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Saturday, October 18, 2003

Magic vs. politics

 
Magic, santeria, daily life, visions, saints and community--these are the subjects of the paintings at "Cuban Visions" at Indigo, part of Philadelphia's annual celebration of Cuban art and culture El Festival Cubano.

The show's folk art is filled with magic and joy in the community and its beliefs. It's quite different from the kind of isolationist, introverted, closed-system outsider art that's been hot in the galleries in the past year (I'm thinking of mentally ill people like Henri Darger, or like Adolph Wolfli--see Roberta's post of May 11).

The religious visions of Jose Garcia Montebravo (shown, top right), for example reflect communal beliefs in santeria, not one man's hallucinations.

The Cuban paintings of daily life, like Pelly's cock fight and emergency operation (both shown left), suggest a communality that we seem to have lost in our own daily lives.

There's a joy to these pieces, a pleasure in the world and in society.

And there's a belief in the magic of things, a magic that survives in the art of Jose Fuster (image right), who, although he is a trained artist, has kept touch with the world of wonder.

Fuster was invited to the opening reception Oct. 3rd, but delays with the U.S. visa prevented his attending and prevented a dancer for the festival from coming, said Indigo's Tony Fisher, who suggested that it seemed like the dilatory tactics were government policy.

Less government, more people. That's the lesson of these paintings. If they paintings had needed a visa, there would have been no show.
permanent link  libby 8:56 AM
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Thursday, October 16, 2003

Video unchained

 

Liberating video was the hot theme that percolated through a panel discussion at the Fabric Workshop last night.

The discussion, which included most of the participants in the Fab's "Surface Tension" show, drew a crowd of about 50 on a weekday night.

I was surprised to hear that video needed liberation--from the tv box and even from the movie screen. Clearly, I hadn't thought enough about this issue, which formed the basis for the show curated by Cassandra Coblentz, who also moderated the panel along with video artist and Penn prof Joshua Moseley, a sharp cookie who asked intriguing questions without knowing the answers beforehand--very refreshing.

Panelist Peter Rose, whose theatrical video environment played with
screens, curtains and space (image above, "Pneumonal"), said liberating video from the tv box descends from the tradition of artists escaping the constraints of the rectangular canvas and its two-dimensional surface, and he brought up a number of video artists in that tradition including Bill Viola. He also said something about flat video being like Plato's shadows on the cave wall.

LURE's Aaron Igler, who took video screensavers onto a local rooftop (shown right), talked about liberating video from the gallery space. Later, he brought up the chilliness of technology, and how screensavers, no longer a technological necessity, were an antidote to the chill by allowing your familiar, personal image to welcome you back to your computer screen.

Camille Utterback, whose interactive video "Liquid Time" (shown left) got more intriguing to me as she talked about it, said that video technology enabled her screen to represent layers of images which responded to the depth of viewer's bodies in motion.

Earlier, she talked about the viewer role and location in front of the screen, but what interested me more was how bits of video data were stacked (by hypertext links, I guess) in conceptual three dimensions, allowing the flat screen to become an expression of virtual depth that reflects the real depth. What a concept.

Nadia Hironaka turned out to be an old-fashioned girl, unapologetic and charming about the facts that her work required a flat screen for the most part and that it existed in time, with a beginning, middle and end.

Even with a story arc, she didn't mind people taking in just a part of the work. "Galleries have to assume that people won't sit and watch your piece for two hours," Hironaka said.

Did you know the average gallery video viewer spends six minutes in front of a video piece before bolting? Pete Rose, knowing this, made his piece loop every four minutes and provided a cushioned bench.

And speaking of time, the unanimous reason for using digitized video over analog was for timing and synchronizing effects . Nicole Cohen, who used two screens and two layers of video on each screen (shown, "Jet Lag"), was particularly concerned with synchronicity.

