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Saturday, July 03, 2004

Yellow terror alert opportunity

 
We have a long-time link to Jim Capozzola's Rittenhouse Review on our site. Capozzola's a local writer, and we recommend RR for its passion, its humor, its broad coverage of subjects and for the snarky terror alert feature -- an image of just about anything under the sun that's in the day's security alert color scheme. (image is Friday's terror alert feature -- a painting of sunflowers by an artist friend, Gary Fisher.)


The Homeland's been in yellow mode for a long time now and Capozzola wrote us he's in need of an infusion of new yellow images so he doesn't have to repeat himself.

He's looking for your help.

So, if you have yellow art and would like to be a terror alert feature on Rittenhouse Review -- with links to your home page if you have one -- contact Capozzola for information on submitting your jpegs.

Artists of orange might also submit, for, as Capozzola says, he wouldn't be surprised to see the alert status ratcheted up to orange a few weeks before the election.
permanent link  roberta 11:13 AM
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How and who defines patriotism?

 
Post by Colette Copeland


For those of you who are not familar with the Steve Kurtz case, this is another example of the abuses of the Patriot Act and how our freedom is slowly being taken away from us.

Here is a brief recap: Steve Kurtz is part of the established Critical Art Ensemble and teaches at University of Buffalo. His wife died, and when the paramedics came to take away her body, they became suspicious of his studio/lab and called the FBI. [ed. note--see website for examples of Kurtz's work and links to information about the legal matter]

Agents in HazMat suits came and confiscated all of his artwork and his studio/lab materials, arresting him on charges of bioterrorism.

I have seen two articles (one in the NY Times Metro section today) which listed E-coli, but in the other information, the substance is not listed. The government has kept his wife's body for evidence and he has not been allowed to give her a proper burial.

His work is socially critical of bio-engineering and its relationship to capitalism, the economy and food, so he is percieved as a threat. Since the government could not prove its case for bioterrorism, it seems that in order to save face, they are indicting him with fraud. (two images are from Kurtz's work Genterra, 2001)



In the past month, there is also the case of the Boston College student Joe Previtera who was arrested for protesting the U.S. Iraqi prison photos by 'performing' outside of a military recruiting office. He was wearing a black hood and had stereo speakers attached to his hands. Apparently his passive performance sufficiently riled up the military so that they are pursuing prosecution more severely than for the prison perpetrators in Iraq.

Ok--so perhaps it was not the most intelligent decision to put speaker wires on your hands and don a black hood and hang outside of the recruitment office. Clearly, the military does not get the idea of performance art. However, he was not creating a threat.

There is also the case of Daniele Perna, who was forced to delete his digital photographs of the Path station in NJ, while on his way to the beach.

As an artist, I am outraged that these breaches of freedom are occurring on a daily basis. As a parent of two small children, I am fearful that if I am outspoken or don't comply with the new regime, my children will be affected. I am posting this as a means to create awareness and hopefully to promote a dialogue of what we can do as artists and citizens to protect our civil liberty and freedom.

--Colette Copeland is a regular contributor to artblog

permanent link  roberta 10:09 AM
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Friday, July 02, 2004

Call them fellows

 
I got notice recently of the 2004 Independence Foundation Fellowships in the Arts. Ten artists received $79,200, some of them receiving the maximum of $10,000 for their projects.

Here's the new fellows. We're fond of many of them -- see our artist's list for posts.:

Yekini Atanda
Jerry L. Bennett
Joan Wadleigh Curran
David Guinn
Ann Northrup
Tony Rocco
Peter Rose
Bill Scott
Shelley Spector
Justin Witte

Congratulations, all!
permanent link  roberta 9:01 AM
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Demolition alert!

 

Sarah McEneaney's wonderful mural "Indoors/Outdoors" at 12th and Hamilton is going the way of the wrecking ball today.

Sarah called me Wednesday to tell me this shocking bad news. Last night, when I saw her, she confirmed it.

This is one of, if not THE, premier art mural in the city and it's a dirty shame to lose it.

