Expanding the Definition(s): Some Days Are Easier Than Others

Many thanks to those who have helped get the Teaching with Contemporary Art column off to a smooth start! Recently, a few friends and colleagues have mentioned (even e-mailed) about the fact that, well, while Season 4 of Art:21 has won quite a few prestigious awards, the selection of artists chosen can be difficult to transition into the classroom. As educators, how do we get our collective heads around teaching with Season 4 artists such as Mark Dion, Alfredo Jaar, Ursula von Rydingsvard and Laurie Simmons? These aren’t artists that lend themselves easily to K-12 or university-level curriculum, particularly if the course is production-based. How can artists like these, as well as artists such as Ann Hamilton (Season 1), Martin Puryear (Season 2), and Fred Wilson (Season 3) help us work with students in our classrooms?

First… they can help us redefine and expand on what art is and what it’s becoming in the 21st century. There aren’t too many neat little projects that fit perfectly with what some of these artists do, but the segments and related materials on art21.org help us work with students to consider new possibilities for subject matter and ways of working with traditional and non-traditional media. These segments can inspire writing in the classroom just as well as Elizabeth Murray may inspire students to paint in new ways. They can be the catalyst for spirited debate much like Trenton Doyle Hancock can act as a starting point for understanding cartooning or how artists develop/illustrate alter-egos. Mark Dion can teach about the relationship between art and ecology, as well as blurring the line between artist and curator. Alfredo Jaar can teach about public art and how contemporary art often needs a particular setting much like a great work of fiction. Ursula von Rydingsvard teaches how an artist today can create work that relates to landscapes, the human body and psychological states… sometimes simultaneously. And Laurie Simmons can teach that there is a difference between photographers as artists and artists that use photography as a tool.

While it’s hard to incorporate the ever-increasing number of artists that can meaningfully inspire and help guide students, it’s hard to NOT include artists that will help them open up definitions and engage in dialogue about what art is and what constitutes an artist to begin with. Bringing these artists into discussions and/or socratic seminars in the art classroom can have surprising and wonderful benefits. Is it easy? Never. Some days are easier than others. But it’s always worth it. I can tell you stories…..

Image: Untitled Hot Glue Drawing by Karyl DelMundo

U.S. Embassy Makes Olympic Rings

These big metallic tulips aren’t just going to be on view in Spain, where they are permanently installed along the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao’s riverside façade, above. An edition of Tulips by Jeff Koons, as well as new work by Art:21 artists Louise Bourgeois, Cai Guo-Qiang, Martin Puryear, and Maya Lin are included on the checklist of 18 contemporary Chinese and American artists that will on view when the massive SOM-designed American embassy opens in Beijing, just before the start of the 2008 summer Olympics. Many of the pieces are either new commissions or site-specific works purchased by the State Department. According to The Art Newspaper, the State Department calculates the budget it will spend on art based on a new building’s square footage, and therefore $800,000 will be spent on art for the Beijing project — the largest sum ever splurged on a new US embassy.

Walker, Puryear, and Marshall featured in Corcoran show

Those in the Washington D.C. area should take a moment to check out The American Evolution, an expansive show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on view through July 27. Works by three Art21 artists: Kara Walker, Martin Puryear (both Season 2), and Kerry James Marshall (Season 1) have all have been included in the Corcoran’s reexamination of the history of American art. The exhibition focuses on the evolution of five frequent themes in American art: money, land, politics, cultural exchange, and the modern world. The Corcoran has dug into their large collection of American artwork to illustrate how the definition of these concepts has shifted throughout the history of our country. Other artists in this show include Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn, and Gilbert Stuart.

You can find more information about this show and a full list of the artists involved here.

Martin Puryear retrospective at Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth

Through May 18, 2008, the traveling retrospective of work by Art21 artist Martin Puryear (Season 2), is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth and features nearly 45 large-scale sculptures made over the past 30 years of the artist’s career. Organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where the exhibition debuted last year, it will also travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

One of the most striking objects in the exhibition, Ladder for Booker T. Washington (pictured above) is part of Fort Worth’s permanent collection. Inspired by homemade ladders that Puryear saw in the French countryside while he was working at Alexander Calder‚Äôs studio, in 2003, Puryear commented to Forth Worth‚Äôs chief curator, Michael Auping:

“It just occurred to me that this would be an interesting project to try to do, to make a very tall or long ladder. For a long time I had been interested in working with a kind of artificial perspective through sculpture, which if you think about it is not so easy to do. With a ladder, a very long ladder, I could make a form that would appear to recede into space faster visually than it in fact does physically, by manipulating the perspective and exaggerating it by narrowing the parallel side pieces toward the top of the form.”

Ladder for Booker T. Washington has been one of Forth Worth’s most popular objects since it was installed for their grand opening in 2002. It was also recently included in Picturing America, a new arts education program launched by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Watch an Art:21 video about the work here.

On Tuesday, April 8, Auping will conduct a public conversation with Puryear. This event is free to the public.

