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).
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.
Robert Adams | Light
EXCLUSIVE: Robert Adams in his Oregon home.
Robert Adams’s black-and-white photographs document scenes of the American West, revealing the impact of human activity on the last vestiges of wilderness and open space. An underlying tension in Adams’s body of work is the contradiction between landscapes visibly transformed or scarred by human presence and the inherent beauty of light and land rendered by the camera.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Robert Adams.
LEARN: Robert Adams 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 | Robert Adams, (Left) From Lookout Mountain, at Buffalo Bill’s Grave. Jefferson County, Colorado and (Right) Sunday School, a Church in a New Tract, Colorado Springs, 2007. © Robert Adams. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Doug Dunderdale. Editor: Steven Wechsler.
Robert Adams | Working Along Freeways
EXCLUSIVE: Robert Adams with photographs in his Oregon studio.
Robert Adams’s black-and-white photographs document scenes of the American West, revealing the impact of human activity on the last vestiges of wilderness and open space. An underlying tension in Adams’s body of work is the contradiction between landscapes visibly transformed or scarred by human presence and the inherent beauty of light and land rendered by the camera.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Robert Adams.
LEARN: Robert Adams 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 | Robert Adams, (Left) Untitled, Colorado, early 1970s; (Right) Adams County, Colorado, 1973. © Robert Adams. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Doug Dunderdale. Editor: Steven Wechsler. Artwork courtesy: Robert Adams. Thanks: Matthew Marks Gallery & Fraenkel Gallery.
Humor and Beauty
How can humor be used to say something serious?
Can unattractive or disturbing things be represented in a beautiful way?
These were just two of the questions posed at last week’s workshop for Rockland County, NY art educators. During an afternoon at the Garnerville Arts and Industrial Center’s GAGA Gallery, teachers viewed season 4 segments featuring Robert Adams and Allora & Calzadilla, worked with Season 4 Educator Guides, and learned about new Garnerville programs with James Tyler, curator of the GAGA galleries.
The workshop and discussion offered a glimpse into how contemporary artists work with redefining beauty (who can resist Allora & Calzadilla’s gesture for residents of Vieques to acknowledge a new anthem celebrating the return of their land or Adams’ passionate critique of our altered landscape?). It also brought together over two dozen art educators to think about and plan for incorporating contemporary art into a variety of curricula. Through the segments featured during the October 15th workshop, participants got a chance to reflect on how the art of today works not only with beautiful images, but also beautiful ideas set into motion- sometimes on film, sometimes through performance.
How is contemporary art shaping your curriculum this year vs. past years? How has Art21 played a role in your work?
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!
Badlands at Mass MOCA
Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape is currently on view at MASS MOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). The exhibition considers the traditions of landscape painting and picks up the thread with work that addresses contemporary ideas of exploration, population of the wilderness, land usage, environmental politics and the relativity of aesthetic beauty.
The artists in the show include, among others, Vaughn Bell, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Joe Smolinski, Nina Katchadourian, Alexis Rockman, Anthony Goicolea, and Season 4’s Robert Adams. In ways harking back to history and dismissing it altogether, each re-invents the genre of landscape painting while addressing current anxieties over the human-effected environment.
“From the earliest renderings on cave walls, man has been compelled to depict the world around him…Badlands comes at this critical time, an era when the world is more ecologically aware yet more desperately in need of solutions than ever before.”
The Billy Joels of Art Education
This past Sunday, the New York Times ran an article about Billy Joel. The article focused on the fact that, despite not making a new recording in 15 years, Billy Joel still manages to sell out Shea Stadium—twice—in less than two hours. It got me thinking about the Billy Joels of art education. You know, the artists that we may admire and respect in one way or another, but have gotten tired of teaching about over and over. Think “Uptown Girl.” A fun song when it came out, but a song that’s been beaten into submission by its radio-friendliness. It got me thinking about the “Stairway to Heavens”of the art classroom and immediately I came up with three: Monet, Dali, and Warhol. These artists now have the unfortunate distinction of often having their names linked with the word “project”. For example, “Oh you tried a Warhol-project with your class.”
I started to think about artists that might offer very different takes on what Monet, Dali and Warhol often help us teach. Here’s are some initial ideas:
- Juxtapose the work of Andy Warhol with Alfredo Jaar. Have students compare how both of these artists explore the idea of becoming desensitized to certain images. Students can create, juxtapose or layer contemporary images and symbols that, from their perspective, the public has become desensitized to.
- Compare the works of Salvador Dali and An-My Lê. How do both artists deal with the the theme of violence in ways that are similar and very different? Students can create a variety of work that explores violence in our society. One approach might ask students to create a surreal illustration or staged photograph based on world news images.
