Summer Reading Part 2
Jenny Holzer, "WISH LIST BLACK," detail, 2006
Continuing with my column from May 27, I’d like to suggest a few more books related to contemporary art education that you may be inspired to buy, borrow or steal this summer (but please, steal from someone who has the book sitting on a shelf waiting to be opened, not from your local library!).
First, Julie Thompson’s suggestion to check out Paulo Freire’s Teachers as Cultural Workers - Letters to Those Who Dare Teach is an excellent one. Thank you, Julie! She also mentioned John Dewey’s Art as Experience, which is must reading if you haven’t already.
Other suggestions include:
Elliot Eisner’s The Arts and the Creation of Mind
Olivia Gude’s article, Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education (also a must!)
Anne-Celine Jaeger’s Image Makers, Image Takers: Interviews with Today’s Leading Curators, Editors and Photographers
Please continue to share your ideas for summer reading as we get closer to the official start of the season….
Chakkrit Chimnok’s banana-leaf utopia
Chakkrit Chimnok at a cafe in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Photo by Paul Schmelzer
Chakkrit Chimnok dreams of a “banana world,” a utopia in which overlooked or discarded items — specifically, the ubiquitous banana leaves that litter the streets in his home city of Chiang Mai, Thailand — can become the material for a renewed world. Chimnok’s recent forays into this idea (or ideal) transformed the ever-present leaves into clothing modeled after western haute-couture.
“One day I was sitting in a banana garden, when a banana leaf fell on me,” he told me last year. He picked it up and felt it: It was smooth and flexible, unlike the dried leaves many locals get rid of by burning. Senses piqued, he began paying attention to how the leaves had different characteristics, depending on where he found them, their age and the level of humidity where they grew.
Installation at Art Space, Japan Foundation, Bangkok. Courtesy of Chakkrit Chimnok
He says he was struck by how perfect banana trees are. Both the fruit and the flowers are edible, and the leaves — as his explorations would later prove — could be made into apparel. Chimnok enrolled in a clothing-design class, taking 60 hours of instruction on sewing and pattern-making, and then set out to make functional objects, including a space suit and a dress (sized for his parents, pictured in the installation shot above), handbags, boots and tennis shoes.
Chakkrit Chimnok, "Body – Imagination – Dried Banana Leaf," 2006. Courtesy of the artist.
This functionality is questionable — as the leaves dry, they become too brittle for regular use — but he appreciates the various layers of symbolism as well. He’s taking gentle jabs at both Thai and western cultures. To often brand-conscious Thai people, he offers fashions from one of the country’s most plentiful, banal and unbranded materials. He patterns his ensembles after western styles, forgoing patongs and flip-flops for western-style skirts and shoes, in order to put the designs both within the vocabulary of fashion but also starkly opposed (the hard, crunchy leaves also stand in contrast to the silk textiles for which Thailand is best known). “We always have the sense that the west looks at us as the third world,” he told me.
Shoes by Chakkrit Chimnok. Photo by Paul Schmelzer.
While his message addresses international audiences — it was featured in the 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale 2005 and was shortlisted for the 2008 Signature Art Prize by the Singapore Art Museum — it is, in essence, local. In his artist’s statement, he writes, “Following the west is viewed as part of destruction of community culture.” His art is a celebration of the local, he says, even if it celebrates one of that environment’s more overlookable features.
But he’s not Thai-centric about it. During the project’s showing in Fukuoka, Japan, he promoted a local variation of recycling. By the end of his three-month residency, he was showing at a fashion show the 20 kimono-inspired garments he’d created — from bamboo leaves.
Hallowgreen
This week’s Teaching With Contemporary Art column is written by Carolyn Sutton, Director of Arts at The Park School in Baltimore and a member of Art21’s National Education Advisory Council.
