itt: ilx user plaxico (i know, right?) goes on at length abt contemporary art that he has a boner 4

that andy goldsworthy thread that some1 else started turned out pretty good and while i love the 10 visual artists thread, it doesn't really generate any conversation so i'm just gonna say some semi-provocative things and post some pics and hopefully ppl will also post and it could be awesome but i know u can't force these things so u no

First up: Richard Aldrich

http://rolu.terapad.com/resources/648/assets/img118.jpg

http://5.media.tumblr.com/sBXQDUgdEp3rdk3cw3sw0Rtuo1_400.jpg

http://www.bortolamigallery.com/Aldrich/Jan809/CRW_1050.gif

are you anticipating this will be a kind of general 'state of contemporary art 2010' thread or more just 'artists we know and love (or not)'?

tbh id like to get a strong dialogue going bc i know there's a lot of ppl here who are into art and i'm kinda sick of talking abt hipsters and pitchfork

if you ever read anything in a magazine abt richard aldrich, chances are it'll say something abt how his first studio was tiny, chaotic and had low ceilings. i dunno why ppl always wanna talk abt the low ceilings. I think the dude is tall maybe, but really it somehow makes me think of a bomb-shelter built by some nut in the early-60's that doubles as his hobby room. his stuff is kindof eccentric, more like a half-assed thrift store version of 70's german painting (blinky palermo, sigmar polke). when he started painting he didn't have enough space for an easel and all of his stuff was painted on table top or on his lap. and it does have a weird intimacy/handled feeling. his markmaking is like handwriting, alternating between fluent and shaky. he does stuff that kindof annoys me on paper but in actuality is kinda great like the ones where he cuts into the canvas to reveal the stretcher, sticking random stuff on.

what i like is how he does the opposite of classical modernist painting, i mean part of the project of modernism is generating a style that is strong and groundbreaking and then working within that and refining it, but he seems to situate his style in the negative spaces between his paintings, how elements disappear get toyed with abandoned and re-worked. yeah ok its really "postmodern" but what's cute is its thinking about the modernist project the whole time. like mary heilmann, raoul de keyser or a lot of post-process peeps that r still working

like i wanna know abt these washed out colours a lot of these guys use (i think of this guy in relation to sergej jensen and michael krebber in partic)

tbh you are definitely way ahead of my understanding of craft/form than i am so it's hard for me to engage in any especially profound dialogue on that front - that and i'm not overly familiar with aldrich/heilmann/de keyser/etc. very intrigued by this idea of the dimensions of the artist's physical space/studio affecting their output tho

also, as a painter, i am very interested in your thoughts on jessica stockholder, if you have any. i think she's marvelous and one of my favorite artists working today for reasons i will perhaps articulate later:

http://www.klausgallery.com/d/photos/hires/67LUQBXE.jpg

also would it be gauche to discuss the MOCA/deitch thing on this thread?

its funny with stockholder tho isn't it? i mean she exists in this weird vacuum b/n two different two different strategies for using kitsch as an element of art. what's great abt her is she's not really interested in subverting anything. when i was in art-school, one thing that i always thought was really funny was how nobody really lived in garrets, and our junk was pretty fucking different to the junk that you think of in bricolage stuff in early 20c modernist stuff. when ppl needed junk to make stuff out of, 90% of the time they headed to the €2 shop to buy cheap plastic stuff. the kinda stuff you see in jessica stockholder. but the colours never really looked like that. She's kindof extraordinary with color isn't she? i read an interview with her where she said she's interested in the idea of a third kind of space as distinct from an object in space or the presence of colour in space. i love the idea of her in her house re-organising her washing on the line and stuff

haha u can go ahead, but ny gallery politics don't really come up on my radar unless its like that new museum stuff, but that was pretty riveting!

yeah, you nailed it with the color thing, you can tell she thinks about it very deeply with each piece. i love how chaotic her stuff appears on first glance even though her works are so tightly controlled and conceived and i'm very fond of when artists attempt to bring painting out of its 2-D space (like something i think maybe you said on another thread abt jeremy blake - how he works in video but his stuff is so much closer to what we think of as painterly aesthetics than time-based art - obv a lot to unpack here but i don't have time right now unfortunately).

the MOCA/deitch thing is that today he was appointed LA MOCA's new director, and may close his NY galleries (this second part hasn't been confirmed officially yet i don't think, but the first part has)

dont understand at all why deitch would go to MOCA but its good news for MOCA!

yeah, i think ppl who are like "oh god ew deitch wtf" don't realize that he's not gonna be in a curatorial position there, he'll be a director - and he's tremendously skilled at raising and managing funds which is exactly what MOCA needs right now (they almost closed in 2008)

Also, Deitch has been running his galleries more like museums than galleries for years! It's not like they're putting Gagosian in charge or anything.

