|
|
 |
| Jason Gubbiotti |
|
shotgun, lo-ridin'
|
|
| 1 |
FIELD TRIP
|
| 2 |
Numark
This week at Numark Gallery, Cheryl opened a show of David Jung. David is a young painter in DC whom graduated from VCU's graduate painting department. His work was in WPA\C's last Options show and soon after was in Bit by Bit at Numark Gallery. Anyhow, it was really great to see a gallery stand up for a young artist and promote their work. It is really easy to get behind someone's work whom has been established by the media, but there is courage present when someone stands up alone and tells people the work is good. David's show looks great! He stood up to the plate and got ambitious with his work. He did some larger pieces and even did a video installation with small monitors inserted into the wall.
It is up for a few weeks now and worth the travel. |
| 3 |
Heavy Duty
In this months Index, Peter Halley conducts an interview with NY smart smart-ass Tom Sachs. Tom is the young artist who's work got Mary Boone arrested last year in her 57th street gallery space.
In this interview, Peter and Tom discuss everything from military systems, James Brown, Lenny Bruce, Sachs 5th Ave..... and so on. The two most interesting things are Tom's studio practices and the car he is building. The studio is well customized for his needs. But most of all, the two artists discuss the more cerebral approach to the studio. The idea "It must be smart before it is good" is quite present.
The other wicked cool thing is Tom's car. It is an old cop car that has been modified for urban survival. The back seat is one large speaker, the trunk is filled with cables, forced entry tools, first aid..... there is even a DJ swivel light that brings cop and DJ culture together.
I just related to his outlook on art and the act of making it. The whole article boils down to the idea of repairing and replacing broken goods and as artist we prefer to repair as instead of replacing. |
| 4 |
Cy Twombly
- frosted fragility
- ancient oceanic monsters
- flowers subjected to tears
- urgent artifacts
- wild frustrated notes of love
|
| 5 |
Birds in flight
This week I journeyed over to Anton Gallery to check out Dan Treado's and was pleased to see katerina Wong's work too. I have seen a few shows of hers, last in the Fuzzy show at WPA/C. Every time I see her work it is completely different, pluralist you might say.
These pieces are great. She casted her finger in wax and attached them to paper and the wall with little pins. From there she paints there shadows on the wall echoing their movement. In the end, there are these very lyrical movements across the wall that are very poetic and very physical ... quiet, subtle and at the same time cerebral.
The work is an interesting chapter to her story.
|
|
 |
| James Huckenpahler |
| Rejected verb. |
|
| + |
Ghetto
Spent a few hours on Saturday morning getting to know Graham Caldwell - no relation to Colby. It was great showing him around the studios, talking about Robert Wilson and Tim Hawkinson, and talking about his work - currently up at Millennium Arts Center [see Annie’s post from last week.] We talked about the ghetto-ization of specific media – in his case glass, in mine computer-whatever. He feels strongly about operating in a larger cultural arena – at the expense of quick sales through the glass market. It’s a tough choice: one that subordinates specific materials to ideas, which are a lot harder to sell, but ultimately much more valuable.
|
| + |
Eurasia
Last week was a tough work week. The bright spot was that I started working on some maps of ‘Russia and the Newly Independent Nations of the Former Soviet Union,’ all the while listening to Dali’s Car. Groovy, fascist 80’s drum machines with weird Eastern-European melodies played on a flatulent bass. Maybe the Balkans are the intestines of Eurasia.
|
| + |
RE: to curate
From Doug Lang:
Officially, there is only the noun "curator," (and the noun "curate"= cleric, or vicar). The non-existent verb, "to curate," has been widely used for decades, which should make it acceptable (according to usage, which is one of the ways language develops). I don't know why it's needed, though. All it really means is to organize, or to arrange -- why not use one of those two perfectly useful verbs?
