blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

Tonight is the BIG NIGHT when the previously discussed Work of Art premiers on television’s BRAVO network. If you are going to view the program, I highly recommend reading Art Fag City’s supplemental program guide and all show-related posts Jesse P. Martin has written at PURPLE LINKS. My own contribution is the proposed week-to-week episode breakdown as follows:

Establishing Myth: describe the narrative and metaphor of an ancient myth through installation. Only materials to be used are plastic Pokémon characters.

Identity Paintbrush Challenge: draw a paintbrush from the bucket, and make an artwork informed by or addressing the labeled constituency. Identities include: second wave hunter-gatherers, neoevangelists, the Tang party, puppies and bunnies, pantomime environmentalists, niche marketers, microglobalists, pipsters, proprietary vegetarians, and urban jamokes

It is What never Was: visually reconstruct the simulacra - cannot use self portraiture

Cut! #1: make a video

Cut! #2: remake the same video

Cut! #3: remake the remade same video

None for You: make a work of art so ephemeral, it cannot be sold

Name the Null Set: Minimalism with a capital M

The Object Found: Utilize a slaughtered chicken

Koonsian: have another contestant make your art for you

The Body as Medium: demonstrate Lars von Triers’ personification of women in a performance piece

THE FINAL CHALLENGE: written exam, closed notes.
Question: Compare and contrast in theoretical, historic and critical context, the notion of beauty in at least three periods of art prior to 1800 and after Modernism. Codify those notions as they apply to Clement Greenberg’s article Avant-Garde and Kitch, Juvenile and Preteen Beauty Pageants, Lady Gaga and your experience on this program. You have 45 minutes.

subversion

While I love all spring flowers, I think my favorite is the Peony. It used to be lilacs, but that was youthful romance, and they now elicit a tiny tinge of morbid nostalgia. But the peony - even when white, or the palest pastel pink, is a little bit naughty. Certainly flirtatious, peonies possess a joie de vivre that not even exquisitely controlled Chinese painting can keep in check. When you invite them into your home, like the Trojan horse, they release their hidden delegation of ants. Peonies are a bit subversive.

Some friends and I had dinner at a former professor’s home recently. The bucolic landscape, some wonderful food and her giant intellect generated great conversation. She has always stressed the importance of social action, participation and activism, but on a personal scale. The professor asked us if an artist had to make political art to be subversive. My answer was no. I believe that the choice to make art - if it even is a choice - goes against the grain of the general population. It’s a choice that often commits one to a life contrary to everything the rest of the world is seeking: wealth, security, comfort.

It’s a difficult choice, especially in a world where the individual is marketed to 24/7. The payoff is a stunning level of intellectual freedom. And, in the end, artists will not have dumped countless gallons of oil into the Gulf, created a subprime mortgage bubble, hedged on the bets of others’ failure, or created a worldwide financial collapse. And that’s fine.

draw winky

I remember this advertisement from magazines and matchbooks when I was a child. The idea intrigued me, although I never actually drew “Winky” or “the pirate”. Why? I didn’t think I could, that I was good enough. Next week, the equivalent of this contest will premiere on TV’s Bravo Network as Work of Art - The Next Great Artist. So continues the latest installment of the Top Chef cum Project Runway slash Real House Wives of American Idol culture to which we have been reduced.  Jumping on the bandwagon, every art blogger seems to have become an apologist and gone Gaga for it. I will not.

I read the bios of a number of the contestants and many of them have already achieved a meritorious level of accomplishment. However, I would rather see a portfolio than a carefully edited bio. One artist works in “carbon based media”, hmmnnn…. ground breaking… pencil? Charcoal?  Everyone should watch the hilarious clips on Bravo’s website. Trembling and tearful, an artist pleads that she wants her art to show in a Museum. Eureka! She's discovered fudge covered cookies! In fact, the winner of this glorified game show will receive a substantial cash award and a one-person show at a major Museum. I personally believe that that type of accolade comes from a lifetime of achievement or singular genius. Here that honor will be bestowed after 14 weeks of assessment by a group of merchants.

I wonder if there will be any discussions of art in critical, historical or theoretical context? I wonder if the program will show the time working alone in the studio, filled with indecision and doubt, dirty, messy, tired without sleep, fashion, jewelry and make-up. I wonder if they will capture the genetic predisposition that forces the artist to constantly doubt, question and navigate the world in visual terms. I wonder if there will be anything real here at all or just have a depiction of what people think the life of an artist is like. Will they really be giving these artists assignments every week? I can see it now, “Your assignment Scatological Assemblage!” After  all, isn’t this whole thing a scatological assemblage?

Call me an elitist; call me a snob, I’m happy to assume either of those mantles. But I would like to make a suggestion. Don't watch this crap. Learn about art through you own experience. Go to galleries and museums in your community, support local not-for-profit art venues, encourage arts programs in your school districts, go to the library and check out books and videos of artists and their work.  My father was a physician who always hated doctor dramas on television. I can understand why.

Me? I think I’ll watch Jeopardy instead. Maybe I’ll learn something.

warm swell

"We had intended if it were a pleasant day to go to the country it was a very beautiful day and we carried out our intention # 47”

Pencil, watercolor, gouache, cut-and-pasted paper on handmade paper


22" x 30"

© Cyrilla Mozenter

I have been trying to get current with art on exhibit in New York. Last Thursday I visited three very different venues. My first stop was at the Drawing Center to see Live & Die Like a Lion?, the late drawings of Leon Golub. I have always admired Golub’s work. As a political provocateur, Golub somehow managed to articulate the brutalities of war and power with masterful and luxurious paint. His paintings can lure you in and bludgeon you in one fell stroke. Seeing the politically charged artist so overtly concerned with his late-in-life virility left me bereft.

