Archives for 2009

Via, 1966

Via

Good NYT story today by Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop on the great transitional figure of Chinese art, Wu Guanzhong, now 90. Online, it ran with no images, which is bizarre but still a frequent enough occurrence in newspapers that it goes largely unremarked. A visual art review devoid of images is like a diving suit without an oxygen tank.

What has always struck me about Wu’s work is his tenderness for lost things. Below, The Ancient City of Jiaohe, from 2007, via.

As a theme, it’s universal.

Joseph Goldberg,  Wall Ghosts, 1999

Ansel Adams, St. Francis Church, 1929,
Georgia O’Keeffe, Ranchos Church No. 1, 1929

Jay Steensma, Landscape, 1991

Jeremy Mangan, The Little One, 2009

Buddy Bunting

Whiting Tennis, Stranded Tudor, 2009

Gary Faigin

Jesse Paul Miller, Landscape, 2007

The proliferation of art writing around the country, covering the local and aspiring to the global, makes fully-staffed art sections of old newspapers look sparse indeed. What’s rare are blogs devoted to a single artist that have an authentic voice and distinct point of view, not fan notes but life notes centered on a singular art experience, and how that experience unfolds in a life.

Two of my favorites could not be more different. Jonathan Janson’s Essential Vermeer is a scholarly dissection of every aspect of the painter’s work and the context in which he made it. Janson can truly say he has thought of everything. Peter O’Neil’s Go Head On! The Art & Rock & Roll of Chuck Berry is O’Neil telling his life story through his reaction to Berry’s work. In his own way, O’Neil too has thought of everything.

Disclosure: Peter’s my brother-in-law. I remember trying to argue with him once that Earth, Wind & Fire Blood, Sweat & Tears was better than Sly Stone. (Peter’s correction. It never ends, him being right.) Peter  was 14, and I was in my mid-20s. He stomped me speechless. In the end, all the cards were in his hands. I was getting a master’s degree, and he was a 9th-grade drop out. How could this be?

One of his sisters emailed me a couple of days ago to say she didn’t have time to read my blog anymore, because she’s reading his. I guess she has a one blog limit. Those who have a one blog limit might consider joining her. I’ll understand.

Art Fag City (Paddy Johnson) takes a swipe at David Hockney:

In other grating news, The Daily Mail reports famed artist David Hockney creates digital paintings on his iPhone and He also sells prints created on his computer in limited editions. If there were any interest in this project past the fact people are actually willing to pay for it, lifestyle, the display of Hockney’s iPhone on an easel certainly destroys it. Surely the artist doesn’t use the easel to make the work and the iPhone is not equivalent to a stretcher- its frame is invisible- so why display it as such? The iPhone as medium is a gimmick that needs to die a quick death.

Couple of things wrong here. First, why should any medium be called upon to die? It’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion in the ocean. Japanese school girls are writing text novels. I await the text novel masterpiece. Second, Hockney is Mr. Tech. He loves the mechanical means of reproduction and thinks old masters did too. Third, he’s the ultimate in pure visuals. Like a drummer who can play with a symphony orchestra by banging away on tin cans, he can be Hockney in any form he chooses. Case by case basis, Ms. Johnson. Nor do I care that he put his little phone painting on an easel. So what.

C-Monster nails it:  Abdel Abdessemed’s roots in a bad 1980 movie. It’s funny, of course, but doesn’t matter at all in the art sense. He could get his inspiration from the drool on his grandfather’s chin. What matters is where he took it. I haven’t seen this show, but I’m mighty impressed with the photos.

Peripheral Vision’s take on Arts Writing and the New Thing:

Well worth reading. She quotes Doug McLennan:

I’ve recently come to feel that the new thing (whatever that is) won’t
have a chance until the old order is disposed of. Newspapers are
sucking up all the oxygen in the room, and the startups won’t have room
to flourish until newspapers get out of the way.

I think I agree in cities like Seattle, where the Seattle Times represents a grim version of the old order, but I don’t agree at all if we’re talking about the New York Times, LA Times and Boston Globe. Can’t we all just get along?

As PV notes, it’s an excellent time for anybody interested in reading about art.

Greg.org on Le Corbusier’s Poeme electronique from 1956 is riveting. Watch the videos. It’s probably the only futurist pavilion that delivered on the future.

