Mel Bochner, "No," 2009. Oil on canvas, 60 x 45 inches. Courtesy Marc Selywn Fine Art.

Los Angeles galleries are brimming with minimal, kind-of-conceptual abstraction at the moment — Paul Davis’s successions of hinges and wood and Joe Fyfe’s felt and muslin Motherwell spin-offs at ACME; Matt Connors’s posed expressionism and empty frames at Cherry and Martin; Leonor Antunes’s hanging brass triangles at Marc Foxx; or Lisa Williamson’s controlled outlines and understated installations at the recently closed David Kordansky exhibition. But of all these, it’s veteran Mel Bochner who makes the keenest impression.

Mel Bochner is obscenely smart. He has the pedigree and, when he wants to, the vocabulary of an academic. He has taught at the New School and Yale, and written about the “oddly circular history” of perspective and linguistics in Wittgenstein. But through forty-five years of making, he’s managed to keep his artwork visually crass, provocatively simplistic, and, as a result, wittily incisive. In his current exhibition at Marc Selywn Fine Art, a series of comfortably large, kinkily colored paintings run through sequences of synonyms. Visually staccato, the paintings look the way that  Charles Bukowski soundbytes sound.

Bochner, who has called himself a “belated beatnik,” had his first exhibition back in 1966, at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Then, like now, he was questioning the grammar of art. In a particularly memorable piece, he used word portraits to engage work made by his contemporaries–in Portrait of Eva Hesse, a slew of tactile-sounding verbs circle around the word “wrap,” which anchors the drawing. It’s an abstraction of an abstraction that pulls Hesse’s ideas out of the context of her work and yet it’s surprisingly accessible. Pared down to “wrap,” “limit,” “ensconce,” and “tie-up,” among other words, Hesse (or at least the Hesse represented by these verbs) seems like a spatially-obsessed poet who’s fixated on everything bodily, which is actually fairly accurate.

Since then, Bochner has done a variety of public works, written about Donal Judd and serialization for Artforum and, among  other ventures, begun a refreshingly whimsical series of drawing not too ingeniously derived from Roget’s Thesaurus.

Mel Bochner, "Be Quiet," 2009. Oil on canvas 60 x 45 inches.

A new wave of thesaurus paintings is on view at Marc Selwyn. These paintings, all of which have palettes that could have popped off Sunday school felt boards, are evenly populated with rounded, multi-colored letters (excepting articles, only a few words consist of just one color: “hush,” “tits,” “stuff,” “skin,” “sofa, “rich,” and “dead”). A term in the top left-hand corner always starts off the progression. Then a string of synonyms follow. Upon first reading, the synonyms seem absurd, and, after a closer read, they still seem absurd. Can you really move from “lazy,” to “torpid,” to “lumpen,” to “proletariat”? If so, it explains that illegible genre of undergraduate writing in which, afraid of using any word more than once, students offer up mouthfuls of synonym-speckled sentences.

Mel Bochner, "Fucked-Up," 2009. Oil on canvas, 60 x 45 inches. Courtesy Marc Selwyn Gallery.

One of Bochner’s paintings, titled Fucked-Up, feels more like prose poetry that could have inspired Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son than a progression of terms. It has a bold orange ground and just enough pleasingly placed, complimentary blue letters set up against almost-too-many orange-yellow letters that disappear against the background. The painting reads, “Fucked-up And/Far From Home,/In Some Deep/Shit, On Queer Street, One Tit/In A Wringer,/Up To Your/Ass In Alli-/gators, Your/Dick Caught In A Zipper.”

According to his student and fan Chuck Palahniuk, writer Tom Spanbauer uses the metaphor of a horse when he teaches minimalism:

“The first thing you study is what Tom calls ‘horses.’ The metaphor is–if you drive a wagon from Utah to California, you use the same horses the whole way. Substitute the word “themes” . . .  and you get the idea. . . . The next aspect, Spanbauer calls ‘burnt tongue.’ A way of saying something, but saying it wrong, twisting it to slow down the reader.”

This approach is funny, because it suggests that tightly controlled consistency, coupled with an calculated element of surprise, is what allows language to work effectively on a reader. It’s also funny because it might be true.

Bochner works in the realm of one-horsed wagons and burnt tongues. He has a single vehicle–pithy, clear-cut terms and symbols–which, presented in a slightly unexpected, heavily visual way, have allowed him to drive through forty-plus years of art history and make a point that is starkly straightforward: language isn’t transparent and, if it ever brings you to meaning, it takes a lot of detours on the way.