Just remembered that SFMOMA's design curator is Henry Urbach, who ran a great architecture gallery for years before accepting the position.

i will say that deitch has always had a bit too much truck with hipness that what u want from a museum director

moca could use a little hipness imo

kinda seems like a new museum disaster waiting to happen now i think abt it

well i guess it kind of depends on what youre looking for out of "contemporary" "art" "museums"

not really looking for collectors using museums to show off their neat stuff for one thing

not sure what else museums are for tbh

would love to see some neat stuff at a museum

"some neat stuff" - an art - by michaelangelo

there's a few reasons this is a bad idea. the relationship between collectors and museums is and has for a long time been fairly different from them being directors. museums and collectors both act in different ways to represent and create the shifting markets of the art world. its some pretty church and state shit imo. A large part of why museums are impt is that they exist to a certain extent outside of the machinations of the marketplace. sure an acquisition by a major museum of a piece by a certain artist will have a positive effect on the artist and his dealer and the collecter, but what happened at numu with increasing attention being drawn to the fact that their retrospectives seemed kinda tailored to boosting the profile of a particular collector, seems to skew the role of where the museum fits into the grand scheme of things, and why it needs to be funded in the first place.

but--correct me if im wrong--this is a "problem" more or less only with "contemporary" art museums, right?

which retrospectives do you mean, t? besides the joannou show?

i think the issue is more sensitive wrt contemporary art yeah bc museums are in a more powerful position wrt actual careers of emerging artists, that's not to say i think fluff shows etc are a good idea either or that curators necc get it right or are completely independent from the system.

i'm talking abt large shows for verne dawson, urs fischer and elizabeth peyton, all represented by gavin brown/owned by joannu, also bigging up jeff koons kinda seems outside of the new museum's orig mandate in a bad way etc.

like i think if you put it that a new government subsidised space for helping young bands started only really putting on shows by bands signed to a certain label for instance..

the koons part is the most troubling aspect of the joannou debacle for me tbh - like i almost think the controversy surrounding the show could itself be used as a motor for some interesting curatorial ideas wrt the relationship btwn collectors and museums, but is JK the guy to do that?

um according to deitch: yes btw

also in general i don't have much of an issue w the new museum's programming since it's reopened and i think it's generally a good thing that we have it, i mean none of the ppl you mentioned are 'emerging' sure but they show a lot of artists who have no representation in museums anywhere else afaik

(largely thinking of the unmonumental and younger than jesus shows there, admittedly)

i think 1 outcome u could come up with is that maybe museums are inherently unsuited to representing contemporary art bc they are abt canonising not championing, that is the job of gallerist and dealers bc it is in their interests

yeah younger than jesus ended up being a pretty great show i thought.

i dont know--its kind of hard for me to take the joannu conspiracy angle seriously, not because i dont think it has merit but because the whole idea of a 'contemporary' art museum seems... not silly, but, you know, silly. or maybe im just not familiar enough w/ contemporary art because most of it is so dumb.

when you talk about it in terms of gov't subsidies, i agree, it becomes a little less "lol artists" and little more "hmm taxpayers" but the fact is the new museum can get in line after the ny yankees and goldman sachs and a bunch of others in terms of shady-ppl-getting-my-tax-dollars.

or xp kind of what ikr said

yeah but such as it is i would rather you not make taxpayers pay to make deitch's collection more "historically relevent" or whatev

eh, but well be paying to make someones collection more historically relevant? and besides in the end id rather my $$ go to making art, really any art, more easily accessible? or am i too jaded?

i dunno it just seems a bit nakedly crass, and its not my money so whatevs man

except i'd say that this is prolly gonna result in deitch projects closing so really its making art less easily accessible if theirs one less venue so...

i am sort of playing devils advocate here since i dont really have a dog in this fight. i liked the urs fischer show but i mostly hate any art after cezanne so.

