Avoiding Wallpaper via Art 21 Blog

Susan Rothenberg, "Galisteo Creek", 1992 via

Joe Fusaro's post about art becoming wallpaper, particularly in the classroom, brought up some interesting points about integrating forms of art in such a way as to enable and encourage discussion. This brought to mind my most memorable moment in the classroom when I was in high school, which occurred when viewing a documentary on Louise Nevelson; it was like a light was turned on, she was eccentric, she was building structures with the help of others, and she fought through the art scene in the 30s and 40s that was primarily considered a 'man's world.'

This visual exchange should take place more often, with spaces within classrooms devoted to multiple types of art practice in an effort to juxtapose the mediums and processes. I think education would change if this were the case, even in the university setting, I can see this being a positive approach to introducing new artists to students and even to faculty. I think the brutal movement in university architecture has finally passed, but as a student I am still subjected to windowless classrooms, white cinderblock hallways and ultimately an anonymous setting in what serves as the 'creative' backdrop to an arts education. I am a firm believer that a thought-provoking environment would better serve the needs of the photography students. Alas, the institution may not be able to 'remove' the buildings, but surely there could be a sort of compromise in which there is more freedom to alter the classroom by posting and sharing imagery and work in allocated spaces. I suppose I was spoiled at Rice.

I also thought it was ironic to see an image of Susan Rothenberg's work at the beginning of the post, as I for some reason respond to her artwork as though it is 'wallpaper'. I simply cannot relate to it, but she has been critically acclaimed since '75, so what do I know?

Update from PDN: For Annie Leibovitz, a Fuzzy Financial Picture

Well, I hadn't visited PDN in a while, but found this article about Annie Leibovitz's current situation and am eagerly awaiting the verdict and resolution in the coming weeks as her deadline for repayment of all loans approaches.

I knew from the previous NYT article that ACG was suing Getty, but I had not realized at the time that Annie Leibovitz was also named in the claim. I am a little confused, ACG loaned Ms. Leibovitz $24 million last year, however, they were in talks of selling her archive to Getty claiming the value of her images was around $50million? SO that would have paid off all of Annie's loans, and I suppose with ACG as the acting agent, they would get a little off the top for the sale? (Apparently, Getty lowballed with a $15 million offer, and negotiations ended.) But if Ms. Leibovitz's archive is worth $50 million as ACG claims, then they would not be able to obtain the entire archive for collateral, as that would be more than she owes. Collateral is to cover debt, correct...so now I'm totally confused, because if ACG is accurate in its claims of her archive's worth, then by default they could not possibly gain full control of her archive.

I suppose I need to look into the law a little more, as I know nothing about it. Perhaps until the collateral is liquidated, during that time there would be an opportunity to control all of her images. Seems convoluted.

Alright, I did a little googling and came up with this:

It is important to note, that the lender can use the collateral only to regain the money owed by the borrower (capital and interest). If the property (real estate, car) will be sold, the lender will get only the sum owed to him by the borrower. The rest will go to the borrower, who was previously the owner of this property. For example - if you owe $1 mln to the bank and your house secures the loan, and you are not able to pay the installments any more, the bank can take over the house and sell it. But, if the house will be sold for $1.5 mln, the bank will take only $1 mln and the rest ($0.5 mln) will come back to you.

Found here

Annie, how did this happen? In another article I read that a lighting company filed a complaint as Ms. Leibovitz owed over $200,000 to the company. What? Doesn't she own her equipment, she's been in the biz for like 4 decades, and don't her employers pay for any technical needs like lighting... what I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in Vanity Fair's office so I could snoop through all her contracts and dealings.

Yelle: RGB Made Simple!

This is Yelle's Video for "Ce Jeu", this is going to make it into my regular examples for educating my students on how light differs from pigment, notice the RGB spotlights and how the secondary colors appear where the primaries overlap! RGB makes CMY, yes those are colors of LIGHT! Or what is otherwise known as the additive color model.

A great lighting demo as well, an excellent example of checkerboard lighting, the use of cookies, and making a still-life interesting through lighting (although who doesn't like plastic dinosaurs gettin' down?), this video even includes complementary coloring. Thank you Yelle!! I love it when pop-culture somehow makes my life easier, while teaching my students something about photography.

Did you learn anything from this video?

God, I heart the French.

Art Must-Sees this Summer: New York Photographs

image of John Lennon by Bob Gruen, on view at Bonnie Benrubi


As you may well know, I get many of my topics from NYTimes, so of course today I have to tell everyone about another summer must-see. This summer on exhibition throughout 13 galleries in Chelsea, are photographs of New York. From Nan Goldin to Helen Levitt, one can view almost every perspective of the city through the last century.

