Archives for 2010

In the mid-1990s, Charles Krafft and Larry Reid decided to do something about the past-tense reputation of Krafft’s personal hero.
Enter the Mystic Sons of Morris Graves, Lodge No. 93.
  In draping a mantle of irony and subversive humor over the spiritual head of the Northwest School, Krafft and Reid were pushing what Krafft called “resurgent regionalism through mythomania.”  Graves’ profile had become fogged with the dewy breath of his mythy-minded admirers, and Krafft and Reid hoped to clear it with satire.

Satire and strategy. Like a Stephen Sondheim stripper in Gypsy, they got nothing against a gimmick.

You can pull all the stops out
Till they call the cops out,
Grind your behind till your banned,
But you gotta get a gimmick
If you wanna get a hand.

You can sacrifice your sacro
Workin’ in the back row,
Bump in a dump till your dead.
But you gotta get a gimmick
If you wanna get ahead.

Krafft:

We’re taking out the sanctimony and adding a bit of titillation. The
Northwest mystics were an urban movement, not a bunch of remote
dreamers. They didn’t have master of fine arts degrees. They learned on
the job.

Graves:

Besides membership charters, wristwatches, calendars, trading cards, ashtrays, portable shrines and even a theme song written by Krafft and sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies, what has the Mystic Sons done for us lately?

Reid is glad you asked.

Thursday night, 5:00 to 8:00 at 3 galleries in the
Tashiro Kaplan compound (Rock/DeMent, the Corridor, and Angle galleries
at 306 S. Washington St) is a Graves’ tribute invitational, with a Graves séance on August 28, what would have been Graves’ 100th birthday.

Morris Graves, Self Portrait, (left); John Ohannesian, Morris Graves (right)

(Reid’s press release after the jump.)

[Read more…] about Mystic Sons of Morris Graves

This post is dedicated to the insanely great Dil Se, especially the dance sequence below and on the link. In the West, if two or more people encounter each other on top of a moving train, one of them will die. In Bollywood, there are other options:

Using posters from a Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry, artists throw in Indian
miniatures, traveling carnivals, folk paintings in a florid vein and Mexican shrines with an occasional touch
of anime.
Below, Bollywood fellow travelers.

Namita Kapoor

Timothy Siciliano Torture in pastel shades.

Donald Fels Even the Wizard of Oz is working for a living.

Lari Pittman Remote but dreamy. The veil covers nothing.

Also Lari Pittman:

Cheryl dos Remedios Chinese dragon (five claws for the emperor) in a girl’s girl narrative.

Manish Arora Who needs to sit down?

Maki Tamura– Everything together.

Angela Fraleigh. Overheated romance, anyone?

Finally, more Bolly than Holly, a fake movie campaign from Eva and Franco Mattes.

A handful of solid shows open in August. More on them later. Meanwhile, reliable venues are taking the month off, including Platform and Ambach & Rice.

Platform opened with four partners. Stephen Lyons is the only one left, and he runs it by himself. Even though he no doubt he needs a vacation, why pick August? Seattle collectors tend to stay in town, plus it’s high tourist season, attracting those who are sweltering where they live.

Ambach & Rice has been lights out since June 27. Its website reports it will reopen August 14, but with what? That space is a blank.  No news is not necessarily good news. I’d hoped the gallery would use its time out to upgrade its website, adding, for instance, images to its list of artists represented. Alas, no. Under each artist’s name is the caption, “More information coming soon.” That’s soon in turtle time.

Lawrimore Project has scheduled nothing past the close of its Isaac Layman show, ending August 14. (Click the Layman link for more on LP’s still mysterious plans.)  Fetherston Gallery’s last scheduled exhibit closed June 12th. Grey Gallery closed its Capitol Hill space on June 19 and is still looking for a new one. Ohge is out May 15-Sept 1.

The open-with-bells-on crowd includes:

Soil: Xanadu: A Stately Pleasure Dome. Group show including Amanda Manitach‘s Glory, Utopia (the head of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the body of Terpischore) Charcoal and pastel. Opens Thursday night, 6-8.

Ouch My Eye is having a yard sale 5-11 p.m., also the opening for a group show.

Punch Gallery: Orange Crush. Yes, gallery artists explore orange. (Wasn’t Punch artist Ries Niemi recently deploring the prevalence of cute curatorial ideas?) Thursday night opening, 6-8.

Traver: Dante Marioni, opening Thursday night, 6-8.

Francine Seders: Juan Alonzo and Marita Dingus, opening August 13, reception August 15, 2-4 p.m.

Alonzo:

Dingus:

Greg Kucera: Tim Bavington opens August 19, reception that night,  6-8
.
Winston Wachter: My Summer Vacation continues through Aug. 27, including:

Zack Bent

and Buddy Bunting.

