Weekly Roundup
Ida Applebroog, "Group A #9", 1969. Ink on paper, 10 5/8" x 8 1/4". Courtesy Hauser & Wirth.
This week Art21 artists depict nether regions, play with light and space, bundle and fuse old toys, mirror the dandy, reimagine rooftops, photograph electricity, and display cookie cutters by the thousands:
- Beginning January 19, a new body of work and major installation by Season 3 artist Ida Applebroog will be on view at Hauser & Wirth in New York. Central to the exhibition, titled Monalisa, is a collection of more than 160 drawings of the artist’s crotch based on reflections of herself in a mirror. Applebroog made the drawings in 1969 during her nightly bath ritual. Packed in a basement and forgotten until studio assistants discovered them in early 2009, they are now key in her Hauser & Wirth installation. Applebroog has created a room-sized wooden structure covered with more than 100 new drawings made from her original vagina images, which she has scanned onto handmade Gampi paper, enlarged, digitally manipulated, and enhanced with washes of color. The exhibition will also include a selection of the original drawings. Monalisa will be on view through March 6. Read more about the exhibition here.
- The Visible Vagina, on view concurrently at David Nolan and Francis M. Naumann Fine Art galleries in New York, is inspired by Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. As the exhibition title suggests, “the show is designed to make visible a portion of the female anatomy that is generally considered taboo―too private and intimate for public display.” Works by Art21 artists Jeff Koons (Season 5), Kiki Smith (Season 2), Laurie Simmons, and Nancy Spero (both Season 4) will be included. The Visible Vagina is on view January 28-March 20. A panel discussion with artists in the exhibition, moderated by Anna Chave, will be held at David Nolan Gallery on January 30.
- Through February 6, works by James Turrell (Season 1), Robert Irwin, Doug Wheeler, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Laddie John Dill, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Helen Pashgian, and De Wain Valentine are on view at New York’s David Zwirner Gallery. Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970 surveys the diverse art practices that flourished in 1960s California and are often placed under the umbrella term “Light and Space.” The selection of works in this show are intended to capture some of the more specific aesthetic qualities of the Los Angeles scene during the 1960s. A guided walk-through of the exhibition with co-curator Tim Nye will take place on January 23 at 11:30am.
- Two sculptures by Season 2 artist Maya Lin made from recycled toys (titled Toy Asteroid: Boy and Toy Asteroid: Girl) are included in Animamix Biennial: Visual Attract and Attack at MoCA Taipei. The exhibition presents the most recent developments and trends in Animamix art, or “contemporary comic aesthetics” from across the world. Featuring works by nearly 300 artists, Animamix Biennial is hosted simultaneously by three other museums in China and Taiwan: MoCA Shanghai, Today Art Museum Beijing, and Guangdong Museum of Art. Visual Attract and Attack, according to the New York Times, only features about 50 artists, not all of whom are from Asia. Other artists hail from Japan, Italy, France, Israel, Russia and the United States, showing “the international spread of the Animamix language.” The exhibition is on view through January 31.
- Shapes from Maine (2009), a project by Season 5 artist Allan McCollum, is included in the exhibition Vertically Integrated Manufacturing at Murray Guy Gallery in New York. Shapes of Maine is an extension of an earlier Shape project, for which McCollum developed a system to generate over 30 billion unique shapes, at least one for each person on the planet. McCollum worked over the internet with Holly and Larry Little, founders of Aunt Holly’s Copper Cookie Cutters, a home business in Trescott, Maine, to create this installation of over 2,200 one-of-a-kind works. Vertically Integrated Manufacturing brings together works by artists who, like McCollum, respond to changing processes of labor. Continues through February 20.
- Since the 1980s, a number of Art21 artists have been commissioned by The Stuart Collection to create permanent works for the grounds of University of California San Diego. Most recently, Season 2 artist Do-Ho Suh proposed Fallen Star — his first major permanent outdoor installation in the United States — for the Collection. At the center of his proposed piece is a small house which has been picked up by some mysterious force (such as a tornado) and has “landed” seven stories up atop the Jacobs School of Engineering. The house is cantilevered out over the edge of the building and can be entered from the roof, or roof garden (also part of the artist’s design). The actual structure might serves as a student/faculty lounge or meeting room. See images of Fallen Star here.