Similarly, art folk talk about exhibits, when they mean exhibitions. Traditionally the word "exhibit" has referred to a pile of old bones, or other such non-artistic materials on display. A show of paintings, or sculptures, and suchlike, is an exhibition.
Ho-hum. Everybody begins sentences with the word "hopefully" incorrecty used. Hopefully, I will piss on your grave tomorrow does not mean that I hope I will piss on your grave tomorrow, it means I will piss on your grave tomorrow feeling hopeful, but everybody knows that if I say "Hopefully, I will piss on your grave tomorrow," I mean to say that I hope I will piss on your grave tomorrow. What's the difference?
Love,
Doug
PS I looked it up, and "curate" used as a verb was rejected by 81 per cent of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel. Now there's something to lose sleep over.
|
| + |
A thought I had while I was reading the introductory notes to Tristram Shandy:
There is a vague, half-knowing god, who, through the creation of the universe, is grasping for an incomplete truth.
|
| + |
Opera
I’ve been thinking about how to stage Frankenstein as an opera. It occurred to me that the story shares a fun formal device with Rashoman. It’s a story told from different perspectives: Frankenstein’s self-centered perspective [class commentary?], the monster’s counter-perspective [the artist’s rebuttal?], and the ship captain [an echo of Frankenstein] observing the end results. This is convenient for three acts – each act told from the point of view of a significant character.
|
|
 |
| George Hemphill |
| Naive Melody: |
|
| 1 |
I received a telephone call from Milton Esterow, editor of Art News magazine. The magazine had received a letter of rather vehement content. Mr. Esterow wished to respond to the content of the letter. It contained phrases like "...very offensive and damaging...". The letter referred specifically to an article written by Jessica Dawson and mentioned MOCA. It was signed George Hemphill. The letter was not by me and the signature was not mine. My guess is that the forger was speaking from a sense of helplessness. Beyond any real and purposeful injury the writer of the letter may, but probably did not, suffer at the hands of MOCA, Ms. Dawson, or myself he/she must feel overlooked. And by feeling overlooked must feel hurt. I guest that in order to suppress the discomfort of being overlooked the letter writer was attempting to injure those he/she believes are responsible. More important than the legal issues of fraud, impersonation and forgery, the mean-spirited creepiness of the letter may indicate a kind of malady. The local art community has the potential to fester with a blindness to interdependence in the scene. A few artists, dealers, critics, and art professionals too often inhabit an art existence that is disconnected. This disconnectedness allows one to think about his or her part without an awareness of the whole. It is naive not to realize we are all connected. We are all responsible. Each success adds to everyone’s good fortune and anyone’s bad behavior depreciates the value of being here. I hope that the writer of the letter, as well as others thinking of undermining another member of the art community, becomes aware of a kind of ecological/business truth that is applicable to our artistic health;
"Differentiation emerges from generality, but growth depends upon co-development, moreover durability depends upon transformations that add value. The more dense and diverse the environment the richer and more resilient the economy."
|
| 2 |
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.
|
| 3 |
Today is my wife's birthday and our wedding anniversary, she is younger than me and we've been married for thirteen years. I am of middle age. We will get old together. For me the coinciding events bring into focus an overwhelming sense of measure. This is not measurement in the usual sense. It is not a measurement taken, graduated, or ultimately grade-able. In my best moment when I look at her I see the look of our time together. It is a look of age, not flesh wrinkling, but an accumulated beauty held. I feel real beauty makes one weak to resist and stronger in resolve. This is not beauty by design. It is beauty as it occurs. I have learned that there is little that I can share with anyone about what makes a marriage work. I do know that after the infatuation period when you and your mate-able are wonderfully stupid in love you've got to make an effort to make it work. The chemical dynamic within each partner’s body changes, it becomes necessary to navigate desire into the goal of marriage. So how is it beauty exists in long marriages? I could say all sorts of romantic stuff about my wife. It would be showy to put those things here. If am good, I'll make a point of saying "wonderfully stupid in love" things to her. What I will say is "this must be the place" for me. And by the way if you run into her tell her how beautiful she is.