If you've read this far on your computer, you're attention span may have hit overload--blogs and videos need time limits--so I'm stopping short and liberating you from this screen. The end.

photos: Aaron Igler
permanent link  libby 4:48 PM
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Blur those edges

 

Vis a vis Joe's blog (Oct. 15), Seurat used blur for his Grand Jatte and Monet for his waterlilies (Oh, I know he was going blind, but still, the work is great).



Impressionist blur was partially a response to the clarity of camera images. Think of those perfectly detailed daguerrotypes. With cameras providing such clarity in representing the world around us, painting had to go somewhere else, and one of its options was blur.


And when we moved into tv, video, and computers, where the non-HDTV screen provides its own brand of blur, those screens became a part of our world in a way no still camera image has. So painters began painting about that brave, new, blurry world.

And even if we think we're not painting about the world we inhabit, why should we restrict ourselves to hard edges?

The issue is not blur per se. It's whether the blur is meaningful. For example, I'm still trying to figure out Gerhard Richter (shown, "Der Kongress"), but while I'm figuring, I find myself pondering the blur and what it's about. I guess I think Richter's blur is not gratuitous, although my answer to what it's about is on the shaky side.

Or to summarize, blur can be beautiful and blur can be smart.

When it's neither, it's worth criticizing; same goes for sharp focus.
permanent link  libby 11:41 AM
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003

More places to pick up flipbook entry forms

 
Follow-up from Andrew Jeffrey Wright
dear roberta, people can go to Spector, Last Drop, The Bean, Repo Records, Wooden Shoe, Book Trader, TLA Video on 4th St., Big Jar Books, Reload Bag Company/Gallery, Space 1026 and Pearl Arts and Crafts. That's where I put [the entry forms]. I think last year we had 85 to 100 flip books in the show. Thanks. peace ajw
(Andrew Jeffrey Wright is an award-winning animator who serves as Philadelphia Flip Book Festival Director.)
permanent link  roberta 5:42 PM
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Blurry blur

 
Post from artist Joe Naujokas
[editor's note: Joe is responding to Roberta's post of Oct. 12, with its blurry image by Hiroshi Sugimoto.] ok what is it about blur these days that it is as popular as daffodils (or daisies?) were in the '60s.

If F Bacon (study of the human body, shown below started the tremors with his blurry sections (usually the faces) of meaty/abstracted figures, G Richter became the earthquake with his technical prowess at blurry, brush-strokey photorealist paintings (phantom, shown).

Any one can be a photorealist, and anyone can do it with an airbrush, but letting brushstrokes show was a stroke of "i dare you to try it" bravado i have not seen too many people try.

I wonder why Roy L. never gave a shot at a parody of Richter's strokes...but anyway this blurry thing probably goes back to a more boring origination in the photographic technique used in portraiture to romanticize a not quite romantic face.

Oh and please throw out those cheap russian cameras already, the ones with the built in blur.

I'm not really sure how often blur was used before the invention of photography (shown, a blurry piece by photographer Cate Fallon, Roberta's sister), although one might be tempted to say Vermeeer experimented with blur, but then again he was always accused of using photographic accessories in his technique...the veneer of his paintings was possibly a camera obscura image projected onto the canvas.

Realists have long soften parts of pictures so as not to compete with the center of interest, but im not sure if that really qualifies as blurry.

...Today a blurry photo is like listening to, i dont know, Captain and Tenille, it just sucks you in and of course you are going to sing to yourself "muskrat muskrat...."

lets see, then, there's the guy who blurs porno pictures... Photoshop of course has a dozen different ways to blur...Paschke (shown) kinda blurs....yuskavage blurred her bimbos in that romantic way just a little bit. .... this is like, 'blurry pursuit' or something... or 'blur-opoly'...What if someone blurred a mondrian?

