Art21 “Exclusive” Video, Year 2
What a year it’s been! We’re taking a look back at the 42 Exclusive videos that premiered here on the Art21 Blog, and subsequently on YouTube and iTunes. We hope you’ve enjoyed this new feature for 2009 and, as always, look forward to your comments.
What’s our New Year’s resolution? We’ll be premiering more behind-the-scenes moments with contemporary artists such as Beryl Korot, Shahzia Sikander, Allan McCollum, Julie Mehretu, Cao Fei, Florian Maier-Aichen, and many, many more. Check out what happened in year one.
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.
Weekly Roundup
Josiah McElheny, "Chromatic Modernism (Blue, Red, Yellow)," 2008. Courtesy Donald Young Gallery.
- The Art of Caring: A Look at Life through Photography opened this past weekend at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The show is comprised of over 200 photographs covering seven thematic components: Children and Family, Love, Wellness, Disaster, Caregiving and Healing, Aging, and Remembering. Among the many artists are Tina Barney, Nan Goldin, Chester Higgins, Nicholas Nixon, and Season 1’s Sally Mann and William Wegman.
- Also opening this past weekend at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona is Time as Matter. The presentation of new acquisitions from the MACBA Collection covers the last fifty years in the history of art through installations, paintings, sculptures, photographs, collages, models, books, etc. The show focuses on notions of time and life and play, and includes work from Franz Kline, Dieter Roth, Lawrence Weiner, Joan Jonas, Nancy Spero (Season 4), and more.
- The summer group show season is starting a little early this year. At the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago is a selection of work from ten artists represented by the gallery including Rodney Graham, Josiah McElheny, Bruce Nauman, and Martin Puryear. Through August 15.
- As part of Le French May Arts Festival, an exhibition entitled A Passion for Creation at the Hong Kong Museum of Art cuils together a selection of large scale works from the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Creation. The show reflects on “an urban and energetic culture, leading to fictional landscapes, somewhere between dream and adventure.” Exhibiting artists include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paul Chan, Cao-Fei, Pierre Huyghe (Season 4), Christian Marclay and others.
- Season 4 artist Judy Pfaff’s solo exhibition Constructed Paper is on view now at the Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinatti.
- An exhibition of selected photographs by Mike Kelley (Season 3) produced for Patrick Painter Editions is on view through July 11 at the Los Angeles space. The collection includes the series Timeless/Authorless, The Poetry of Form, and Photo Show Portrays the Familiar 1-26.
- The Big Sad, Barry McGee’s exhibition with Clare Rojas, just closed at the Riverside Art Museum. But here is an interview from the exhibition with McGee (Season 1) on Current TV.
- At Triple Candie in Harlem is Selections from the Museo de Reproducciones Fotograficas. The quirky collection comprises 1,200 high-quality photographic reproductions cut from books on the visual arts, crafts, design, and architecture. Among other traits, the reproductions’ cataloguing records are incomplete and based exclusively on the objects’ original credit lines. The collection includes works by Laylah Ali (Season 3), Chris Ofili, Richard Prince, Mark Rothko, Richard Serra (Season 1), Lisa Yuskavage, and others. Through June 7.
- Jessica Stockholder’s solo exhibition Swiss Cheese Field is currently on view at Senior and Shopmaker. The show includes new monoprint constructions that coincide with both Flooded Chambers Maid, the Season 3 artist’s first major outdoor installation in the U.S. presented by Madison Square Park, and Sail Cloth Tears, a concurrent solo exhibition of new sculpture at Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery.
Judy Pfaff | Assistant Rob van Erve
EXCLUSIVE: Assistant Rob van Erve during the making of Judy Pfaff’s installation Buckets of Rain (2006) in the artist’s studio in Tivoli, New York.
Balancing intense planning with improvisational decision-making, Judy Pfaff creates exuberant, sprawling sculptures and installations that weave landscape, architecture, and synthetic color into a tense yet organic whole. A pioneer of installation art in the 1970s, Pfaff synthesizes sculpture, painting, and architecture into dynamic environments in which space seems to expand and collapse, fluctuating between two and three dimensions.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Judy Pfaff.
LEARN: Judy Pfaff is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Romance of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, production stills, 2007. © Art21, Inc.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Mark Sutton. Artwork courtesy: Judy Pfaff. Thanks: Rob van Erve.
Judy Pfaff | Assistants Kate Hodges & Ryan Muller
EXCLUSIVE: Assistant Kate Hodges at Judy Pfaff’s studio in Tivoli, New York.
