Dan Phillips: Not Merely Vernacular, Pt. 2
Dan Phillips, "Chateau," 2008. Courtesy Phoenix Commotion.
In my estimation, Phoenix Commotion’s ongoing project (founded around 1998 by Dan Phillips) does much more than simply supply a university town with a rich dose of local color. While Phillips and his crew are building upon traditions of southern vernacular art, which have made significant and often under-acknowledged contributions to the evolution of American art—perhaps most-recognizably through the work of Texas-native Robert Rauschenberg—their project simultaneously engages with issues enjoying currency in contemporary art discourse. Most notably, this involves the impetus to devote one’s art, including one’s artistic process and not just the finished project, to the goal of raising an ethical awareness of our interconnectedness to each other and to the natural world.
Phillips’s project, which decades ago may have simply been understood as an example of “outsider” art and the product of some “place apart” (psychologically, culturally, and geographically), is today implicated in an ongoing and evolving international debate. The members of the Commotion do not simply belong to a cultural group entirely removed from the reach of influences acting on other contemporary artists whose similarly-minded, if aesthetically-divergent projects, have received critical attention, such as Rirkrit Tiravanija’s The Land Foundation (begun 1998), Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West and A-Z East (West begun 1999 and East begun 1994), or Tyree Guyton’s The Heidelberg Project (begun 1987). The Phoenix Commotion shares with these projects an exploration of eco-friendly, low-cost solutions to design problems, and the commitment of one’s art to transforming local social conditions. But while Phillips has and continues to spread the philosophy of the Phoenix Commotion near and far, and while his project resonates with these other contemporary examples, the end products of his creative labors remain rooted in his homes of Huntsville. The Commotion’s ideas and methods may circulate in regional, national, and international circuits, but their final artworks stay resolutely put in a place that, in the end, is somewhat removed yet also intimately connected.
Deference to the Vernacular
Donald Judd, "15 untitled works in concrete," 1980-1984
In a short essay dealing with the peculiarities of the West Texas that Donald Judd called home, he writes,
Here, everywhere, the destruction of new land is a brutality…Within a real view of the world and the universe this violence would be a sin – there are no words since there are no ethics that correspond to the present known nature of the world. I’ve never built anything on new land.[1]
While Judd confessed that the modification of existing structures proved to be a tiresome activity, his respect for utilitarian architecture and engineering, as well as his reverence for the landscape, trumped these frustrations throughout much of his time in Marfa.[2] Here at the Chinati Foundation, this sensitivity to the local environment, both built and natural, is particularly striking.
Judd’s interest in an authorless architecture born of necessity was first evinced in his 1963 essay, “Kansas City Report.” In this report from the field, Judd moves from an appraisal of the art housed in the Nelson Atkins Museum to consider the aesthetics of Kansas City’s edifices and environs. Structurally, in the “Kansas City Report,” Judd calls attention to the lack of connectivity between the art of the Midwestern grain elevator, mill, or silo, and the “art from five thousand miles away and usually centuries before” found in the Nelson Atkins.[3] Of the mill, Judd states, “it had a purpose, they wanted it a certain way; it was not imposed from the outside.”[4] It is this connectivity between existing buildings, local environment, and permanently installed art that Judd would achieve at Chinati.
