better the next time around. Starting the Power unit in a slightly different way allows me to show students I am taking their feedback seriously and that I’m ready to help with what they need as we move into something new.

Weekly Roundup

John Baldessari, ”How We Do Art Now”, 1973. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NY.

• Vital Signals: Japanese and American Video Art from the 1960s and 70s is a three-part screening program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Presented in collaboration with Electronic Arts Intermix, the series focuses on artists experimenting with video in both the United States and Japan. On October 20, early videos by Art21 artists William Wegman (Season 1), and John Baldessari (Season 5), will be screened along with works by Joan Jonas, Mako Idemitsu, Norio Imai, and Hakudo Kobayashi.

• On October 8, Tim Gunn of Project Runway (a former student of Anne Truitt) will moderate a panel discussion at the Hirshhorn Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection. Season 2 artist Martin Puryear, filmmaker Jem Cohen, and photographer John Gossage will also be on hand to discuss Truitt’s installations. The event begins at 7 p.m.

• Thurston Moore of the band Sonic Youth is launching Ecstatic Peace Library (EPL), a boutique publisher of art books. A catalog listing the publisher’s first releases was available at the New York Art Book Fair this past weekend. If you missed the event, the information will be available on the EPL website beginning January 1. Moore plans to release books in tandem with recordings from artist-authors, including Raymond Pettibon (Season 2). Read more on the LA Times blog.

• A New Literary History of America, an anthology edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors, comprises 219 essays that, together, give a picture of U.S. history and culture. The book begins in the year 1507 (when “America” appeared on a map), and concludes with Obama’s election last year. This final entry features a six-page illustration by Kara Walker (Season 2).

• Wind Shadow, a new piece from Taiwanese choreographer Lin Hwai-Min and the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, is at the Barbican Theatre through October 10. Lin has collaborated with Season 3 artist Cai Guo-Qiang on the set, which the Barbican describes as “projections of Cai’s gunpowder drawings that merge into silhouettes and form a moving art installation within which the dancers engage.” See a clip of the performance here.

• On Thursday, November 19, 2009, Season 2 artist Kiki Smith will be honored by the Brooklyn Museum at their seventh annual Women in the Arts luncheon. An exhibition of Smith’s work will open in the Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art on February 5, 2010.

Weekly Roundup

Mark Bradford, "Red Painting", 2009. Mixed media collage on canvas, 101.75 x 143.5 in. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

• Season 4 artist Mark Bradford has been awarded the 2009 MacArthur “Genius” Award. The MacArthur Fellows Program, as it is also known, awards unrestricted fellowships to individuals who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” The Foundation recently released a YouTube video of Bradford. Watch it here.

• The Japan Art Association has announced the winners of the twenty-first Praemium Imperiale, an international arts prize that celebrates the human spirit as expressed by the world’s artists. This year’s recipients include Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3), Richard Long, and Zaha Hadid.

• Ear Sofa; Nose Sconces with Flowers (In Stage Setting) is the first ever tableau vivant created by Season 5 artist John Baldessari. The installation will be unveiled at Sprüth Magers London on October 12, the day before Baldessari’s retrospective opens at Tate Modern. Central to this piece is an ear-shaped sofa, on which a model sits, flanked on either side by a pair of nose-shaped wall sconces. Inspired by Art Deco aesthetics, the sofa is framed by a large decorative semi-circular arch. The gallery’s storefront window will be shrouded by a sheet of sheer stretched silk. The exhibition was developed by Baldessari in collaboration with production designer Naomi Shohan, whose credits include work on American Beauty; I Am Legend; and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

• Andrea Rosen Gallery’s fourth solo exhibition of work by Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie opens October 23. Works include Line Shot, a one hour animated feature film; Haruspex, a series of collaborative drawings; and The Dawn Line, a modular structure that is part of a larger architectural, film and musical collaboration. The exhibition is held in conjunction with The Long Count, part of the Next Wave Festival at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York.

• A new single-channel film by Catherine Sullivan (Season 4) is on view at Metro Pictures.  LULU – Or: To What Ends Does the Bourgeoisie Need Despair is based on the 1978 affair between silent film star Louise Brooks and British theater critic Kenneth Tynan who was also the creator of the musical review Oh! Calcutta! Runs through October 17.

• Illusion of Childhood, an assemblage of bicycles, toys and other objects by Season 3 artist Cai Guo–Qiang is included in the exhibition Bikes Rides at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Organized with help from bicycle enthusiast David Byrne, the show features approximately thirty works from around the world, from functional cycles to bicycle-inspired sculpture and video. On view through January 2010.

• Season 5 artist Jeff Koons will curate the Dakis Joannou Collection exhibition at the New Museum that is scheduled to open late February 2010. This will be the first time Dakis Joannou, a New Museum Trustee based in Athens, shows his collection in the U.S. The collection contains major holdings of works by Koons, Kara Walker, Kiki Smith (both Season 2), Pawel Althamer, Maurizio Cattelan, Nathalie Djurberg, Urs Fischer, Robert Gober, Chris Ofili, and Charles Ray among others. Read more about the exhibition here.

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.

iPod Advertisement

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.

- Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof

Art21 Educator Joe Fusaro Teaching “Power” at Nyack High School

Embarrassing as it is, this is the first video I’ve ever made. I am immersed in the world of film production each day, yet focused on the Education side of Art21. It’s been a long journey to connect the two.

Where does an idea start? I don’t think it was just mine, but I was interested in some way to better articulate and share what was happening out there in the world when people actually saw and used Art21. How does one go about making a film of that moment when teachers, students, artists, and the casual viewer are confronted with artists talking about their work, the ideas behind it, and then attempt to DO something with that experience?

We needed a willing guinea pig for our first attempt to capture one of these stories. Joe Fusaro, Senior Education Advisor and weekly contributor to the Teaching with Contemporary Art Column, proved willing and more than able.

Joe told us about a unit he was teaching his 9th grade studio art classes at Nyack High School on the theme of Power. We jumped at the chance to be flies on the wall, with very large cameras and sound equipment. And it was not easy. We stumbled through interviews, and many of them. We awkwardly wrangled equipment while trying to remain unobtrusive and unintimidating. Room schedules were changed. Much paperwork was signed. We drove over the Tappan Zee Bridge countless times.

But the process was part of the journey and well worth the results. We are eternally grateful to Joe, his students, and his colleagues at Nyack High School for their patience, their generosity, and their continual support of this fledgling idea. We’ve gotten the production bug and we’re itching to make more. And on these next ones, we’ll be a little less nervous. We’ll keep it conversational. We’ll enjoy the process even more.