|
| 4 |
I worked for ten years at a prominent gallery. I climbed through the ranks of the art gallery business. A former professor and friend would occasionally visit the gallery. He once commented that "...this gallery is like a great rock’n’roll band with a bad lead singer." My friend's observation was not about the gallery artists or their shows. He was talking about the working relations of the gallery staff. His comment has hung with me. It has in some sense shaped my ambition for my own gallery. Not that I wanted to be a great lead singer, but I do want to work within the creative dynamic. I have enjoyed good relationships with some former employees of my gallery and others have been disasters. Beyond the necessary talent and personality of a great team, in addition to a degree of competitiveness between members, and on top of a needed amount of empathy between players, exists a tenuous magic. To speak of this magic is tempting and dangerous. The people I now work with are serious, passionate, intense-they have come to play. I am most grateful for the opportunity to work with them.
|
| 5 |
A wise man stands holding a stick. He ask his acolyte; "what have I got in my hand?" The eager to please acolyte replies; "A simple stick, master." Pulling himself to his full height, inhaling slowly, the wise man whacks the acolyte on the head with his stick and exclaims, "No, it is what it is."
|
|
 |
| Tom Mandel |
| Clothes make the man: |
|
| 1 |
The airport at Abu Dhabi.
I spent last week in Pakistan and India. The trip there was long – almost 24 hours – and the trip home a few hours longer. My plane stopped in Abu Dhabi both ways. I wasn't able to leave the airport, but there was much to see nonetheless.
|
| 2 |
Everything you experience is your possible future.
I traveled to Pakistan on business, but the experience was rich and strange in many ways. 'Rich and strange' – the phrase comes from The Tempest by Shakespeare and describes a state into which a person is transmuted by time and water ('Full fathom five thy father lies / Of his bones are coral made / Those are pearls that were his eyes / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.') Because it is your father Ariel describes to you, you envision this state as one which you will inhabit in time.
I was met at the Karachi airport by Abdul Hameed Kath. It was almost 11pm, the air was dark and hot. Hameed grasped my hand with enthusiasm and asked whether I wanted something to drink, running through a number of possibilities ('water, coffee, tea, juice?') but of course nothing alcoholic. Pakistan is an Islamic nation. We drove a long boulevard into town, then turned through a series of small streets until we came to Agha Juice.
A man brought me a glass of mango pulp, delicious and almost too thick to call a juice. The drink was instantly restorative, and from Agha Juice we went to the Cricket stadium – an all night sports complex. It was midnight, but 'they will be playing until four in the morning' Hameed told me. The next day I saw the Arabian sea, a man offered to stage for me a fight between a weasel and a snake, and I went bowling. Bowling was a great way to meet my team, about whom more soon. But let me show you where I stayed in Karachi.
|
| 3 |
The Sindh Club.
Late that first night we found our way to a private club where, through the generosity of Mrs. Iftikhar whom I would not meet until the 4th day of my trip, I was able to experience one of the few remnants of British colonial times. The Sindh Club is a compound of courtyards, gardens, tennis courts, and buildings all within walls. It was peaceful and removed – in space and seemingly in time too – from twentyfirst century Karachi.
My huge, spartan-but-elegant quarters opened off an exterior balcony which extended the length of the 2d floor of a smallish building, and from above I was able to look out over the club walls to a green space, a park I think. One day I saw a man walk by carrying a large bag.
|
| 4 |
My friends in Karachi.
For many hours each day I was with Hameed, Shameel Zuberi, Khurram Kalim, and (less often) Najam-ul-Hassan Zaidi. We spent most of our time in meetings, which meant that we also spent much of our time in the car together, driving from meeting to meeting. Our conversations were wide-ranging, driven by my curiosity about my new friends and about Pakistan and by their curiosity about me. Anwer Khan was our driver and my constant companion in whatever I needed to do. Wherever I thought I might want to look for him, Anwer was already there.
