Friday links – railing against the NYT

If Culture Grrl’s list of stories missed by the New York Times is accurate, the NYT culture desk would be wise to give it some thought. Her complaints would have more weight if she had gone on to say what she appreciates about NYT’s arts coverage. In visual art, at least, it’s stellar. I don’t understand why so many art bloggers have a hard time coughing up a compliment for the Times.

Constant nitpicking against it gets old. Reminds me of Olive Oyl’s dad saying over and over in Popeye, “You owe me an apology!” Let me get my form letter of apology and sign a dozen in advance.

Spiders made this: (story here)

Bill Viola was temporarily Jeff Weinstein’s hero when he declined to participate in Pope Benedict XVI’s conference on spirituality and art. Good piece by Weinstein, as per usual, although it ran under the mysterious subhead, Who Would Expect a Video Artist To Be a Hero? Why not expect a video artist to be a hero? Viola no longer is, as least as defined by Weinstein, because Viola changed his mind and will attend.

Instead of his original statement, issued by his dealer and quoted by Weinstein, “Bill Viola doesn’t agree with many of the policies put forth by the
Vatican and the Catholic Church and this is his reason for declining to
participate,” Viola now says the issue is so important he’ll show up, story here.

Like Weinstein, I cheered Viola’s first impulse, but the best comment came from Jen Graves:

But seriously: Church, if you want to get the attention of artists, do like you used to do–throw money at ’em. (more)

I’ll believe the Pope is serious about engaging contemporary art when he commissions Eric Yahnker. (Yahnker was recently at Ambach & Rice. My review here.)

Eva Diaz on Lisa Oppenheim’s Dead Letter Office, an altered-photo series that sounds like a terrific 9/11 memorial:

Dead letter office. The phrase nags at me; it seems too direct, perhaps insensitive to use, given the context. The dead letter office is what happens to public artworks that have outlived their civic life and, due to the vicissitudes of time, taste, and politics, find themselves with no public. Their large scale makes it unlikely they’ll find another home, so they may end up stored in the basement of the World Trade Center until 2001. Then, well, we know the rest. 
…Now these forever absent works exist only in photographs: the death of the dead letter office. Oppenheim’s series is, however, the birth of a gracious memorial to all that was lost. (more)

Diaz wrote no more than a long paragraph but covered everything. An image would have been nice, however.

Did Jackson Pollock sign his name all over the all-over abstraction of Mural from 1943? I’d say yes. Fascinating to see what was there all along. (Story here.)

From dogs to the deep space of an eyeball: Douglas Britt interviews Keith Carter, here. Speaking of deep space, stars eat each other, story here.

In the interests of ending on a positive note, here’s Andrew Junge with something you gotta have.