Archives for 2009

Jesse Durost Static

Kader Attia: Untitled (Empty Plastic Bags)

On her AJ blog Critical Distance, Laura Collins-Hughes confronts the sexism that never says die, here.

Her starting point is an essay by Charlotte Higgins at the Guardian, here. Higgins asked Alstair Spalding, artistic director of London contemporary-dance center Sadler’s Wells, why there were no female choreographers among the “raft of commissions” he’s just announced for the coming season. He responded:

 It is something to do with women not being as assertive in that field. It’s not that I don’t want to commission them.

If he only could, he’d be behind women a 1,000 percent. Alas, there’s the regrettable problem of their not being up to scratch, and quality is his watchword, he says, regardless of color, sex, sexual orientation or creed.

Collins-Hughes’ essay is terrific, if theoretical. She doesn’t name any women choreographers she thinks could if given a chance step up at Sadler’s Wells.

Here’s a few, just for starters.

Susan Marshall, BeBe Miller, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker,
Pina Bausch
(at Sadler’s Wells last year), Trisha Brown,
Twyla Tharp, Zoe Scofield and Donna Uchizono.

Tiny Art Director, so like real art directors as well as the people encountered when making public art. Since his daughter was two (she’s now four), Bill Zeman has made drawings at her request, which she proceeds to critique. Soon to be a major motion picture, or, as the tiny art director herself says, “I want daddy to go away on a trip.” (Via Slog.)

The Brief: A mama snail and a baby snail

The Critique: I’m sorry to say that you’re worser than me. You gotta learn to draw as me. You just don’t draw so well. Why do you think that is? It turns out that I’m the good draw-er. It turns out that you’re the art director.

Artists Note: The critique is on the initial sketch, and compares to hers. She actually likes the painting.

Job Status: Provisionally Approved, pending addition of jumping fish in the lake.

The Brief: A monster (on spec)
The Critique: Too scary! He’s a tomato and he’s yelling right in my ear!
Job Status: Rejected

Previous.

Current from Specterart:

When Jen Graves wrote on Slog that she was seeking an intern, Seattle artist Ken Marulis (look under February in his name’s link to see his work) replied with the following, which he posted on Artdish:

Firstly, I thought it prudent to list my shortcomings. I’m a two finger typer who gets worse if someone is watching. I’m ignorant, I have almost no schooling and I come from a strictly blue collar background. I’m sixty years old, uncomfortable to be around, have a stupidly perverse and immature sense of humor, sometimes emit dense male body odor and have been known to say the wrong thing at the wrong time (and usually to figures of authority).

I can be a troublemaker. I like to peek down woman’s blouses and a nice ass will make me lose my concentration. I avoid being politically incorrect but if you look into my eyes you’ll see the truth. I may have been barred from entering a couple of galleries but I’m not sure yet. I love Artists more than I love critics. I like to drink sometimes.
I know there are more than a few items missing from the preceding list but you can point them out to me when we begin working together.

On the plus side, I love art and I think I may be interested in writing something, and as stated before I’m ignorant and would like to learn a few things.
Oh, and the answer to that question: If I could go to any art show in the world this very minute it would have to be a café somewhere, an art town maybe, and see the work of the best ignored Artist that that particular area has to offer. Some hidden jewel of a painter that the entrenched have chosen to ignore because he/she does not come replete with a following. Aside from that, maybe I’d like to see Al Held’s studio.

Thanks, Ken Marulis

To nobody’s surprise, including the artist himself, he did not get the job.

In response to this post, Ries Niemi wrote:

Mostly, it’s the system.
First, a jury, with perhaps one artist on it, and, usually, an
architect who feels any art is an intrusion on his genius, plus a few
laypeople who are convinced the budget would be better spent on giving
them more days off.

Unless you have been on juries, …you have no idea the horsetrading, educating, and
politicking that are involved to get any but the blandest, least
threatening, beige art selected.