Sarah told me last night she was going to videotape the destruction. We may run over there ourselves today to witness the event. I don't know what time this will be since Sarah herself didn't know. The demo crew promised to call her when they arrived. When I hear from Sarah I'll let you know in case you're in the neighborhood.
permanent link  roberta 8:30 AM
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Blonde hair, green pond and red winged blackbird

 
When I talked with curator Julie Courtney before going on Janet Cardiff's walk in Central Park she gave me this advice.

"Don't do the walk last after seeing 20 shows." Since this is what Libby and I and most art lovers usually do on day trips to the city (look at 20 shows) we took it to heart. (top image is young Stella and her long blonde hair)

Good advice.

Courtney, who's bringing Cardiff in to Eastern State Penitentiary to make a new piece in 2005 also had this to say about the Central Park walk, "Her Long Black Hair."

"It's a very nice piece for observing -- people, nature, the park," she said. And indeed it is. (right are some little people from Asphalt Green Day Camp. Don't you love the name?)



Libby told you much about the walk in her great post so I'll try not to be redundant. Look for my piece in the Weekly (PW) next week for more of what I thought.

I'll just add a few people observations and a few pictures. Central Park never looked so good as it did on the sparkling day we were there.



When Cardiff is purring her stories at you and alternately telling you "Don't look back," or, my favorite, "Close your eyes and walk forward," just feel free to ignore her. (I took this picture (left) of some sandbags and later on of the skater taking a meeting (below right) while I was ignoring some directive.)

Don't ignore the "left, right, go down the stairs" part or you'll get seriously out of sync with the audio tour however.



At one point, juggling camera, notebook and trying to digest the real world I got lost, somewhere between tracks 4 and 5.

Cardiff's piece has death on its mind.

Near the beginning, she tells a story about how the city had to shoot wild pigs that had come into the park.

When? Not recently but I missed the details as I fixated on the shooting wild pigs part.



You don't see any pigs but you do see wild animals, and lots of pets -- and their people.


Kittyman, pictured here (left), is one of the more poignant examples. The sign on his cart asks for help.

There is much talk about walking. Walking is the major thread in the walk.

Walking is life -- your footsteps, the artist's footsteps, those of the historical figures she tells you about. You're all on the same path, from birth to death. Cardiff tell you about philosopher Soren Kirkegaard who was a walker. Every day for several hours he walked the streets of Copenhagen, she tells you. Runaway slave Harry Thomas was also a walker. He made a three-month walk to Canada and to freedom. French symbolist poet Beaudelaire walked the streets of Paris. Cardiff says "I like to think of them walking together."



She tells you "Sometimes I watch my husband when he's asleep," and compares it to watching someone who's unconscious. What is unconscious if not dead?

At the Bow Bridge over the most matte green pond I've ever seen in my life (image right), Cardiff point out the Dakota building overlooking the park and speculates about John Lennon and whether Yoko was with him that day. She can't imagine getting that news. Nor can we.

Right after this there's a story about a man in Iraq, I believe, whose son was killed by a bomb. He found his son's arm in a tree. We don't want to imagine that either. But there it is hovering as an idea, an image in your mind right there at the Bow Bridge.



I don't want to put you off the trip but all those stories and dark ideas weave themselves into Cardiff's walk.

At the end, when she's speculating darkly about the lady with the long black hair and you're down near enough to the pond to jump in it and disappear forever like the lady, wander over to your left and look at the black plastic whatisit floating in the lake. If you're lucky, you'll see a red winged blackbird perched on top like I did. (look closely at image. it's there) It was like receiving a poke from a friend drawing you back to the real world and out of a dark reverie.
permanent link  roberta 7:39 AM
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Thursday, July 01, 2004

Identity crisis

 


The wide gap between us and coporate America (see Roberta's previous post in which we try to connect artblog to hotel guests) is but a crack in the sidewalk compared with the gap between today's Chinese culture and that of 30 years ago.

On our New York outing, after the Janet Cardiff walk (see my post), we walked some more, crossing a load of sidewalk cracks to get to "Between Past and Future: New Phography and Video from China" at the International Center of Photography and the Asia Society, in New York until Sept. 5.