The disposition of Judd’s approach to his architectural adaptations is a specific, responsive, and non-invasive one that has been characterized as a process of “tidying up.”[5] The barracks, mess halls, stables, gymnasium, tennis court, and artillery sheds of what was Fort D. A. Russell now comprise the exhibition, living, and working spaces of the Foundation. In shifting the buildings from one utility to another, Judd enhances, what he termed in a 1964 review, the “plain beauty of well-made things.”[6] Eschewing military-issue shingles for corrugated metal – the roofing material of choice in this region of Texas – and using adobe to modify windows and entryways were among the practical and aesthetic choices made by Judd during the renovations. He asserts, “Materials vary from place to place; local ones are cheap, are usually better suited to the climate and those doing the work know how to use them.”[7]
The Chinati Foundation, 2009
The use of proper (local) materials is perhaps best seen in the subtle metamorphosis of the two artillery sheds now housing Judd’s 100 hundred untitled works in mill aluminum. The changes made were few, but notable. The flat roofs of the two sheds proved unsound, so to address this difficulty, a corrugated, galvanized metal Quonset hut-style roof was added. This choice of roofing material was both aesthetic and practical. Judd writes, “In Valentine nearby, thirty miles, there was a large storage building, once curve from the ground to the ground, very deep and broad corrugations, obviously structure itself. Similar vaults were built as the roofs of the two artillery sheds.”[8] Taking a cue from local utilitarian forms of the Valentine storage facility, the hut-style roof doubled the sheds in height and gave the structures a less cumbersome appearance. Quartered aluminum windows replaced the garage doors, which better suited the works of art inside and fluidly brought into view the high desert landscape and Judd’s 15 untitled works in concrete outside. In a comprehensive article dealing with the execution of the works in concrete and aluminum, Marianne Stockebrand, director of Chinati, writes, “From this angle, everything connects—indoors and outdoors, aluminum and concrete, blocks and barrel shapes, transparency and closure, light and shade, nature and built spaces.”[9]
Weekly Roundup
Pepón Osorio, "Lolo," 2008. Pins, digital image, plexiglas and slippers, 8 x 12 x 13 in. Photo: Catherine Serrano. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.
- Works by Art21 artists Pepón Osario (Season 1) and Eleanor Antin (Season 2) are currently on view in the exhibition Black&WhiteWorks at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. The show includes painting, sculpture, drawings and prints by more than twenty-five artists, many of whom are associated with the history of the gallery, which was founded in 1971. The exhibition continues through July 31.
- Through October 19, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles will display a selection of objects from their permanent collection with a particular focus on the past five years. Titled Collecting History: Highlighting Recent Acquisitions, the exhibition includes works by Mike Kelley (Season 3) and William Wegman (Season 1).
- Wegman’s work is also on view at the Scottsdale Museum of Art in Arizona in the solo exhibition, Unexpected Wegman. All forty-five pieces on view are held in the museum’s permanent collection; some have never before been exhibited. In addition to the artist’s well-known Weimaraner portraits, the exhibition includes facile prints Wegman made with the Segura Publishing Company beginning in 1985. Unexpected Wegman continues through January 2010.
- Season 1 artist Barry McGee is included in the group exhibition Work Now, which explores the concept and meaning of “work” in our present society. The exhibition is on view at Z33 in Belgium through September 27.
- See images of Lance Armstrong’s bike–with graphics by McGee–at Supertouchart.com. According to the website, the bikes was created to commemorate Armstrong’s competition in the Tour of California this year. McGee’s signature characters “populate a carbon fiber frame masterfully altered to resemble a vintage metal race cycle literally ‘ridden hard and left out in the rain’ one too many times.”
- Kara Walker and Martin Puryear (both Season 2) are mentioned in Kinshasha Holman Conwill’s recent article about the push to bring greater diversity to the White House art collection, and the importance of supporting African American artists. Read Conwill’s piece for the Art Newspaper here.
- Through September 12, the Otis College of Art and Design presents Superficiality and Superexcrescence, an exhibition focusing on the work of thirteen Los Angeles-based artists–including Season 4 artist Catherine Sullivan–who remake superficiality “not as a condition to be resisted, but rather one to be analyzed and manipulated.” A full-color catalog is available for purchase.
- The Southwest School of Art and Craft presents Texas Draws I, an exhibition of drawings by thirteen artists from various parts of Texas. Work by Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2) is included, along with drawings by Benito Huerta, Jules Buck Jones, Jayne Lawrence, Mona Marshall, Christine Olejniczak, Katie Pell, Jimmy Peña, Regis Shephard, Bonnie Young, and Eric Zimmerman.
- Season 4 artist Mark Bradford will lecture at the Dallas Museum of Art on July 23 at 7pm. Bradford’s work is featured in the museum’s exhibit, Private Universes, which continues through August 30.
Calling all photographers: Museums (and Wikipedia) want to recruit you!