- Sur le dandysme aujourd’hui: From Shop Window Mannequin to Media Star, on view at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo, reveals concepts and strategies developed by nineteenth-century dandies in the work and attitudes of contemporary artists. The curator considers how iconography and themes of dandyism remain significant. The show takes George Bryan Brummell, Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde (with passing references to Jules Amadée Barbey d’Aurevilly, the Countess of Castiglione and Joris Karl Huysmans) as its point of departure. Season 5 artists Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, and Yinka Shonibare MBE are included in a roster of more than 40 artists. Sur le dandysme aujourd’hui runs January 15-March 21.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3) is featured by Wired Magazine Online for his new series of electricity volt photographs, while his seascape photograph on the cover of U2’s album, No Line on the Horizon, has ranked #48 in Art Vinyl’s annual album cover awards.
The Real Story: Laurie Simmons Interviews Art21 Executive Director Susan Sollins
Season 4 artist Laurie Simmons recently sat down with Art21’s Executive Director Susan Sollins to uncover the story of how Art21 began and the experience of filming 86 of today’s most thought-provoking artists.
LAURIE SIMMONS: I am Laurie Simmons with Founder and Executive Director of Art21, Susan Sollins. It is Summer 2009.
SUSAN SOLLINS: You are such a pro.
LS: Well, you trained me, right?
After 20 years of working with art and artists, what made you think artists themselves would make for interesting TV?
SS: In general, when artists are interviewed in public settings or on film, I would find the result stiff, academic, or too theoretical. Sometimes these situations are more about the interviewer than the artist. I always had all sorts of questions that were never asked—or answered—unless I happened to be talking with an artist directly—like with you, Laurie, right now. This is a moment when things can be revealed. Most people don’t get a chance to talk with artists. You might see the work, but you’re remote from the person. I wanted to bring these experiences together. I thought it could be possible to make something for television that would provide people with a more complete understanding of artists’ methods and thinking.
LS: Well, toss me a question, one of those burning questions you wanted to ask with this idea of revealing something.
SS: Well, something simple—are you interested in beauty? Is beauty important to you? Do you ever think about or play with beauty? Is it a factor in what you do? For years beauty is a topic that has not been talked about. What is beauty for you—if it interests you at all? And what is beauty today?
LS: And yet that’s just a fraction of the way that you divided up the segments of Art21 series and the subjects that you’ve touched on. Beauty is…
SS: Well, it’s a subtext.
LS: A subtext, one of the many.
SS: I’m interested in the real voice of the artist. I want the artists to tell their stories.
LS: So you’re looking for the real story?
SS: I am looking for the real story.
LS: Walk me through the steps toward the creation of Art21.
Pictures at the Met
Richard Prince, "Untitled (four single men with interchangeable backgrounds looking to the right)," 1977. Mixed media on paper. Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
As summer officially winds down, I can’t help but note that 2009 marks one very significant anniversary that seems to have been somewhat underappreciated, if not totally overlooked here in New York. I’m not talking about this the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s historic exploration of the New York region, which also seems to have slipped by with relatively little fanfare. While perhaps not of this same scale, the underappreciated anniversary to which I’m referring does, nevertheless, mark an occasion that forever changed the course of art history. It is, after all, one hundred years ago this year that the first Futurist manifesto was published—a seismic proclamation that signaled the coalescence of a group that would alter the landscape and the trajectory of modern art (this group’s lessons and legacy are still being assessed). Although a major exhibition is irculating around Europe at the moment to observe the occasion, here in America, the centenary has been greeted with a somewhat muted response by institutions from which one might have expected a more robust commemoration (MoMA, wherefore art thou?).
While there was no centennial celebration to be found, one of the better commemorative exhibitions in New York did in fact highlight another group of radical, young artists whose lessons and legacy are also still being absorbed. I’m referring to the The Pictures Generation: 1974-1984 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this summer. This exhibition, however, felt a bit like the anniversary that wasn’t, as it commemorated and expanded upon Douglas Crimp’s landmark Pictures show. But it did so, somewhat peculiarly, two years after the thirtieth anniversary of that now legendary exhibition at Artist’s Space in 1977 (to be fair, it was the thirtieth anniversary of Crimp’s important article in October magazine, a broad articulation of his argument in which he also discussed the work of Cindy Sherman, who was not included in his original exhibition).