Judy Pfaff at work, Art21 production still, 2007

I was recently blown away after seeing a few of our Art21 Educators in action and thought it would be a good time to talk about the best kept (or ignored) secret in education: visiting our colleagues to learn new strategies, get new ideas, and gain perspective on what’s working when we teach. You see, 95% of the time, maybe more, teachers are busy teaching, preparing to teach, or performing a variety of tasks related to just being an educator in general. Visiting our colleagues in their classrooms is often not very high on the priority list. Having reflective conversations about these visits can be as rare as a lunar eclipse. But some of our best professional development is taking place in the classrooms right next door to us! Sharing best practices is something that takes organization, time, and effort, but over the past nine years I have learned repeatedly that this is time well spent and absolutely worth the extra effort. It’s worth taking the risk to ask that veteran teacher if we can come in to check out the project everyone is talking about. It’s worth opening ourselves up to feedback when we ask a colleague to visit our classroom. Some of the most meaningful learning experiences in my career have occurred in the classrooms of colleagues, or over coffee and conversation after being mesmerized by a lesson I just saw, especially when it comes to teaching about contemporary art. Let’s face it, reading about good teaching, or just daydreaming about it, is one thing. Seeing good teaching in action is quite another. Sort of like feeding our own fire.

John Baldessari, "Beach Scene/Nuns/Nurse (with Choices)", 1991 courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Within the first few pages of the season 5 Educators’ Guide, readers are asked to think about the power and influence of juxtaposing images in order to give the viewer very different experiences. Working with artists like John Baldessari, a few of my classes recently began a unit to explore how juxtaposition has the power to send visual messages, tell stories, and even share qualities about ourselves.

Over the course of a few days, I asked students to bring in and collect a variety of images they would like to combine in a single artwork. After assembling the images and cropping them a bit, I asked them about the images they selected and what these images said about their interests, their habits and even their passions. One student remarked that the images he selected basically described his obsession with money. Another described her images as being primarily connected to food, which is something finds comfort in. Still another described his images revolving around his work related to environmental projects.

As students assemble their works this week, we will also begin moving into some small-group research exploring how juxtaposition can be used to send messages simply by placing certain images side-by side.

Nancy Spero "Masha Bruskina / Gestapo Victim" 1994, courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York

Students will be asked to work with partners to research and collect images (fine art reproductions, advertisements, posters, etc.) that send specific messages through juxtaposition. Along with viewing works by John Baldessari, we will be also be looking into artists such as Yinka Shonibare MBE, Nancy Spero, Kerry James Marshall, and Eleanor Antin.

Creating high quality works of art that are technically proficient is always very satisfying for both teachers and students, but when we have the opportunity to make students more aware of the images they see, and how they relate to larger themes and broader issues, we are teaching students not only how to create works of art but also how to interpret them.

Image courtesy of Esopus magazine.

This is part two of my interview with Esopus editor, Tod Lippy (click here for part one). In addition to the interview, readers may also want to check out “The Assembled Picture Library of NYC”, a collaborative exhibition and workspace environment organized by artists Robin Cameron and Jason Polan. The exhibition will provide free and open access to hundreds of images from the collections of Cameron and Polan. Visitors are invited to come in during gallery hours (Mon/Tue/Thu from 12-5pm) and use these images—which include manuscripts, advertisements, prints, original drawings, and more—as raw material for their own artworks, which will be displayed on the walls of Esopus Space for the length of the exhibition. Polan and Cameron will also create a book featuring visitors’ artworks, The Assembled Picture Library of New York Book, that will be available at the closing reception on March 18th.

Joe Fusaro: Esopus is a tremendous resource on many levels. Can you talk about the magazine’s relationship with educators? Have you had experience with teachers using the magazine in their classrooms, and if so, how?

Tod Lippy: I know that Esopus has been used as an educational tool by a number of our subscribers who happen to be teachers. One issue in particular has been especially popular in that regard: Esopus 6: Process, which featured evidence of the working methods of a number of different creative people — work journals from the late Christopher Isherwood relating to the writing of A Single Man; a photographic documentation of the making of a dry-point etching by the artist Sylvia Plimack Mangold, the comic Demetri Martin’s joke diaries, and even a paper model (which our readers could build from pre-cut forms included in the magazine) of a dodecahedron offered by the mathematician John Conway, who always employs model-building when working on a new theorem. But every issue of the magazine features content — such as our “Modern Artifacts” series produced in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art Archives — that offers learning experiences for readers of all ages.