Although I am an artist who competes for these projects, I have
served on several juries over the years, and most every time, the
strongest artists with the most personality are voted out in the first
round, despite my protests.

Jury composition is an art- in the legal system, there are
consultants who charge hundreds of thousands to help on jury selection
of big cases. And this is one of the biggest weaknesses of a weak arts
administrator- not timidity, but the inability to find, and cajole,
great people to serve on juries. Generally, the administrator must sit
on the sidelines and manage process, not lobby for favorites.

Then, the even bigger problem is the politicians or beaurocrats who
must say yes before checks are signed- the main reason for dumbing down
of ideas.

In the recent Dan Webb/Olympia dustup, it was the elected
politicians who shot down the idea, not the artist who was timid- and
this is very very common. Which leads professional artists, ones who
have been around the block once or twice, to avoid pitching that x
rated day glo pink giant reptile eating human cadavers amidst a pile of
crack bags. Self editing is what you are talking about, not timidity…

In any field of endeavor, there is a difference between being timid and just tossing out expletives for their shock value.

Nope, Vito has never proposed that he would masturbate under the stairs for a project for a new convention center…

Comment on obituary, here, from curator Brian Wallace:

I can’t say “I’m thinking of you Mary wherever you are” because I think
that when people die they die; this one hurts because despite her age I
really always thought I’d see her again. Also, and, sure, this is
inappropriate, but what the hell, smoking pot with Mary was a total
hoot.

Related: From Family Guy on Hulu, Bag of Weed.

Via (Click to enlarge.)

Jonathan Jones at the Guardian thinks the public can’t be trusted to have anything to say about public art, here.

Public art is not a matter for the majority – people should simply cough up and stand back as talented artists indulge themselves.

How very monarchist of him. The problem with public art is not the public. The public is part of the challenge. The problem is lazy-ass, timid arts administrators who don’t bother to engage the communities who will interact with the art on a daily basis. Too many artists in the public realm are also timid. They go for the safe and bland.

All this is the public’s problem? Offer good art and sell it to those who are going to see it regularly as they go about their business. Critics who have nothing but contempt for public art are also the problem. They need to be using different criteria to evaluate what Lawrence Alloway called “focal points for an undifferentiated audience.” Instead, they bring only their studio art gasbag of tricks. 

What the well-dressed bank robber will wear: (Freddie Robbins)

Culture Grrl (Lee Rosenbaum) blames the victim, here, in a post about the beleaguered Rose Museum and heroic director, Michael Rush, not heroic to CG, however, who rewrites history to knock him.
 

Michael Rush, whose directorship at the museum ends June 30, told (Geoff) Edgers:

The Rose, as we have known it, is closing…

…or at least the Rose as HE has known it is finished. My hope that a new director, arriving in Watham without the baggage of an acrimonious relationship with the administration, will find a way to preserve the Rose’s collection and its status as a full-functioning museum, while making a more effective effort to communicate its necessity and importance to Brandeis officials, the broader university community and the general public.

Catching up: Excellent Aldrich director Harry Philbrick interview last Februrary with Robert Lazzarini in his New York City studio here.

HP: Do you own a gun?

RL: Well, I own that gun [the one reproduced in the artwork] the original, simply because that’s my process, and I had to go through an FBI check and all that stuff, but I don’t shoot, and it’s not that I don’t want to. I’ve been to a firing range in the city because one of my assistants was a gunsmith, and he worked at a firing range so I’d go there and shoot there. But it’s really loud, even with ear protection on you’re like “wow, that’s loud!”

HP: So not your thing.

RL: I prefer stabbing.

I love Photo Shop: Erik Johannsson, Road Pull

In honor of my dad, whose first book is titled “The Cardboard Giants,” a small roundup of where we are in materially fragile figures. (Click to enlarge.)

Scott Fife: (Bob Dylan)

Oliver Herring: (Patrick)

Ana Serrano: (Chalino)