Ries Niemi objected to my post, Art & golf in a gallery:

As an artist, I always resent these stupid theme shows.
Only one step removed from those plastic cows that “artists” decorate for charity, or the inane competitions on Work of Fart on TV.
Mini Golf, in particular, is a recurring curatorial cop out.
It keeps cropping up, for well over 30 years now. First one I remember was in NYC, in the 70’s, but there were probably some before that….Why is it only visual artists get subjected to these idiotic themes, these “fun ideas”?
How come famous poets aren’t asked to all write poems about
Cupcakes for an anthology? …
Good art does not come at the request of a curator to fit into a “fun” category that everyone can relate to.
Sure, once in a while some of these show produce interesting, or at least amusing, shadows of what the artist could really do if left unmolested.
But by and large, they are an example of intellectual laziness on the part of exhibiting spaces and curators, and pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Now, I gotta go, and make my piece for the upcoming show about Tube Socks…

Yes indeed, except of course, it depends. Even the most unpromising premises can deliver, given the right artists. The right artists are usually those who are there already. It’s the difference between a curator who thinks about corners because she notices artists are working there, and a curator who asks artists who’ve never done a corner piece to make one for her. The former has a better chance of scoring than the latter.

Back to golf. An easy way to sink the art ball is to invite Charles McGill (aka Arthur Negro) to participate.  Not only does he make his own golf bags….

…he’s founder of the moving golf course known as Club Negro and the website, ArtNegro.com.

McGill:

Arthur Negro, the clubs first and only Golf Brofessional, has fulfilled his dream of creating a secluded and tranquil place where former black militants can focus on things more personal to them; A place where the daily pressures of changing the world can be left on the practice putting green and where their inherent desire for individuality can be realized, somewhere between the first tee and the 18th green.

Aya Haidar

Diem Chau

Jerome Powers

Buzz Spector

Aaron Bagley

Elizabeth Jameson

Claire Cowie

Jana Sterbak (detail)

Jennifer Zwick

Helmet Smits via Amy Goodwin

From Oliver Sacks, A Neurologist’s Notebook, A Man of Letters, The New Yorker, June 28, 2010:

On the morning of July 31, 2001, Canadian novelist Howard Engel awoke and discovered that he could not read the newspaper. His room looked normal, and he could still read his clock, but his books were all unintelligible….

Buzz Spector (second Spector image via)

Rachel Khedoori

The heavyweight in the field is Jay DeFeo’s The Rose (1958-66), tipping the scale at 3,000 pounds. DeFeo didn’t intend gargantuan. Over the years, as she added and never took away,  it grew. Most painters are content to work with a flat surface, but there are artists for whom flat is a synonym for starting gate. Once they blow through it, they go for volume, volume, volume.

Leslie Wayne

Ivanna Brenner (via)

Peter Fox (via)
Margie Livingston

Peter Tollens Untitled
2005
oil on wood
3.75 x 3 inches

Michael Toenges
16-07-32-28
2007
oil on linen
15 x 13 inches

Andrew Dadson To Be Titled, 2010.
Oil on canvas
20 x 15 inches
(detail)

Wil Jansen

Richard Allen Morris

Tomory Dodge Survivalist, 2007. Oil on canvas.13 3/4 x 16 inches

Drew Klassen

Joan Snyder Life of A Tree, 2007.
Oil, acrylic, cloth, berries, paper mache, glitter, nails, pastel, on linen
48″ x 68″

Alexander Kroll Untitled, 2009
Oil on linen over panel
14″ x 14″

Back to flat. Paint doesn’t need to be thick to be thick.

Angela Fraleigh, in this moment, 2007, oil on panel, 72″ x 96″

Fallsapart is Sherman Alexie’s website address. Things Fall Apart is the title of Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece and also the title of the Mario Van Peebles’ upcoming film about a football player with cancer, starring 50 Cent.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is Joan Didion at her brilliant best. Dan Savage tips his hat to it in Skipping Towards Gomorrah.

When law professor Elyn R. Saks wrote about her illness – “paranoid schizophrenia with acute exacerbation; prognosis: grave” – she titled it, The Center Cannot Hold. Paul Krugman went to the same well this morning to explain the problem with Obama:

Mr. Obama’s attempts to avoid confrontation have been counterproductive. His opponents remain filled with a passionate intensity, while his supporters, having received no respect, lack all conviction.

Lawrence Lemaoana,
Things Fall Apart, 2009
Textile
49 x 32 inches

Just as I feared. It’s not just Jerry Saltz. Bravo’s Work of Art is deteriorating the discourse. Jen Graves’ post on the last episode is devoted entirely to what she thinks of the artists’ personalities. She ended with:

May the winner not be a douchebag.

Jen. Shake your usually admirable head to clear it. We care about art, remember? Look down and check the color of your jersey. You’re on the art critic team. Art critics don’t care who’s a douchebag, not that they would  would presume to judge based on the edited clips of a reality TV show. (My last posts on the show here and here.) The question is, who’s making the best art, as far as the audience can tell, given the format. It’s Miles Mendenhall followed by Peregrine Honig and Nicole Nadeau. They’re not necessarily the best artists, but they are the best reality TV artists this sorry season.