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Saturday, September 06, 2003

Something’s happening here

 
I don’t think it was just rock star Patti Smith and her art work (about which she was refreshingly modest) that brought out the crowds at the ICA opening Thursday (left)--at least I like to think it was Brit video artist Gillian Waring and local art hero Virgil Marti.

The turnout, which included art lovers young and old, overran the spaces and gave the opening some cosmopolitan sizzle.

Same for the LURE, or Lighting for Urban Rooftop Environments, screening of artist-created screen savers (in conjunction with the Fabric Workshop's "Surface Tension" video show) on the rooftop of a Parkway parking garage at 12th and Filbert yesterday. (LURE is a project of Aaron Igler working with other artists.) You had to know it was happening, find the garage entrance, and then go up to the garage roof. People stretched out or sat on the concrete (right); they lounged against the barrier wall. The big kudos went to Mika Tajima's screensaver, which even had audio effects, but you can check all the screensavers yourself by downloading them from the LURE site.

Sooo cool. So un-Philadelphia. I say something’s happening here.

permanent link  libby 2:50 PM
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Thursday, September 04, 2003

Great expectations 1 & 2

 
1--The thing about the "Impressionist Tradition in America" show at the Corcoran is that American Impressionism is not really impressionist. It's realist (see *John Singer Sargent's "Mrs. Henry White" here), romantic, more traditional than what people love to think of as impressionist. One of those paintings, "South Room, Green Street" -- that would be Green Street in Philadelphia-- by Daniel Garber was nearly Pre-Raphaelite (alas, no image available).

Calling the show "Impressionist" is bound to pull in the crowds (everyone loves the stuff), but my companions Paul, Stefanie and Murray were looking for European Impressionism, and they were disappointed.

Philadelphia alert: Many of the landscapes, as well as the Garber painting, had Philadelphia roots.

2--On the other hand, we had no expectations for a show we stumbled upon called "Census 03: New Art from DC."

Graham Caldwell's blown glass and steel **"Transversalis" (detail shown), it's blend of delicacy and threat, skin, fabric and meat-hook suggestions taking over a gallery wall, was one of several surprises.

Iona Rozeal Brown's "blackface #14"*** was one in a series of three on display, raising issues about blackness and ethnic identity.

Without great expectations, we enjoyed most the art that was embellished by the pleasure of discovery.

Copyright info: *1883, oil on canvas, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Gift of John Campbell White; **78x66x21 inches, courtesy of the artist; ***2002, acrylic on wood panel, 48x36 inches, courtesy of Sandroni Rey, Venice, CA


permanent link  libby 10:57 AM
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To decorate or not to decorate

 

I'm having trouble getting an image of the Pakistani bus outside the Sackler (right) in D.C., one of two gorgeous, classically paired buildings, the other being the National Museum of African Art (left).

The bus is anything but classical, an eruption of metalic decorations that put circus wagons to shame.

But somehow the buildings stood up in its presence, as did the nice, rug-like garden between the two buildings.


Inside the Sackler's lobby, Yayoi Kusama reshaped the space with red dots on the walls and on floaty balloons--a reminder of some cherry-patterned wallpaper I grew up with that took over the space where we ate and cooked. While the peaceful glow of the classical look is worth preserving, so is the mad need to decorate.

The two buildings, created with mucho input from everyone and anyone, somehow survived the process, becoming something beautiful. And the bus, which combines decorative touches from a variety of sources combined especially to show at the Sackler, also survived the process. It almost gives me hope for democracy (assuming we ever get back to majority rules), an appropriate message to take home from the nation's capital.
permanent link  libby 9:58 AM
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Video rules

 

Here's something vis a vis all the blogging about video. The highlight of a five-museums-in-one-day extravaganza last weekend in D.C. was a video I had already seen, and it was competing with lots of art. William Kentridge's "Stereoscope," showing at the Hirshhorn, was riveting, even with us standing out in the hallway peering through a doorway blocked by other casual viewers who, like us, looked like they didn't want to invest the time but just couldn't tear themselves away.

It was open to interpretation, allusive, and visually exciting. It suggested a story arc, showed the artist's hand (instead of the usual mediated-by-technology images everyone is playing with), suggested great emotion and suggested multiple important issues in the world in which we live. And it was great to look at.

That makes eight hallmarks for successful video.
permanent link  libby 8:46 AM
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Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Shine on

 

This just in. Philadelphia artist Virgil Marti, whose Versailles-meets-Brady Bunch wall treatment of the ICA ramp opens tomorrow, has installed another mylar-and-antlers environment -- this one in California. "Grow Room," the artist's first West Coast solo museum exhibit opens in the Project Room of the Santa Monica Museum of Art September 13 and runs to November 15. Lisa Melandri, formerly at Moore College's Levy Gallery and now at the SMMA, curated the show.

Marti’s work, which takes its cues from the 1970s (shag carpeting, sunken living rooms, candles and marijuana) has been characterized as beautiful, poignant, hypnotic, luxurious. I would add sassy to the list. [image is Marti's new "Flowers of Romance" installed in the ICA Ramp]
permanent link  roberta 8:09 AM
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Sunday, August 31, 2003

Rolodex alert

 
Get out your erasers and take a note. The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts (GSFA) has changed its name to the School of Design of the University of Pennsylvania.

In a press release that reads like the Green Bay Packers defensive line, Dean Gary Hack explains that the “name of the School has been a constant source of confusion, requiring an explanation more often than not.”

The school houses programs in architecture, city planning, fine arts, historic preservation and landscape architecture -- and fine arts is the smallest. Also...one-third of the teaching is at the undergraduate level, according to the release.

What's in a name anyway? Branding...and did I mention funding?

Meanwhile, check out the school’s website for the fall visiting artists lecture series, a mix of 25 practicing artists and critics coming in for slide lectures (all free and open to the public). The two I’ll hit are local cartoonist and Pew fellow Charles Burns on Oct. 27 [see image] and Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz on Nov. 11. And I'm waiting to hear about the speakers for the next Locks Foundation Distinguished Artist event, since the innaugural in April -- a jousting match between Alex Katz and curator and critic Robert Storr -- was such fun.
permanent link  roberta 8:42 AM
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