Slowing Down and Visualizing Approaches
While vacationing locally this summer (since that’s all anyone has gas money for) and taking the necessary steps to slow down in order to feed your imagination and even your own art making, make sure to visit some beautiful and engaging exhibitions on view through the dog days of August. Two of these exhibits—Henry Moore’s Moore in America: Monumental Sculpture at the New York Botanical Garden and Louise Bourgeois at the Guggenheim Museum—are outstanding places for educators to revisit both of these artists, make important connections and visualize multiple approaches to working with our students.
When visiting the New York Botanical Garden for the Henry Moore show, plan to walk a few miles in order to see all of the sculptures. Allow for plenty of time with your sketchbook and/or camera. Most importantly, give the works attention and time; allow yourself to consider how you have approached the figure, sculpture, or figurative sculpture in your own classes while walking around the pieces. Take things slow and not only enjoy the grounds but also consider how we may teach more about context and the place a work is viewed in order to see it and engage with it.
At the Guggenheim Museum, Louise Bourgeois’ exhibit will not require nearly as much walking or a camera, but the possibilities for teaching about a wide range of sculptural materials, autobiographical themes, and depictions of the figure in a variety of roles will require a step or two backward, reflection, and a comfy sketchbook once again.
Other shows of interest for educators this summer include:
- Artist as Publisher at The Center for Book Arts in New York
- Lucky Number Seven, SITE Santa Fe’s 7th international biennial
- Jeff Koons at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
At the end of August, after spending some time with Marlene Dumas’ Measuring Your Own Grave at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, I look forward to sharing an artist-educator’s take on the exhibit as well as possibilities for teaching with Dumas’ work.
Do you have some “best bets” to check out this summer? If so, please share them! If you have visited one of the exhibits above, please share your comments and thoughts.
Hot Topic is not Punk Rock!
Reading Ben Street’s recent post Pop (and) Art, I started to consider links between music and art. It is easy to support Ben’s idea that the relationship between music and art was closest in the sixties, yet the music of the 60’s and 70’s seems to be a hot topic for contemporary art institutions today. Case in point, right now Malcolm McLaren is guest blogging about ArtBasel for “The Moment” on The New York Times. While art might not be comfortable with pop music, some curators are excited to draw on the nostalgia for rock and punk music of those bygone days.
Over the last year, there has been a wave of exhibitions that point to rock and punk music as inspiration for many artists’ practices. Double Album: Daniel Guzmán and Steven Shearer, currently on view at the New Museum, cites rock culture and male adolescence as strong influences on both artists. Music is a Better Noise, exhibited at PS1, looked at genre jumpers, “musicians who make art and artists who make music.” Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years explored the “vibrant art scene that emerged during these [punk] years,” at the Barbican; it included works by Art21 artists Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Raymond Pettibon (Season 2), and Jenny Holzer (Season 4).
It is Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 that seems to be receiving the most press and perhaps the most scorn. The exhibition features work by Raymond Pettibon (Season 2), Mike Kelley (Season 3), and Laurie Anderson (Season 1) is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. Sympathy for the Devil is described as “the most serious and comprehensive look at the intimate and inspired relationship between the visual arts and rock-and-roll culture to date.” This assertion is troubling considering omissions of influential musicians like George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Sun Ra, and Bad Brains which makes me wonder, would rock-and-culture exist without black culture?
Considering this trend of rock and punk influenced exhibitions, I am left with a question posed by critic Pedro Velez in his artnet review of Sympathy for the Devil, “How do you tame counterculture into the prepackaged pretext of High Art?” Responses welcomed.
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle wins Richard H. Driehaus Foundation award
Art21 artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Season 4) is the winner of a 2008 individual artist award granted by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. This award recognizes artists living in the Chicago area and aims to support and encourage “excellence, artistry, focus, direction, maturity, and originality in the visual arts.” The fifteen thousand dollar prize is awarded to three artists each year to support their work and future achievements.