Last October, inspired by the spirit of sustainability, Betsy Leighton, Lower School Principal at The Park School of Baltimore, challenged her students to consider the environment as they thought about Halloween. She coined the phrase, Hallowgreen, and students and teachers set about collecting various recyclable materials for costumes. Cardboard, empty containers, fabric scraps, old computer parts and broken toys filled “help yourself” boxes for the students to select from. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to introduce our youngest students, in grades pre-k to 5, to the contemporary artist Nick Cave.
Nick Cave’s Soundsuits are fabulous creations, made of thrift store finds, twigs, plastic bags, discarded thcotchkes, and just about anything else that strikes his fancy. Children loved seeing his work and guessing the materials they were made from, and seeing a video presentation of people inhabiting them. They enjoyed learning about his process, too. Often, Cave’s Soundsuits are assembled by a multigenerational, multicultural group of volunteers in his Chicago neighborhood.
With the second Hallowgreen Challenge underway, I visited Obi Okobi’s fourth grade class at Park. The students talked about how Cave’s work influenced their thinking about artists in general: Naomi said he had stretched her thinking about what art is – that it can be much more than drawing or painting or sculpture. Olivia noted that he has the freedom to bring together two things he loves – visual art and performance – into something bigger and better. Henry commented that the pieces could be interpreted lots of ways, which the students found exciting. They were inspired by his use of materials and several talked about their own costumes using unusual materials. Connor plans to head to antique stores to look for inspiration. Atira thinks she may fashion her outfit using empty snack food wrappers. With the election in mind Naomi plans to become an election booth. Gabe wants to be a domino, and the entire class helped Meg work out possible materials to make wings for a butterfly. Last year the halls were filled with students dressed as computers, recycling bins. Max was a bubble-wrap snowman last year, and there were three lovely ladies (sisters!) dressed in gowns made entirely of blue plastic grocery bags.
While we often think of contemporary art and how our older students might respond to it, we are always pleased that our very youngest students are so enthusiastic about it, too. Nick Cave is one reason why.
Cave, chair of the Department of Fashion Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, brings together his interests in fashion, performance and sculpture while making reference to African ceremonial costumes. Watch a video of Nick Cave, produced by United States Artists:
Artists Vote for _________.
On October 8, Gap launched its “Vote for” initiative to coincide with the American election season. Centered on a customizable classic white t-shirt that reads, “Vote for ______.”, the retail chain is encouraging customers to fill in the blank with whatever word, expression or presidential candidate they are passionate about.
Gap has also enlisted artists Kara Walker (Season 2), Laurie Simmons (Season 4), Fab5Freddy, John Baldessari, Adam Pendleton, Nate Lowman, John Waters, Deborah Kass, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, and Sean Landers to design a limited edition “Vote for” button. The buttons can be purchased in select stores for $5 each with $1 from every purchase donated to Declare Yourself, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign to empower and encourage every eligible 18-year-old in America to register and vote. Beginning Thursday, October 23, Gap will auction off an exclusive set of buttons autographed by the artists on eBay. All proceeds from the auction will benefit Declare Yourself.
A limited number of unique ”Vote for” buttons can be added to your Facebook profile or sent to friends using the gallery of buttons at Gap.com, Gap’s Facebook Fan Page, or Facebook’s Pieces of Flair application.
Click here for more information about Gap’s multifaceted “Vote for” campaign.
Rebirth of Danish art and design
If you want to keep track of modern Danish art and design, Forårsudstillingen at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen is a pivotal point of departure. Yesterday was the final day of the annual censored exhibition, where artists like Per Kirkeby and Olafur Eliasson once had their debut, and I went there to catch a last glimpse of the exhibition’s proposition as to what the Scandinavian art scene will look like in the years to come. In its 151 year-history, Forårsudstillingen obviously draws on a number of traditions and codes of practice; however, a new and substantial initiative has been introduced this year, triggering critics to designate it a rebirth and a mall-like ornamentation. The 2008 exhibition has been curated much in line with the direction of the art scene in general, where hierarchies between different art directions are loosened, juxtaposed, and discussed.