Since the editorial tone of the magazine is deliberately neutral — we try to avoid critical jargon that might be off-putting to more general readers — and since the artists’ projects in the magazine rarely have any introductions or explanations preceding them, I guess one could argue that the magazine is actually neglecting the opportunity to teach its readers about the meaning of contemporary art (much of which, of course, can feel oblique to people lacking art degrees).  But to tell you the truth I think the experience readers have with the work in the magazine, which they are forced to approach on their — and its — own terms, may end up being a deeper one in many cases.

Incidentally, I think that perhaps one of the best things Esopus has to offer younger readers, particularly in this era of publishing, is an essentially commercial-free environment. I’ve spoken at a number of high schools and colleges about the magazine, and when I deliver lectures I bring along a Powerpoint presentation during which I ask for a show of hands from the audience as I project photos of spreads from current magazines. I ask them to raise their right hands when they recognize an ad, and their left hands when they see editorial content. I start with obvious choices — a Nike advertisement, a page from The Talk of the Town in The New Yorker — but it’s amazing how quickly confusion sets in when I show them an “advertorial,” or a paid-for “special supplement” that apes the look and feel of the particular magazine. Advertising is so pervasive in every nook and cranny of our culture that it really isn’t noticed anymore, and I think that’s problematic, especially for young people who should know when they are being sold something.

Esopus 6: Process

JF: Have you been under pressure at certain points to include advertising for one reason or another?

TL: Not really, no.  The only entity in the magazine world that typically applies pressure regarding advertising is the publisher, which in this case is the Esopus Foundation. And the fact of the matter is that very few smaller circulation art magazines make any kind of significant revenue from ad sales anyway. So at this point it wouldn’t really make financial sense to open up the magazine to advertising.

JF: I have asked students to draw similarities between ideas and artists in specific issues or perhaps create lists of traditional and non-traditional media used to create the work in a given issue. Do you have any particular advice for those who might want to teach with the magazine or get more involved with Esopus outside of the magazine itself?

TL: I think (at least I hope) the magazine offers students and teachers a way to access the efforts of creative people in a very direct manner (as discussed earlier, without critical or commercial interruption), which ideally opens them up to different ways of looking at the world. I also believe that because Esopus is so devoted to its materiality, it raises some interesting questions about why printed matter can still offer a unique experience to readers that can never be replicated on the internet. It’s not that it’s necessarily better or worse than the experience of reading or viewing work online, but it is probably worthwhile to consider exploring the meaning of that very physical relationship with younger people, who have much less of a “history” with it.

As for going outside of the magazine, we now have an exhibition and performance venue in Greenwich Village called Esopus Space and we’ve been thrilled to see a number of students showing up for both exhibitions and for our series of lectures, screenings, concerts, and the like. One plan we hope to implement in the near future is to institute a series of workshops for high school students in the area, who will be invited to visit the space, get a tour of whichever exhibition is up at that time, and also learn more about Esopus and the magazine publishing in general.

William Kentridge, Drawing for the film 'Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old (Soho and Mrs. Eckstein in Pool)', 1991. Charcoal and pastel on paper, 47 1/4 x 59 in. Collection of the artist. © 2010 William Kentridge. Photo: John Hodgkiss, courtesy the artist.

With 19 bits and bites below, this week’s roundup is a whopper:

• Five Themes, the traveling survey exhibition of work by Season 5 artist William Kentridge, has landed at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition underscores the inter­relatedness of Kentridge’s various disciplines and mediums — drawing, print, animated film, theater models and books. The exhibition is organized chronologically and in five primary themes that cut across his artistic output: “Occasional and Residual Hope: Ubu and the Procession,” “Thick Time: Soho and Felix,” “Parcours d’Atelier: Artist in the Studio,” “Sarastro and the Master’s Voice: The Magic Flute,” and “Learning from the Absurd: The Nose.” The New York installation of Five Themes has been expanded to include 38 prints from the MoMA’s collection. The exhibition is on view through May 17.

• On March 8 at 7pm, Kentridge will perform his lecture/theatrical monologue/installation, I am not me, the horse is not mine, at MoMA. (According to museum press materials, the event is already sold out.) The piece is based on the short story The Nose (1837), by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, which “follows the travails of a pompous Russian bureaucrat who wakes one day to find his nose has escaped his face and assumed greater clout than he.” In this solo performance, Kentridge combines narration, video projection, and a vocal and instrumental soundtrack. I am not me, the horse is not mine is part of an extensive body of work Kentridge has developed in preparation for his production of Dimitri Shostakovich’s The Nose, premiering at New York’s Metropolitan Opera on March 5.

