Weekly Roundup

Sally Mann, "Candy Cigarette" from the series "Immediate Family", 1989. © Sally Mann. Courtesy: Gagosian Gallery.

In today’s roundup you’ll read about three kids in Switzerland, political defiance, Latin American photography, a map upstate, Opera House sails, the nature of light, and airborne balls:

• The Family, The Land is the first museum exhibition in Switzerland devoted to the work of Season 1 artist Sally Mann. The controversial photographs of her three children, published in the 1992 book Immediate Family, will be on view along with recent works, some of which picture her children in adulthood. The artist, according to the museum, “questions memory and the ephemerality of life,” or as Mann has stated, “what remains.” The Family, The Land is on view at Musee de L’Elysee through June 6.

• On March 11, a conversation between Julie Mehretu (Season 5) and Pat Steir (moderated by Susan Harris) will take place at the RISD Museum. Both artists will discuss the central role of drawing in their work, with a focus on issues specific to women artists of their respective generations. The event (free and open to the public) is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line, on view February 16 through July 3.

• Art21 artists Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Laurie Simmons (Season 4), Cindy Sherman, and Jeff Koons (both Season 5) are included in Your History is Not Our History — a group exhibition organized by artists David Salle and Richard Phillips for Haunch of Venison. The show features works produced in the 1980s by artists working in New York City. Phillips says, “We reject the sterilized view that is offered…and hope to offer a more accurate portrayal of the energy and experimentation that was permeating the city during that time.” According to Haunch of Venison, “Salle and Phillips believe that the best work of the 1980s shares a belief in the necessity to take forms, ideas, and content to their extremes.” The exhibition continues through May 1.

• Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line at Malmö Konsthall in Sweden brings together work by artists John Baldessari (Season 5), Simon Denny, Mario Garcia Torres, Thomas Kratz, Falke Pisano, and Ryan Siegan-Smith. The title is borrowed from a 1973 work by Baldessari in which the artist repeatedly documents his attempt to toss — with geometrical precision — three balls in the air. This piece has guided the entire exhibition, which explores an artist’s own self-awareness in the conceptual and pictorial dimensions of their work. Throwing Three Balls is on view through April 11.

• Works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2) and Alfredo Jaar (Season 4) are on view at the Museum of Latin American Art in the exhibition Changing the Focus: Latin American Photography (1990-2005). Comprising over 75 works created by 35 artists from the four regions of Latin America (Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean), Changing the Focus explores personally-charged response to local and global issues grounded in the contemporary Latin American experience. The exhibition, which continues through through May 2, is the first survey of Latin American photography and photo-based art generated between 1990 and 2005 to be presented in the Los Angeles area. Read the LA Times review.

• Living Under The Same Roof, an experimental exhibition at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), is organized by Curator-in-Residence, Ana Paula Cohen. Over the course of the exhibition, the CCS museum will in effect become a laboratory activated by the audience. Visitors are presented with a map of the entire Marieluise Hessel Collection — some 2,000 objects — developed in collaboration with Paris-based Brazilian artists Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain. The public is invited to select works from storage to be seen in a viewing room in the museum space. The works will then be displayed in a rotating system according to weekly requests. A series of related artist talks have been organized in collaboration with Bard College undergraduate studio arts professor and Art21 artist Judy Pfaff (Season 4). Speakers include Pfaff, Nicole Eisenman, Robert Longo, Matt Mullican, Martha Rosler, and Stephen Shore. View the complete schedule here.

• Works by Bruce Nauman (Season 1), Kara Walker (Season 2), and Paul McCarthy (Season 5) are included in the group exhibition Abstract Resistance, on view at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis through May 23. The show focuses on artists working from the 1950s to the present who have revolted against the aesthetic orthodoxies of their times. Starting with Michel Foucault’s assertion that “where there is power, there is resistance,” curator Yasmil Raymond argues that art made since World War II has been shaped by traumatic historical events in complex ways. Such art, she says, is “resistant to interpretation; it withholds information, it tends to evade identification, and certainly it protests interrogation.” Abstract Resistance proposes a new framework for art that is “aesthetically inventive, ethically engaged, and politically defiant.” In conjunction with the exhibition, the Walker will publish a collection of essays that will be available online in April.

• A new publication dedicated to the work of Season 3 artist Hiroshi Sugimoto has been released. Nature of Light focuses on Sugimoto’s recent investigations into the science and presentation of photography. Published to coincide with his upcoming exhibition at the Izu Photo Museum in Japan, it also offers detailed documentation of the artist’s architectural and landscape redesign of that space. For more information, visit the RAM Publication website.