Chief curator is the internationally acclaimed, New York-based designer Karim Rashid, who is responsible for the overall design and title of the exhibition, 21. With this title, Rashid lets the exhibition leap into the twenty-first century, where the boundaries between art and design become increasingly vague. Therefore, this year’s exhibition offers fashion, graphic design, and sound art aside from the more traditional genres of architecture and visual arts—all indicating renewal and a relation to our current social, political, spiritual, and technological development. Karim Rashid’s own aesthetic expression is present throughout the exhibition, not only in the selection and composition of the works, but also in the separate works that have been placed on walls covered with his colorful, digitally designed wallpapers, manifesting the unity of the exhibition as a whole.
Whitney Biennial Model Tees
The Whitney Museum has collaborated with the Gap on a series of t-shirts designed by past Whitney Biennial artists, including Art21 artists Cai Guo-Qiang, Barbara Kruger (her design is pictured above), Kerry James Marshall, and Kiki Smith. There are thirteen in all, and the prominent remainder includes Ashley Bickerton, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Hanna Liden, Glenn Ligon, Marilyn Minter, Kenny Scharf, Sarah Sze, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
The t-shirts will be available at select Gap stores and online beginning May 15. In the meantime, with the opening of the 2008 Whitney Biennial last week, they can also be found in advance at the museum gift store.
Juergen Teller at Lehmann Maupin
The Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City is currently presenting an exhibition by photographer Juergen Teller. The exhibition follows the installation Reflection by Season 2 Art21 artist Do-Ho Suh, which was on view into the start of this month. Teller’s work is exhibited in the gallery’s 540 West 26th Street space and includes the his recent body of work, Ukraine. The work was commissioned, along with four other artists, by the PinchukArtCentre for the Venice Biennale 2007.
The works included investigate modern Ukraine through the lens of the fashion and luxury industries. The artist used the country as a setting for a W Magazine fashion photo shoot, depicting inviting young girls and excessive wealth. The works divert viewers from the economic reality of the land and places that attention on the artist’s perception of a country obsessed with capitalism and new growth.
Teller was born in Germany, and has lived and worked in London for the past 20 years.
Hiroshi Sugimoto in New York Times’ T Magazine
“Isn’t It Iconic?”‚Äîphotographs by Season 3 featured artist Hiroshi Sugimoto are published in the Holiday 2007 issue of the New York Times‘ T Magazine. “In his latest passion, Hiroshi Sugimoto is training his celebrated lens on fashion, documenting the history of modernism as he once did with architecture,” writes T.
View these images online here and watch the related short documentary video (also produced by T) here.
Click on the image of Sugimoto to access the film. Reference his Art21 webpage for a portrait, additional biographical information, interviews, and clips from his Art:21 segment.
[via New York Times]
“Liberation through Limitation” - Andrea Zittel’s Smockshop
Saturday, Season 1 artist Andrea Zittel opens her inaugural “smockshop” at Susan Inglett Gallery, coinciding with Fashion Week in New York.
Having spent years gaining international recognition and developing a variety of concepts for living, from furniture manufacturing, A-Z Administrative Services to the design and construction of an island off the coast of Denmark, A-Z Pocket Property, Zittel returns to the gallery as fashion arena with smockshop. With the collection that consists of a series of smocks sewn and designed in cooperation with various artists, Zittel challenges the connection between fashion and function, design and life, and commerce and art, and makes these links explicit by selling her one-of-a-kind smocks at ready-to-wear prices.
Zittel’s designs are more about everyday use and less about rarified statement. “Our current state of consumerism is pretty out of whack right now,” Zittel says. “Wear what you work” The artist hopes her project will inspire a more frugal approach to design, but under all circumstances, the smockshop is bound to tempt the eyes as well as the purse strings.
Smockshop will be on view at Susan Inglett Gallery until October 13. Visit the smockshop Web site at http://www.smockshop.org/