During one of our extended in-car conversations, Anwer said something to Hameed in Urdu, and Hameed turned to me: 'Anwer says you are a very open-minded person.' I've rarely been as pleased by a compliment.
In every office building a carpeted area faces Mecca. In the early afternoon, whether during a meeting or between meetings, either in an office building or in a mosque, my teammates stopped to pray. Not everyone prays, but I was usually alone for a few minutes at this time. My eyes and mind were too full to pray myself, but I tried to pay attention to something, to observe something, keeping in mind a saying of the XVIIth century French philosopher Malebranche that 'Attention is the soul's natural prayer,' a thought I like very much and try to live by. Here are pictures of Hameed, Khurram and Shameel. I don't seem to have a picture of Najam unfortunately. He is slight, with a round face and eyes that are full of sympathetic laughter. Oh, I have found a picture of Najam.
|
| 5 |
Buses. Man with weasel and snake. Pictures from a rocket-blast through India.
Buses in Karachi are very different from buses here.
By mid-week, the face I saw in the mirror seemed oddly pale and blotchy. Here is the man with the weasel and the snake.
In the middle of my week, I visited Bombay and Bangalore. I was in India about 48 hours and had nine meetings. From my car, I took these pictures.
I could go on for pages. I could write for days. I have given you so little – almost nothing – of this experience. The Tempest portrays a charmed world and the overthrow of those charms. Between an experience and its rendition in words is a terrible overthrow, and like Prospero, my strength is faint. I must depend on you, on your attention as Malebranche calls it, to travel the gap between what I say here and what I saw in Pakistan and India.
|
|
 |
| Annie Adjchavanich |
| Non-profit Parking Lot |
|
| 1 |
Jeff Krulik, Filmmaker, Heavy Metal Parking Lot. www.planetkrulik.com & heavymetalparkinglot.net
DOOD! Bust out your Judas Priest tees! For years I've heard about Jeff Krulik and his film. Having never met him, decided to ring him up. He told me about the 15th anniversary of Heavy Metal Parking Lot on Friday, June 22 at Visions and continuing for a week. I'm planning on being there! The following is from their website;
Fifteen years after John Heyn and Jeff Krulik produced one of the most widely distributed underground videos of all time, the above ground celebration screens for one week at Visions Cinema Bistro in Washington, DC beginning Friday, June 22, 2001.
Featured in the 90-minute program are:
The original Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986)
Filmed in the parking lot of the Capital Center arena in suburban Maryland as fans of Judas Priest gather in anticipation of seeing their heavy metal heroes.
The official sequel Neil Diamond Parking Lot (1996)
Return to the same arena parking lot 10 years later and visit a different, but equally passionate crowd of Diamond-heads.
Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The Lost Footage (1998)
The long-rumored outtakes, unearthed from John Heyn's waterlogged basement.
Harry Potter Parking Lot (2000)
Harry Potter mania sweeps the nation during a JK Rowling book tour.
As well as footage from Monster Truck Parking Lot and the trailer to the feature film currently in development Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The Movie.
plus tributes to Heavy Metal Parking Lot:
- Raver Bathroom (from Canada - filmed in a crowded rave bathroom)
- Girl Power Parking Lot (from Los Angeles - Spice Girls movie premiere)
- Heavy Metal Sidewalk (from San Francisco - Judas Priest' '98 nightclub tour)
- and a music video for the band American Hi-Fi and their song Flavor of the Weak (a note-for-note nod to Heavy Metal Parking Lot directed by Chris Applebaum for A Band Apart--Quentin Tarantino's production company in LA).
|
| 2 |
The injustice of work for hire.