• On March 12 at 7pm, the New York Public Library, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera, will host a public conversation between Kentridge and Paul Holdengräber, the Director of Public Programs for The Research Libraries. Read more about the program and purchase tickets here.

• In conjunction with all of the above, Dieu Donné, a non-profit space in New York City that focuses on the hand papermaking process in contemporary art, presents a new limited edition book of 18 watermarked images and text created by Kentridge. Sheets of Evidence was, according to the website, conceptually designed to reveal nothing at first glance. “The viewer is encouraged to delve deeper and quite literally look beneath the surface, allowing light to reveal the subtle images and text hidden in the white sheets of handmade paper…Through the use of the watermark technique the artist continues his exploration of light and perspective, and like his films these invisible drawings are revealed only when illuminated from behind.” The exhibition will also feature two earlier projects created in collaboration with Kentridge: Thinking in Water, a suite of three works; and Receiver, a limited edition book published in 2006, which features twenty-three etchings, photogravures, and dry points by Kentridge and seven poems by the Nobel Laureate poet Wislawa Szymborska. Sheets of Evidence closes March 27.

• On March 3, the Manifest Equality project will open a one-week pop up gallery in the center of Hollywood. The exhibition brings together international and local artists in “a call to present art that unites art, activism and the message of universal equal rights into a memorable multi-media moment.” Participating artists include: Barry McGee (Season 1), Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Harvey Pekar, Karen Kimmel, Robbie Conal, Ron English, Tierney Gearon, Clare Rojas, and others. Manifest Equality specifically responds to “the growing resistance to equal rights for the LGBT population” and seeks to “raise visibility for the grass roots efforts to ensure full Equal Rights to LGBT Americans.” Follow the Manifest Equality blog here.

• On March 5 at 5pm, Ida Applebroog (Season 3) will sign copies of her new monograph Monalisa, published by Hauser & Wirth. The event is part of INDEPENDENT, a hybrid model and temporary exhibition forum, conceived by New York gallerist and founder of X Initiative, Elizabeth Dee, and gallerist Darren Flook, from Hotel, London. Monalisa features an illustrated essay by critic and art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson and a photographic study of the Monalisa house by Abby Robinson.

• For the annual week of New York City art fairs, Galerie Lelong will present Sheela-Na-Gig at Home, an installation by Season 4 artist Nancy Spero. First created in 1996, the piece displays Spero’s “dark humor and interests in the female experience and the grotesque” and alludes to “women’s work.” Figures of Sheela-Na-Gig are repeated and interspersed with feminine lingerie and hung on a clothesline. Placed on the floor is a television monitor showing the artist hanging the drawings and clothes. Spero conceived Sheela-Na-Gig at Home as an “instructions” work that could be installed by anyone, similar to Fluxus and Conceptual works. This is the first time the work will be presented in New York since the year of its creation. Sheela-Na-Gig at Home will be on view March 3-7 at the Park Avenue Armory.

• Season 2 artist Maya Lin has received the National Medal of Arts, an annual award managed by the National Endowment for the Arts. Chairman Rocco Landesman said the winners represent “the breadth and depth of American architecture, design, film, music, performance, theater and visual art.” Lin’s latest project, What Is Missing?, was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal and on CNN. On April 22, her website www.whatismissing.net will go live, and a companion video will screen in Times Square.

• Three sculptures and 29 drawings by Louise Bourgeois (Season 1) are currently on view in Seoul, Korea at Kukje Gallery. Les Fleurs, Bourgeois’ fourth solo show at the gallery, focuses on Bourgeois’ interest in drawing corporeal and psychological subjects such as nature, motherhood and women. The artist has chosen the title to “speak to her adoption of the flower and women as symbols for vitality, desire and sexuality.” Les Fleurs is on view through March 31.

• Season 5 artist Jeff Koons (whose personal art collection was featured in the New York Times over the weekend) has curated an exhibition of work by Ed Paschke for Gagosian Gallery. Koons was Paschke’s assistant in Chicago in the mid-1970s while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschke would prove to be an important mentor and formative inspiration for the young artist. The exhibition includes loans from public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad, as well as rarely seen works from the Ed Paschke Foundation. Read more about the show here.

• The Ashville Art Museum has opened the exhibition Limners to Facebook: Portraiture from the 19th to the 21st Century, which explores the persistent desire to capture images of self and others. The multimedia exhibition includes formal portraits, self-portraits, portraits of animals, and portraits of friends or models. In addition to photographs by Season 1 artist William Wegman, the show includes an image of Season 1 artist Laurie Anderson taken by Annie Leibovitz. Limners to Facebook closes July 18.

