Archives for 2009

Shirin Aliabdai and Farhad Moshiri, We Are All American from Operation Supermarket Series, via New York Times.

To Aliabdai and Moshiri, add Sonny Assu.

Sonny Assu again, via.

Jack Daws, TWO TOWERS, Chromogenic print of artist-made construction from McDonald’s French fries and Heinz ketchup.

Ross Palmer Beecher, 7-Up Quilt

Roger Shimomura, The Asian Mind

Shimomura again, EBay Citizen No. 1

François van Reenen, memories of a white childhood in South Africa, Crying Cowboy #1

Rashid Johnson, Shea Butter Mountain

John Feodorov, New Age Native American mysticism

Nikki S. Lee – inserting herself into iconic America

This could be the endless thread. It’s the essence of what artists do – Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. One more packaging-worlds essential, although suggestions from others welcome.

Tracey Moffatt:

With Michael Jackson dead at 50 and Elvis at 42, the unlinkable Bay Area painter Rooney O’Neil wondered what John Lennon, who didn’t make it to 40, might have looked like had he more time and (fork in hand), had he chosen to emulate the eating habits of one of his root sources. Via

Any museum director (and plenty of curators) who leave the job to
applause gets presents for the institution. Mimi Gates has earned her
share.

In her 14-year tenure as director of the Seattle Art Museum,
Mimi Gates, 66, guided guided SAM through a major expansion as
well as the opening of a waterfront sculpture park, what John Walsh,
former director of the Getty Museum, called her “benign, beautiful land
grab.” 
She came to Seattle after 19 years at the Yale University Art Gallery,
seven-plus of those years as its director.

With
a doctorate in Chinese art history, her background is art rather than
business. Under her tenure, however, the museum has been successful on
both fronts. When she announced her retirement last year, Walsh said:

It
helps if you’re a fundamentalist, and she is. She believes in the
basics of building the collections and mounting serious exhibitions.
Expansions are great and nobody has done it better than she has, but
she proceeds from sound museum ideas.

Future plans include starting a Center for Asian Art and Ideas at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

(Photo of Gates with Richard Serra by Joshua Trujillo/P-I. All other images from SAM.)

Today SAM announced a list of 20 gifts donated in her honor.

Highlights:

Pine and Rock and Lotus and Ducks,
1690s
Bada Shanren (Zhu Da)
Chinese, 1626-1705 Set of two hanging scrolls; ink on satin; 172 x 43cm
each.
(The Gates Foundation Art Acquisition Fund, backed by Gates’ step-son
and step-daughter-in-law, Bill and Melinda Gates, contributed to this
gift.)

[Read more…] about Booty time: gifts to SAM in honor of Mimi Gates

Below, illuminations on a point made today in the LA Times by Ann Powers, logging in with the best (only good) obit:

…as a man whose physical presence was first androgynous and
then seemingly cyborgian, forcing his astounded public to puzzle over
their assumptions about race, gender and age.

Jeff Koons: Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1998

Christian Marclay: from Body Mixes

Samantha Scherer: Just his eyes

As he saw himself: Robot Head (1 & 2)  from Moonwalker:

Another way to see Jackson as he saw himself: Turn him into a toy, a la Michael Matthew Porter:

Mark Flood goes for the benign freaky:

RIP to the dazzling genius of rhythm and pop soul. There is, however, and elephant in the room, and that rough beast has nothing to do with the moonwalk. As Chris Rock said, “We loved him so much we let the first kid slide.”

 Banksy here, putting a face on the (in fairness, unproven) problem. More Jackson-in-art here.

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Donald H. Rumsfeld, Dec. 14, 2006

Ben Jackel, stoneware and beeswax, 2008

Via

Seattle’s Dawn Cerny, as part of the exhibit at 4Culture. Her flags revel in local resentments, defunct businesses and crackpots.

Jack Daws is into home craft. Below, he pickles old glory.

Costa Vece – from the coffin of lost causes.

Harmon de Hoop– red, white and blue product under a red, white and blue grid.

Ed Templeton – American Pride for Sale. Looks like a good thing to me.

Via

Spiegelman’s  St. Louis Refugee Ship Blues is stellar. Nobody treads in the dark with as light a touch. Example, his final frame:

He’s referring to what Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen called his country’s worst international crisis since World War II, here. In Seattle, only the Stranger ran the cartoons in question.

To this post – In a dry season, what blooms out the back end? – Eric Fredericksen added the essential Naomi Fisher. Thanks, Eric!