- View and discuss the work of Claude Monet and Robert Adams side by side. How do the landscapes painted by Monet compare with the photo landscapes by Robert Adams? What kinds of things does each artist want the viewer to think about? Students can then create a painting or series of photographs that explore landscapes (both literal and figurative) of personal importance.
Who are the Billy Joels of your own classroom? How can we use and incorporate contemporary art to give these artists a different, and perhaps more meaningful, place in our teaching?
Berliner Salon: The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and Alec Soth
Disclaimer: the following post is biased, self-indulgent, anecdotal and probably too long for a blog.
Yesterday I had the delight of seeing one of my all time favorite people for the first time in almost two years, the brilliantly poetic photographer Alec Soth. Alec was in Berlin for two openings, Dog Days, Bogotá at Wohnmaschine and Fashion Magazine, Paris/Minnesota at C/O Berlin, the latter of which was being presented in conjunction with the annual Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, given this year to Esko Männikkö. Alec had been shortlisted for the prize in 2006, which was ultimately rewarded to Art21 Season 4 artist Robert Adams, who then promptly donated the entire £30,000 cash award to a human rights organization.
I first came to know Alec when he was picked up by Gagosian Gallery, where I had recently begun working after graduating from a small liberal arts college in Vermont. The combination of a modest, laid-back Minnesota native and an idealistic and totally naïve Vermont transplant, both (relatively) new to the elite milieu that is Gagosian had the potential to be utterly disastrous. Fortunately, we somehow managed to survive his first exhibition at the gallery, despite the opening being pushed up by several months, not to mention technical difficulties at the printers and a slew of other behind-the-scenes obstacles.
Alec’s show, NIAGARA, was well received and the accompanying monograph, published by Steidl, won that year’s Golden Light Book Award. He is a Magnum Photos associate photographer and he was recently exhibited at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and yet, Alec remains one of the most humble, self-deprecating and genuine artists, with whom I have had the pleasure of working. “I was just in China and I’ve been wearing the same clothes for I don’t know how many days. I just want to hide,” he told me before leaving Wohnmaschine to give his speech at C/O Berlin. “Don’t worry,” I assured him, “wearing the same clothes for multiple days means you’re truly a Berliner.”
When addressing the audience that had gathered in C/O’s upper floor in honor of the Deutsche Borse, Alec stayed true to form, emphasizing that he had, in fact, been a Deutsche Börse “loser.” His works on view, a series of photographs depicting the world and personalities of couture fashion, are not emblematic of his signature style (typically melancholic portrayals of banal beauty and subtle humanity), which Alec also noted. “These are fashion photographs, but I’m not a fashion photographer. There are also advertising photographs, but I’m not an advertising photographer…and I’m here in Berlin, with stylish 20 year-olds everywhere I look, but as you can see,” he gestured towards his black t-shirt over black jeans, “I’m not really stylish, and so I’m not really a Berliner.”
The connection between Alec’s photography and the shortlisted nominees for this year’s prize is precisely the social conscious, however fragile, that Dog Days, Bogota exposes. Images of forlorn stray animals, vacant decaying living quarters and other intimate spaces, wide-eyed children and overcast ramshackle urban landscapes dominate the exhibition. Similarly, John Davies (UK), Jacob Holdt (Denmark), Esko Männikkö (Finland) and Fazal Sheikh (USA) all address these themes through their individual lenses, converging in an exhibition that speaks of the human spirit, as well as the pain that we, as a collective society, inflict on ourselves and on our natural habitat.
The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize will be exhibited at C/O Berlin through July 18. Dog Days, Bogota will be on view at Wohnmaschine until June 28. Both exhibitions are absolutely worth seeing and every photographer included should be accredited with contributing a powerful and honest voice to the international discourse of contemporary art and photographic imagery. Schoenes Wochenende.
Photography on Photography at The Met
Last September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a new gallery on the second floor dedicated exclusively to contemporary photographs. The second exhibition in this space, Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium Since 1960, opens to the public today.
This exhibition, organized by Doug Eklund, Assistant Curator in the Met’s Department of Photographs, includes Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3), Sherrie Levine, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Prince, Thomas Ruff, Vito Acconci, Kota Ezawa, Moyra Davey, Mary Wyse, and others. Malcolm Daniel, Curator in charge of the Department says, “This new selection [from the permanent collection] takes a narrower focus, showing how photographs since Conceptual Art have reflected on the medium itself in their work. With many more works by younger artists, the installation also provides more of a snapshot of where photography is at the moment.” Photography on Photography is on view through October 19, 2008.
Photographs began to enter the Met’s collection as early as 1928. Today their photography collection alone includes more than 20,000 works. A quick search through the Met’s online collection database returns names familiar to Art21 such as Ann Hamilton, William Wegman (both Season 1), Gabriel Orozco (Season 2), Robert Adams, and Laurie Simmons (both Season 4). Learn more about the Met’s photography department and its collection here.