“Henry VIII,” Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3)
February may very well be the unofficial month of the photography contest.
Earlier this week, Joe Fusaro wrote about art contests in the classroom, and his thoughts hold true outside of the classroom, as well. Contests can be a chance not just for students, but for anyone “to get inspired by art.” With the Brooklyn Museum-initiated “Wikipedia Loves Art” contest and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “It’s Time We Met” contest, there is plenty to keep photographers busy this month and to be inspired by art.
Here’s a rundown of what’s going on:
Wikipedia Loves Art (You, “The Object Photographer”)
The concept here is simple: submit photos through Flickr to help illustrate articles on Wikipedia. Coordinated by the Brooklyn Museum, and with participation from 14 other institutions, the Wikipedia Loves Art contest takes the form of a photo scavenger hunt. Prizes include memberships, admission passes, curator-led gallery tours, and even an iPod touch!
Yes, Wikipedia, the participating institutions, and the winning teams all benefit by the time the contest is over, but they aren’t the only ones. Participating photographers walk away from the experience with a different perspective on subject matter both new and familiar. The contest’s goal lists are largely theme based, so it is completely up to the participants to determine how to best illustrate these themes—it is an opportunity for participants to discover art and to interpret themes in a personal and creative way. In the end, though, the Wikipedia audience benefits the most. With new content added to thousands of general-knowledge articles across Wikipedia, the long-standing mission of expanding art awareness to larger audiences reaches a new level.
The event takes place throughout the month of February. Read more at Wikipedia, or register online at the Brooklyn Museum site. Open meetups are scheduled at the Met tonight, and at the Brooklyn Museum tomorrow.
“It’s Time We Met” (You, “The Marketing Photographer”)
While you’re running around the Met galleries (or the Cloisters) checking off items from the Wikipedia Loves Art goal list, why not switch gears and participate in the Met’s other photo contest, tied to a marketing campaign titled “It’s Time We Met” (another play on “met,” more amusing when it isn’t used by the Met). The goal of this contest is to find photography that depicts “how you, the visitor, have shared your Museum experience with friends and family.” The winning photograph will be used in the Met’s “It’s Time We Met” advertising campaign, and the Museum pays the winner what is essentially a one-time licensing fee of $250 and a one-year “Met Net” membership.
The contest is less an opportunity for learning about art and more an opportunity to connect with art. We all respond to art in different ways, and the focus here is placed on the visitor, not just the art; it is inspiration in the form capturing and sharing a reaction to art.
The event takes place from February 15 through March 7, 2009. Read more about the contest at the Met’s Flickr group page.
Color into Light
Color into Light opened today at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). The exhibition of approximately 90 works explores the ways that artists have used color as a “liberating force,” from the “high modernist era of the 1940s and 1950s to today’s digital revolutions.” By embracing artists who have worked across the globe, the show offers alternative ways to tell the story of Modernism.
A section of the exhibition specifically dealing with perception and illusion begins with Acro (1968), an installation by James Turrell (Season 1). This piece is new to the MFAH collection and, like other works by the artist, uses projected light to create the illusion of tangible form and explore the phenomenology of perception. Turrell’s The Light Inside (pictured here) was commissioned by MFAH in 1999. The work is made to transform the walls of a tunnel between the Museum’s Beck and Law Buildings into vessels for conducting light. The passageway is thus “an exploration of color and space.” Color into Light is on view in the Law Building through March 22, 2009.
Art of the 1960s at the Blanton Museum of Art
Two new exhibitions opening September 28, 2008 and running through January 18, 2009 at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas explore an overlooked chapter in regional art history. Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York and The New York Graphic Workshop: 1964-1970 are meant as counterparts in the investigation of this period.