I do look forward to the artwork that takes the blurry idea to the next level, thats one of the reasons i am willing to slush through so much so-so art....just when you think art has hit a brick wall....someone surprises us...i cant wait. (image by David McShane--all images chosen by editor)

joe naujokas shows at Katharina-Rich Perlow Gallery, New York



permanent link  libby 3:03 PM
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Take the art train

 
Looking for how to get to Dia/Beacon without your car? There's a round trip from Grand Central to Beacon for less than $50 round trip if you purchase the tickets on line from Metro-North, plus you qualify for a discounted admission ticket to the museum.

By the way, there's also a discounted Amtrak/MoMA deal specifically for the Ansel Adams show (ends Nov. 9). That's a 20 percent discount on the fare.

permanent link  libby 11:16 AM
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More building

 

My friend, Bay, wrote to remind me of yet another Philadelphia building project I had overlooked in my write-up the other day -- the Calder Museum, which stopped being a gleam in somebody's eye and became real in 2001 when Japanese architect Tadao Ando got the go-ahead to design the thing. According to the Philadelphia Museum of Art website, costs for the Calder Museum, which will be administered by the PMA, are estimated at $50 million-- $35 million for construction and $15 million for an endowment. The museum is to be sited on the Parkway across the street from the Rodin Museum. (Image is Alexander Calder's "Ordinary," now installed on the Parkway at 22nd St., the site of the soon to be museum) Read more on the Philadelphia Museum's website.
permanent link  roberta 11:01 AM
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Flip Flap

 

Time again to sharpen your Sharpies and start making flip books for the Third Annual Philadelphia Flip Book Festival, Dec. 5-26, sponsored by the cartoonists and animators-extraordinaire at Space 1026.

Some day soon you'll be able to download an entry form from the Space's website. Until then (and we'll let you know and provide the link when it's available) pick one up at Space 1026. Entries due Monday, Dec. 1 before 5 pm. The entry fee of $5 allows you to enter up to 5 flipbooks. (If you are local and drop off/pick up your books directly, your entry fee drops down to $2 -- such a deal.)

Cash prizes are awarded in several categories. There are a couple rules set up for the competition -- nothing bigger than 9" by 12;" books must have the artist's name, title and indication of how it flips (front-back; or back-front); books will be handled all month and get a lot of wear and tear so “do not enter the festival if your flip book is too precious.” Jurors are Space 1026ers, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Ben Woodward and Dan Murphy. (images are details from this year's screen-printed poster announcement)

Last year’s festival, which included a wide array of hand-drawn and photo-based work, was full of wild and wonderful hand-flippable animation. Here's what I said in the Weekly...there's a picture, too.
permanent link  roberta 10:22 AM
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Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Building in a weak economy

 
I read at artnet that the Bellevue Museum of Art in Washington state has closed, a victim of financial woes at a time of economic recession. Bellevue may have shot itself in the foot when it ponied up big bucks for a new building which opened in 2001 just about the time the economy started to sour. Read more. (The Milwaukee Art Museum, which went into deficit spending on its new Calatrava addition at about the same time is also in a pickle.) And let's not even talk about the Guggenheim's building expansion and how that's busted the bank.

Locally, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is running a big capital campaign to rennovate its new Perelman Building across the Parkway (Perelman, an ornate, 1920's-era art-deco building that used to house Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company will house administrative offices and part of the collection -- costumes and textiles and prints, photographs and works on paper.) Rennovation of the existing structure is estimated at $25 million. A three-story expansion to the building's rear will cost more. (black and white drawing, above, of Perelman when it was FMLIC home)

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts likewise is fundraising for its new Hamilton Building, a 1915 building that used to house federal offices, next to the PAFA Furness Building. Hamilton will house offices, classroom space and a first-floor gallery. PAFA's website lists Hamilton as a$50 million project. (architect's rendering, above, of big Hamilton next to little Furness)

And of course there's the Barnes Foundation, teetering on bankruptcy and hoping, Orphans Court permitting, to raise money and move to a building on the Parkway. How many funders are out there for all these projects and how deep are the pockets? It probably helps that PAFA and PMA are retrofitting old buildings and not starting from scratch. But as an art consumer I want to know if i should expect to see the cost of museum entry go up again any time soon.

permanent link  roberta 9:20 AM
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Monday, October 13, 2003

Update your bookmarks

 

This just in from the better-late-than-ever department. Fairmount Park Art Association has gone live with a new website that's good looking and useful for things like researching the facts, figures and locations of public sculptures in the city. I liked the little search icon which seems to be titled "htdigs" Hot digs? Hot diggity.

