Paul McCarthy: Bang Bang Room, 1992. Collection Fondazione Sandreto Rebaudengo, Turin. Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Hauser & Wirth Photo: Sheldan Collins Disorientations Who is Paul McCarthy? Not having the good grace to simmer down like a few other once-sensational artists I will not deign to name, McCarthy has never gone away, never graduated to the curious art Valhalla comprising those who are still here but gone. Or, alternatively, … [Read more...]
BUCKMINSTER FULLER: MINISTER OF MIST
Debunking Uncle Bucky Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) invented the geodesic dome, sort of. He was not the first to use the icosahedron for construction. Walter Bauersfield in 1922 in Jena, Germany built a planetarium that had suspiciously geodesic aspects. Moral: Whatever it is, if you do not give it a name and publicize it, it is not yours. Artist Kenneth Snelson, a student of Fuller's at Black Mountain College, made the first "tensegrity" … [Read more...]
Chris Burden: What My Father Got Me
Father's Day 2008 Majid Majidi's The Willow Tree (2004) is an art-house tearjerker about answered prayers. A blind man is able to see. As a crowd of well-wishers throws flowers to greet our newly sighted Professor Youssef at the Tehran airport, the camera lingers … [Read more...]
Olafür Eliasson: Underneath a Waterfall
Olafur Eliasson: Ventilator, 1997 For weeks now my Eliasson … [Read more...]
Keith Haring Redux
Some artists make art. Some make icons. Some, like Keith Haring, made both. Haring (1958-90) started out as a guerrilla subway artist. You see, there were all these unsold advertising boards in the subways: blank and all-black, like vertical schoolroom blackboards. He went around inscribing them in white chalk with a joyous repertoire of cartoony outline-figures. Some people pried them off and saved them. Keith Haring: Houston Street and Bowery Mural, 1986/2008 Then he … [Read more...]
JEFF KOONS: HAVING IT BOTH WAYS
Through the Roof "Jeff Koons on the Roof" at the Metropolitan Museum (to Oct. 26, 2008) consists of only three sculptures: Balloon Dog (Yellow), Coloring Book, and Sacred Heart (Red/Gold). The Met's mingy roof garden, symptomatic of its less than stellar commitment to contemporary art, could hardly showcase more. Because, as far as I know, there is no career-breaking or career-affirming retrospective on the boards for Koons, Inc., I thought I'd allow this tiny … [Read more...]
New Orleans Post-Katrina: Eating Up a Storm
New Orleans has been turned upside down. New art, new food, new people. Disasters are opportunities, if you live to tell the tale. Homeowners become homeless; art critics become ace reporters; neighborhoods disappear and new ones are invented. Real estate opportunities abound. New Orleans post-Katrina, at least on the high ground in the well-worn tourist parts, is like a dreamscape you have visited many times but never in real … [Read more...]
The Murakami Tsunami
I am entertaining myself with a list of critics and artists who will hate "©Murakami," a retrospective of the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami (b. 1962), at the Brooklyn Museum (200 Eastern Parkway) to July 13, 2008. Takashi Murakami, DOB's March, 1995 © Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved Or, if they have passed on, would have hated it. The list is composed largely of those who … [Read more...]
Dan Flavin: Time Travel
The most thoughtful, thought-provoking and provocative gallery show this season has to be "Dan Flavin: The 1964 Green Gallery Exhibition" at Zwirner & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, to May 3, 2008. Installation view (detail) at Zwirner & Wirth. Flavin Redux I remember the original well. I even wrote about it for the now long defunct Art International, coming out of Berne, Switzerland. If a gallery can appropriate a … [Read more...]
Jasper Johns and Color Charts: Ghosts of Duchamp
Gustave Courbet The Desperate Man, 1844-45Private Collection, courtesy of Conseil Investissement Art BNP Paribas The Greeks Had a Word for It The two current museum exhibitions that should have been physically juxtaposed are not "Jasper Johns: Gray" (to May 14) and "Gustav Courbet" (to May 18), now cheek by jowl at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the Johns and "Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today" (to May 4) at the Museum of Modern Art. The easy trick … [Read more...]