Not Every Picture Tells a Story "The Pictures Generation (1974-1984)," now at New York's Metropolitan Museum through Aug. 2, proves that pictures will not cure you of photography, any more than the hair of the dog will cure you of rabies. The exhibition offer as many insights about photography as it does about spinach. The … [Read more...]
Oldenburg at the Whitney
Ice Bag Restored Centered around the artist's newly restored Ice Bag - Scale C (1971) -- it inflates! it slumps! it rotates! -- Claes Oldenburg: Early Sculpture, Drawings, and Happenings Films (through Sept. 8) is drawn primarily from the Whitney permanent collection. Occasioned by the dire economics of the moment, this is one of those exhibitions that proves necessity can be inspiring. Who knew that the Whitney owned so many tasty Oldenburgs? … [Read more...]
Ernesto Neto at the Armory
In The Womb of the Tropical Spider Lycra deployed like tenting, like venting, like pastel parachutes and saliva, forming a gigantic "spider" with udderlike, fabric stalactites weighed down with turmeric, glove, ginger, black pepper, and cumin introduces the hallucinatory feminine into the splendiferous, all-male, historic Park Avenue Armory. One needs people cautiously making their way through the fabric passageways; one needs … [Read more...]
Older Than God
Is the New Museum Slipping? The biennial problem is perennial. The Whitney Biennial has been difficult to deal with for years, so now as punishment for our art sins, the New Museum will offer another survey of "new" art every three years. The Whitney has already complicated … [Read more...]
Robert Barry: Connect the Dots
The New Art History Blessed with hindsight, it is now quite clear that in the late '60s the big question in art was how to include content without compromising abstraction. Pop was too popular, offering the spectacle that the critique far too easily became that which was being attacked. Celebration during the Vietnam War was untenable. Yet … [Read more...]
VOIDS: Nothing Doing at the Pompidou
Being and Nothingness What is the void? It is not a vacuum, nor is it emptiness. Whatever it is, it is decidedly not plural .... Voids: A Retrospective is an exhibition that just closed at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but it will make one more appearance -- at the site of the co-producer, the Kunstalle Bern in Switzerland. In its own way it is as important in our century as were certain exhibitions in the second half of the last: When Attitudes Become Form at … [Read more...]
Sacha Kolin: Lives of an Unknown Artist
What The Art World Was This is an odd, but fascinating book. Look Up: The Life and Art of Sacha Kolin by Lisa Thaler (Midmarch Arts Press, 2008) is the tale of an artist written not by an art historian, but by a genealogist and/or, as the author seems to prefer, a "family historian" using her professional tools ... and then some. In an … [Read more...]
The Martin Kippenberger Caper
Martin Kippenberger: The Happy End of Franz Kafka's "Amerika," 1994. How German Is It? I have a problem with Martin Kippenberger. Not personally; after all, I never met him, but I have a problem with his work. It is not anything fancy as might be suggested by the awkward subtitle of the current festival at MoMA: "Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective" (to May 11). If an art history graduate student were to use this phrase and I were … [Read more...]
Judith Bernstein’s Phalluses Revealed: First Artopia Video Blog
The Turn of the Screwed Judith Bernstein's outrageously penile screw drawings continue to be anti-war, anti-sexist statements that rise above simplistic agitprop. Her show last year at the Mitchell Algus Gallery in Chelsea garnered considerable attention. The first art critic to review her work (in the Village Voice in 1973), I have been a long-time champion. Recently, I introduced her talk at the Drawing Center in SoHo and, through the miracle of my new Flip digital recorder and … [Read more...]
Poop Art: Manzoni Sono Buoni
Piero Manzoni: Merda d'artista, 1961 When the Shit Hits the Fan 1. Let's get it over with, right here at the beginning: excrement, feces, crap, poo-poo, doo-doo, ca-ca, poop, turds, shit. Notice how so many of the words are baby-talk. Like Dada. 2. "A wonderful fertilizer -- money." -- Percival "Money Bags" Montgomery Hower (played by Clyde Fillmore) in … [Read more...]