As Chinese culture takes in Western influences at warp speed and redefines its expectations and economy, Chinese people have a whole lot of adjusting to do. That's the theme of the show.

The things that struck me at both venues were 1) the preponderance of body art and self-portraiture 2) the persistence of the traditional scroll shape and its story-telling qualities in media not traditionally used this way 3)the insertion of snapshots into grand images or installations.


Through it all, there's an undercurrent of the fragility of life and the body, an irony about the official Party line and an uneasiness with Westernization. In short, China is having an identity crisis.

At the Asia Society, the two themes were "Reimagining the Body" and "History and Memory," but I found the work, like my childhood coloring-book efforts, refused to stay within the lines. The same can be said for the themes at the ICP--"People and Place" and "Performing the Self." Like all art, the work was rebellious.

Huang Yan's beautiful "Chinese Landscape: Tattoo,"* (top, at the Asia Society) is not a self-portrait, but it delivers its imagery from the past on a thoroughly nontraditional substrate. It's one of any number of pieces showing an identity with a pre-Communist homeland. Yet individuality remains masked and cut off. The body here is still that of a member of the collective.

Even so, there's something so individualist in a body that the argument for membership in the collective falls apart. And the texture of the powder on the strong-man torso and the cropping emphasize how fragile even this strong young man is. The wash-off technique also emphasizes how fragile and ephemeral this ancient Chinese identity seems to be.

Qiu Zhijie's "Tattoo 1" and "Tattoo 2" (left, "Tattoo 2" according to the wall labels, "Tattoo 1" according to the documentation on my CD of images**) uses the artist's own body to make a statement about Chinese individuality, with the irony of language silencing his voice and pinning him to the wall. Qui's other "Tattoo" showed him looking pierced and dotted by thumbtacks. Ouch.

Other favorite pieces at the Asia Society include Wang Wei's underfoot lightboxes in which the viewer steps into a tunnel on images of underwater faces pressed up against the plexiglass. Suffocation was another persistent theme. And so was the invasion of Western ideals, imagery and products, displayed in Xu Yen's interactive piece covering a wall on which cropped tidbits from porn images downloaded from the Internet are printed (in black and white) on the Post-its, that can be moved around (one dirty picture is not much different than another, and it's cut off from the poser's humanity).

Typical of the dramatization of small snap shots was the show's signature image by Sheng Qi of his hand, the pinkie cut off, with a tiny snap of himself as a child wearing his regulation cap and jacket. "Memories (Me)," (right) is a documentation of the artist separating himself from his past, his memories, a part of himself. He had cut off his finger and buried it in China before emigrating. The child and China are the lost finger.

A number of heroic photos and the one video I caught mocked Maoist heroic imagery and correct Maoist thinking. The video, "Our Future is Not a Dream" by Weng Fen is a compilation of short excerpts from Mao-era Chinese feature films. The characters speak in stilted, politically correct phrases, discussing their politically correct dreams of their future.

Pretty funny.

I'm going to see if I can gather some images from the ICP before I post on that part of the show--which was far more varied than the show at the Asia Society.


*Chromogenic print, © HUANG Yan, Courtesy of Artur Walther
**Chromogenic print, © QIU Zhijie, Collection Smart Museum of Art, Chicago
***Chromogenic print, © SHENG Qi, Collection of the International Center of Photography





permanent link  libby 1:27 PM
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From artblog corporate headquarters

 
In case you're wondering if Libby and I ever do anything but look at art (and write about it) the answer is actually no, that's all we do. (Just kidding)

We're very broad in our approach to the world.

As an example, I'll tell you what we did yesterday.

We participated in a mini trade show sponsored by the Philadelphia Hotel Consortium at the Marriott Hotel.

It was a dog and pony show for hotel concierges to acquaint themselves with the wonders of Philadelphia.



We consider artblog a Philadelphia wonder so we were there. (top image is artblog table -- note our new corporate banner)


We didn't even bat an eye when we found out our table was in the stuffed animal section of the hall, right next to Sesame Place's table.

If artblog is the Big Bird of art criticism, we can live with that. (image right).