• For the March issue of Modern Painters, Anderson was commissioned to visit artist Marina Abramovic and discuss the recent evolution of performance art. Abramovic’s retrospective exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York on March 14. Marina Abramovic and Laurie Anderson: Wise Women is available online. (On an unrelated note, The New York Observer recently reported that Anderson has been appointed to P.S.1’s Board of Directors.)

• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas has acquired a work by Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall for their collection. The museum describes the piece: In Our Town [1995], Marshall presents a tidy vision of suburbia not unlike Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play of the same title – apron-clad mother, cookie-cutter homes, two kids and their dog – and then undercuts it with the tense expressions and postures of the children in the foreground. Yellow ribbons are wrapped around most of the trees, suggesting war or other tragedy beyond the confines of the neighborhood…Floating above the image, heralded by bluebirds bearing ribbons, the title of the work calls into question who belongs in this American idyll.” Our Town will be included in Kerry James Marshall, a retrospective exhibition opening May 8 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

• On March 5 at 6pm, the Salina Art Center in South Santa Fe will host a public talk by Marshall. Titled John Brown’s Body: The Representation of Black Bodies as Revolutionary Gesture, Marshall’s presentation will explore his ongoing investigation of African American identity and culture in the United States.

• On March 5, the Brooklyn Museum will host a free open house for teens in conjunction with Sojourn, the solo exhibition of works by Kiki Smith (Season 2). The event, planned by teens working at the museum, offers hands-on activities from 4:30pm until 7pm. To RSVP call (718) 501-6588 or e-mail teen.programs@brooklynmuseum.org.

• In conjunction with the exhibition Contemplating The Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum, Harvard physicist Lisa Randall, Spanish composer Héctor Parra, and Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie have collaborated on Hypermusic: Ascension, a new site-specific monodrama. The piece “inverts and renovates the genre of opera with an experimental score suggesting the expanding reality of a fifth dimension.” Hypermusic will debut in the museum’s rotunda on March 11 at 6:30pm.

• Reverend on Ice (2005) by Yinka Shonibare MBE (Season 5) is on view at the National Gallery of Victoria. According to the Brisbane Times, this three-dimensional rendition of Skating Minister, an 18th-century painting by the Scottish artist Henry Raeburn, is placed in the 18th-century galleries to encourage visitors to “think about the migration of ideas and culture across boundaries, from the political to the historical.”

• Season 3 artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has been awarded a 2009 New England Art Award. The awards are organized by the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research to honor the best art made in New England and exhibits organized in 2009. The winners are picked by some 1,880 voters from across the region. In each category there are two winners — the critics’ choice and the people’s choice. Wodiczko won the people’s choice award in the category for New Media.

• Visit Bostonist.com to read about the public conversation between Roni Horn (Season 3) and John Waters that took place at the ICA, Boston a few weeks ago. Horn’s retrospective is on view at the ICA through June 13.

Image courtesy of Esopus magazine.

Back in 2004, I was lucky enough to be introduced to Esopus magazine at a silent auction being held during a Mass MoCA fundraiser. Don’t ask me how, but my wife and I were able to bid on (and somehow afford when we won) a package that included a signed copy by every single artist and author in the very first issue of Esopus. At the time, I wasn’t as familiar with Beth Campbell or Christopher Durang, but I immediately loved their contributions. I was intrigued by the Richard Tuttle piece and had no idea what to make of Alex Shear’s work. And these were just four of the contributors!

Since then, I have managed to devour every issue at a leisurely pace (Esopus is published twice a year), been introduced to many new artists, and reintroduced to artists and writers I thought I knew. I have found ways to utilize Esopus as a teaching resource in the classroom and have shared it with many colleagues who have been impressed with the way the magazine simultaneously feels like a periodical and a group exhibit you hold in your hands.

This week, Teaching with Contemporary Art is pleased to present part one of an interview with Esopus editor, Tod Lippy, conducted via e-mail over the past month:

Joe Fusaro: What’s the story behind Esopus magazine? It’s certainly not a “regular” art magazine. As a matter of fact it’s more like a work of art that operates in a magazine-format and schedule. How did you get started?