My friend Kevin Bradley is the co-owner of Yee Haw Industries where he is a graphic designer, printmaker, painter and artistic genius. Many years ago he worked for Hatch Show Print in Nashville, where he was ridiculously underpaid and overexploited for his design work - now recognized as the Hatch aesthetic. The problem is, there is an employee of that particular firm that calls Kevin's work his own, AND THAT IS NOT RIGHT. Chronicle Books just published a new book, "Hatch Show Prints," that has particularly infuriated Kevin. Although there is a photo of him working in the printshop, waving at the camera, he is neither acknowledged as an employee nor credit for any of his work. Kevin got in touch with Josh Kaufmann, an attorney who has taken copyright issues all the way to the Supreme Court. Kevin was inconsolable after the conversation he had with Josh. It's all I can think about these last few days. I am hoping to arrange a 'tour' for Kevin so that he will publicly speak to other artists, design professionals on the evils of 'work for hire' so that other folks can avoid being the 'before' photo of a copyright infringement that Kevin appears to resemble.
|
| 3 |
Futur Skupture@McLean Project for the Arts.
Wow! This exhibit features some very cool art, my faves are; Mary Early, Walter Ratzat, Fumihito Sato [who just graduated from the Corcoran] and Randy Jewert. Randy made 5000 nickels, a cylindrical sculpture made out of stacked, not glued nickels. The video that accompanied it showed similar pieces being destroyed by him in front of a group of people. Really cool. Jewert's label said that the piece would be destroyed at the end of the exhibit. Sato's hanging piece exhibited engineering genius, a grid of wooden boxes hanging from the ceiling area with stretchy, semi-transparent material that looked like pantyhose that connected to a similar box at the bottom. It was mesmerizing. Ratzat also had a video as well as drawn plans and sculptural figures. One looked like a chastity belt for a man that had some sort of record player contraption that could make sound. The people I was watching the video demo with sorta lost interest since the spoken word video seem to take too long [he took off his clothes and stood basically naked in the metal underwear] and I ended up being more interested to see if he was going to show his goods! Mary Early included her intoxicating, encaustic spikey balls. They sit on the floor and you will want to sit with them too.
|
| 4 |
Olga Hirshhorn and Mayor Anthony Williams seeing the frederick exhibit at MAC.
Wooby said that they both visited MAC for a tour (separately) and that they enjoyed the show. I'm just as pleased that Bill Wooby is getting his props....finally.
|
| 5 |
I lost 3 hours of my life to "VH1's Behind the Music."
That show is like crack. I guess. Why would the history of 1980's music be so intoxicating? Hair bands, the birth of MTV, Madonna's rise? I'll tell you why...it allowed me to sit and be entertained and do nothing...for a while.
|
|
 |
| Colby Caldwell |
| Safe passage: |
|
| 1 |
On my way to work one afternoon, I was busily and quite haphazardly making my way up rock creek parkway. Going my usual 20 miles over the speed limit. I saw cars slowing for no apparent reason up ahead. Typical dc driving behaviour. Just as I was about to hit the horn, I noticed the driver side doors opening on two of the stopped cars, who just a moment before, were going 25 miles over the speed limit. I was going to be late, a common occurrence, and I begin to hit the horn once more. I stopped just short, as I finally saw why traffic had stopped. A mother duck and her two ducklings were trying to make it back to the Potomac via the parkway. It became apparent that the problem was not the traffic, as people had stopped, but that the ducklings could not quite make it over the median. Just as I thought of doing it, someone began very carefully to catch them, and help them over the barrier. This was during rush hour on a Friday. The driver was successful, and I did not hear one horn blow during the10 minute delay.
|
| 2 |
Stephen Micus Desert songs
I have picked up some very intriguing music of late, but this particular release truly stands out. Micus has been releasing music for over 15 years on the ECM label. It seems that he travels to different areas around the world, learns the folk songs on indigenous instruments, and proceeds to write his own compositions using both. This particular release sees him working mostly in the West African areas. One composition entitled, For Yuko, lists two flower pots, 8 voices and shakuhachi (a bamboo flute) as it's components.
|
| 3 |
"... photography does not create eternity, as art does, it embalms time, rescuing it simply from it's own corruption."