And speaking of stuffed animals, here's Philadelphia's biggest stuffed animal, the Phillie Phanatic, hugging an (ahem) unnamed artblog representative (who asked to be erased from the picture.) (image left)

You must not read this photo as the Phanatic's endorsement of artblog. But it's ok to read it as artblog's endorsement of the Phanatic.

So we do get out now and again and have fun, artblog fun. We're obsessed. But you knew that.
permanent link  roberta 8:14 AM
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Sellers, Wargo in Plane sight tonight

 

Randall Sellers wrote to tell us he and his fellow Tyler school mate Alicia Wargo are in a group exhibit at Plane Space at 102 Charles St. in the West Village. Opening's tonight from 6-8 pm if you're up there. The show's up through July.

We've told you about Seller's lovely miniature drawings before (including his first wall drawing in Arcadia's "Open" (see my post for more on that).

Sellers says the gallery is in a former firehouse. Check out the website for more information (and for their nice flash homepage with a line drawing of a building that rushes at you like a bus).

permanent link  roberta 7:19 AM
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Julie York's spooky science

 
Post by Daniel Heyman



[ed. note: Clay Studio resident artist Julie York's exhibit at Garth Clark Gallery on 57th St. runs to Aug. 13.]

What has been consistent with Julie York’s sculpture and what makes it so compelling is her stunning and cool arrangements.

York arranges easily identified porcelain slip cast objects in installation settings, often and most strikingly placing large clusters of these objects in light and liquid filled clear tanks bringing ceramics to the doorstep of conceptual art the way a cat leaves a dead mouse at the foot of its owner.

The objects reproduced are both dispassionate and mundane -- casts of metal trays, funnels, beakers, tooth brushes, all mass produced items, anonymous in their own right, yet made even more so by their reproduction.



The objects, quite often 20 or more from the same mold, are meticulously arranged in grids on the floor or stacked in beautiful glass or plexiglas display cases, often filled with oil or water.

In one work, “Beauty Distilled” from 1999/2000 (shown left), York created a three level glass and metal tank, with cast dolls on the first level, muffins on the second, and two large mannequin’s heads on the third, with the objects on each level half submerged in water. The effect is eerie, and it is difficult to decide upon the correct aesthetic response.

What's a viewer to do?

Is this work so hermetically sealed that there is little space for the viewer to connect with the works? Is it a feminist critique only? Or, more sympathetically, is this careful and clean arranging a defense against the gluttony of the material world which can seem burdensome by its very excess? I opt for the latter, and leave to others the feminist interpretations that seem too dated and obvious to be compelling.

There is in these queer and distilled placements of objects a poise and confidence that forces me again and again to marvel at the sheer beauty York has placed before me and be satisfied irrespective of any particular conceptual point.

Spacey specimens

York casts of industrial objects are artifacts from the city around her. Remarkably, these eerie arrangements have the attraction of HAL, the onboard space age computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” setting an atmosphere so perfect that human interaction is not only irrelevant, but an interference. In a time where the debates of the day include the cloning of spinal tissues from embryos and more and more babies are conceived through the help of “fertility technologies,” York’s work is right on.



One such work is “Specimen #0408” (right) from York’s 2003 exhibition at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia. The work is made of porcelain, metal, plastic, oil and light, and comprises a porcelain cast of a funnel set in a metal ring on a clear plastic jar, in which sit three smaller cast objects. The jar itself sits above a round metal tray, the kind of object one thinks is familiar, but when asked to name it one finds it elusive, mixed in with the vague memories of high school science. The piece is lit from under the plastic jar, a sharply colored, specifically unnatural light. Specimen of what? Whose specimen?

Another work, “Word Blindness,” 2003, (below) is a large plastic tank with three levels: the bottom level is translucent radiating a pale yellow light; the middle level houses casts of cake molds and is half filled with water – the innumerable reflections and refractions transfixing our gaze; the top level again filled half way with water in which multiple porcelain casts of funnels of several sizes are strewn. Amidst the beauty, for this work is exceptionally beautiful, there is an ominous, creepy feeling, much stronger than the earlier works.