Tod Lippy: I founded Esopus in 2003. I started it mainly because I had had a fair amount of experience in editing special-interest magazines and I wanted to take a different approach in order to create a magazine that would reach a wider audience. The idea was to come up with something that was very multidisciplinary in form and content. We have contributions from contemporary artists and filmmakers, writers, poets, musicians – a CD is included in every issue – and the idea was to avoid the kind of ghettoization that often comes with specialization in creative disciplines. If you go to a Barnes and Noble newsstand, you’ll find an Art section, and a Literature section, and a Film section, and a Design section—the idea was to somehow incorporate all of these in one magazine in order to attract a broader readership. There were several other ideas behind the founding of the magazine, but probably the most important one was that I didn’t want to include any advertising. I feel like I’m constantly fighting with advertisers when I’m going through my favorite magazines—particularly these days, when editorial and advertising are so hard to distinguish from one another—and it seemed like it was worth a shot to try to do a magazine that literally had nothing in it that was for sale.  So, in order to do that, I created a non-profit entity, the Esopus Foundation Ltd. We’re a 501(c)(3) and we depend on contributions from foundations and individuals to make up for the money we lose from not being able to count on advertising revenue which, as you probably know, is very important in the magazine publishing world.

JF: Did you also set out to create a magazine which functions as a work of art in itself? Because of the interdisciplinary nature of Esopus it also feels like purchasing a piece of art. There are things to unfold, pull out, and listen to.

TL: I can’t say that I explicitly set out to make something that functioned like a work of art.  I think that was probably a natural offshoot of my wanting to stay as invisible as possible as a designer. Most magazines have a very rigorous grid structure — an extreme example of this would be, say The New Yorker — where every article fits into a very recognizable format: Columns are generally the same width, headline and body typefaces are consistent, and artwork tends to be “framed” in relation to the composition of the page. I actually love The New Yorker and its look but that’s not what I was going for with Esopus. I wanted everything that appeared in the magazine to work visually on its own particular terms rather than conforming to a “house style” — that way, I hoped, each article or project would feel less mediated, and this would provide a more authentic experience for our readers. The idea was to give them the sense that they were flipping through a box of artifacts, each slightly different from the one before it.  This approach, I think, encourages that interaction you mentioned, which is so important to me and to the mission of the magazine. The less passive our audience feels, the better (for them and us)!

Image courtesy of Esopus magazine.

JF: Describe some of the challenges you face as you design and organize each issue.

TL: One of the biggest challenges is gathering content — each issue usually contains approximately 25 contributors (split between musicians for the CD and artists, writers, etc. for the magazine), and securing contributions from, and then keeping in contact with, all of these (typically very busy) people can present its difficulties. Usually I will start an issue with three or four definite contributions, and from there, it becomes easier and easier to fill in the blanks for the rest. For instance, if two artists are contributing artists’ projects and they both happen to be, say, photographers, I will obviously seek out a third who can contribute drawings or paintings. As the issue comes together, some semblance of a theme usually emerges. Although I don’t use it to identify the issue in any kind of formal way (our issues aren’t themed; only the CD is), it does tend to help the whole project coalesce in my mind. After editing, the design of the issue is the last thing I do before the magazine goes to press. As I mentioned before, in many cases it’s simply a matter of taking whatever an artist has given me and placing it in the magazine as is; at other times, there is more give-and-take between the contributor and myself. The key to all of this is a direct relationship between the two of us — one of my golden rules is that I never deal with people through their handlers (agents, publicists, gallerists, etc.), as it tends to lead to misunderstanding, confusion, and worse. So I will go back and forth with each contributor until they are happy with their piece Everyone always gets a chance to approve a final layout before we go to press. This whole process usually takes about 4 months.

Of course the other challenge — always — is financial. And that involves not only fundraising and creative thinking to cut costs but also aggressively seeking in-kind donations from paper companies, suppliers, and service people.

Part two of this interview will be published next week in the Teaching with Contemporary Art column.

Do-Ho Suh. "Who Am We? (Multi)," 2000. Four-color offest print on paper, 25 sheets each: 24 x 26 inches. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin Gallery.

Why art school? Why now? Why does it matter?

“It wasn’t till I got to art school that I really understood how art can connect you through human history and the type of reservoir that it could be.” (Jeff Koons)

“I wanted to cause trouble. And that caused me trouble in graduate school, because by that time I had figured out that I wanted to be on the edge, original, avant-garde. And that meant going against the status quo.” (Mary Heilmann)

Open Enrollment, the newest weekly column on the Art21 Blog, chronicles the experience of graduate school via the perspective of current students. As MA and MFA degrees become ever more the norm for the professional training of artists, educators, and administrators alike, Open Enrollment functions as a time-sensitive journal, offering readers a birds-eye-view of the challenges, rewards, puzzles, and ontological questioning that a graduate education engenders.