yeah i got the feeling

the gallery is gonna close, yes. also apparently the art parade is now coming to LA

tyler green's interview w/ deitch about all this btw (in 3 parts)

http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2010/01/qa_with_incoming_moca_director_2.html

i guess partly i feel like the new museum conspiracy is more a symptom of the general--i hesitate to say fucked-up-ness--weirdness of the 21st century art world than it is any kind of cause

also i would be madder if i hated dietch or gavin brown

i think if u frame it as some conspiracy it is a little tough to take seriously, but if you look at the situation as it is and decide on those terms where or not you think it is really beneficial for that particular setup to be operating unchecked, then its a lot easier to have a clear opinion on it

yeah, i don't think of it as a conspiracy - ppl on both sides of the coin are making valid points about conflicts of interest

a friend of mine who's a big contemporary art nerd went as deitch for h'ween last year

more fun to think of it as a conspiracy though

plus that big illo that was getting fwd'd all over the place made it seem like a conspiracy

i don't really hate the guy either, dude's enough of a fixture that it's kind of like "oh, he's just being jeffrey"

this was easier in the 15th century where dietch was the medicis and no one complained because if they did they would be drowned in the arno by agents of the pope

I, for one, am glad to see the John Bock and Chris Johansson pieces gone from the 5th floor. Will post pictures of these shortly, though maybe I should be keeping more "posi" on this thread?

http://tagger.steve.museum/images/institution_SFMOMA/2005.182.A-UU_%2001_d02.jpg

the Bock piece

^^ I'm not sure when that picture was taken, because that isn't quite how it was installed most recently.

may as well put this here: saw a guy in washington square park today recreating yoko ono's cut piece

i feel more and more out of my depth talking abt anything that isnt painting l8ly

http://risd.digication.com/files/M599d3dc91eece06b0ed49f8886c43b90.jpg

The Chris Johanson piece - the security guard on the right isn't part of the piece.

xp

photo i took of it

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/full/61970845.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0ZRYP5X5F6FSMBCCSE82&Expires=1265067171&Signature=lAYKA%2FilC1r496bF0mkl5%2B6J9vc%3D

cut piece is great!

Bock was a total mess of a piece--I didn't like the piece but it was a blast to put up. A day of unwrapping the most disgusting sculptural objects...we called it "anti-christmas" because you didn't want to open another one. Fun fact--it comes with a dozen half-open bottles of shampoo that are part of the piece but don't get displayed. They smell revolting.

we called it "anti-christmas" because you didn't want to open another one

lol sounds like the universal art handler experience?

btw i am cracking up over every detail of that post

where do the shampoos go?

dont its perfect the way it is

I'm really stoked about the three screen version of Bruce Conner's Cosmic Ray that is up now, and the fact that Breakaway is on one of the compilations of video/film that is also showing.

whoa, three screen? i've only ever seen a single-screen version (which was still awesome)

Yeah - I think it's relatively new - I think it might be the premiere of this version, but I'm not entirely sure.

where do the shampoos go?

the video - which is on a small tv that is part of the installation - shows documentation of the performance.

Yes. The video is hilarious.

looool i need to check this out pronto

well it depends on your sense of humor - I've seen the thing too many times, it's just annoying - it's intentionally "wacky."

I don't want to turn a great conversation about great art into a bitchfest, but can someone give me an opinion on Schjeldahl? I ask because I read a lot of his essays, and I want to know if he's having a pernicious influence on me. I think he's a good writer, and when he's writing about stuff he loves he can be just incredibly incisive, but I've heard people bitch about how he really doesn't love anything post-'68, and tbh that resonates.

not such a refutation but this line is classic from his "younger than jesus" bit

Novelty keeps us spry, and it cleans up after itself by being gone in a minute.

I don't want to turn a great conversation about great art into a bitchfest, but can someone give me an opinion on Schjeldahl? I ask because I read a lot of his essays, and I want to know if he's having a pernicious influence on me. I think he's a good writer, and when he's writing about stuff he loves he can be just incredibly incisive, but I've heard people bitch about how he really doesn't love anything post-'68, and tbh that resonates.

― scratch paper (lukas), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 6:14 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he wrote in the orozco writeup from a couple weeks ago that orozco was one of only two post-'68 artists who he rates at all. so at least hes open about it i guess?

i tend to think hes one of the best critics at the NYer but hes very much in the stereotypical-NYer-critic mold, i.e., fairly conservative, distrustful of postmodernism/irony/humor, etc. when hes writing about stuff he likes, as you point out, hes on-point, but hes smart enough that even when hes writing about stuff he doesnt like--his kippenberger and bacon pieces come to mind--its interesting to me.

this is his intro to the orozco piece:

f you’ve missed out on the avant-gardish art of the past couple of decades—some people make a point of doing so—you now have a one-stop chance to catch up on the good parts. They are in a Gabriel Orozco retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. The Mexican sculptor and conceptualist, forty-seven years old, is easily the best artist to have emerged on the era’s global biennial circuit—a milieu whose chaotic demands for theatrical pizzazz and political virtue have wrecked innumerable promising talents. (Scant other exceptions include the tough-minded Danish-Icelandic installation-maker Olafur Eliasson.)

