Wrestling with the Past: A TwCA 2008-2009 Roundup

Eleanor Antin, Art21 production still

It’s been quite a year. Quite an academic year, that is. Between the country voicing a collective NO to four more years of the same Bushed policies and Bernie Madoff being sentenced to the equivalent of a few lifetimes in prison, a lot has happened and been written about. While I haven’t had any obsessed music fans calling to threaten me lately (haven’t I mentioned the response to The Billy Joels of Art Education??) I just wanted to take this opportunity at the beginning of summer to provide a TwCA roundup of sorts….

The year started back in September 2008 with an article on Mining Ideas - examining the use of sketchbooks in the classroom. Thinking Through Possibilities shared a variety of student sketchbook work as result of this popular theme, and students continued to use sketchbooks in order to respond to and create work influenced by the highly controversial Bodies exhibit.

I was honored to be given the opportunity to interview Eleanor Antin for the TwCA column in December, and right through the holidays she and I e-mailed back and forth (and back and forth… thank you Eleanor!) to create Myths, Metaphors and More: An Interview with Eleanor Antin, which was then published in two parts on January 14th and 15th, 2009.

As winter literally plowed along it became necessary to tackle the bizarre nature of art competitions in What’s an Art Contest? The following week led to a post highlighting how contemporary artists are relying more and more on others to make their work. It Takes Two… or Two Hundred was inspired by the highly coordinated and detail-obsessed season 4 artist Mark Dion.

TwCA investigated the understated art of Robert Ryman and listened to him discuss his work live before writing the post, What Light? in February. Only a week later I came across a Scholastic Art magazine featuring five Art21 artists and was thrilled to see the periodical break free from it’s staple of Van Gogh, Cezanne and O’Keeffe. I love the artists, but don’t necessarily need classroom resources dedicated to them once a year. Working Without Warhol examined how Scholastic Art and other magazines like it can indeed incorporate contemporary art and artists meaningfully.

As spring began I was excited to share my work with students creating paintings driven by an investigation into what exactly is power? Power(ful) Painting highlighted the initial steps they took to create work about a big question and theme, which then allowed students to demonstrate skills they learned in previous lessons. Immediately following this unit, we made our way to the newly redesigned Museum of Art and Design to see Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. Classes were in the midst of changing gears and working with everyday materials to create works of art that were more than just another project about the principle of rhythm. Remixing. Transformation. highlighted the importance of this influential museum visit.

In April, the TwCA column began reporting on the work Art21 was doing with teachers at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies. The post Teaching with Film, Teaching with Objects was the first of these updates on the three-part workshop series titled Teaching and Learning with Contemporary Art, which concluded in May.

The spring also saw the Education and Public Programs team at Art21 travel to Minneapolis for the National Art Education Association’s annual conference, punctuated by our work at the Walker Art Center and with season 4 artist, Mark Bradford (see Burn Baby Burn). The conference itself provided many possibilities for the TwCA column, and I spent the following three weeks looking into questions posed at our panel discussion with Mark Bradford, Olivia Gude and William Crow. These questions are highlighted in the posts Getting Beyond, Authoritarian?, and Make Less Art.

It summer now. Time to relax and read. Two recent columns, Summer Reading Part 1 and Summer Reading Part 2, suggest a variety of works to inspire you as we get some collective distance from 2008-2009 and prepare for beginning all over again in September. Enjoy!

Weekly Roundup

A teaser image for the exhibition "Blood of Two: Matthew Barney and Elizabeth Peyton." Courtesy of Deste Foundation.

• Matthew Barney (Season 2) and Elizabeth Peyton have collaborated on a site-specific installation for the Deste Foundation in Hydra, Greece. Blood of Two is on view through September 30 in the foundation’s new project space, which used to be the local slaughterhouse. Read The Moment to learn more.

• Tonight at 7pm, Season 2 artist Do-Ho Suh will lecture at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.