Each semester, a selective and diverse group of students (6 max) from accredited graduate programs, as well as students studying at non-traditional institutions (temporary schools, artist’s educational projects, intensive residency programs, etc.), will take up residence on the Art21 Blog. The roster of contributors will grow over time, providing a cross-section of international venues and pedagogical approaches. While chronicling one’s own practice is encouraged in the context of larger concerns, this column is not a forum or vehicle for narrowly promoting one’s own work. It is intended to portray, through both personal examples and larger inquiries about the pursuit of higher education, the diversity of studio and critical academic experiences in art school today.

Requirements
Candidates must be:

• currently enrolled in an accredited art school at the graduate level in one of the following disciplines: studio (painting/drawing, film/video, sculpture, photography, new forms, etc.), art history, arts administration, curatorial studies, visual and critical studies, or equivalent; OR…
• currently studying in a non-traditional academic environment (in the spirit of The Public School, Bruce High Quality Foundation, the New Museum’s Night School, unitednationsplaza, etc.); OR…
• currently undertaking a post-graduate residency program (Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, The MFAH CORE Program at the Glassell School of Art, Rijksakademie, etc.); AND…
• committed to contributing at least 3 blog posts over the course of one 15-week semester.

Writing is contributed on a voluntary basis to start, with the capacity for growth—with demonstrated enthusiasm, high quality writing, and commitment—into a paid position.

How to apply
To apply, send a letter of interest, 2 writing samples (blog writing preferred), and a draft of your first post for Open Enrollment. Be sure to address at least one of the following questions in your application (to be further explored in the column itself):

• Why did you decide to do pursue additional education?
• What does your learning experience look like, on both micro and macro levels?
• Does your school have a visiting artist program? How do regular encounters or interactions with professional artists impact your own studio and academic practice?
• Have you had any experiences with radical pedagogy? What were they? What does it mean to you?
• How does your school interface with local arts institutions in your community?
• Is art school relevant? How or why not?

Send materials via email only to:

Kelly Shindler
Director of Special Projects, Art21
blog [at] art21 [dot] org

Deadline: Friday, March 5, 2010.

Mike Kelley, "Educational Complex," 1995. Synthetic polymer, latex, foam core, fiberglass and wood, 51 x 192 x 96 inches. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee 96.50. Photo by Geoffrey Clements, photograph copyright © 1998: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Margaret Kilgallen, Installation view at UCLA / Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 2000, Courtesy Deitch Projects, New York

Teaching with Contemporary Art is taking a break this week in order to complete special two-part interview with Esopus editor, Tod Lippy, which will be published here on the Art21 blog starting next Wednesday. Stay tuned for this unique look into a very, very distinct art magazine that has wonderful potential for art educators.

Also…. If you are a K-5 art educator and are interested in sharing how you work with contemporary art in your classroom, please e-mail me at: joe@art21.org so we can talk! I will be putting together a column in April focusing on the variety of ways elementary teachers approach working with contemporary art in their classrooms.

John Baldessari, Two-Person Fight (One Orange): With Spectator, 2004 Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Art classrooms are often noisy places. In college they sometimes make a u-turn and become silent morgues where students wait patiently in cold studios for individual crits, but in general, art classrooms are full of activity. Because our classes have such a infectious energy many teachers are often in the position of riding a “wave” of work but putting real conversation and meaning-making on the back burner. Teachers can get caught making excuses about why their students “can’t have a conversation” or “won’t be quiet”, and consequently plan lessons that require extremely quick instructions that follow with a period of “work”- there’s no reflection, no connections, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

This is a recipe for disaster.

The most effective classrooms I have had the pleasure to visit, teach in, or simply learn about have common elements that include, but aren’t limited to:

• Varieties of teaching strategies that consider multiple learning styles
• Changes in rhythm and tempo of lessons
• Big questions and/or ideas that students are working with
• Effective and simple classroom management techniques- nothing fancy

Part of what makes students ready to discuss works of art, participate in partner work, or break their routine in any way involves something that all of us appreciate- a little heads-up.

For example, when students know in advance that the next session will involve art making AND a partnered conversation and sharing, they are more prepared to do so next time vs. being surprised and complaining. We can avoid a few of the “Why do we have to read?” comments if we prep students for when and why we’re reading in advance. Being up front about our planning and next steps is in itself a classroom management technique and a way to more effectively facilitate students talking with one another about questions and ideas that surface in contemporary art. A little heads-up can go a long way.