The work creates the aura of an operating chamber, a place of strict cleanliness that is nonetheless a battleground full of blood and infection. I keep thinking of futuristic movies as a context for understanding this work, where somehow the softness of human interaction has been replaced by the proficiency of a mechanized world. There is a fascination in staring into this perfect world, and like a deer looking into the headlights of an onrushing car, York’s work pulls us in and holds our gaze. We poor viewers are as helpless as Narcissus, mesmerized by beauty even as it immobilizes us.

A native of Vancouver, graduate of Alfred University and the Emily Carr Institute, York came to Philadelphia as an Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Fellow at The Clay Studio, where she remains an artist in residence. Before arriving in Philadelphia, York worked in white earthenware, making objects with a more recognizable feminine content. She cast series of dolls, cupcakes, and mannequin heads. She put the dolls heads on lamb’s bodies, and made casts of tea pots and irons.

Grown up clay vs kiddie clay



York relishes porcelain’s seductive purity. She loves the material, its denseness, its plasticity, the way it becomes so sensual when sanded to a smooth surface. She calls porcelain the grown-up clay – less likely to misbehave but also less forgiving. But the porcelain objects are never the completed piece, and to view them as such would be missing the point. She feels that porcelain, and by extension all clay, remains wide open as an artistic material precisely because so many of the artists working in clay see their work only within the realm of ceramics, and those outside the ceramics world rarely consider clay, with all its inherent materiality, as a convenient expressive medium.



Unhappy with the way the earlier objects controlled the work’s content, (you can’t really escape that a doll comes with a load of associations), York destroyed all of her previous molds before arriving at The Clay Studio, ready to utilize the move as an opportunity to develop a new vocabulary.

--Daniel Heyman is a Philadelphia artist on the faculty of Philadelphia University. You can see his work currently in "Philadelphia Selections 5" at Moore College of Art, at the JMS Gallery in Chestnut Hill, and at the Silas Kenyon Gallery in Provinceton, MA. Look for his Fleisher Challenge exhibit in Feb. 2005.
permanent link  libby and roberta 10:20 PM
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A walk on the wild side

 


I hardly know how to begin to tell you about Janet Cardiff's piece, "Her Long Black Hair," a walk through part of Central Park mediated by a soundtrack, which offers up a mix of narrative mystery, sound effects, directions and thoughts.

The park itself provides the visuals along with five photos that we got (top, one of the five photos plus a little park). The park also provides unrehearsed sounds that augment the CD.

We (Roberta, her daughter Stella and her sister Cate) started out at the Public Art Fund, the sponsor for "Her Long Black Hair," and worked our way up to the usual departure point, which would be at a green kiosk on the southeast edge of the Park (left the kiosk, at rest and closed up on its day off).

The sights of the city


On our way there, we looked at an old building modernized with a glass skin (right)

...












we observed fashion windows in Bergdorf Goodman that would set Philadelphia matrons scowling (left)

...



and we watched a young woman dolled up in her short pink dress (strapless at midday) cross the street and draw stares (right).






But then we followed our instructions, sat down on a bench and turned on our Walkmans, the sound track competing with the real-life sirens. Suddenly, I wasn't sure what was real, what was Memorex.

Lost in time

Roberta and I had both taken a Cardiff walk at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh which included little videos as well as sound, and a surreal sense of secret places and lives, some of which took place simultaneously and yet in the past or maybe over and over. We got lost a couple of times, but not far enough lost for it to matter.

The Central Park walk relied mostly on sound. But being in the present and the past simultaneously was still a hallmark of the experience. We did not get lost this time.

Having the sound tell you about where you are and dictate to you what to notice mediates your normal experience of taking a walk. It makes you part of a semi-planned experience in which reality and unreality merge. The people you pass in Central Park are real, as are the shrubs. But they fill roles within the unreal story.

The disembodied voice on your CD tells you that she hopes you see the egret fly over the water, or warns you that a homeless person surrounded by plastic bags filled with possessions is on the bench ahead--and then you see the egret and a homeless man (here's the egret).