|
| 4 |
Cy Twombly - Sculpture at the National Gallery
Very subtle show that is marred in my opinion, by it's overwhelming number of pieces. It seemed odd that the zen-like quality of the work would be undermined by the cramming of space. So much is encapsulated in each piece, and so much thought to every element, that I wished there were only 3 to 4 pieces per room. Nontheless it is well worth seeing. Plus, it is in the west wing, so why not pop in to see the remebrandts and the vermeer (a lady writing)?
|
| 5 |
Naps at 4:30pm.
|
|
 |
| Peter Ferko |
| From (according to the jobs.com ad) the playground of the fearless: |
|
| 1 |
William Blake, Metropolitan Museum of Art
I have never delved into Blake's philosophy, although I have seen his illustrations repeatedly in art history books. I had a chance to see more samples of his prints than I could take in in a day, and my favorite of what I did see was a work entitled The Laocoon as Jehovah with Satan and Adam. The etching is interesting enough, but the entire background of the piece is "graffittied" by Blake with sound bites of his philosophy of art, religion, government, and money, complete with references for further reading. Here are three samples:
Where any view of Money exists, Art cannot be carried on but only War. (read Matthew CX 9 & 10)
A poet, a painter, an architect: the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.
You must leave Fathers & Mothers & Houses & Lands if they stand in the way of Art.
|
| 2 |
Valie Export, Einkreisung (Encirclement) from the Series, Body
Configurations, mid 1970's
On display now as part of a show of the permanent photography collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The sample from this series showed a woman laying in the street arching with her back to a curb of a small island in a European street. The photo was black and white; the curb had been colored with red ink. The plaque described the artist as being loosely affiliated with the Actionist movement; this series reintroduces the body into abstraction. Export had friends contort their bodies to mimic harsh geometries of the city. This photo stood out for the eerie quality of being both a black and white and color photo at the same time--it was not gimmicky at all, unlike so many current advertising photos that use the same color concept.
|
| 3 |
Gustave Le Gray, French photographer, 1820-1884
In our work, we are continually inventing "work-arounds" when the idea in our mind is not simply executed with tools that are handy. A (black and white, of course) Le Gray photo in the Met exhibit shows a beautiful seascape, with rich cloudy sky, sparkling ripples of sea, and a silhouetted hilly point. However, at the time the photo was made, emulsions were not equally sensitive to all colors, so photographing the sea and sky at the same time was an exposure setting impossibility. Le Gray worked around this problem by shooting two exposures of the scene and printing parts of both negatives on the same print. Per the curator, "This was considered not only a technical tour de force, but the resulting poetic effect was unprecedented." |
| 4 |
Power Photos
A Nan Goldin piece in the Met show grabbed me hard. I forget the name of the photo (Phillip in New York, or something like that), but it was of someone passed out on the hood of a car. She shot it from the sky somehow (standing on the roof, I guess). She just blows me away. Somehow she gets these great compositions and killer color saturation in what would be family snapshots taken by anyone else.