Other winners of the 2008 individual artist award include Jason Lazarus and Anne Wilson. A jury of five arts professionals selected the recipients of the award and included Susanne Ghez, director of the Renaissance Society; Lane Relyea, professor at Northwestern University; Lisa Dorin, assistant curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago; Carol Ehlers, independent curator; and Nick Cave, artist and past winner of this award.
Gordon Matta-Clark: “You Are the Measure” at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Another guest blogger, Kat Parker, posted on March 12th, 2008 about this show so I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity to learn more about Gordon Matta-Clark and his work. MCA Curator Lynne Warren will lead a tour through the exhibition and discusses his work and process on April 1st at noon.
On view at the museum is a first full-scale retrospective in 20 years of the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and curated by Whitney curator Elisabeth Sussman.
As their press release states, “This retrospective celebrates the brilliance and radical nature of his work in various media: sculptural objects (most, notably, from building cuts), drawings, films, photographs, notebooks, and documentary materials. The Chicago presentation features additional never-before-displayed archival material from this project. The MCA presentation is coordinated by MCA Curator Lynne Warren.”
Gordon Matta-Clark is one of the original founders of White Columns ‚Äì where I was lucky enough to be part of for many years. Gordon Matta-Clark: “You Are the Measure” is on view Through May 4, 2008.
James Bishop at The Art Institute of Chicago and The Modern Wing
A Focus exhibition of drawings and paintings by James Bishop opened this week at The Art Institute of Chicago. Bishop, who is American but has lived in France since the 50s, creates exquisite and poetic drawings and paintings, calling attention to the physicality of color. Most of the works in the exhibition are from the artist’s personal collection.
Ed Ruscha and Photography is also on view at The Art Institute until June 1, 2008.
It is worthy to note that to witness the progress of the construction of the The Art Institute’s new building, The Modern Wing, is a truly remarkable thing. The building, designed by architect Renzo Piano, is to be completed in 2009 and will house the museum’s contemporary and modern collection as well as increase gallery space for the institution. It will be an incredible addition to not just the museum but the city of Chicago.
Gordon Matta-Clark at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
“You Are the Measure,” the first retrospective in twenty years of work by Gordon Matta-Clark (1943 - 1978) curated by Whitney Museum of American Art’s Elizabeth Sussman has come to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It seems fitting that exactly 30 years ago to the month the exhibition opened, Matta-Clark cut into a townhouse near the MCA’s original building and created Circus or the Carribean Orange.
Conversations at the Edge , which is sponsored by the School of the Art Institute’s Film, Video and New Media Department, in association with the Video Data Bank and the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago’s most incredible resources for viewing film and video work), has been hosting a series of Thursday night screenings and lectures. This Thursday, the Edge presents several of Matta-Clark’s films including Office Baroque (1977) and City Slivers (1976). Jane Crawford, documentary filmmaker and Matta-Clark’s widow, will be speaking. The screening begins at 8pm at the Siskel Center.
Lilli Carr√®’s The Lagoon
Chicago-based filmmaker, illustrator, and comics artist Lilli Carr√® just completed her new book The Lagoon which will be available in October through Fantagraphics. You can view excerpts here. Her comic story “Hums Like a Bee” will also make a second appearance in Paper & Carriage, a local quarterly arts magazine.
Current gallery exhibitions in Chicago
This is gonna take one more night, an exhibition of photographs by Chicago-based artist Jason Lazarus has opened at Bucket Rider Gallery. Lazarus’s work has always re-defined notions of self-portraiture and self-representation using the photographic image. This exhibition is exemplary in that it allows photographs from several disparate series (NIRVANA, Self Portrait as an Artist, Living with a Portrait series) to exist in one gallery space as cohesive, succinct unit. Yet each photograph remains an individual depiction of a particular wonderland or an odd and even sometimes dark personal moment which Lazarus masterfully captures without using his physical presence. The last rose of summer on my nightstand, a collection of found photographs and text collected and curated by the artist, and a catalogue of recent work is available through Bucket Rider gallery.
Down the street at Rowley Kennerk Gallery are a group of intense yet quirky canvases thick with acrylic paint in mystifying color combinations by School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA graduate Molly Zuckerman-Hartung in her first solo exhibition at the gallery entitled She-male Guitar Solo. You can read an interview with the artist by the gallery owner here.