The merger of life and art

Sometimes the narrator offers what seems like a random prediction and voila, it comes true right before your eyes--the man reading a newspaper, the man on skates (just as the CD plays in your ear a skater warning you to watch out--a warning recorded at some other time).

Footsteps from another day and another walker echo in the background when you walk; a voice that comes from right behind you asks if you'll take a picture of him and you look back to see no one there and realize the voice was on the CD; the main narrator's voice urges "Don't look back" in your ear.

My favorite pairing of recording and life was the rapper on the CD just as we came upon a real-life saxiphone player (left) riffing a jazz melody. I suddenly pictured myself in a Greenwich Village Beat Generation hot spot.

The recording technique Cardiff uses is called binaural sound. It tricks you believing you have located the source of the sound--the voice from over your shoulder, the warning from several feet in front of you, the music from a band just out of sight. We are unaccustomed to this level of realism in normal recordings.

An afterthought--the story

Behind the concurrences of CD and life was a fragmentary story--a sort of mystery or search to explain the five photographs, four featuring a woman with long black hair, the photos taken along the path we took . We are following her, and she becomes identified with Euridyce (she who wasn't supposed to look back, just like us), as Central Park, a few steps down from the street level, becomes the underworld. We are not sure if the female voice on the CD is jealous of her, is in love with Orpheus or what.

In the end, arias from the opera "Orfeo" swell as we stand in the same spot as Euridyce in the final picture, overlooking the pond (right, Stella in her real life and Euridyce in Cardiff's photo looking over the same spot).

On the way to this final spot, we are given quotes from Baudelaire and Kirkegaard, some information about Central Park's visionary creator, Fredrick Law Olmstead, some thoughts about what someone in the Civil War era might have experienced is they walked on our path.

The nature of time and repeating lives and real and not real became the leitmotifs of the walk, along with the fragments of the story and the bits of park history.

Included in my press packet was an interview between Janet Cardiff (who is a Canadian) and Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan. He said that the first piece of hers he had encountered made him feel like he was in the middle of a film being formulated. "Her Long Black Hair" also had a movie feel, but it's more interactive than a movie, taking you out of your own perspective and life and movie-theater seat and sending you on Cardiff's walk. She's the director. You're an actor. But some of the possibilities of what will happen in this film are forever undecided.

I'm wondering if walks are the next big art thing. I'm thinking here about Laurie Anderson taking walks and trying to figure out how to turn them into art. As for my own walks, I doubt that they're art, but they do contain their own inner monologue of observations and meditations.

People who take their walks listening to a recording of some sort don't have the same sort of walking experience--the inner monologue, but this walk gave a mix of inner and outer that fed on eachother when the mix was just right.

(I suppose this man sitting in the park (left) with his earphones on and his nose in a book is not having the same sort of park-sitting experience that someone tuned in to what's around them might have. And I suppose some pedestrian, seeing the four of us with our earphones on might have had the same thought about us.)

I hope you can get to New York to see this piece before it closes Sept. 13.
permanent link  libby 2:26 PM
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Auction business: a follow up

 



In one of the miracles of cyberspace, Texas artist Matt Lively, read my post, about the auction on board my cruise to Alaska.

Turns out, just like the auctioneer said, the prints were bought outright by the auctioneer or cruise line, and the auction price of $145 was a steal. Lively wrote that when the prints first begin selling (he makes editions of 300), they sell for $850 apiece retail. But when sales slow down, he's happy to sell the rest at a lower price. "I wanted to be able to list them as 'sold out' so that I could do new, fresh ones," he wrote. So the auction price of $145 was excellent from the buyer's point of view.

Click on the link to Matt's website. It's a good one.




permanent link  libby 9:54 AM
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Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Tuesday road trip

 
One more thing. Libby and I are off to New York this morning to see, hear and experience Janet Cardiff's "Her long black hair." (See my previous post for more.) We'll be back to posting tomorrow.
permanent link  roberta 7:02 AM
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Pardon our appearance

 
...as we work with our web guru to implement some changes to the blog. Actually, we'd love some feedback here. We'll be back to our normal long column format soon (sorry about how it looks this morning). Here's what we'd like to know. Can you see that right column of boxes on your screen or is it off the screen, requiring you to scroll over? Let us know if you have a minute. And we thank you much!
permanent link  roberta 6:56 AM
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Et in arcadia rainbows!

