Collier Schorr at Villa Romana
Villa Romana in Florence is currently exhibiting Collier Schorr’s Blumen, the second installment of the artist’s Forest & Fields project.
For the last fifteen years Schorr (Season 2) has been documenting the life and landscapes of Schwäbisch-Gmünd, a small town in Southern Germany. Merging the identities of her subjects with her own idea of what it is to be “German,” Blumen is a play on the idea of floral arrangements. Gathering flowers from neighboring gardens and then transporting them to the higher mountaintops and slopes of the town, she then ties them together with strings which are held up by sticks. “By removing the flowers from their place of cultivation and positioning them on public land, Schorr suggests a migration or re-patriation.”
Blumen is on view through summer and also includes small black and white portraits of “the Germans” in a loose installation of pinned up images that play with scale, whereby people are dominated by the natural world. Close-ups of chairs, pears, and faucets dwarf the townspeople, “who exist in their ever changing world as almost nostalgic personages.”
Berliner Salon: Fashion Week and the Paparazzi
Yesterday inaugurated Berlin Fashion Week, which will continue through the weekend, bringing a number of “celebrities” to town, as well as designers, models and the ubiquitous hangers-on. It’s a pretty well known fact, however, that Berlin Fashion Week often leaves much to be desired, both in the way of big name runway shows, and big name industry insiders. Fortunately, the Helmut Newton Foundationhas taken it upon itself to mount an exhibition celebrating old-guard glamour and the cult of celebrity, so out-of-towners and locals alike can still indulge in some good old fashion voyeurism.Entitled Pigozzi and the Paparazzi and with “approximately 350 b/w and colour prints by Salomon, Weegee, Galella, Quinn, Angeli, Secchiaroli, Pigozzi and Newton, the exhibition presents the forerunners and central figures of the “classic” period of paparrazi photography—and provides a visual commentary about the evolution of this phenomenon. The exhibition offers an overview and critical look at the history of a photographic genre dedicated to fame and sensationalism,” according to the press release. In light of the present-day hysteria surrounding public figures, Pigozzi and the Paparazzi offers a more serene, nostalgic and somehow romantic version of celebrity sovereignty, back when it was dignified.The exhibition runs through November 16th. To view additional images from the show, click here. Schoenes Wochenende.
SIDE X SIDE
Art and activism have been intimately engaged throughout contemporary art history, reiterating the notion that the personal is political. In 2007, Art:21’s Season 4 addressed activist strategies (in particular, the politics of war) in “Protest,” which included Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, An-My Lê, and Nancy Spero. A new investigation of art and activism (in this case, the AIDS crisis) can currently be seen in SIDE X SIDE, an exhibition curated by Dean Daderko for Visual AIDS on view through August 3, 2008 at La MaMa La Galleria in the East Village.
With works from the 1980s to the present by Scott Burton, Kate Huh, Nicholas Moufarrege, Martin Wong, and Carrie Yamaoka, Daderko’s project is rooted in the history of the 1980s in New York City where more than 10,000 people were diagnosed with AIDS in 1986. Between 1986 and 1991 there were numerous exhibitions, conferences, and artworks about AIDS in New York, while activist groups such as ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and Visual AIDS worked to educate the public and insist on medical research and treatment. Art21 artist Oliver Herring (Season 3) has also made works related to AIDS, in particular A Flower for Ethyl Eichelberger (1991) a tribute to the performance artist who committed suicide in 1990 after discovering that he had AIDS.
One of the most noted exhibitions about the politics of AIDS was Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing (a 1989 review of the show can be found in the New York Times on-line) organized by artist Nan Goldin at Artists Space in 1989. The show highlighted a group of artists living in the lower east side of Manhattan who were directly affected by AIDS. Daderko’s project is a sobering reminder of this history as well as a tribute to those who have been lost to this vicious disease. Further details and upcoming events related to SIDE X SIDE can be found on the Visual AIDS website.
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle | Casta Paintings
EXCLUSIVE: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle at home in Chicago, with photographs of the installation The Garden of Delights (1998) at the XXIV Sao Paulo Bienal.
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s technologically sophisticated works use natural forms such as clouds, icebergs, and DNA as metaphors for understanding social issues such as immigration, gun violence, and human cloning. The artist’s strategy of representing nature through information leads to an investigation of the underlying forces that shape the planet as well as points of human interaction and interference with the environment.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle.
LEARN: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Ecology of the Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, (Left) Doug, Joe and Genevieve from (Right) The Garden of Delights, 1998. Courtesy the artist and Max Protetch, New York.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Mark Falstad. Sound: Heidi Hesse. Editor: Steven Wechsler. Artwork courtesy: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle. Thanks: Max Protetch Gallery.
Eleanor Antin at San Diego Museum of Art
Eleanor Antin: Historical Takes opens this weekend at the San Diego Museum of Art.