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2009/12/21/091221craw_artworld_schjeldahl#ixzz0eNwHKanh

anyone who is in New York i would recommend going to this exhibition in Zach Feuer which features a few pieces by fergus feehily i think who is pretty much the best irish painter i can think of but who hasn't shown in the US that much afaik

http://www.zachfeuer.com/2010spontaneousgeneration.html

his website is pretty good

http://www.fergusfeehily.com

HAY PLAXICO if you are still in nyc they are showing a bunch of land art films/videos at anthology film archives over the next week or so, starting tomorrow (i'd go to some of these if i could)

saltz's list of the ten worst art shows of 2010 here (as well as some thoughts on the wojnarowicz debacle):

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/12/ask_an_art_critic_jerry_saltz_answers_your_questions_about_bad_art_good_biographies_and_the_smithsonian_controversy.html

(i liked the neuenschwander show a lot, but co-sign on 'skin fruit' and probably the greenaway too even tho i didn't see it)

is this where we talk about MOCA firing paul schimmel

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-moca-schimmel-20120628,0,7041186,full.story

haha i see this is the thread where i defended the dietch hiring

i dont have a great sense of schimmel except that everyone loved helter skelter and that was 1m years ago. i went to moca a bunch when i was in LA though, i remember the murakami show being verrry 'troubling' but i thought his rauschenberg show was great.

but anyway. contemporary art museums! am i right?

Anybody on this thread work at a contemporary art museum?

i believe there is one person who posts here regularly who does (i might be mistaken tho)

i used to work at an art gallery in chelsea

all i really have to say about it is 'under the big black sun' was awesome and that this generally seems like it sucks

http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2012/06/29/breaking-l-a-moca-will-not-replace-paul-schimmel-as-curator/

L.A. MOCA, which dismissed its highly-regarded chief curator Paul Schimmel on Wednesday, has no plans to replace him, according to a museum representative. “Its [MOCA's] curatorial vision will be implemented by director Jeffrey Deitch, the curatorial team, and guest curators,” the rep told ARTINFO in an e-mail on Friday afternoon.

the whole thing seems shitty. dont really have the energy to be contrarian about it. :-/

the art world :((((

i saw some really good old art in italy

i had the strongest sense that nothing ever really changes at the muse d'orsay last month

art is p rad galleries are kinda not i guess

yeah i spent a lot of time w/ late renaissance & mannerists in florence and rome and had a series of unoriginal thoughts

original thoughts are overrated

this one did a number on me

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Jacopo_Pontormo_-_Kreuzabnahme_Christi.jpg/374px-Jacopo_Pontormo_-_Kreuzabnahme_Christi.jpg

the art world :((((

― Lamp, Friday, June 29, 2012 9:02 PM (1 hour ago)

http://www.bravotv.com/gallery-girls/season-1/videos/the-cutthroat-world-of-gallery-girls

less talk, more art!

david batchelor:

http://rosierogers.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/img_5484.jpg

http://marinageorgopoulou.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/p1010804.jpg

jenny holzer:

http://artobserved.com/artimages/2011/09/Jenny-Holzer-at-Kukje-Gallery.-All-Images-Courtesy-of-Kukje-Gallery-2011..jpg

http://theartblog.org/blog/wp-content/uploaded/2007_ForChicago_001.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YZnoU9su3mk/TEayzjunItI/AAAAAAAAAoc/dTiigUMtaMo/s1600/Screen+Captures.jpg

http://www.artnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/Guggenheim.jpg

i don't really know enough about the art world to be sure, but i'm guessing these artists are sorta "canonized"? nice stuff though, easy on the eyes.

wow, sorry, guess some of those images are huge and slow loading.

d-d-d-d-damn

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-0712-thursday-moca-20120711,0,1281959.story

this too:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-artist-john-baldessari-resigns-from-moca-board-20120712,0,4768880.story

and with ruscha exiting, there's officially no more artists on the MOCA board of trustees. dag:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-ed-ruschas-exit-leaves-no-artists-on-board-at-moca-20120716,0,691553.story