 
Post from Richard Torchia

[ed note: Torchia is responding to roberta's posts here and here on the Arcadia University's show "Open"]



I agree that “Open” is, to some extent, a ‘white on white’ show, but there is some color to be seen, however fleetingly. To this end, I wanted to share the attached. I admit that very few people will see what’s occurring in this photo: the evening sun (streaming through the high windows in the gallery’s west wall) hitting the threads of Mustafa Gur’s Rainbow. This momentary phenomena, however, is easily visible to visitors between 6 and 7 o’clock at the end of sunny Thursdays through July 3o. (We are open until that hour on Thursdays, and as ever, by appointment.)
--Richard Torchia is Arcadia University Gallery Director. He co-curated "Open" with Sandra Firmin, Associate Curator of Buffalo University Art Gallery
permanent link  roberta 6:42 AM
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Monday, June 28, 2004

Hear ye, hear ye

 


Philadelphia's a town gone bonkers for its history. Of course it helps that Philadelphia's history includes the always popular, founding of the nation stuff -- Independence Hall, Ben Franklin' house, Betsy Ross's house, George Washington slept here, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence there..etc. All that and the Liberty Bell.

A little while ago, we got a new piece of the tourist/history package -- the National Constitution Center. Now just to dispel the idea -- the place is not a repository for the original constitution of the United State of America. But then, Independence Hall doesn't have the real Declaration of Independence either, so I guess it's all a wash. (top image is young Stella touching hisory at the Constitution Center)



What the Constitution Center does have, right now, is a wonderful exhibit of the photographs and text from Yvonne Latty and Ron Tarver's new book, "We Were There," the collected oral histories of African American soldiers from 20th Century America's armed forces. (image is detail from the exhibit. Pictured is James Brantley, Vietnam vet and local painter. See my PW review for more on his work.)

The book -- give it four stars like the generals -- is beautifully achieved by the local writer and local photographer. See We Were There website for more -- and to buy the book (highly recommended). The photographs by Tarver depict the soldiers today. Dignified shots of elders. Each story has an archival photo just for comparison.



In Latty's hands, the soldiers' stories are transformed from facts and dates to gripping drama -- much of it focussed on race relations and heart-wrenching humiliations experienced by soldiers just trying to do their duty and running smack into racism every step of the way.

Stella and I attended the opening reception for the exhibit. Several of the veterans whose lives were chronicled were also there, as were their buddies and families and supporters. The house was packed, and when Latty spoke, describing her passion for the project, the crowd rose to its feet and clapped loud, hard and long.

It brought me to tears, as did the book, with its unbelievable true stories. Buy the book. See the exhibit. At the Constitution Center until Aug 15.
permanent link  roberta 7:59 AM
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Sunday, June 27, 2004

The art of the auction

 


I'm sure a lot of you have been to those "art auctions" used for fundraising, as had I. So when I saw that there would be an art auction on my cruise through Alaska, I decided to take a look. (Turns out, it was the first of several art auctions, selling being one of the hallmarks of the entire trip--selling the massages and work-out classes, selling the cocktails, selling cruiseware and souvenirs, selling wine tastings, and selling art).

So, amid the tossing of the brief crossing through open seas, I headed off to the (free) champagne and the display of art. So much art for every taste. Most of the works were artist's prints (no surprise here). There were prints of sexy gals with doe eyes, of sappy animals and of women walking down the beach. There were Chagall look-alikes and real Chagalls, there were decent Norman Rockwells and bad Picassos and a number of Ertes. There were also collectibles like a Ted Williams autographed baseball, Nascar memoribilia, and an Elton John autographed LP. Sentimentality and convention preponderated (is there such a word?).

The auctioneer began a spiel. At one point he actually said that the show had work representing the five most influential artists of modern times--namely Picasso, Chagall, Miro, (I didn't get number four jotted down in time) and number five was none other than Zamy Steynovitz. Honest, he really said this.