In the same building at Tony Wight Gallery (formerly Body Builder and Sportsman) is an exhibition of new paintings by John Phillips and, in the project room, a video animation by Ken Fandell.
John Phillips makes an appearance in Caleb Lyons’s (artist and co-owner of an apartment gallery in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood- Old Gold) show Slow Dance backinblackisblackisblackisblacisback as a grave digger who makes little progress in a mesmerizing and eerie video work shot in the backyard of the artist’s childhood home in Michigan. Here, the strobe effect and warped soundtrack of folk music disorient the viewer into thinking the digging man is making headway through the dirt the more one watches. Slow Dance backinblackisblackisblackisblacisback is on view at Three Wall’s Gallery 2A space until March 29 and Lyons will be speaking this Friday, March 20th at 7pm.
Weekend: Robert Heinecken, Times New Viking, Onibaba
Robert Heinecken: Dream/Circles/Cycles opened at Rhona Hoffman Gallery this past Friday. The first gallery show since his death in 2006, this exhibition features work created between 1964-1973, much of which has never been exhibited before and includes seminal bodies of work such the series Are You Rea (1964-1968), a group of gelatin-silver contact prints from magazine pages. Every piece in the exhibition is a favorite, particularly Christmas Mistake - a 1972 black and white film transparency illuminated in a light box. Imagine a mix-up at the photo lab where negatives of a nude pin-up model were accidentally developed with family Christmas photos.
On Saturday I attended the Society for Contemporary Art of the Art Institute of Chicago benefit and auction where I was taken by the works of Richard Hawkins, Nathan Hylden, Florian Morlat, a group of glittered collages by the TM Sisters, and a photograph by New Catalogue (collaborators Luke Batten and Jonathan Sadler) from their new series Tiger Afternoon (a Jean Luc-Godard version of a John Hughes film). I ducked out early to catch the $5 Warhammer 48k side project - Cave - and Times New Viking show at Mr. City press.
Dani Leventhal, a UIC MFA grad who now lives and works in Rosendale, NY was in Chicago this month showing several of her short video works at Gallery 400. I was only familiar with her sculptures and so I watched five videos by the artist on Sunday. The visuals were complex, personal, beautiful, darkly humorous, abrupt and abstract; an exploration of Jewish identity that is both subtle and raw.
I also saw Onibaba (The Demon), the 1964 black and white Japanese horror film directed by Kaneto Shindô followed by the silent Super 8 footage documenting the making of the film. The film itself is visually astounding. The lighting alternates constantly and without warning only making the oppressive heat and brutally dry landscape of swaying bamboo reeds so realistic that it was hard not to feel physically affected by the creepy plot. I look forward to seeing more films by the director including The Naked Island (1960).
Catherine Sullivan and Arturo Herrera in Adaptation in Chicago
While adaptation is a common practice in popular culture‚Äîfamiliar to moviegoers and booklovers who debate endlessly whether the film version is superior to the novel‚Äîit is perhaps less well known as a practice in contemporary art. The exhibition Adapation at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art looks at the use of this strategy in the recent work of Catherine Sullivan (Season 4), Arturo Herrera (Season 3), Guy Ben-Ner, and Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation. These artists have transformed source material to make their own adapted works of art, re-envisioning classic literature, painting, film, ballet, and even email as new video installations.
Adaptation is a tightly focused exhibition: each of the four artists is represented by one or two significant video installations. Arturo Herrera’s first-ever video installation, Les Noces (The Wedding, 2007; see http://adaptation.uchicago.edu/artists/herrera/ for a clip), enjoys its US premiere in this show, and is an animated adaptation of the ballet of the same name by Igor Stravinsky. Catherine Sullivan’s Triangle of Need (2007; see http://adaptation.uchicago.edu/artists/sullivan/), builds from a notorious and ubiquitous type of mass e-mail scam, as well as a smaller-scale new work developed in collaboration with students from the University of Chicago.
Read more about each artist and their work and view video clips on the exhibition’s extensive website, http://adaptation.uchicago.edu.