Face-to-face once more with some of the most iconic images from the so called Pictures generation, it struck me that few moments in the history of art match the late 1970s for its wide-ranging and sustained critique of those institutional systems through which meaning is manipulated and, more importantly, produced. Certainly the Italian Futurists and various strains of Dada vigorously attacked the mechanisms of power and the conventions of representation, and articulated a radical new vision of what art and life should be. Likewise, the 1950s witnessed Jasper Johns’s and Robert Rauschenberg’s devastating assault on both the painterly gesture as an index of authenticity and originality, as well as the mythology of the abstract expressionist artist.
BOMB is (back) in the building
Richard Prince, "Untitled (LuAnne)," 1983
After a hiatus, we (the folks from BOMB Magazine) are back to resume our fun and educational guest blogging. We’ll be chiming in once a month with some cool stuff that we hope you’ll like.
For those of you in New York, Rhys Chatham will be performing “Guitar Trio” tonight (April 24th) at 6pm as part of the exhibition The Pictures Generation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here’s a video of a past performance if you’re not aware of, or haven’t witnessed, the awesome glory of “Guitar Trio”:
The Pictures Generation exhibition is a massive survey of a group of artists who were using photography in their work between 1974 and 1984, and includes BOMB interviewees: Richard Prince, Sarah Charlesworth, Laurie Simmons, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and James Casebere. Kruger and Simmons have also been covered by our lovely hosts, Art21.
There’s a good explanation of who exactly the pictures generation is/was here. Also, Charlesworth and Kruger made a piece called Glossolalia specifically for BOMB’s issue 5 that includes images from many members of this group.
The new generation is shaped by its exposure to YouTube, and Kalup Linzy is one of their leaders. His show at the Studio Museum in Harlem is up until June 28th. If you’re not familiar with Linzy, here’s one of his original video pieces:
Christopher Durang’s Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them has been extended through the first weekend of May at the Public Theater.
And in the spirit of torture, sometimes things are just better in song:
In closing, we want to encourage you to get out there and buy magazines, lots of magazines! Shockingly, even in the age of the internets, people are still starting new ones! Here are two that caught our eye: Gigantic (co-founded by intrepid former BOMB intern and current BOMBlogger Annie DeWitt), and Meatpaper (as you’d expect—a magazine dedicated to meat in all its glory).
Weekly Round Up
Robert Adams, "Eden, Colorado" (circa 1968-71). Courtesy the artist.
- Robert Adams has won the 2009 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. Based in Astoria, Oregon, the Season 4 artist received the $61,000 prize at a ceremony in San Francisco last week.
- Maya Lin will speak tonight at San-Francisco based not-for-profit organization City Arts and Lectures. The Season 2 artist will engage in dialogue with with Ryan Watt.
- As part of Earth Day events, Mel Chin (Season 1) will deliver a talk this Wednesday at Blue Ridge Community College in Blue Ridge, North Carolina. For more information, click here.
- The China Project: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art just opened at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia. Culled from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, the show features installations, painting, sculpture and video by over 40 of China’s foremost contemporary artists including Xu Bing and Cai Guo-Qiang (Season 3).
- Opening tomorrow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is The Pictures Generation, 1974-1985. The show features artists “educated in the self-reflexive and critical principles of Minimal and Conceptual art,” a list of 30 that includes Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons (Season 4).
Laurie Simmons | Choreographer Helen Pickett
EXCLUSIVE: Choreographer Helen Pickett during the making of Laurie Simmons’s The Music of Regret (2006) at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio, New York.
Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as “living objects‚” animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets. Her work blends psychological, political and conceptual approaches to art making, transforming photography’s propensity to objectify people, especially women, into a sustained critique of the medium.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Laurie Simmons.
LEARN: Laurie Simmons 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 | Laurie Simmons, production stills from The Music of — Act III, 2006. © Laurie Simmons, courtesy the artist, Salon 94, and Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Mark Sutton. Artwork courtesy: Laurie Simmons. Thanks: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Artists Vote for _________.
On October 8, Gap launched its “Vote for” initiative to coincide with the American election season. Centered on a customizable classic white t-shirt that reads, “Vote for ______.”, the retail chain is encouraging customers to fill in the blank with whatever word, expression or presidential candidate they are passionate about.