I love Emily Pothast’s tribute to Bea Arthur at Translinguistic Other.

In 2005, during my final quarter of the MFA program at the University of Washington, I spent hundreds of hours holed up in an apartment equipped with a TiVo and dozens of chisel-tip felt markers to cross out the entire Bible, leaving only the violent words. The resulting document is a concentrated study in psycho-spiritual trauma more closely resembling a censored Bush era CIA folio than a sacred religious text.

To figure out how Bea Arthur fits in, click the link.

If you’re in LA May 23 to June 13, check out 1000 Days, which Daily Serving helped organize at Scion Space. It includes, from Seattle, the dazzling Tivon Rice.

The galleries at the Museum of Glass look like waiting rooms at an airport, but its hot shop delivers on the romance of the process.

MOG bought a truck to take a portable version of its selling point on the road. It debuts in front of the museum May 15, 6-8 p.m. and remains in the tow-away zone on Saturday. After that, it goes where it’s wanted.

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Even though 95 percent of museum visitors enter through the parking lot in the rear. The proposed plaza will not only spruce up the entrance almost nobody uses but wrap around the building to sprinkle museum dust on the cars.

The museum’s 2003 Antoine Predock building may be a peach, but the plaza is a pit.

TAM is unusually frank in its assessment of its plaza problem.

* There is undistinguished street visibility along Pacific Avenue

* There is no protection on the plaza from the elements

* The building turns its back on the city

* Museum appears closed and monolithic from the outside

* Plaza feels empty

* Plaza appears like a drive-by space

* Plaza feels stark, cold

* Plaza contains no art work.

The budget is $3 million, entries due June 5. Discussion forum, or shell of a discussion forum, here. Outline of issues here.

Why not let an artist do it? The artist can add landscape designers as needed. Be bold, Tacoma Art Museum. Pick an artist.

My preliminary recommendations, based on their past work and interests:

Buster Simpson: No one understands public space better, or engaging the audience.

Ries Niemi and Sheila Klein: Working together, they’ll make sure nobody forgets this plaza ever again. Plus, Klein is all over the concept of glam parking lot, and Niemi can do the furniture.

Vaughn Bell: portable nature for a parking lot culture.

Bruce Conkle and Marne Lucas: Lively up yourself with fantasy, Northwest edition of Eco-Baroque.

Peter Reiquam: The concept of a flying saucer was invented in Tacoma. Roots, baby, roots.

Ann Gardner: Rain can be a plus. And she knows how to wrap a plaza in rhythm.

I would love to see what Claudia Fitch came up with.

Ditto Linda Beaumont.

With his lean line and robust id, his unfailing intelligence and ability to mutate metaphors down the page of his image stream, poet Craig Arnold deserved but almost certainly did not get a long life. (Obituary notice here.) Because no body was found, he’s presumed dead. I hope he staggers out of the volcano everyone thinks he fell into to amaze the multitude.

In the meantime, here’s Couple from Hell #1 in the hopes there will be many, many more couples from hell to follow.

You walk out in the morning

and the sky is broad and blue

and across the pathway threads of silk

glint in the sun   at the end of each a spider

still wet from the egg   spins out a dragline

and sails off into the breeze

The air is so bright and busy

your whole body feels it

a puppet weightless on its wires

and you let it guide you down a path

you’ve never taken   along the river

the little harbor at its mouth

where three blue boats are moored

at a dock cushioned with old tires

where the only sound is the deep bass

drumming of waves on wood

Here is a small café

opening for breakfast

a zinc counter catching the light

at every angle in bright rings of glitter

A cup of black coffee is placed before you

brimming with rainbow-colored foam

a packet of sugar   a pat of butter

a split roll of bread

scored and toasted and still warm

The butter is just soft enough to spread

the coffee hot and sugared to perfect sweetness

the bread grilled to the palest brown

crisp but not quite dry

You tear it neatly into pieces

eat them slowly   when you finish

you are exactly full

Here are bread butter and coffee

Here you are   your own body

eating and drinking what you are given

as one day you in turn will be devoured

and that is all   You were never the lord

of a lightless kingdom   any more

than she has ever been its queen
and the world you talked each other into prison

suddenly seems to be made of glass

and your eyes see clear to the horizon

and you feel the molecules of air

part like a curtain   as if to let you pass