• Laurie Anderson (Season 1) and her husband Lou Reed (of Velvet Underground) will co-curate this year’s Vivid Sydney in Australia. Previously called Luminous, the live performance festival is partly inspired by the illumination of the Sydney Opera House sails. This year’s festival (only the second in its history) includes large scale light installations and projections; music performances and collaborations; creative ideas, discussion and debate. Reed said: “We see Vivid as being a critical, high-value anchor event in Sydney’s calendar for years to come. Something that has been built and is owned by Sydney, [it] can’t be bid away and will drive those visitors and those dollars and that image of Sydney around the world for many years.” Vivid runs from May 27 to June 21.

• John Yau has written about the work of Robert Ryman (Season 4) for the Brooklyn Rail. Ryman’s exhibition Large-small, thick-thin, light reflecting, light absorbing is on view at Pace Wildenstein through March 27.

Weekly Roundup

Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher, "Better Dimension (detail)", 2010. Ink and tape on glass slide from an installation of silkscreened wood panels, four Hasselblad slide projectors, one 16 mm eiki projector, resin and steel projection screen, 106 × 252 × 268 in. Collection of the artist; courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York.

Biennials, cremated canvases, German faces, cashmere sportswear, sculptural tour de force, fashionable shoes, and an iPhone app comprise this week’s roundup:

• 2010: Whitney Biennial will open at the Whitney Museum of American Art on Thursday, February 25. Art21’s Ellen Gallagher (Season 3) is one of fifty-five artists selected by curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari for this year’s show. She was also included in the 1995 Biennial, and had a solo exhibition at the museum in 2005. This time Gallagher has partnered with Dutch artist Edgar Cleijne on a film installation that includes sculptural construction and silk-screened panels. Gallagher recently told The Providence Journal: “In some ways, it feels very similar to my first Biennial. I mean, it’s a huge honor for any artist to be invited to participate in a Whitney Biennial. In a way, it’s a little like being nominated for an Academy Award. You feel this wonderful sense of validation.” 2010 is on view through May 30.

• Shrew’d: The Smart & Sassy Survey of American Women Artists, a biennial invitational at the University of Nebraska’s Sheldon Museum of Art, focuses on the work of artists who question social norms of representation in art, pop culture and daily  life. According to the website, the survey “takes a critical feminist perspective on society’s mixed messages about assertive women, which describes what some contemporary women artists have had to become.” Carrie Mae Weems (Season 5), whose work is included in the exhibition, will lecture at the museum on March 30. Shrew’d continues through May 9. (Watch a slideshow here.)

• Pure Beauty is the largest retrospective exhibition ever mounted in Spain that is dedicated to Season 5 artist John Baldessari. The Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona display features more than 130 works created between 1962 and 2009. Curated by Leslie Jones, Jessica Morgan and Bartomeu Marí, the exhibition brings together many of the artist’s most relevant works, such as God Nose (1965); Cremation Project (1970), which marked Baldessari’s burning of all the canvases he had produced between May 1953 and March 1966, accompanied by its corresponding urn, commemorative plaque and death notice published in the San Diego Union newspaper; Commissioned Paintings (1969); and Baldessari Sings LeWitt (1972), featuring the artist singing every one of Sol LeWitt’s thirty-five conceptual statements to the music of different popular tunes, such as “Singing in the Rain” and the American national anthem. Pure Beauty (titled for one of Baldessari’s early works) will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• German Faces — an exhibition that draws from a long-term body of work by Season 2 artist Collier Schorr — is on view at Modern Art Gallery in London through March 20. Every summer for the past 18 years, Schorr has traveled to southern Germany, working in and around the small town of Schwäbisch Gmünd. She used the landscapes of artists Sander, Kiefer, Beuys, Baselitz and Chagall as a ground on which to play out imagined and inherited histories of Germany and her own Jewish heritage. Schorr’s images are further influenced by reportage, fictional films, and portrait photography. The installation of this project, completely arranged by the artist, includes photographs, drawings, collages and videos. Schorr was recently named “Artist of the Week” by The Guardian.

• Through April 23, works by Season 2 artist Maya Lin are on view at The Arts Club of Chicago. The exhibition includes wood constructed land formations and bodies of water, wire wall pieces, drawings, pastel rubbings, and a piece created specifically for the city. According to Chicago Art Magazine, “Maya Lin’s show is a sculptural tour de force, which will surely be counted among the year’s best.”