This is sure to take up a day or two when visiting the city, so plan ahead to hit all of the venues. This loosely titled exhibit, called New York Photographs, is organized by galleries that specifically represent photography, so even if the New York Photographs show is over, this is an excellent gallery list to start with if you want a down and dirty education on the broad representation of photography in New York City. For instance, Yancey Richardson is a highly respected contemporary gallery with some of the hottest photographers on the scene, while something like Howard Greenburg Gallery seems to show more conservative black and white work. Overall, the beauty about photography and this city, is that both have come of age together; as photography was developed during the same period as the birth of the steam engine and the iron industry, so the city literally grew up around the photograph. I think that's what will be beautiful about these exhibits, viewing the increasingly complex relationship the photographic medium, which has recorded and re-presented the life of the city time and time again, has with New York. Reviewing in these galleries, how both the visual structures and the concrete structures have altered in context over the last century. I am certainly going to try to make it to see many of these galleries before the end of the month.

I have made a list of the participating galleries below, some have references to the New York Photographs show, while some mention nothing of it. Alas *shrug* I never fail to be disappointed in at least a few NY gallery websites.

Bonni Benrubi, thru Sept. 5
Danziger Project
Yossi Milo, thru Aug. 28
Deborah Bell, by appt. thru August
Edwynn Houk
Howard Greenberg
Hasted Hunt, thru Aug. 28
Janet Borden, worst website yet...*sigh*
Laurence Miller0, Helen Levitt thru Aug. 2
Pace/MacGill
Robert Mann
Julie Saul, thru Sept. 12
Yancey Richardson

YAY!

I ordered lights today! Yay!! I have no money now, but by this time next week I will have studio lights!! Yay yay yay!!

Check it out! Tom Sachs: Cameras at The Aldrich

Tom Sachs: Cameras at The Aldrich, an exhibit focusing on the artist's camera objects. Sachs constructs cultural relics out of disparate materials, merging modern culture with the tools that shaped its history. A quirky reflection on the great Modern icons.

The Tom Sachs exhibit is on view through September 16, 2009.

Art Must-Sees this Summer: William Kentridge, Five Themes

William Kentridge: Five Themes, a traveling exhibition stopping into the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth showcases the artist's work for the past 2+ decades. The show includes multiple small screens of his famous films, with accompanying pieces ranging from drawings and prints, to sculptures and books. It is an art show exploring the essential development and dominant themes of Kentridge’s oeuvre.

Kentridge's work draws on his interest in theater, utilizing its archetypes as a way of presenting the conflicting issues he himself has had as a South African Jewish man who witnessed the realities of the apartheid. His films are pieces that explore the two faces of oppression. Kentridge’s working method, in which he draws in charcoal each image on a single piece of paper, then photographs each image frame by frame, reflects on the issues of oppression and conflict present in all societies. Wherein even though the oppression may be legally absent, the scars of history remain; a metaphor inherently present in his process as each image that is erased to make room for a new image leaves a visual ghost behind. One cannot ignore that as a Jewish man he is also sensitive to his own history of oppression, and the questions that arise from the paradox of economically successful Jews thriving on the oppression of others, as in Apartheid.

I myself am particularly interested in this issue as part of my family is of Lithuanian Jewish decent and retreated to South Africa before the war, when the Russian military did eventually enter their former town, all of the Jews were rounded up and slaughtered. This genocide scenario may be different from the issues in Africa, but it is not so far from the issues of oppression, ownership and prosperity, so prevalent in the mining industry and corporate powers reliant on the natural resources of the African continent. These issues are universal, and simply living in an ‘enlightened’ country such as the United States does not make one any less participatory in ethical dilemmas of conscience. Kentridge’s perspective is one of the complex nature regarding the burden of action and inaction.

The review for this work from the Dallas News by Gaile Robinson was not flattering. Unfortunately, the writer did not have the insight to comprehend the strength of Kentridge’s aesthetic. His view is that the ‘best part of a Kentridge film: [is] watching the artist's hands at work’ a typical suggestion from someone conveniently ignoring the issue. In a city who’s own segregation and conflict of race and economic segregation is very much alive, it was disappointing to see such a perspective with Robinson expressing irritation at the lack of convenience offered, due to the length each film, and the museum bench being ‘uncomfortable.’ Seems somewhat appropriate when the theme is the conflict of ignoring the status quo of oppression, a subject anything but comfortable for the majority of us ‘white folk.’

This travelling exhibition was curated by Mark Rosenthal of the SF MoMA and will be travelling to the MoMA in February 2010, William Kentridge: Five Themes will be on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth until Sept. 27, 2009.

This is the second installment of the five Must-Sees for the Summer 2009, as the season approaches an end.