I had trouble finding up to the minute information, however, about things that I know are happening right now like Ed Levine's Pennypack Park piece, second of the New LandMarks community projects, which was dedicated on Oct. 4. (see image of his "Birdblind") But as we all know, new websites take some time to settle down and reach full usefulness. Meanwhile, here's some information from FPAA's director, Penny Balkin Bach, about the naturalist's three-part piece in the park.

"Artist Ed Levine's project was inspired by the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and each of the elements reflects a different aspect of humanity's relationship to nature. Nestled along trails in the Pennypack section of Fairmount Park, three artworks provide the opportunity to both contemplate and interact with the park's spectacular natural setting."
permanent link  roberta 9:06 AM
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Sunday, October 12, 2003

Canyons and cubbyholes, affordable and non-affordable art

 

Even before we got inside Gagosian to see Richard Serra’s new canyons of steel, I could tell this gallery experience was going to be different. For starters, the crowd seemed atypical for a trendy gallery -- a mix of moms, babies, grandmoms, business types and students like you might encounter in Central Park on a nice day.

Then again, the work -- huge, curvy, earthy and (in one case, labyrinthine) -- seemed like an indoor natural wonder. (pictures above and below)

In fact whether walking “Blindspot’s” inward-curving spiral or being hit with the late afternoon sun pouring through the gallery’s west windows it was possible to forget you were in a commercial space devoted to the selling and buying of art.

I loved these pieces for their big, bold beauty and for the way they attracted such a diverse audience. I also loved the way they dominated the viewers and the space yet didn’t feel oppressive.

But when all is said and done I have to wonder about the value of art this big and this expensive.

The Serras didn’t move me on a human level or make me think deep thoughts about creation, the past or the future. They gave me a hit of something big and left me with the question of how they were made and for whom. I suppose work of this scale is for corporate collections or museums that can afford it. I’m glad I saw it but I can’t say I’ll remember the experience the way I remember seeing Michelangelo’s David (another indoor art wonder) or even something natural like the Rocky Mountains.

Meanwhile, no sooner had we left Gagosian than we ran into the smallest gallery in town, Rider Gallery in the Ryder truck. (picture right) I wasn’t really tempted to run up the ramp into the cramped cubbyhole and look at the 20-person group show but I applaud the gallery’s feisty alternative approach to business. The truck moves from location to location around town. Check their website for the schedule.

All day we seemed to run into art that inserted itself into a relationship with the viewer’s body. Serra’s canyons did it and so did Kevin Zucker’s paintings at Mary Boone (see Libby’s post below).

Then there were art objects that created a relationship with the viewer’s memory -- like Hiroshi Sugimoto’s soft and fuzzy photographs of the world’s architectural wonders -- from the Eiffel Tower to the Gehry Bilbao at Sonnabend. (image left is Sugimoto's "Marina City")

Or the more abject color photos of David Robbins at Feature which showcased discarded objects left for curbside pickup in his Milwaukee neighborhood. (right below) Both shows threw you into a relationship with the work that relied on your own memories -- and on some kind of collective, romantic memory of past glories and failures. I found both bodies of work poignant.

Finally, ending on the upbeat and affordable, I picked up a brochure for the Affordable Art Fair coming Oct 30-Nov.2 to Pier 92. Margaret Thatcher Projects will be there if you need a reason to go. Three Philadelphia galleries are also listed, Rodger LaPelle, Pentimenti and F.A.N. With a cost of $10 at the door, this might be a fun alternative to the Chelsea crawl.


permanent link  roberta 5:56 PM
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