According to the press release, Reimagining Space “presents a groundbreaking exhibition of work by artists associated with the Park Place Gallery, a prominent artists’ cooperative space in 1960s New York. With their commitment to space, the group was often at odds with the predominant aesthetics of many artists of the era, and as a result, their work has largely been ignored in chronicles of 1960s art.” The exhibition features approximately 40 works by this group of artists, including Mark di Suvero, Peter Forakis, Robert Grosvenor, Anthony Magar, Forrest Myers, Dean Fleming, Tamara Melcher, David Novros, Edwin Ruda, and Leo Valledor. It is comprised of major works, as well as photographs and documents, not seen since the era in which these artists worked . The group was connected to Texas both through its members as well as its patrons. The exhibition’s guest curator is Linda Dalrymple-Henderson, David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor, Department of Art and Art History, College of Fine Arts, The University of Texas at Austin.
The New York Graphic Workshop: 1964-1970, in the words of the press release, “examines the Conceptualist movement of the 1960s and ’70s through the printmaking practices of the New York Graphic Workshop (NYGW).” The workshop was founded in 1964 by Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, and Liliana Porter, three Latin American artists living in New York. Included in the exhibition will be 70 prints, drawings, and mixed media works by Camnitzer, Castillo, and Porter, as well as Michael Snow, Max Neuhaus, José Luis Cuevas, and Salvador Dalí, because the workshop produced some of their work as well. Curator Gabriel Perez-Barreiro, Director of the Coleccíon Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and former Curator of Latin American Art at the Blanton comments, “the New York Graphic Workshop represents a key moment in the history of both American and Latin American Conceptual art, yet this is the first comprehensive exhibition of the group since it disbanded in the early 1970s. The exhibition will provide a unique opportunity to understand the important contributions of this group of artists, and their pivotal role in the history of art of the 1960s in New York. It will also be the first time many of these artworks have been shown in over three decades.”
If you find yourself in Austin, don’t miss what look to be very exciting and compelling exhibitions at the Blanton. For further information about the exhibitions and for related programming please visit the Museum’s website.
Hubbard/Birchler: No Room to Answer
Hubbard/Birchler: No Room to Answer is the first major survey in an American museum of works by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler (Season 3). The exhibition is on view from September 14, 2008 through January 4, 2009 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
No Room to Answer presents key works made by the duo since 1991. Their most recent video, Grand Paris Texas (2008) debuts with this exhibition and will become part of the Museum’s permanent collection. The video is named after The Grand, located in Paris, Texas. According the press release, the tiny East Texas town became famous by way of the German filmmaker Wim Wenders’ movie, Paris, Texas (1984). However, the “cold architecture and barren desert landscapes” in Wenders’ film’s were filmed in and around Houston, the desert area of West Texas, and Los Angeles, “reinforcing the film’s bleak theme of social isolation in America in a way that the wooded landscape of the real Paris would not.” Grand Paris Texas is a study of the physical and social space in that geographical location, which has been described as “the middle of nowhere.”
“One of the most important things for us,” Hubbard and Birchler explain, “is that we have always left the authority of reading the work up to the viewer and there’s got to be active interpretation that’s not just asked for, but is somewhat demanded.”
A Cult, Some Vegans, A Ballet, Oh My!
What do you get when you mix religious overtones, memories of a few former vegan college roommates, comic book-inspired heroes and elegant ballerinas prancing around the stage in funny costumes? In the case of the collaboration between Houston-based contemporary artist Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2) and Ballet Austin, I would say a lot of conflicting clichés: archetypal values with a bit of a focus on flesh, eggs, and orifices.
It’s clear that absurdity plays a role in the mechanics of what makes this wondrously colorful ballet tick. Alas, culture and context are what enable us to investigate eye candy on a level we can mull in our minds and chew on with our souls. How fun and exciting—it sounds like a performance to really get the heart racing! (Beckett, are you there?)
For a description of the ballet performed this past spring, see this month’s issue of Art in America and specifically “Food for Thought,” Eleanor Heartney’s review of Cult of Color: Call to Color, a collaboration between Trenton Doyle Hancock, composer Graham Reynolds, and the Austin Ballet director Stephen Mills.