My next stop was the 2010 Whitney Biennial. Though I have ardently studied previous catalogues this was my first opportunity to see the Biennial live and in person. With the exception The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Charles Ray, Nina Berman, Theaster Gates, and Kate Gilmore, I was again disappointed. However, the show is dense and I am still processing it. I plan to return and reassess.

I had one final stop and that was at Adam Baumgold Gallery to see Warm Snow by artist Cyrilla Mozenter. It was unseasonably warm and humid that day and I felt tired, crabby and grimy. However, when I entered the diminutive yet elegant gallery, the temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I know Mozenter personally. She was my MFA Thesis advisor. I admire both the artist and her work. Because I prefer to write about work that I like, I feel no loss of objectivity here. In fact, it’s harder to write about the work of someone you know.

Mozenter has been working for some time with industrial felt, hand-stitched and molded together to create two and three-dimensional works. The material recalls Joseph Beuys’ use of felt and his invoked mythology. Certainly mythology is present here. Yet there is a less Teutonic side to Mozenter’s mythology that I can only describe as enchantment. At the same time, a series of felt vessels suggest both the Holy Grail and a fancy ice cream dish. This show includes her recent series Polar Bear Pass VI. Throughout many cultures the bear inhabits a fabled station, particular and varied. Here there is the sense of great strength, warmth, and protection.

A number of works on paper are also included in Warm Snow. I have always been drawn to artists that appear to possess a secret language. Two works suggest that this might be the case with Mozenter.  We had Intended..., pictured above, is faintly inscribed with the words: bear, boat, mitten, cave, boot and castle. I don’t need to know why these words are here, but they are satisfying. Another work, Slow Wide Turn, suggests cautionary instructions that cross one’s mind when approaching a turn on either a snowy road, or indeed, in life.

Warm Snow will remain on view at Adam Baumgold, 40 E. 75^th Street, through June 26, 2010.

exiting MoMA

Last Friday I made a trip to the Museum of Modern Art to see the William Kentridge exhibit Five Themes. I would almost say that it is a pity that the exhibit coincided with Marina Abramović, the Artist is Present, but that is like saying that melted butter on warm, home-made bread is almost too delicious. Both shows work as documents of prolific and powerful art making careers. The bonus round was the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit, and I didn’t even attempt the Picasso. Kentridge has closed, but with Abramović, Cartier-Bresson, and Picasso, there is an abundance of riches at MoMA right now.

I only spent a short time with Abramović. I want to return and devote my full attention to this incredibly dense exhibit. While I would like to sit with the artist, I don’t share the burning need for catharsis or enlightenment that some museum goers appear to seek.

What is a pity is much of the commentary floating around the interweb right now regarding the Abramović show. Most of it deals with issues irrelevant to the work. Some are going gaga over the means by which Ms. Abramović is urinating under that supposedly designed-by-Prada gown. Then there are warnings about the naked performers. There are the Who’s Who rosters of celebrities showing up to sit with Ms. Abramović. Finally there is the proposal that Lady Gaga’s attendance at the retrospective supports the elevation of her status to that of performance artist.

The depth and consequence of Abramović’ opus far exceeds any of these trite and pointless discussions. However, in the spirit of my lower self, I offer the following thoughts:

It doesn’t mater how she is peeing, but why don’t you just ask her? No one said you couldn’t.

Some noteworthy bloggers would be well served to follow her lead and wear Prada. (you know who you are)

Celebrities get to go to museums too.

Lady Gaga is a pop star. I like good shoes, but it doesn’t make me a cobbler.

If you are so strapped for a glimpse of naked people, you can still view them in National Geographic. Don’t embarrass yourself in a museum. Better yet, follow the moving billboard parked outside the Museum. It’s pictured above.

find your tribe

A visiting critic recently addressed the difficult position the visual artist is in. The artist pours the internal and intensely personal into a work then puts that work on public view. The artist knows full well, that their inner life is now not only exposed, but open to criticism. Muddling through the decisions that eventually get a work up on a wall can be daunting. Ultimately, the decisions made in the studio are made alone, but any artist will benefit from the counsel of a close circle of confidants that really know you, and that are engaged in the same endeavor. My advice? Find your Tribe.

It’s beneficial if the members of your tribe work in a like medium. Every material possesses a unique set of qualities and problems.  Understanding these cuts down on demands that cannot be achieved within that particular medium. In addition, the members of your tribe should be as good or better than you. This raises your personal bar sand engenders better work.

It’s helpful if your tribe is made of friends and confidants. You establish a mutual trust. Critics too, put themselves in a vulnerable place. A trusted confidant is more likely to offer substantive criticism when there is no fear of reprisal. They know you, your concerns, and what you are attempting to accomplish.

Your Tribe should take you somewhat seriously. I amplify somewhat. You need some one to let the hot air out of your high and mighty balloon when it becomes too inflated.

Inevitably your tribe cracks the whip, breaks the rules, and rubs your temples. They are your thicker skin. I am grateful to have met the handful of painters that I think of as my Tribe. Thanks for the push and the pull. Now, let’s go out in the world and paint.

birthday

green-eyed creature lingering somewhere in every thought

the prescient muse

intellectual: guitar quartets

empathetic: angel valley

but permanent rock

towel-clad tirade, bathed in the light of television’s morning news  -

armed with waving tooth brush

mediating wire gray curmudgeon and nine year old boy

love and sex for a long time, again and still

oh that nice neck

and the secret language

51 = birthday = today = love = always