Annie Leibovitz, Whoopi Goldberg
Steven Miller, from Decode Books’ Milky at Platform
Steven Miller, again:
Regina Hackett takes her Art to Go
That old grade-school test question - Which of these does not belong? - offers a key to the aesthetics of the expressively hot, as opposed to the classically cool. The hint of crazy within the solid citizen, the blood in the water and the worm in the rose (mortal, guilty) move us in a way that visions of perfection rarely do. In honor of the flaw, a small survey of its recent, robust manifestations. Douglas Gordon Three Inches (Black) 1997 (image via) Susan Robb: Three from the last … [Read More...]
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If human history were underwater, Alwyn O'Brien's ceramic vessels could serve as the bleached bones of the Ancien Regime, the decorative drained and dead on a dark sea floor. 4 Descending Notes 2010 Manganese Clay and Glaze 9" x 7" x 5 1/2" Hand-rolled coils make her lacy vessels. Born past their prime, they are in their own weird way pristine. Story of Looking, 2010 Porcelain and glaze, Two Pieces 12 1/2" x 14" x 5" Following Thelonious Monk, she knows how to use the wrong … [Read More...]
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Collectors who hire experts to solve problems that don't exist till help arrives are responsible for the equivalent of bad face lifts on old masters. What the artists intended too frequently recedes under an abrasive cleaning or a deadening layer of varnish. Current practices discourage irreversible interventions. That means John Currin's work is a little safer than artists who preceded him, such as Picasso, although having the money to buy good advice doesn't guarantee it will be heeded. … [Read More...]
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Nice to see David Wojnarowicz (wana-row-vitch) back in the news, making the monkeys dance. It's no surprise that the usual people want to use their deliberate misunderstanding of his work to rally their frightened base. It's also no surprise that the Smithsonian once again proves to be cowardly. Remember its Enola Gay exhibit from 1995? The examination of this country's use of the Atom Bomb started as scholarly and turned into a my-country-right-or-wrong cheering section, after suitable … [Read More...]
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Humans see, humans do: After the first horse drawn on the first cave and the first pot incised with a decorative line, everything became imitation. You don't need a weatherman to know which way that wind blows, or that in the contemporary period, it blows harder. In selecting the 12 artists featured in Image Transfer: Pictures in a Remix Culture, associate Henry curator Sara Krajewski looked for those whose engagements with image recycling make them visual mix masters of note, those who … [Read More...]
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By Regina Hackett Leave a Comment
Mequitta Ahuja Wriggle, oil on canvas, 41"X26" 2008. Could have been titled, Medusa takes a nap. Geoffrey Chadsey Welterweight, 2002 Watercolor pencil on rag vellum, tape 57" x 24" Another great Chadsey figure with flowing locks. (Not safe for work.) Lauren Grossman Behold 2003 Iron, wool, steel. 13"x21"x12" Rolls on casters. Mequitta Ahuja, again. Flowback, oil on canvas, 68"X51" 2008 … [Read More...]
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Annie Leibovitz, Whoopi Goldberg
Steven Miller, from Decode Books’ Milky at Platform
Steven Miller, again:
A Lawrence Weiner installation at a football stadium is impressive, along with everything else opening soon at the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium, previous post here.
What is even less likely to materialize in a football stadium is art that critiques the game as effectively as Grant Barnhart‘s does.
Detail:
George Carlin on the difference between baseball and (American) football here.
Only in Texas do both reactionary politics and advanced art dominate.
Exhibit A is the Dallas Cowboys Art Program in its recently completed stadium. Instead of tapping LeRoy Neiman, somebody the state’s most famous politician is sure to have heard of, aritsts in the lineup are largely but not exclusively abstract or text based: Franz Ackermann, Annette Lawrence, Olafur Eliasson Ricci Albenda, Mel Bochner, Daniel Buren, Teresita Fernandez, Terry Haggerty, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jim Isermann, Dave Muller, Matthew Ritchie, Gary Simmons, Lawrence Weiner, Doug Aitken, Wayne Gonzales, and Jacqueline Humphries.
I’m dazzled. There’s a press tour Aug. 11. Press release here.
Martha Stewart is a satire waiting to get out. Not too far beneath the surface of her hints for gracious living are lunatic assumptions about the value of women’s time. Performance artists have spotted the lunacy and exploited it, including Karen Finley, who advised women to save hairs from shower drains and weave them into bath mats: waste not, want not.
Mike Simi is not about to waste his time weaving, although he too is interested in what can be salvaged from the bathroom.
Lint Roller Series: Bathroom Rug
Els Vanden Meersch as a bee, making honeycomb:
Ben Beres as a cat (SuttonBeresCuller):
Bryan Zanisnik – mom and dad as stars in the night sky, with nuclear cooling towers as background shadows and the demised World Trade Center at her feet.
Mandy Greer as a spider:
Fred Muram as a horse, after John Baldessari :
Darren Waterston as a jellyfish:
Susan Robb as an animal made of land:
Claude Zervas as many bears:
Dan Webb as a dandelion:
Gretchen Bennett as her own forest:
Last month’s edition of Flat Stanley’s Steamroller Print Initiative produced prints by Tina Randolph that will be part of Georgetown’s Art Attack on Saturday.
(Last time I checked, the link for Art Attack says July 11, but a similar event takes place Aug. 8, same place. Info on this month’s activities after the jump.)
I’m convinced. Via
I can’t believe Jen Graves and I are arguing about William Hogarth. My comment was an incredulous, take-it-for-granted, passing swipe in parenthesis in a story about my misgivings on the appointment of Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker as director of the Frye Art Museum:
(Graves also wrote Danzker’s exhibit, William Hogarth: Nationalism, Mass Media and the Artist,
was “awesome-sounding.” Awesome? Hogarth is an illustrator in the worst
sense of the word. He belongs in picture books accompanying stories.)
Her response:
I cannot even address a person who dismisses Hogarth.
Maybe it’s generational. Nobody from my time and place countenances the didactical moralism of Hogarth, the 18th-century’s Norman Rockwell. It’s hardwired. You can have them both, Jen.
Via.
An Egyptian bust from 1500 B.C. to 1050 B.C. at Chicago’s Field Museum is getting heavy traffic thanks to its resemblance to Michael Jackson.
After Surrealism exhausted all of its possible permutations, it reemerged in Japan as amine and bounced back elsewhere as a delicate version of Pop with a punk twist.
Born and raised in Japan, Toshi Asai has the troubling delicacy down cold. She draws madonnas from a tattoo parlor, outer-space Virgin Marys and their animal companions.
Working in oils, Asai plays with the suggestion of depths, populating her surfaces with greater and lesser beings emerging and receding within an orchestrated flow. Opening Wednesday night, her current exhibit at Joe Bar is all pencil on paper, which highlights the supple rigor of of her line.
Through August.
an ArtsJournal blog