EXCLUSIVE: Assistant Ryan Muller at Judy Pfaff’s studio in Tivoli, New York.
Balancing intense planning with improvisational decision-making, Judy Pfaff creates exuberant, sprawling sculptures and installations that weave landscape, architecture, and synthetic color into a tense yet organic whole. A pioneer of installation art in the 1970s, Pfaff synthesizes sculpture, painting, and architecture into dynamic environments in which space seems to expand and collapse, fluctuating between two and three dimensions.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Judy Pfaff.
LEARN: Judy Pfaff is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Romance of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, production stills, 2007. © Art21, Inc.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Mark Sutton. Artwork courtesy: Judy Pfaff. Thanks: Kate Hodges & Ryan Muller.
Pfaff in Albany, Pfeiffer in Berlin
The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York inaugurated its new art gallery at the Massry Center for the Arts this past weekend with a one-person exhibition by Season 4 artist Judy Pfaff. Judy Pfaff: Paperworks, Year of the Dog, Pig, Rat, Etc. contains a recent series of small, delicate drawings juxtaposed with large-scale works on paper of varied motifs and prints based on the Chinese New Year that the artist produced at Tandem Press earlier this year.
Across the Atlantic, Paul Pfeiffer also recently opened an exhibition at Carlier | Gebauer in Berlin. The Season 2 artist is premiering two new videos plus Live from Neverland, a creepy “Michael Jackson choirlogue” work finished in 2006. Caryatid (Red, Yellow, Blue) and Cross Hall (both 2008) are video pieces that explore surveillance culture and examines their origins. Typical of Pfeiffer’s ingenuity and sophistication, the latter confronts audiences with live transmission of footage from two surveillance cameras, projected to cover an entire wall. An empty passageway is recorded from the end of a neo-classical corridor, and from a room adjacent to that corridor. Behind the surface onto which the images are projected is a diorama, a model of the imposing corridor, which audiences can only see through a peephole. The actual space remains concealed while the perspective of the surveillance camera defines visible reality and constructs it through the projection.
Judy Pfaff: Paperworks, Year of the Dog, Pig, Rat, Etc. runs through November 9th and Paul Pfeiffer through October 11th.
Judy Pfaff at Bellas Artes
Recent work by Judy Pfaff is currently on view from August 1-30 in the garden of Bellas Artes. Included are “three-dimensional drawings” that comprise Jardin de los Cuervos, an installation the Season 4 artist begun in 2000. These non-traditional drawings are layered, complex gestures of her larger works, and continue Pfaff’s stream of consciousness mediation of universal opposites – natural and manmade, chaos and structure, physical and emotional.
As she views it, one way or another, everything in the universe is linked. The imagery she collects constitutes a visionary chart or model of universal knowledge. The complexity that Pfaff values in each piece also extends over time from work to work. Each issues from a different experience; often inspired by the particular place she happens to be in, and each expresses a different mood or sensation, reflecting a different psychological state, ranging from elation to melancholy, from hedonism to pain. (Irving Sandler)
Museum
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was established eighteen years ago in Kansas City, Missouri on 18th and Vine Streets, just around the corner from the Paseo YMCA building where the Negro National League was founded in 1920 by Andrew “Rube” Foster. The founding of the eight-team league was the direct result of a silent agreement to segregate African-American players from baseball. Jonathan Earle, Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas, presents an extensive review of NLBM in a feature article titled In a League of Its Own: The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in May/June 2008 issue of Museum. Several pictures and illustrations accompanying the article make the hard copy more informative and visually appealing than the electronic version. The expansion plans for NLBM will create a five-level structure complete with a gymnasium and an addition of 40,000 square feet, making the museum emerge as one of the most remarkable sport museums in the world.
The other interesting article in the same issue, titled Meet the New Boss: Opening the Door for Emerging Professionals, is a brief survey of the formation of new leadership in the museum field, and it introduces five new leaders who speak about their careers. Given the freedom and team support, this is an enormously fertile time for new leaders to grow and to make dramatic changes and improvements. Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director of MoMA, is a great advocate for open thinking and a huge source of inspiration to new museum professionals and artists. In her Museum interview, Making the Modern More Contemporary, by Robert Ayers, she reflects back on her experience as the director of the Walker Art Center and mentions the positive ripple effects of the close camaraderie and teamwork between the staff. During the April 14th “Artforum at The New School – Art and Money” panel discussion she expressed some of her thoughts on institutional traditions and the necessity for in-depth research to discover new approaches in art.