Heartney’s article examines many themes that course through the ballet. She states, “Thematically, the ballet lends itself to various interpretations. On one hand, it can be read as a repudiation of asceticism in favor of optical beauty, and as an affirmation of art as a realm of freedom. On the other, the battle of the ‘good’ with Vegans, who convert, and the ‘bad’ black ones, who resist, has peculiar racial overtones that Hancock, who is African-American, must have been aware of.” Heartney goes on to say, “…however, the full spectrum of color as mediator and redemptive force might be read as a vindication of the ‘post-racial’ notion of hybridity so much in vogue in the moment.”
I can only speculate how might Trenton Doyle Hancock respond to that. Perhaps with the following quote from Susan Mansfield’s article “Son of a Preacher Man” (2007):
- “I think at first I fooled myself into thinking it was about race,” he says. “There was a bit of exoticism happening, because I was black in a predominantly white art world. People saw that first and that was always the first thing mentioned in the press. I would take racial stereotypes and treat them like a cartoonist, make fun of them, make them my own. But the conversation about race is so confined, I decided to leave these things by the wayside and focus on storytelling. The icons I use now are more universal. The Mounds represent to me a kind of stabability, being at peace, growing, and acceptance. The Vegans are the complete opposite. They are about pushing out everything that’s good from themselves because they don’t trust it. In essence they get smaller and smaller as human beings, become this pale imitation of humanity, like skeletons…”
In her review, Eleanor Heartney does not fail to mention, “Color aside, the ballet offers a political parable about deceit, power oppression, and liberation…the forces of repression and tyranny can never completely overcome.” Well, I am happy to say that this superhero hasn’t given up. This November 20th, I look forward to James Cohan Gallery’s presentation of Hancock’s fourth solo exhibition, which will include four major new paintings, a new set of prints, and elements from the Cult of Color ballet. So if you missed his lecture and installation this past spring at the ICA in Philadelphia, come check out Hancock newest work in New York this fall.
Socially Acceptable
My biggest pet peeve in New York City is watching men (and women) of all walks of life, hack and cough, then swiftly discharge a slimy wad of saliva on the sidewalk as passersby narrowly attempt to avoid its path. Despite my repulsion for this most sordid act, saliva is the product of Ana Prvacki’s innovative performance at the Sydney Biennale this year in which she produced gallons of saliva through a solemn flute solo. The bodily fluid—known for its medicinal properties—is then used as a healing salve. Though her actual saliva cannot legally be used, Prvacki has worked with a chemist to create wet wipes infused with her music-derived painkiller that were distributed at her performance at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art in June. The event was reviewed in the The Sydney Morning Herald and images of her performance can be seen on the 2008 Sydney Biennale website.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Prvacki’s performance in view of the upcoming exhibition, theanyspacewhatever, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, organized by Chief Curator Nancy Spector, which will open this fall. The show addresses artists whose conceptual and social practices in the 1990s are frequently defined by the term “relational aesthetics,” a phrase coined by Nicolas Bourriaud in his collection of essays by the same name (originally published in France in 1998). Art: 21 artist Pierre Huyghe (Season 4) as well as Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Forester, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija are included in the forthcoming exhibition. Though I am eager to see how this ambitious project is executed, I can’t help but question the institutionalization of such practices. Aren’t they inherently in opposition to such institutions? And where do artists like Lygia Clark, Jeremy Deller, William Pope L., and Ana Prvacki fit into this dialogue?
Last Chance: The Old, Weird America
Closing at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston on July 20, The Old, Weird America is the first museum exhibition to explore the widespread resurgence of folk imagery and history in American contemporary art. The exhibition borrows its inspiration and title from music and cultural critic Greil Marcus’ 1997 book examining the influence of folk music on Bob Dylan and The Band’s album, The Basement Tapes.
This exhibition of works from nearly 20 artists and collaborative groups, includes Kara Walker (Season 2), Eric Beltz, Jeremy Blake, Sam Durant, Barnaby Furnas, Brad Kahlhamer, David McDermott and Peter McGough, Aaron Morse, Cynthia Norton (a.k.a. Ninny), Greta Pratt, Dario Robleto, Allison Smith, and Charlie White.
The exhibition is curated by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston senior curator Toby Kamps. Click here for museum hours.