Gap has also enlisted artists Kara Walker (Season 2), Laurie Simmons (Season 4), Fab5Freddy, John Baldessari, Adam Pendleton, Nate Lowman, John Waters, Deborah Kass, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, and Sean Landers to design a limited edition “Vote for” button. The buttons can be purchased in select stores for $5 each with $1 from every purchase donated to Declare Yourself, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign to empower and encourage every eligible 18-year-old in America to register and vote. Beginning Thursday, October 23, Gap will auction off an exclusive set of buttons autographed by the artists on eBay. All proceeds from the auction will benefit Declare Yourself.
A limited number of unique ”Vote for” buttons can be added to your Facebook profile or sent to friends using the gallery of buttons at Gap.com, Gap’s Facebook Fan Page, or Facebook’s Pieces of Flair application.
Click here for more information about Gap’s multifaceted “Vote for” campaign.
Laurie Simmons at Fashion Week
Segueing from the start of the New York fall art season last week to Fashion Week’s spring collections, we have neck and neck competition from the world of the critical eye that range from the obvious to oblivious to serious to sincere. Somewhere in between this fine balance was eavesdropped that “it’s all about color” and “Italian ice and Absolut vodka go hand in hand thank you very much.” Can one distinguish anymore between which world is which?
At one such less inebriated intersection, there is the collection of young Thai-born designer Thakoon Panichgul, whose runway show started off with somber grayscale but enlivened to brash pinks and emerald greens. One especially notable fabric print included roses with legs, a collaboration between the Thakoon label and artist Laurie Simmons (Season 4).
Shooting in Broad Daylight
Many teachers I met over the summer had some connection to teaching photography or working with a variety of students who are photographers (for example, in an AP Studio Art class). During a few conversations the subject of Art21’s developing collection of featured photographers came up, so the purpose of this week’s TWCA column is to highlight various Art21 artists that allow students both traditional and non-traditional approaches to taking pictures.
Some photographers, like Robert Adams and Gabriel Orozco walking with his camera, give students the chance to see photographers who inform their work through discovery and re-discovery of the landscape, be it beautiful, surprising or desolate. Others like Laurie Simmons (who clearly says she is an artist who uses the camera simply as a tool) and Eleanor Antin meticulously set up their photographs, arranging the compositions and designing the space in particular ways with models, props and even stagehands. Then there are portrait photographers, to use the term loosely, such as Oliver Herring and Sally Mann, who create more than a representation of the person photographed through particular interaction with the model(s).
Juxtaposing these pairings, or across these pairings, can give student photographers a chance to look into how a camera in the hands of an artist with a patient and experimental eye can stretch common themes and subject matter- making viewers look again.
Have any of these artists, or other Art21 artists who use photography in their art, influenced your work or the work of your students? Please share with us by posting a comment and even links to images…
Have a good start to the new school year!
Celebrating Four Months…
Looking back, the Teaching With Contemporary Art column is off to an exciting beginning in our first four months. Since early May, we have had the opportunity to feature writing that focuses on topics such as:
- - Bringing Season 4 artists meaningfully into the classroom.
- - The difference between teaching students about making art vs. engaging with and discussing contemporary art.
- - Allora and Calzadilla in the classroom.
- - Mark Dion in the classroom.
- - Robert Ryman in the classroom.
- - Laurie Simmons in the classroom.
- - The Billy Joels of art education (although one passionate Billy Joel fan took issue with my analogy…).
- - Summer exhibits and best bets to check out, including Henry Moore at the New York Botanical Garden, Louise Bourgeois at the Guggenheim, SITE Santa Fe’s Biennial, Jeff Koons at the Chicago MCA, Martin Puryear in Washington DC and The Cinema Effect Part II at the Hirshhorn Museum.
- - Ways to slow down and recharge for the upcoming school year.
If you’re just returning from summer vacation… welcome back! We have arranged for gas prices to be reduced by a few cents. To celebrate and begin getting ready for the school year, reach back and check out some of the posts in our first four months. Write a comment for some of the posts you find interesting.
Next week: a report on Art Tools for High Schools, the week-long institute for high school teachers at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where Art21 presented workshops that focused on using our educational materials in the classroom.