The exhibition is the first to focus on Antin’s recent series of large-scale tableaux photographs based on Greek and Roman history and mythology.
Eleanor Antin’s (Season 2) exquisitely staged photographs invoke Pompeii and Helen, as well as fictionalized classical narratives using friends as models posed in various locations throughout San Diego.
Created from 2001 to 2008, Antin’s new works engage photography in a dialogue with nineteenth-century European salon painting, evident in the staging and backdrops of her photos that were inspired or transformed from the grand tradition of European history painting, including the classical James Copley Auditorium at SDMA. “The works are affectionate spoofs on classical culture with metaphorical parallels to the excesses of contemporary consumer economy.”
The Billy Joels of Art Education
This past Sunday, the New York Times ran an article about Billy Joel. The article focused on the fact that, despite not making a new recording in 15 years, Billy Joel still manages to sell out Shea Stadium—twice—in less than two hours. It got me thinking about the Billy Joels of art education. You know, the artists that we may admire and respect in one way or another, but have gotten tired of teaching about over and over. Think “Uptown Girl.” A fun song when it came out, but a song that’s been beaten into submission by its radio-friendliness. It got me thinking about the “Stairway to Heavens”of the art classroom and immediately I came up with three: Monet, Dali, and Warhol. These artists now have the unfortunate distinction of often having their names linked with the word “project”. For example, “Oh you tried a Warhol-project with your class.”
I started to think about artists that might offer very different takes on what Monet, Dali and Warhol often help us teach. Here’s are some initial ideas:
- Juxtapose the work of Andy Warhol with Alfredo Jaar. Have students compare how both of these artists explore the idea of becoming desensitized to certain images. Students can create, juxtapose or layer contemporary images and symbols that, from their perspective, the public has become desensitized to.
- Compare the works of Salvador Dali and An-My Lê. How do both artists deal with the the theme of violence in ways that are similar and very different? Students can create a variety of work that explores violence in our society. One approach might ask students to create a surreal illustration or staged photograph based on world news images.
- View and discuss the work of Claude Monet and Robert Adams side by side. How do the landscapes painted by Monet compare with the photo landscapes by Robert Adams? What kinds of things does each artist want the viewer to think about? Students can then create a painting or series of photographs that explore landscapes (both literal and figurative) of personal importance.
Who are the Billy Joels of your own classroom? How can we use and incorporate contemporary art to give these artists a different, and perhaps more meaningful, place in our teaching?
Hiroshi Sugimoto (Sort of) at Madame Tussaud’s
In the June issue of Colloquy, art historian Elizabeth Howie writes about discovering two ‘anonymous’ Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3) photographs hanging at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London. Though no labels were attached showing their authorship, the large black and white images of Lady Diana, Princess of Wales and Queen Elizabeth I near the entrance were actually part of a series of wax figure portraits Sugimoto had made at the museum in 1999.
The great fear of many artists is of course seeing one’s work die an anonymous death. Tussaud saved her own life during the French revolution through her skilled handiwork, forced to make commemorative death casts of her friends at the court of Versailles. For artists, their work ultimately becomes surrogates for the artists themselves, where paintings and sculpture (even of the wax variety) replace wax figures. In a culture and art market where celebrity artists are common in a parallel universe to Hollywood, it is particularly odd and fascinating to consider the predicament of anonymity within a museum context.
If every art museum were burned to the ground as Malevich and the Futurists had hoped, leaving merely traces of what was once “grand” in only public spaces and kitschy museums such as Madame Tussaud’s, then even stranger to discover the possibility that the artist may survive as somewhat of a “nameless soldier” in a tomb to the history of celebrity.
Will the fate that stricken the artist named “School of Rembrandt” or “Follower of Velasquez” one day befell the rest of us as well as Sugimoto himself, who ironically considered Madame Tussaud’s a place he wouldn’t normally visit as an art viewing experience, “but always with my work in mind”?
Eleanor Antin | Inventing Histories
EXCLUSIVE: Eleanor Antin reveals the process behind her photographic series Helen’s Odyssey (2007), installed at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York, in particular the work The Tourists (2007) that recasts the destruction of Troy in the southern California desert.
An influential performance artist, filmmaker, photographer, and installation artist, Eleanor Antin delves into history — whether of ancient Rome, the Crimean War, the salons of nineteenth-century Europe, or her own Jewish heritage and Yiddish culture — as a way to explore the present. Antin is a cultural chameleon, masquerading in theatrical or stage roles to expose her many selves.
ART21: You enjoy making photographs, and you’ve made them over your entire career in many different ways. But it’s a mistake to think of you as a “photographer.” What is it that you like about photography? Is it because a photograph is always taking a picture of something that exists? There’s a reality that’s always built into it, no matter how abstract or fake the image?