• Art21 artists Vija Celmins (Season 2) and Robert Ryman (Season 4) have inspired recent runway fashions. Payless ShoeSource tapped designer Lela Rose for a special fall shoe collection that debuted during New York Fashion Week. According to CNN Money, “The collection’s inspiration stems from the textural and ‘craggy’ landscapes of the moon and earth, and the graphite works by Vija Celmins featuring lunar floors and nighttime skies.” Huffington Post reports that designer Jason Wu’s fall collection was inspired by Ryman’s monochromatic canvases, resulting in minimalist “sportswear with a highly civilized twist and turn.”

• Works by Barbara Kruger (Season 1) and Lari Pittman (Season 4) are featured in the exhibition Disquieted at the Portland Art Museum. The show explores our social condition and how living artists have responded, challenging our preconceptions and exposing our vulnerability in turbulent times. The exhibition boasts its own iPhone application that includes video interviews with artists; commentary from curators and educators; and a map so visitors can easily locate featured works of art. Disquieted is on view through May 16.

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.

Landscape Revisited

Bernd and Hilla Becher. "Harry E. Colliery Coal Breaker, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania," 1974. 8 Gelatin Silver Prints, 16 x 12 in. each. Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Life is boring,” said Matthew Coolidge, talking about how most of us live in the uneventful “periods between the monuments.” Coolidge, the director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, an institute that explores often-overlooked landscapes, has made a career out of documenting everything “boring” and in-between—helipads, hidden oil wells, mile markers. He spoke at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Saturday as part of a day-long symposium. Called “What’s at Stake? New Topographics and the Man-Altered Landscape,” the symposium accompanied LACMA’s current exhibition of neutral, mostly black-and-white landscape photographs (though every landscape is marked by man-made structures) from the 1970s. These photographs render the boring parts of the US topography in a way that seems to presciently foreshadow today’s general wariness toward monumentality and obsession with sustainability.

Joe Deal, "Untitled View (Albuquerque)," Gelatin Silver Print, 1974. Courtesy George Eastman House.

LACMA’s New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape is actually the restaging of an earlier exhibition by the same name. The first New Topographics appeared at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, in 1975. Like its restaging, it included images by Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, Jr. None of these photographers aggrandized their geographical subjects. Instead, their intentionally composed photographs were coolly barren in ways that almost seemed radical.
Continue reading »

Chain Link Fence

Left: Karin Bubas, Lauren Crying (2009). Pastel on paper, 9.5 x 12.5 in. Right: Karin Bubas, Heidi Pouting (2009). Pastel on paper, 9.5 x 12.5 in. Both images courtesy Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver.

Some summertime offerings from the internets.

Pastels Not Dunzo: Joshua David Stein watches the cast of “The Hills” getting pastel’d.

“Chalk pastels are the soft focus of the art world — the Lifetime channel on paper — and for the characters of the notoriously high-definition, supersaturated “The Hills,” the medium is humanizing.”

Turn Your Back On Me: Jennifer Higgie turns her gaze on men who love women who turn away.

“She turns her back on you; this, it would seem, is her appeal. She’s been painted like this for centuries, and, more recently, photographed. Often she is naked, in a bathroom or bedroom, solitary, sleeping or day-dreaming….”

Pale Fire: Arthur Danto on Suzanne P. Hudson on Robert Ryman (Season 4) on everything.

“Suzanne P. Hudson’s Robert Ryman: Used Paint is the first book-length study of the artist’s achievement, and it comes with an interesting thesis, namely that his paintings exemplify what the author calls ‘embodied thinking,’ which I interpret to mean that his paintings are not the product of thought, but thought itself.”

Script Vicious: Lyra Kilston dissects Pablo Helguera’s panel freak-out.

“The play presents a public discussion between a cast of art world archetypes—curators, a collector, a thwarted artist and an arts administrator—as they meet to discuss the life and work of the artist Juvenal Merst, a character that Helguera named after the early second century Roman poet Juvenal, who is credited with developing the nascent genre of satire.”

Hey Papi: Ara Merjian takes to the work of Marco Papa.

“A hint of Joseph Beuys’s notion of ‘social sculpture’ perhaps echoes in Papa’s interdisciplinary, participatory affinities, as well as his investment in a kind of collective, symbolic catharsis around specific objects. But Papa steers clear of the specious naïveté that marked Beuys’s self-styled shamanism, with its quixotic faith in the autonomy of artworks.”

You Wish: Heike Munder assembles a list.

“‘Live in Your Head’ is a motto that could well serve to guide a revival of interest in processes, for the latter remain inconclusive, continually opening up new possibilities of interpretation. I should add the following keywords to my wish list: intellectually stimulating materials, forms and ideas.”

Soft Touch: Jorge Colombo’s iPhone finger painting archive. They’ve been the splash this summer, yes, but they’re just so nice.