2007: a brief recap

2007 was a landmark year for many Art21 artists. Apart from the accolades and prizes bestowed upon such artists as Kara Walker, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jessica Stockholder, Kerry James Marshall, and Cai Guo-Qiang, the multitude of exhibitions featuring Art21 artists reflect the pinnacle stages in many of their careers. While this is an achievement in its own right, we wanted to mention some of the other critical kudos recently published in print and online.

For Robert Ayers of ArtInfo.com, the two sculpture retrospectives organized by MoMA last year, Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years and Martin Puryear (on view through January 14), are the fourth and fifth best shows of 2007. “Having already visited [Serra’s] show several times, I actually cancelled all of my plans for its final day so that I could see it one last time,” writes Ayers. About Puryear he notes that the artist, “proves himself here a magician of forms that sit happily at the intersection of abstraction and representation and a poet of implied and suggested appearances and meanings.”

As previously cited in December, the top ten exhibitions of 2007 for Time’s Richard Lacayo include those of artists Richard Serra (#1), Vija Celmins (#3), Martin Puryear (#5), and Kara Walker (#6). For Howard Halle of Time Out New York, Serra’s show at MoMA is one of 2007’s best. “Serra put the me in heavy-metal postminimalism, but in this retro of curving labyrinthine slabs, he put you and I and just about everyone else in there, too.” remarks Halle.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the writers from 24 Hour Museum (to be renamed Culture24 this Spring) have their own opinions. Jon Pratty, 24 Hour Museum’s Editor and Head of Content, selected the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Tate Modern as his top pick. For Pratty, this show (on display through January 20) “was the first in a long time I have seen bringing to life the peculiar talent, skill and craft of a true artist. Everything in her show had been chosen by her, crafted by her, formed by her. It was really inspiring.”

On a more somber note, 2007 sadly marked the death of Season 2 artist Elizabeth Murray, who passed away on August 12. But as Verlyn Klinkenborg writes in the New York Times, “her paintings will be with us for years and years to come.”

“Martin Puryear: A Panel” - Tuesday at MoMA

Through a series of presentations and a moderated discussion, David Levi Strauss, scholar, critic, and chair of the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts; Judith Russi Kirshner, professor of Art History and dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago; Josiah McElheny, artist (featured in Art:21 Season 3); Terry Winters, artist; and others offer their perspectives on the work of Martin Puryear (Season 2). John Elderfield, MoMA’s Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture and organizer of the exhibition, moderates the discussion.

This event is held in conjunction with MoMA’s Martin Puryear exhibition.

Tickets ($10; members $8; students, seniors, and staff of other museums $5) can be purchased at the lobby information desk, at the film desk, or online via Ticketweb.

Serra, Celmins, Puryear, and Walker top TIME’s Top 10 Exhibitions of 2007

Major exhibitions of work by Richard Serra (Season 1), Vija Celmins, Martin Puryear, and Kara Walker (all Season 2) all made it onto TIME Magazine’s annual Top 10 Exhibitions list.

Serra’s seminal retrospective at MoMA clocked in at number 1, a show that, according to TIME, was the ‚Äúartworld thriller of the year.‚Äù Vija Celmins‚Äô drawings show at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (#3 out of 10), garnered similar hyperbole, as did Puryear‚Äôs current retrospective at MoMA (#5; TIME‚Äôs art and architecture critic/blogger Richard Lacayo proclaims Puryear ‚Äúone of the greatest living American artists‚Äù). Walker rounds out the Art21-related roster at #6, her current Whitney retrospective described as ‚Äúa fearless combination of righteous anger, ruthless clarity and fierce imagination.‚Äù

Read the full details here.

Martin Puryear exhibition videos at www.MoMA.org

MoMA features two videos of its current Martin Puryear show on the exhibition’s companion website. The first is a walk-through of the finished show, and the other provides a glimpse into the work as it is installed. Access both at http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/martinpuryear/flash.html (scroll over the “Atrium Installation” menu to access the videos). Puryear was a featured artist in Season 2 of Art:21‚ÄîArt in the Twenty-First Century.

Martin Puryear Retrospective Now at MoMA

A major exhibition of work by the artist Martin Puryear opened this month at MoMA. The retrospective features approximately forty-five sculptures following the development of Puryear’s artistic career over the last thirty years, from his first solo museum show in 1977 to the present day.

Puryear’s objects and public installations—in wood, stone, tar, wire, and various metals—are a marriage of Minimalist logic with traditional ways of making. Puryear’s evocative, dreamlike explorations in abstract forms retain vestigial elements of utility from everyday objects found in the world.

In Ladder for Booker T. Washington, pictured above, Puryear built a spindly, meandering ladder out of jointed ash wood. More than thirty-five feet tall, the ladder narrows toward the top, creating a distorted sense of perspective that evokes an unattainable or illusionary goal.

Martin Puryear was a featured artist in Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century Season Two.

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
New York, NY 10019

Exhibition on view November 4, 2007–January 14, 2008