ANTIN: [SIGH] You’re asking me to go back to the beginning. I can’t really remember… [LAUGHTER] I enjoy that a photograph announces itself. This is going to sound a little naïve to say now, but back then…
The photo comes with a claim to truth. Nowadays we know that’s bullshit. And in those days I knew it was bullshit. Continue reading »
Conversations: An-My Lê with Michael Almereyda part 2
Following is the second half of the conversation between An-My Lê and filmmaker Michael Almereyda that took place on May 5, 2008 at the Mid-Manhattan Library.
ALMEREYDA: There’s one bit of work that you did that I am really dazzled by that’s not featured in the movie—your video footage of Twentynine Palms. The black and white footage of the particular company at Twentynine Palms is shocking because you recognize how young these people are. We see war movies all of the time, and you see actors striving to be tough and war-ravaged, but when you see people going into war, it’s shocking. I was shocked by this footage because they seem so innocent. That’s a tricky word to apply, but they seemed beautiful—the light and their attitudes. A particular shot roves around their faces while they’re being instructed on something, but you can’t hear it because it’s without sound, so it’s just a kind of feat of observation. It’s really beautiful. The wind is rustling through their hair, they’re backlit; it’s not glamorous, but it is beautiful. I look forward to seeing it again. What are you doing with that? Is that going to be shown in a gallery at some point? Can you talk about your other film work?
LÊ: Yes. You encouraged me to make films—that’s how I started. Originally I wanted to do film because of sound. I felt that pictures could not reproduce sound. And some of the dialogues that I heard were so amazing.
ALMEREYDA: I didn’t realize that.
LÊ: So I started doing that. Then after looking at the footage it turned out that film provided the kind of ideal portraits that I had been looking for. I feel it’s been beginner’s luck! I would like to do some more, but I’m not sure what I want to do.
ALMEREYDA: In the video piece that was just shown, there are people returning and being embraced by their families. So you were shooting there, but you haven’t organized or edited it yet?
LÊ: Yes, I haven’t organized it yet. I’m mainly a photographer so…
ALMEREYDA: I look forward to seeing that edited. Part of my homework was to actually read this book that I’ve been looking at the pictures of for so long. There’s a very good essay by Richard Woodward and in it he goes to great lengths, and maybe overreaches a bit, to draw historical references to what you’ve done and how this relates to the history of landscape photography, and how landscape photography measures not just human time but also geographic time. I wonder how much of that you’d absorbed from Timothy O’Sullivan and then thought about as you were taking pictures?
LÊ: Well, I certainly love Timothy O’Sullivan’s work, [Roger] Fenton, [Eugene] Atget and all of the 19th-century photographers. I consider myself a landscape photographer working with a large format camera because I love the way it describes the space, the details, and the air between things. So when it came to working with the particular subject of war or the re-enactors, I had to reconsider my tool. I worked with a medium format at first and it did not describe space in the way that I wanted to. I’m not necessarily just interested in people fighting, holding guns, but I’m interested in people fighting and holding guns in the landscape. I felt that the large format camera was necessary so I just continue on with that tool and try to make it work. In that sense, I’m sort of a 19th-century photographer. I think it’s also about not describing the action, but about describing something before it happens or right after it happens. And there’s no reason why you can’t do that with a view camera.
Let’s See It Again!
I had a great experience recently sitting with my son, Paul, and doing a little preparation for this column. Since he’s an inquisitive, very verbal, curly-haired three year old, I thought he might enjoy checking out the Laurie Simmons segment with me, since so many students had positive reactions to her work when we included her in our preview screenings this year. I didn’t expect the reaction I got, though.
Whether it was the puppets coming to life on screen or the dancing camera and clock, he kept asking me to back up and show him again.
So we watched Laurie Simmons’ segment four times together.
Each time, Paul would zoom in and ask questions such as, “She is an artist??? But she is a dancer!” or “How many people help her make pictures, Dad?”
Laurie Simmons makes an important point in her Art:21 segment by stating that she’s an artist that uses photography and the camera as a tool, just as other artists use brushes as a tool. Simmons, along with so many of the Art21 artists, especially in Season 4, remind us that a singular style or way of making art is becoming harder and harder to find in contemporary art practice. While Robert Ryman, our featured artist in last week’s column, certainly falls into the signature style category, many artists like Simmons have a range of interests and abilities.
As I viewed her segment a fifth time (Paul had left the room to find a way to dress up as a dancing house) I thought about the interdisciplinary connections with Social Studies, Drama, and Language Arts that a segment like this can provide. If you have used Laurie Simmons in your classroom, or plan to use her segment next year, please share how. I will check in during the week and share some ways I plan to incorporate her work in 2008-2009….
For now, I am going to try constructing a house costume for Paul that’s loose enough for him to dance….