Another seasoned leader who also took up her new position in February 2008 is Sabine Folie, the Artistic and Managing Director of the Generali Foundation in Vienna, Austria. In her statement she also makes a reference to teamwork: “The time has now come for me and a highly committed team to resume work under the new premises and to continue to build a collection that constitutes a commitment to collecting far away from all criteria oriented by speculation or conforming to the market.”
Exemplary teamwork and nurturing leadership is what I also encountered during my recent collaboration with the staff of Art21. Witnessing the tremendous dedication and knowledge of contemporary art among the Art21 staff was an unprecedented experience for me. The extraordinary results of harmonious teamwork can also be seen in the work of the Art:21 Season 4 artists Mark Dion, Judy Pfaff, Catherine Sullivan and Ursula von Rydingsvard. It is apropos to conclude with an interview, featuring Art:21 Season 2 artist Raymond Pettibon, titled Gumby, Vavoom, & Baseball Players.
Conversations | Judy Pfaff with Betsy Sussler part 3
Following is the conclusion of the conversation between Judy Pfaff and BOMB Magazine’s Betsy Sussler that took place on March 3, 2008 at the Mid-Manhattan Library.
BS: I’m going to ask you two more questions, and one of them actually comes from Patricia Spears Jones, who’s a poet. I don’t know if you’ve met her, but she’s a contributing editor to BOMB. A.M. Homes, the writer, has this really great trick when she interviews people. She calls up all of her friends in a panic and says, “I don’t know what I’m going to say. What would you ask if you were interviewing this person?” and then she comes with a list of their questions combined with her questions. So I did that too. I thought, this will be fun. So, Patricia Spears Jones asks this: “I have been fascinated by the colors in your work? What do they mean and are there ones that you have never used and why?”
JP: I’m very involved with color. Initially, I was involved with Goethe’s idea of color, then Madame Blavatsky, and I worked for [Josef] Albers, believe it or not. So each piece actually is very coded. I don’t usually talk about that, but what I mean is that even just black and white mean this or that. When I sampled things in earlier pieces, they were always specifically about color and emotional and even visual sensations. But no, color is a huge deal to me.
BS: The earlier ones especially were so exuberant. It was never just instinctive? You really always had an idea of what the color….
JP: Yeah. The first show in New York that someone might have seen was called Deep Water. I had just come from a trip to the Yucatan as a response to doing a failed show about subatomic physics, and I thought, painters don’t use color? There was this equivocation that thinking is sort of gray and black and brown and sober and in Merida, which is this perfect colonial town in the Yucatan, and is also my favorite town of all time, there were just beautiful flowers. The sea is turquoise, and I just thought this really has the color of life. The way things look when they’re alive, like flowers and birds and fish and this and that. Also, I was probably at war with—do I say it again?—Richard Serra, who is about weight and mass, and I thought, throw it away. Get the air in there and make it circulate. You don’t own it. You don’t dominate anything. Don’t have the language that painting could have. That was a very south of the border show.
The next one I did at Albright-Knox, the whole palette was for all of the people. There was the Clyfford Still motif, there was the Jackson Pollock; it was the moment. So there was a kind of homage. It’s like, if I go to Japan, I think it’s totally Japanese, but they don’t think it’s Japanese at all. I think there is a difference between references to things and paying homage to things.
Conversations | Judy Pfaff with Betsy Sussler part 2
The following is the second part of the conversation between Judy Pfaff and BOMB Magazine’s Betsy Sussler that took place on March 3, 2008 at the Mid-Manhattan Library.
BS: I wanted to ask you about the burning kits and drawing with fire. Given that fire is an all-consuming element that has connotations about being a life force and also leaving darkness in its wake while calling up images of hell, what is it like to draw with fire?
JP: It is the very coolest thing I’ve ever done, but I’ve always thought that artists are pyromaniacs and believed that they are orphans. I don’t know any artists who think of themselves as being the product of a mother and father. Fire is always major. I think the funniest thing about fire, and there’s a mischief in this, is that a gallery on 57th street—which is about as clean as you can get—the gallery owners just decided to leave until I was finished installing because they were having heart attacks because of the soot everywhere. They’ve got Hans Hoffmans in the back room and the soot was going through the ventilation system and it was fabulous because it’s carbon! Acetylene is very dirty stuff, but it’s the purest sort of soot. You know how Sumi ink is made by capturing the soot from candles? Well, like Sumi, acetylene has a velvety quality to it and if you touch it, it just falls.
BS: It’s like paint and graphite.
JP: Yeah, it’s like shadows. It’s beautiful, beautiful stuff. You can’t focus on it so you sink into it, like a lovely spacelessness or something. It’s nice.