• Sally Mann (Season 1), Kara Walker, Collier Schorr, Louise Bourgeois (all Season 2), Ellen Gallagher, Roni Horn (both Season 3), and Jenny Holzer (Season 4) are included in a mega display of works by women artists at Cheim & Read. The Female Gaze: Women Looking at Women opens June 25.

• Works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2) and Josiah McElheny (Season 3) are on view in the exhibition Universal Code at The Power Plant in Toronto. Timed to coincide with the International Year of Astronomy, the exhibition presents artists responses to cosmology and ideas of the universal in the current age of information. Continues through August 30, 2009.

• The Art Newspaper reports that nearly twenty bronze sculptures in the Tasting Garden (1998), a public art project by Season 4 artist Mark Dion, have been stolen. The garden was created for the inaugural Artranspennine exhibition organized by Tate Liverpool and the Henry Moore Institute.

• Art critic Christopher Knight of the LA Times has reviewed Hipnostasis, a collaborative video and multi-screen installation by Raymond Pettibon (Season 2) and Yoshua Okon at Armory Center for Arts in Southern California.

• Read Deborah Sontag’s extensive New York Times article about Yinka Shonibare (Season 5), poetically titled Headless Bodies From a Bottomless Imagination.

This Week’s Round-Up

James Turrell Museum (Photo: Florian Holzherr)

• On April 22nd, the collector Donald Hess opened the world’s first James Turrell Museum in Colomé, Argentina. The 18,084sf space is based on a plan created by Turrell himself, and showcases nine light installations representing five decades of the Season 1 artist’s career.  All works on display are drawn from the Hess Art Collection, Bern, Switzerland, in which Turrell is represented with 22 pieces.

• The Herb Alpert Foundation and California Institute of the Arts has announced the five recipients of the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts. They are Paul Chan, Rinde Eckert , John King, Reggie Wilson, and Season 2’s Paul Pfeiffer. Now in its 15th year, the $75,000 Award recognizes experimenters in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theatre, and visual arts.

• The New Yorkers opened last Friday at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen. As the press release states, the exhibition, like the Big Apple, is “difficult to map out.” The list of artists includes, among many, Agathe Snow, Peter Saul, Kostas Seremetis, Ryan Wallace, and Art21’s Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger.  The show runs through June 22nd.

• Season 4 artist Mark Dion lectures tonight at Portland State University, at the Shattuck Hall Annex. It’s at 7:30 and free!

• Oliver Herring’s solo exhibition Teens with Masks is up now through June 13 at Max Protetch.  The show includes a number of new photo-collage works by the Season 3 artist.

Weekly Roundup

Catherine Sullivan, "Triangle of Need," 2007. Multi-channel video installation. Collection of Miami Art Museum, Gift of Ella Fontanals-Cisneros.

• The Miami Art Museum recently acquired Triangle of Need, a video installation by Catherine Sullivan (Season 4). Her piece is on view at the museum through October 11.
• A full room installation by Season 2 artist Kiki Smith is included in the exhibition Space-Time at the National Glass Centre in the UK. The artist’s three-dimensional astrological star chart, with cut-glass stars and animals of the zodiac scattered across a night-blue paper carpet, titled Constellation, is on display through September 6.
• The Times Online (in association with Saatchi Gallery) is asking readers to vote for their favorite artists of the 20th and/or 21st century. At present, Art21’s Louise Bourgeois (Season 2) and Alfredo Jaar (Season 4) are included in the list of leading artists. The Top 200 will be revealed on May 25. Cast your vote now.
• On April 16, Hubbard & Birchler (Season 3) will lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The talk is the second in a series ssponsored by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership in conjunction with Confluence: Points of View on Buffalo Bayou, a public art project on Houston’s historic waterway.
• A site specific piece by Mark Dion (Season 4) has been added to the outdoor sculpture garden at the The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Antiquarian Book Shop (2008), the artist’s life-size curiosity shop, is filled with hundreds of books and collectibles from around the world. Learn more about the installation here.
• Chelsea visits Havana, an exhibition presented by Fundacion Amistad in conjunction with the 10th Biennial of Havana, features work by Season 2 artists Walton Ford and Matthew Barney, among others. The exhibition is part of the Bridges to Culture initiative, which uses the power of art to surmount the cultural, political and social boundaries between the United States and Cuba.