Now I had never heard of this guy, but I had noticed a couple of his pieces early on--not-quite Chagalls.

He explained that the reason the auction prices were so low (were they?) was that the cruise line bought the work outright, that it wasn't on consignment, and therefore, the artists (did they really buy this from the artists, so many of them dead?) were willing to sell them for less.

He went on to note the unique works (i.e. paintings, not prints) by Harold Behrens ( the auctioneer said, of course, those of you who know Behrens' work will be excited about this) and Peter Max, whose Statue of Liberty was a typical self-parody (shown at top, about 12" square, probably acrylic).

About 25 people came to the auction, and the bidding was hardly competitive, with people taking things at base price for the most part.

A print called "Rhapsody in Blue" by Zina Roitman went for its asking price of $146. In the same price range went "Swoon," by Matt Lively, from Texas(right, sorry about another annoying photo). A cat with sunglasses riding a motorcycle actually excited two bidders and each ultimately took home a print at an only slightly higher price than the base.

An oil, asking price in the $3,000 range, evinced not a bid.

By then I'd had enough champagne and needed to sober up for the wine tasting, so off I went. The wine tasting ultimately cost me more than the art auction, but I enjoyed it more.


permanent link  libby 9:01 PM
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Preaching art to Episcopalians

 
There's a nice Mia Fineman story in this morning's NY Times about Russian conceptual artist Alex Melamid's new art ministry. Read. (username lrrfartblog, password artblog)

Melamid, one half of the team of Komar and Melamid, who brought you "America's Most Wanted" painting, Thai elephants painting and other hilario-serio stuff, is on a tear to preach art to the masses. (image is "America's Least Wanted" painting)

In one of the more humorous aspects of the project, Melamid proposes projecting slides of art onto the bodies of the sick, thereby imbuing the the sick with art's healing proprerties. He also proposes the viewer do full body calesthenics in front of artwork in order to fully benefit from its charms.

Best quote from the Fineman article. Says Melamid

All I'm trying to show... is that believing in art is no more or less absurd than believing in Christianity or Buddhism or Vitamin C.

Libby and I are major K&M fans from way back. We interviewed the duo in 2000 and wrote up our Q&A as a feature for the Weekly. Unfortunately the PW archives don't go back that far. Here's a Libby post on one of their recent efforts.
permanent link  roberta 11:50 AM
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Philadelphia via Toledo via Montenegro

 
Post by the folks at Toledo's Space 237

You may or may not remember Blazo Kovacevic and Nataljie Mijatovic. They were both students at PAFA...and Nata was a Joan Mitchell Fellow. [note: I met Kovacevic in 2002 when I wrote for PW about his exhibit at Siano Gallery. Read it here. Interesting drawings set in a faux-retail installation. The drawings were clipped to hangers and hung on display racks.]

The pair is back in Montenegro but will be returning soon, we hope. Blazo has set up a very interesting website with a donation from the Montenegran Government, and it is terrific.



Both Blazo and Nata were part of a team that worked on the Balkan entry at the Venice Biennale last summer, and they have had several shows in Europe since.

(images are from the Kovacevic website. Top is webdesign by Kovacevic; above is detail from Aleksandar Macasev's first prize piece "Copy and Waste," a sexy animated that pops along to a spooky German rap audio --definitely worth a view.)

--the folks at space237
permanent link  roberta 8:39 AM
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Hot opportunity

 

Kutztown University's Sharadin Art Gallery Director Dan Talley sent me this open call listing which sounds like a great opportunity. Artists in Philadelphia, Reading, Allentown and surrounding areas are eligible to apply.

The show's called Torrid and it'll explore the notion of extreme heat — both physical and psychological. Talley's looking for all variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, installation, and new media works. Literalists and metaphoricals sought here. If you make work that's hot or that's about hot, this show's for you. Here's more information.

Deadline for submissions: October 1, 2004. For more information email talley@kutztown.edu

If you don't know the gallery, I've been there. It's a nice big space. The show I saw included several large sculptural installations along with more intimate scale sculpture and paintings and the space handled it well.
permanent link  roberta 8:18 AM
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