Again at the Met, there was a photo by a photojournalist whose name I did not get (I will go back and note it). He covered the front lines of World War II and was present at the invasion of Normandy on D Day. The gripping photo of soldiers wading to shore was shaky from movement (probably fear) and dreadful--I mean that it filled me with a certainty that death awaited. There were 79 photos of the battle, and we can only imagine how powerful they were--imagine, because a careless lab assistant ruined all but 11 of the images. |
| 5 |
Five Strokes of Color, by yours truly
|
|
 |
| Carole Greenwood |
| Yeah, she was watching: |
|
| + |
Deliberatively, I set out to ready myself for clay wellman's sculptural welding class at the corcoran, which I begin this week. I now realize that I spent my entire life getting ready for that first sculpture class last spring - so I thought it only fitting that I undertake some preparation for the second. |
| 1 |
visited the german modern paintings at the east building - on my drive into the city, I heard a writer on diane rehm's show discussing many of the shameful acts and behaviors of germans, and other Europeans before and after the holocaust. I was particularly interested in the story about the third generation of descendants of the composer Richard Wagner's family - and an errant great-grandson who has renounced his family and their anti-semitic activities, past and present (his grandmother was said to have boasted of the fact that is was she who supplied Hitler with the paper to write mein kampf while he was in jail), and has moved to italy, where he now describes his best friends as jews. This is of great wonder to me because my surname is wagner, and a branch of my father's family were german jews. - cut to the paintings - lots of angst, military fervor (dating from the mid seventeenth century on), and even more disturbing, the view of german social supremacy as a metaphor for some sort of national aesthetic, all on view at the german modern art museum in berlin. After the rehm show, I found this really scary - it was as if the holocaust was fostered and fermented within germany for centuries - but of course, we all know that...?
I liked the paintings of Menzel though - in particular the two paintings hung together-
Iron Rolling Mill and Supper at the Ball-
the first being a brutally honest view of the new industrialism and its affect upon humanity, and the second, a group of wealthy society folk - depicting the formality, alienation and artifice of their seemingly jolly lives. |
| 2 |
made a little tour of some of dc's welded, outdoor sculpture - visited the sculpture garden at the hirshorn, and the national gallery's sculpture garden and the haunting FDR memorial - I'm now thinking small |
| 3 |
went to look at 20th century art at the east building - trying to put it all in context - the german's with the moderns, the bigs with the smalls, the painterly figures with the abstract sculpture -
but it was Louise Bourgeois' beautiful stacks, giacometti's spare silhouettes, the very early Pollock, Bacon's study for a running dog (a true visual embodiment for the word doggedness,) the exquisitely rich Rothko's, Jacob Kainen's The Vulnerable, and even Richter's amazing huge day-glo canvas - which to me was the "visible man" for modern painting technique - showing all of the ways he did or didn't apply the paint - revealing other hidden surfaces, or strokes or images - are they deliberately abstract - a shadowed profile here or there? that made the most sense. Making me think that art constantly mirrors the intellectual quest of its society.
|
| 4 |
calder vs. twombly - and viewing both in the same day
I have thought a lot about twombly's modern classically based sculptures - trying to establish a continuity between Greek and Egyptian classicism and modern art. this investigation made me think that Calder does the same, drawing relationships between his work and nature - the sensual curves, movement and interplay of sculptures with their own shadows and spaces. The east building is imbued with a calder force field - every molecule of air seems charged by his work - and in some ways - interacts with it - Maybe I can see some new work in my minds - eye now.
|
| 5 |
Why Art Cannot Be Taught, by James Elkins.
A terrifying read but in many ways, very reassuring, like "the emperor's new clothes" - yeah, you know how it ends, but he is the emperor and, well, we all watched!
I know that I began an applied study of sculpture because I was already doing it and I wanted some context for what I was making. And I knew that I had to make a lot more of it before I could begin to be satisfied. I also understood that, for me, making art is dependent upon my thoughts and my approach, and being present in the moment of creation. This happens with food, with plaster, with paint, with cameras. It happens when our imaginations are awake enough to let it happen. I can now recognize our art in the interchange when Colby scrawls out the specifics for an alternator that makes me feel that he has written a story in the ten or so words, and then Jason listens to the discussion and sketches the car with the lights gleaming and going on a journey. I see art in the discussion that ensues about a particular show of a colleagues' work among James and Jason and Colby. Are they teaching me? Have they learned this? Like many skilled laborers, we all can go through the motions and end up with something plausible. But the reality remains that what I bring to it is what I end up with. I'm glad that Elkins elucidates with honesty how little we know about what happens in an art classroom - and that it is spontaneous and can be magical when it strikes. But it is nearly impossible to define how, what, where, who, when and why.
I'm hopeful for the mystery to unfold again. |
|
|