It Takes Two…. or Two Hundred

Production still from "Art:21" Season 4 segment featuring Mark Dion

Recently I saw the Mark Dion segment from Season 4 for the sixth or seventh time. I love the Dion segment. I was sharing the video with teachers in a small, informal workshop introducing ways of working with Art21 in the classroom. During the discussion, we talked about the fact that many, many contemporary artists rely on others, sometimes hundreds of others, in order to realize their work. On my way home that evening, I started thinking about the number of artists in Season 4 alone that rely on other people to make their work ready for public viewing and/or consumption. The total number? Fifteen out of the seventeen, at least, rely on others to bring their work full circle into the gallery, museum, or exhibition space.

I mention this fact because it came up in discussion more than once over the past week that the days of artists working alone in a studio, tortured with their ideas and feverishly slaving over canvas, are slowly coming to an end. Artists are collaborating more and more, and using teams to realize ideas that would be impossible to complete on their own.

In a few days, I plan to visit Allora and Calzadilla’s new exhibit/performance at Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea. The idea to cut a hole in a grand piano and have someone stand inside and play is one thing. Actually making it happen requires more than two artists with a beautiful idea. And without musicians (able to play the keyboard upside down, no less) performing on a regular schedule, their work would be a series of still photos and cheesy background music.

Students in art classes today are most often engaged with working on projects alone. Why do so many teachers resist collaboration? Is it solely the organizational challenges? We’re certainly aware of the benefits it offers to both students and ourselves. How can we overcome the fear of planning collaborative work to more realistically reflect contemporary practice?

Hunting with Mark Dion

Concerning Hunting, an exhibition of work by Season 4 artist Mark Dion, opens at Galleria Civica di Modena’s Palazzo Santa Margherita in Modena, Italy on February 1. The traveling exhibition expresses Dion’s interest in hunting in terms of the sensitivity of the hunter and the profound knowledge he has of nature. Dion’s work, writes curator Verena Gamper, is “entirely dedicated to the fascination of nature that turns man into a collector, a researcher and an adventurer. [His] installations, interventions, representations and photographs…appear most of all as a form of criticism of the careless and cruel relationship that man often has with nature.”

The exhibition includes five hunting blinds: The dandy hunter whose elegantly furnished blind is reminiscent of a noble hunting house; the librarian hunter who has put together his blind with maniacal care; the glutton hunter who shoots (and kills) with food in mind–game hangs from his ceiling and his walls are papered with nude images; and The Ruin, a blind where everything is abandoned or broken. The exhibition also includes six felt portrayals of animal prey, and Men and Game, a series of around 100 photographs of hunting scenes from different times and places that comprise a large wall installation. See images in the online gallery.

Concerning Hunting is on view through April 26, and accompanied by a bilingual catalogue, featuring critical texts by Dieter Buchhart, Verena Gamper, Martin Henatsch, Angela Vettese and Jacob Wamberg.

Rolling Up Our Sleeves

Since this column gets posted on Wednesdays (and believe me, I didn’t arrange it this way), it’s been my pleasure to contribute posts directly after the November 4th election (see Hope and Change) and today, after the thrilling inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th President.

Throughout President Obama’s speech, I kept thinking about ways we can teach students about being truly productive citizens- citizens that contribute, think critically, offer service, and teach others. It got me thinking about artists in the Art21 series who can help teach about these things in a variety of ways….

