Archives for April 2004

Erro, Pop's History, 1967 Too Political To Be Pop? This is the year of the second Icelandic invasion; the first happened before Columbus. Adventurous Icelandics settled briefly in what they called Vineland. You can even read about it in one of the Icelandic sagas. Now its art that's coming over. First, Dieter Roth at MoMA and P.S. 1; now Erró at the Grey Art Gallery of New York University (100 Washington Square East, to July 17) and Goethe-Institut (1014 Fifth Avenue, to July 16). Erró is … [Read more...]

A Pavilion Grows in Brooklyn The Brooklyn Museum has a new look. Images of the just-inaugurated "entry pavilion" look best when shot inside, aimed at the glass ceiling or outside from high above to include the plaza. Unfortunately, when you actually see the Polshek Partnership redo of both entryway and front yard upon emerging from the subway or just at street level, the pavilion looks like a flimsy glass tent with no relationship to the looming hulk of a building it inadequately fronts. The … [Read more...]

Dieter Roth: (detail)Garden Sculpture What Are Masterpieces? "Roth Time," the first U.S. retrospective of Dieter Roth (1930-1998), is now at P.S.1 and MoMA QNS through June 7. [See the MoMA website for an online exhibition.] Ten years ago I could not have predicted that such a survey -- actually a double-header -- would receive the Museum of Modern Art imprimatur. Although Roth was European (German mother, Swiss father), there hasn't been much of a market for his work in the U.S.A., or much … [Read more...]

Ruppersberg: (detail) The New Five Foot Shelf Why Leave Home? He lives there in two rooms which he had covered ceiling to floor with the most strange and troubling designs that made certain distinguished critics repeat for the thousandth time: It is nothing but Literature!    -- Giorgio de Chirico, quoted at the beginning of each book in     Ruppersberg's The New Five Foot Shelf I like to keep my eye on new forms as they grow and mutate. In the deep, dark past … [Read more...]