Charles Atlas, "Son of Sam and Delilah", 1991. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

Greek tragedy, cross dressing, cooking shows, needlework, rowdy teens, storytelling, nighttime walks, and a few mystery plays in this week’s roundup:

• Virtuoso Illusion: Cross Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde at the MIT List Visual Arts Center explores how experimental art has been enlivened and advanced by artists who cross dress as part of their conceptual process. “The show is not intended,” according to MIT, “as an exploration of identity issues specifically, but more as an in depth look at current and historical strategies of cross dressing as an art of the irrational, the unexpected.” Artists include Charles Atlas, Matthew Barney (both Season 2), Claude Cahun, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, Marcel Duchamp, Michelle Handelman, John Kelly, Katarzyna Kozyra, Kalup Linzy, Ma Liuming, Manon, Pierre Molinier, Yasumasa Morimura, Brian O’Doherty, Ryan Trecartin, and Andy Warhol. Atlas created video mock documentaries about the evolving twentieth-century performance avant-garde during the years he collaborated with Merce Cunningham. In Son of Sam and Delilah (1991), Atlas provides “a transporting view of a flock of gender indiscriminate performers.” Virtuoso Illusion, organized by guest curator Michael Rush, former director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, is on view through April 4.

• The highly anticipated exhibition Kiki Smith: Sojourn opens at the Brooklyn Museum this Friday. Smith (Season 2) draws on a variety of experiences in the cycle of life, from the milestones of birth and death to the daily chores of domestic life, with particular attention to the lives of women artists. An eighteenth-century silk needlework by a woman named Prudence Punderson that inspired Smith’s installation is on loan to the museum from the Connecticut Historical Society and included in the exhibition. Via the museum website: “Punderson’s stark depiction of a woman’s journey from childhood to death in the years leading up to and immediately after the United States gained its independence intrigued Smith because rather than following the stereotypical rites of passage in a woman’s life of the period…this young woman chose to depict a life of the mind for her subject, presenting a woman engaged in creative work.” Smith will install her work in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art as well as in two of the museum’s eighteenth-century period rooms. Sojourn closes September 12.

• Works by Laylah Ali (Season 3), Kara Walker (Season 2), Ghada Amer, Shary Boyle, Amy Cutler, Chitra Ganesh, Wangechi Mutu, Annie Pootoogook, Leesa Streifler, and Su-en Wong are on view at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Ontario, Canada. The exhibition, titled Pandora’s Box, offers a new twist on the myth of Pandora in which it is no longer about what is hidden inside of the box, but what is metaphorically reflected on the outside. Pandora’s Box continues through March 21.

• Through February 28, Tank.tv is showing two works by Season 5 artist Paul McCarthy: Family Tyranny and Cultural Soup. Both works — cut from two days of taped performance at a community television studio in 1987 — feature Season 1 artist Mike Kelley. Tank.tv calls the videos a “disturbing tableaux of familial horror, steeped in the stomach turning abjection” of McCarthy’s practice. Performed within a “barely credible domestic set,” the format and characters in the videos enact several tropes of television entertainment: the unruly teenager (Kelley), and the how-to format of cooking and DIY programs.

• Fifty photographs of nocturnal landscapes by Robert Adams (Season 4) are on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in the exhibition Summer Nights, Walking. These images of trees and houses, mountains and streets, fields and sidewalks captured between dusk and approaching dark were made between 1976-1982 near Adams’ home in Longmont, Colorado. Adams first showed photographs from this series in 1985. He recently said of editing his night pictures: “When I have looked again at the photographs that I might have chosen but did not, it has seemed to me that if I had included a wider variety, the result would have been, though less harmonious, more convincing, closer to our actual experience of wonder, anxiety and stillness.” This exhibition celebrates the publication of Summer Nights, Walking, co-published by Aperture and the Yale University Art Gallery, a revised and updated version of an earlier book. The exhibition continues through April 17.

• Delusion, a new work by Laurie Anderson (Season 1) will premiere at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company, February 16-21. The piece is described as “a series of short mystery plays” populated by “nuns, elves, golems, rotting forests, ghost ships, archaeologists, dead relatives and unmanned tankers.” Delusion was commissioned by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and The Barbican Centre in London. Tickets can be purchased here.

• The lecture series Critical Conversations at the Roski School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles features talks by visiting artists, curators, theorists, writers, and other cultural producers, who engage in open conversations with graduate students and attending members of the public. Season 4 artists Mark Dion and Mark Bradford will speak on February 23 and March 2, respectively.

• Season 5 artist William Kentridge will lecture at The Cooper Union in New York City tomorrow, February 9. The event begins at 8pm and is free and open to the public.

• BMW has announced that Season 5 artist Jeff Koons will design their 17th art car. Read more about the project here.