First, Krzysztof Wodiczko can certainly teach students that speaking out can not only be something done in a newspaper editorial or part of a speech, but it can also be a part of the art we create. Wodiczko helps voices literally project themselves and allows viewpoints to be shared in ways few artists approach.

Nancy Spero can teach about protest and history, and how protest can take many forms- somehow avoiding violence yet simultaneously picturing it.

Jenny Holzer offers students the opportunity to think critically about the text she uses in her work and then relate that to what it means to be a “good” or “productive” citizen. Her recent work with declassified documents can open up meaningful discussion about what citizens should know and be informed of.

Mark Dion can teach students about teaching others through art. Whether it’s work inspired by literature or installation inspired by natural elements, Dion shares with students that the work of contemporary artists can educate and inspire discussion about things such as sustainability, recycling, and preserving natural resources.

Lastly, I want to mention Robert Adams‘ photography. Through his quiet and intense pictures, students can reflect on the things we must do to save and reclaim the parts of our landscape that are devastated by greed and carelessness.

Have you used, or are planning to use Art21 segments and resources as part of your post-inauguration lessons? Please share them with us!

Pictured above: Jenny Holzer, “Benches”, 1989
Installation: Dorris C. Freedman Plaza New York, New York.

Mark Dion | Methodology

EXCLUSIVE: Mark Dion at his Pennsylvania home and studio.

Mark Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. Appropriating archeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates artworks that question the distinctions between “objective” (”rational”) scientific methods and “subjective” (”irrational”) influences.

SEE: More images, videos, and news for Mark Dion.

LEARN: Mark Dion is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Ecology 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 | Mark Dion, Costume Bureau, 2006. Photo by Chris Burke Studio. Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Steven Wechsler.

Darwin & Art in Edinburgh

Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic (2005). Courtesy The Species of Origin

The intersection of art and science isn’t commonly discussed in the art world. But one British art school, the Edinburgh College of Art, has been developing an intriguing project (The Species of Origin) that looks at new artistic and cultural understandings of the work of scientist Charles Darwin and his seminal book Origin of Species.

Next year marks Darwin’s bicentennial and for over a year the Scottish art school has been re-examining ideas about the development of life (i.e. evolution) that have revolutionized the world.

According to the website:

This project asserts the potential for contemporary art practice to re-imagine Darwin’s work within a current context, to draw out, in particular, some of the most significant ideas embedded in his thought and of others.

Some of the participating artists in this investigation that straddles the cultural and scientific worlds are Catherine Chalmers, Marcus Coates, Mark Dion (Season 4), Ellen Gallagher (Season 3), Andrea Roe and Alexis Rockman.

Mark Dion Wins 2008 Lucelia Award

Mark Dion is the 2008 winner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s prestigious Lucelia Artist Award. Given to an artist under fifty who has shown distinguished vision and achieved a substantial body of work, the award honored Dion (Season 4) for his prolific creativity and impressive production, which includes mixed-media installations, sculptures and public projects that explore the relationship between art, science and history through pseudo-scientific methods of investigation and display.

A selection panel of five independent jurors chose Dion from a nominee list that included Doug Aitken, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla (Season 4), Slater Bradley, Matthew Buckingham, Keith Edmier, Spencer Finch, Harrell Fletcher, Mark Grotjahn, Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2), Rachel Harrison, Zoe Leonard, Suzanne McClelland, Wangechi Mutu and Dana Schutz.

“The Lucelia Artist Award acknowledges Mark Dion’s tireless imagination and ongoing achievement as an artist and educator. His archeological digs and museum interventions celebrate the value of exploration and learning, and invite audiences to embark on their own journey of intellectual discovery. This approach, coupled with a prodigious commitment to visual creativity, has inspired a generation of artists and established Dion as one of the most innovative contemporary artists working today.”

Dion is the eighth annual winner of the $25,000 award, which is intended to encourage the artist’s future development and experimentation. Congratulations!