Musings: Paper Castle

Had to post this as I am obsessed with paper craft and interested in its current re-emergence into art culture. Found this image of a castle by a young art student in Tokyo by the name of Wataru Itou, on the Makezine website, while browsing the internet for craft photographs.
I have begun noticing a resurgence of craft not only in visual art culture, but in many aspects of consumer culture as well. Etsy.com for example is an online space developed expressly for handmade objects. Kirsten Hassenfeld is another artist that comes to mind when considering this re-emergence, Hassenfeld does not deny her satisfaction in romanticizing the ephemeral, and for that matter, many of the installation artists at Rice Art Gallery seem to use consumer grade materials to reflect on the sublime nature of a well-constructed space. In photography, it is the current popularity of formalist photography, now a days when a photographer claims they only use 4x5 sheet film, one immediately must take them seriously, because that isn't easy in this digital age.
And that's just it, I think there are two fold reasons for this new trend, one is the reaction to Post-modernism in which the ideals of craft were called into question. Craft was seen as problematic, it enforced a concept of perfection and assumption that there was a 'right' way of representing something. The second is this digital age in which photographs are everywhere, each and every online profile has an image associated with it, the image has become meaningless, and that's just the beginning. Everything is suppose to take place faster in this digital revolution, and for the most part, it is. So, artists and craft people alike are slowing down, revisiting their roots, questioning what handmade vs. digital means. I don't think there's an answer yet, but there is something about an object that is inherently more valuable than a digital file. My graphic designer told me to leave a handwritten note in every leave-behind because people are less likely to throw it away knowing that you spent time on it. Digital media is abstract, it exists in code, on screens, it disappears. Considering the work of DaVinci, the Romans, the images of Holocaust victims, perhaps our visual culture has not quite denied the belief that it is still the meaningful object that has the potential to live 'forever'.

Art Must-Sees this Summer: Maya Lin's "Wavefield"

Storm King Art Center has added a new Maya Lin sculpture “Wavefield” to its collection. If you are not familiar with Maya Lin, her artistic career took off when, in 1982 as a young architectural student at Yale, her model of a wall embedded into the landscape was chosen for the design of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall. Her work is consistently concerned with structural reflections on the environment and “Wavefield” is no different; a waveform sculpture built from top soil, gravel, and low-impact grasses covers what was once a gravel pit on the Storm King campus. Maya Lin’s sculpture suggests the landscape as waves changing and forming over time, the piece forces a contemplation on our own ability to ‘move mountains’ for better or for worse. Her approach bridges a concern with sculptural installation and an environmental awareness, Maya carefully considers her carbon footprint and is in the process of planting trees on the periphery of "Wavefield" to counter the energy used during the process of producing the sculpture. Like such Earthworks artists as Andy Goldsworthy (whose work is also on view), Lin's obvious passion for natural forms has made her a staple in the international art scene and her work, considered both installation and land art, is in my opinion a contemporary mode on the sublime.

Storm King sits on 500 acres of manicured land and has developed a permanent collection of outdoor sculptures that are dependent on the changing landscape. In conjunction with the unveiling of Lin’s “Wavefield”, Storm King Art Center is exhibiting Maya Lin: Bodies of Water, on display are sketches, models and smaller sculptures by the artist in its museum building.

Maya Lin: Bodies of Water is on view until November 15, 2009

Storm King Art Center is located in the Hudson River Valley, one hour north of New York City.

This is the first installment of what I hope to be a 5 piece seasonal posting of Art Must-Sees across the US.

Just an Update

Working on new images right now, not resolved yet, but I foresee success. Still exploring the way nature is constructed and referenced through different media, but mostly through paper. This often ends up looking like fantasy landscapes and such, mostly because of the abstraction and lack of visual depth. More images coming soon...

For Annie Leibovitz, a Fuzzy Financial Picture by Allan Salkin at NYT

Click Here for the Full NYT Article
Say it ain't so! Annie Leibovitz is in dire straits over a loan gone bad with Art Capital Group, having allegedly offered her Greenwich Village townhomes and negatives as collateral!
Some advice for all creative professionals out there, don't ever offer your life's work as collateral, and NEVER your negatives and rights to your own images. Offer something that you can live without. Negatives are a photographer's bread and butter; many successful artists could take a tip from Damien Hirst who is known for carefully manipulating the art market to his advantage through strict control of his own work. He won't even allow a dealer to sell his work. Rumors claim that in this way Hirst has amassed a fortune close to a billion dollars from his artwork. Hopefully Ms. Leibovitz will pull out of this somewhat unscathed, perhaps there will be companies that see this as an opportunity to contract Ms. Leibovitz for more elaborate work, as the article mentions this is what Getty Images jumped on the bandwagon to do. I am looking forward to seeing how this issue pans out for her come the Sept. 8 deadline.

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