Weekly Roundup

William Pope.L, Sketch for "Yard Reinvention" at Hauser & Wirth New York, 2009. Ink on paper. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth. © William Pope.L

• On September 23, Hauser & Wirth will open its first gallery in the United States with a reinvention of Allan Kaprow’s 1961 environment Yard by artist William Pope.L. Described as “a veritable mountain of black rubber auto tires and tar paper-wrapped forms through which visitors jumped and crawled,” the installation/happening will take place at 32 East 69th Street in Manhattan, the site of the work’s original creation and the address of the new Hauser & Wirth Gallery. Josiah McElheny (Season 3) and Sharon Hayes will each create their own versions of Yard at public sites in downtown Manhattan and Queens.

• Works by Kerry James Marshall (Season 1), Kara Walker (Season 2) and other artists were lost in a tragic fire at the home of collector Peggy Cooper Cafritz, who is said to have amassed one of the most important collections of African American art.

• A 2007 black-and-blue collage by Arturo Herrera (Season 3) is one of the many pieces from the collection of the defunct firm Lehman Brothers that will soon go on auction.

• The weekend of August 15-16, get a sneak peak of the publication Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra (Taschen Books) at the Norman Mailer Writer’s Colony and The Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Ford (Season 2) is being honored by both organizations. The popular edition release of the artist’s book will be available nationwide on September 10.

• Through August 21, works by Robert Ryman (Season 4), Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, and Robert Mangold are on view at Andrea Rosen Gallery. An exhibition of works on paper by John Currin runs concurrently.

• Vandalog and Juxtapoz both report that Alleged Press–the publishing company of artist, writer, musician, film director and independent curator Aaron Rose–will publish a Barry McGee (Season 1) monograph this Halloween.

• Also in October, works by McGee, Raymond Pettibon (Season 2) and Lari Pittman (Season 4) will make their way to Gagosian Gallery in New York City as part of the Stages exhibition, organized by cyclist Lance Amstrong.

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!

What Light?

Robert Ryman, "Initial," 1989. Oil on gator board with wood, 23 3/4 x 23 inches. Private Collection, New York. Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York.

On Monday I had the pleasure of attending the last edition of this season’s Art21’s Salon Series with Robert Ryman and Urs Raussmüller. Going into the evening, I kept thinking about the strange directions a conversation can take discussing a body of work that contains a healthy dose of white paintings. But through the conversation, Ryman and Raussmüller convinced the crowd in attendance, including myself, that they aren’t white paintings, they’re actually light paintings, and you can forget any Thomas Kinkade associations and/or wisecracks (but in case you really care, his latest work is called, Pinocchio Wishes Upon a Star. Oh yes!).

Ryman’s works are often about paint working with light on a surface and over time. It was an odd pleasure to hear two people talk about the simple joy of noticing and experiencing light through the physical product of Ryman’s efforts. In the art classroom, light is often a thing to be corrected, adjusted, fixed, sharpened, brightened or toned-down. Not nearly as often is it discussed as the subject itself. I began to wonder what paintings about light might look like in my own classroom. After recently teaching a unit where students created paintings about power, I reflected on the fact that I was, frankly, unprepared for some of the definitions of power depicted by my students. But paintings about light? Besides literal representations of bulbs and sunrises, abstract color experiments, and perhaps one or two obsessed with Kinkade, what could I expect? It’s a challenge to get some students to notice if a light is even on, much less admire the qualities of it.

But Ryman’s work, whether students love it or hate it (not to mention colleagues, spouses, friends), get the viewer to slow down. Questions will  arise about the kind of white, or whether it’s a flat white. Some will ask whether the work is symbolic or if it is simply about the paint itself and what it does to or with the eye. Many will question how anyone can find  white (or light) so fascinating in the first place. And just as Ryman considers the primary qualities of the paint and light, so should we consider posing these questions and offering these challenges to students.

So… what can paintings about light look like?

Robert Ryman | Possibilities

EXCLUSIVE: Robert Ryman installing Philadelphia Prototype (2002) at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Robert Ryman’s work explodes the classical distinctions between art as object and art as surface, sculpture and painting, structure and ornament–emphasizing instead the role that perception and context play in creating an aesthetic experience. Ryman isolates the most basic of components—material, scale, and support—enforcing limitations that allow the viewer to focus on the physical presence of the work in space.

SEE: More images, videos, and news for Robert Ryman.

LEARN: Robert Ryman is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Paradox 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 Ryman, Philadelphia Prototype, 2002. Collection Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Alexander Harrison Fund 2005.19a-j

VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Bob Elfstrom & Mead Hunt. Sound: Tom Bergin & Roger Phenix. Editor: Monte Matteotti. Artwork courtesy: Robert Ryman. Thanks: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

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.